You can hear the complaints from
the farther rooms.
The pain is intense, like
waves of light cracking up
just under the eyelid.
Snakes made of fire crisscrossing
in your lungs and under your skin.

Happy birthday, you think.
It's bitter.
You're bitter.
It's cold outside.

The doctors come in,
the same questions,
the same tired lies.
They can feel the truth,
because it bubbles in the back
of your throat.
You're free for the telling,
but fear of the man is more
than a compelling enough
argument.

One break, eight fractures.
They show you the parallel bars.
It's here that you will come
to feel like a human being again.
You can't help but feel that
they should be taller.
This place should teach you to
stand taller.
Walk taller.

Fear rules the small world
you call home.
The nurses know it more
than the doctors. Some
of them lived it, others
have just seen enough to
know the warning signs.
You are not a warning sign.

You're a billboard.

The complaints drift to you.
Back aches, sports injuries, cancer.
The small, black spot inside yourself
that you know is a coward,
it cries out.
How I wish I were you.

Put upon me, if there are things
that will fit
(once there),
all the issues that you have saved,
for later days and open ended calls,
that must be solved.

If it were simple, and we both
know it is not,
then I expect that most would
have told you
(by now at the
very least)
how it really ought to
have turned out.

You have impressed me with your
perfect imperfections and I can only hope,
each held breath is anticipation of our
day, that you will find in me
broken pieces of a man
which you will adore
(in kind.)

We are all blind through this life.
Heads held high or low, or which ever way
keeps them out of sight, so that we may be
seen and not feared.
But in this blindness we are two,
where one would probably do,
and there is so little
(about that)
worth changing.

Life is big and wonderful
and so very sad.
On one side it begins
and on the other it ends
The middle part is
where love, songs and adventure
are kept.
You'll find yourself shrink
further inside
every time your heart breaks.
That's fine. It's okay to be scared.
But try, even though it's hard,
to be brave. Because
the world is huge and
heart breaking
and above all, worth it.
It will not always
pay to be nice
but you must always
be kind.
In time you'll learn
the difference
and many more besides.
Don't force yourself
to smile.
Happiness will come and go
and you may miss it
when it's not around
but you can't trick
yourself happy.
It is okay to laugh
a little too loud,
if it's honest.
Comfort people in pain
even if no one comforts you.
And help people,
when and where you can.
What goes around does not
come around but goodness
shouldn't be about rewards.
Don't look for completion
in others. Only you can do that.
Other people don't complete you
they just love you.
When you look for love,
be earnest.
When you find someone
who loves you, be fair.
Return their love, if you can.
If you can't then don't lie.
Better to tell the truth
about love than to
lie about like.
Life is long and painful
but short and wonderful.
Getting from one end to
the other takes a lot of
careful navigation.
Most people are decent,
but they're not treated that way.
Keep that in mind when
dealing with others.
You're gonna make mistakes
and you'll have to carry that weight.
We all do.
Share the load with those
you love.
I love you.
You are not a burden.

There is something in the breeze.
Something about your scent.
Some secret thing that passes,
from you to me, like telepathy.
It catches in the wind,
blows back like sand in our eyes.
I can feel it even now, miles apart
in distance and certainty apart
in moral high grounds.

I loved you when we were children.
I loved you in a way I didn’t understand,
in a way I still struggle to understand.
The electricity of breathing in the same air.
You moved, not like water or silk in
a light wind, but with the calm purpose
of sports figures and politicians.
I always had to fake the confidence you
were born with.
I loved you for it.

If the rain gets any harder, I fear that
we’ll be swept to sea.
You and me crashing against the waves.
Borrow my strength, it is all I have to
give, it is all I know to give.
Float next to me, I will do the swimming.
When we are awash on our own island,
I will build for you the life you always wanted.
I want you to understand,
to feel from me what I feel for you.
Returning that feeling has always
been for you to decide.

Give me ****** noses
and scrapped knees.
Hold me down as I
kick and I scream
and smile your cyanide
as you watch me bleed.
Drag me through miles of
broken glass and burning ash
and call me hearty and hale.
Healthy as you push me to fall.
Find me in loose rhymes
muttered swear words, tomorrow.
Tonight, beat me about the brow
with frustration and sorrow.
Tell me your darkest secrets
until the dark in me reaches out
and together we sway and weep
whisper your chocolate sweet lies
give me promises for better
and endless angry time to keep.
I've come to be broken up by you
to be torn down and worn
to stubs by the venom in your blood.
I came to look in this mirror
and see less of me but all of you.
I came here to be one of many
while you're one of few.
Don't spit love in excuse
because I'm not young, not anymore,
I've not got forgivness waiting
behind any gameshow door.
I'm tired of moving foward
fatigued from this long, long run
I'm seven chords from a ballad
when discordant, it all comes undone.
I'll still show up tomorrow
till the stars burn and are gone
I live for the fighting
Go on, now: Bring it on.

You're going to hurt me badly.
Leave me bleedin' on the floor.
You're gonna love me madly.
I'll have you needin' me for more.

You love to kick me, baby.
You love to kick me around.
I wanna make you happy.
But I only ever let you down.

I think of you like a queen, babe.
I polish and shine your crown.
Don't let go of me, honey.
I swear to god I'll drown.

You make me something less, baby.
Heartsick, weak kneed and grievin'.
You're about my only hope.
You're the only thing keeps me believin'.

I let you think you lead me.
Yeah, you really lead me on.
I made you think you need me.
But, all you really need is me gone.

Pour through me the magma
in your dreams.
I will feel as it burns me down,
cinder, bones and shattered screams.
Still my breath, scattered light,
Broken things,
Heart strings and moon beams.

Face my frigid air with your fire,
breath the light of our twinned
desire.
Beat the door of my house,
clinched little fist, reddened eyes,
far off cries and lover's tides.

With the elements, and a little glue,
these pieces come together,
beneath unsure hand and
eyes of green & blue.
This ****** thing is almost back to together,
love,
bask in these broken things we do.

Forever you have been the opposite side
of the coin that is us.
Brazen with life and love and anger
where I am alight with the same,
though in different measured amounts.
We don't finish each other's sentences,
and there exists no reason why we should.
But we do share the same content in our
bold paragraphs, the same feed in our blood.

Blood.

Blood was never a choice, but friendship is,
and you are unique in that we share both.
You are a brother, a confidant, a partner in crime,
a friend, a conspirator, a business partner,
and so much more.
People remark about the nature of our bond,
and admittedly they get it wrong often,
but they remark frequently.
Too close to be normal,
too extraordinary to be labeled.

Follow where I lead and I will
follow your lead.
Such is our nature.
We seem two circling wolves.
We seem to vie for dominance.
How is it then that we are both and neither?

Who could I trust more with my secrets?
Who could I trust more with my life?
Who could I trust more with my lies?

So we circle.
So we vie.
So we live.
So we die.

Let's build a man, whole cloth
but let's build him wrong.
Let's make him distant and cold
give him lyrics but no song.
Let's curse him with gifts
take his hands and give them art
but leave out his ambition
so he'll never know how to start.
We'll wire his brain backwards
so he'll have the capcity to deduce
but let's not include every *****
so his sanity is always loose.
And what if we give him
outrageous faith in the wrong places.
Have him be confident in failure
when he looks at disappointed faces.
And just for a lark, what if we
made him concious of these facts.
Gave him awareness of deficiencies
so he'll understand all that he lacks.

The people we know are not
those people, not really.
They are constructs of our
imagination, living in our heads
and they are more or less
accurate based on how open
we manage to be with each other.
Our memories are not recordings
they are simulacrum of things
that happened acted out
in pantomime by the homunculus
we all make of friends and loved ones.
And the tragic thing is that
when we go, when we finish
and make memories no more
they go with us, our shadow people.
Every dead person takes everyone
they ever met with them, every time.
No one is an island.
No life is just one is one life.
A light doesn't go out
a blackout occurs.
A drop doesn't fall
the flood comes.
What a terrible tragedy that
singular death is because it
contains a multitude of deaths
and the only comfort I can give
is that when you go, and we all must,
the make believe ghost of you lives on
in the memory mummer's play
inside the heads of everyone
that you have ever met.
Small comfort.
Perhaps.

All I have are fraying nerves
and pleasant whispered lies.
I'm made of potential squandered
and unaknowledged regrets
swimming just below a calm surface
of ******* I just haven't said yet.
And I'll ask you, in pretend passing,
to consider my debts squared
and my intentions over my actions
but I'm not really to be trusted
you just didn't have anyone to warn you.

Break me like a promise
keep me like an oath
love me like a faith
and mourn me like a ghost.

I know the problem has always,
always, always been me
but I've blinded myself to growth
by wallowing long in misery.
I'll say I need a light to guide me
but I'll ignore the lighted path
because I don't want to be better
I just want to be excused from the math.

I know I'm hard to live with
and I never apologize
I know my fictions don't fix
what I always vandalize.
I know that knowing isn't
efforts made to correct.
I know you'll hope for things
that you'll just never get.

I know the road to take
to change into a better man
but I'll never step foot on it
even though we both know I can.
You can lay bricks to build a foundation
on which to finally build it all
but I lay bricks just as easy
to put up a great big wall.

We're all dying,
some just a little
faster than others
and we all wanna know
we mattered to our
sisters and our brothers
because we're short
on time and long
on meaning
with tarnished souls
and empty hearts and
minds that need cleaning.
We talk about legacy
while we struggle
from day to day
but we leave aside our
value when we refuse
to stand and play
these forever games
of trying to find the
hard and honest truth
before it's far too late
before we've gotten just
a little too long in the tooth
And still it isn't over
not by a long shot
and certainly not yet
because they'll never let
it finish before we
pay our outstanding debt.
I do not know if I'll
be here tomorrow to
guide you on the way
because tomorrow is
a foreign land and all
we ever have is today.

I will guide you like
a pencil across the smooth
face of blank paper
or brush on canvas
to define the shape of you
from abstract nothingness.
I will chip away at marble
slabs and whittle logs
of chopped wood until
I've revealed you.
I will bend words until
meaning is clear and the
simple prose of you
will speak honesty.
I compose on sheets
and instruments until
the sweet song of you can
be sung proud from chorus
to substantive verse.
I will labor, young one
to put only what is needed
of myself into the work
that is you so that you'll
be built a better man
than I ever was.
Until the art is complete
I'll labor tirelessly.
One day you'll be unveiled
and I hope you'll be ready
because you will have to
stand tall before a world
that will yet, I swear it,
learn to admire you.

German/Irish as the rest of
White America,
with none of the German Efficiency
and less of the Irish Luck.

Tired and Twenty-Seven,
though some Forty years olds
think I'm their age,
and too overworked to see that
this is all building to something.

I hope it's building to something.

No tattoos and still loads of regrets,
a great wife,
a good life,
but no time to breathe when the
day ends.

My god I love her.
Does she know the things I do for her?
Does she notice that these
years I've added to my birth age
are in service of my feelings for her?

I hope it's building to something.

The second half of the eighties saw me enter.
How is it that less than thirty years on
I'm creaking when I stand and one night's missed
sleep ruins up to three weeks?

I hope it's building to something.

And he'll measure his freedom
in fractions of an hour
and wonder all the time
if the average person
the same one that spends
more time with coworkers
than family and friends
also dies unhappy or
at the very least unfulfilled
and if so if the average person
is on average unhappy
for the average length of
their lives are we, on average,
doing something very wrong?

And he'll learn to budget in
the age of autodeductions as
common bill pay procedure.
As if some company storing
his banking information is
a convenience rather than
a glaring imposition.
His personal life is on sale
at the cost of retweets and likes
but as long as people are watching
he'll be able to pretend
he's not so ******* alone.

And the weather will change
and the oceans will rise
and fall and spring may
disappear and summer may reign.
And he'll be the last generation
that remembers how it was
and he'll wonder how the
youth around him can take
so much of it for granted.
He'll wonder how they can
find it all so normal.

My grandfathers were born
in villages in other countries.
Their first homes had no toilets.
They were young orphans
on American streets, once.
When my father was born no
single man had been to the moon.
When I was born school shootings
were unheard of and most homes
had no computer and a landline.

I wonder how he'll be.
I hope he'll be okay.
And he will, even though.
We always seem to be.
But still...

...I wonder all the time.

With a single sentence
he sent them to their deaths.
He knew what it was,
he knew what it meant.
He now understood
the ruthlessness of war,
the sacrifice of victory.

There was a time when he was normal.
Just a kid, like we have
all been at some time or
another. Gazing into the sky,
envying the birds their flight.
Dreaming of a future he had
absolutely no reference for.
He had no perspective.
He would be young forever.
Wouldn't we all?

The burden on his shoulders
was too massive to control.
Most days he would sink in it.
Wallow in that place
between dreams.
He couldn't be touched there.
He couldn't be asked to
decide. He was free
from that horrible
responsibility.

But it would be back.
It always was. They would
look to him, as their world
fell apart, and he was expected
to have the answers.
To have the resolve.
He was expected to order
his friends into danger,
to order them into eternal
silence. And it was accepted
that his word was law.

He had made so many mistakes.
So many ******* mistakes.
He had failed to see the bigger
picture. He had failed to
see the end coming.
It was here now. And what terrified
him the most wasn't the battle,
wasn't the fear, wasn't
the impending doom.
It was the quiet acknowledgment.
The smooth, calm
smile on his face.

It was the end of everything,
and he was ready for it.

I think I'll just stay here and burn awhile,
thinking about the match and the gas.
Remembering the smile on your perfect ******* face.
Yeah, I think I'll just burn here awhile more.
I got no place else to be. No one to love and nothing to see.
Waste your potential at my side a bit.
Get warm, love.
Settle in.
Feed the fire with you hopes and dreams,
fresh kindling as mine has begun to badly deplete.
Thank you for all you do to keep me going.
I love you more'n I know how to say.
But there ain't enough left of me now to save.
You should head to bed. Let the dreams begin, my love.
Go. Rest up.
You've much to do and tomorrow will bring new trial.
I think I'll just stay here and burn awhile.

We have burned the bridges. All.
We have lit the match.
We have watched it fall.
I no longer know the voice
when you call.

We are not friends or lovers.
We are now absentee voters.
We are nothing to each other.
Forget the times we were better,
like when we would dance,
remember nothing of us together.
We never had a chance.

When a thing is dead,
good and truly over,
Nothing more is said.
We move on in silence
and put the past to bed.

Don't look for me in torchlight,
on the other side of this chasm,
I am vanished into goodnight
with dreams of almost had it
and fresh wounds from the old bite.

We have burned the bridges. Every one.
And with the coming day
we squint into the sun.
We are heavy handed, cold
and in silence we are undone.

Everything was silence,
waiting for my song.
Before there was a face
to meet your face there was
this tired man.

Within myself I felt the ripple
indicate that change,
whole and complete,
was waiting in the still air
between then and horrifying
******* Now.

Fight the pressure on your eyelids.
Push the dark away.
Feel around for the primal fear of death.
You may cower from it always,
but you may never again deny it.

Life is fire and pain.
It is see through flesh and
the dull ache of mending bones.
It is screams heard before the dawn
and so much courage.
So much love and so much gritted teeth.
So much stubborn justice.
So much missed time and perfect
accidents of arrival.
Life is love,
first and foremost.

So much comes down to timing,
and so much comes down to skill.
In between the two is where you can
find me.
The barrier is torn down,
but it remains in our hearts
and in our dreams.
I wonder if I am what it will take
to puncture the falling fog.

Where there was a void there is now
my presence. My feet on solid ground.
The world waits, poised to see what I do.
I look upon my city, from high and from low.
I feel the bile turn my stomach sour.
I hear the voice in my head shouting that
I'm insane.
I see them waiting and I leap.

How I hate to disappoint.

When we were young
I fell in your fire.
Your passion for life and love
kept me off balance and wild.

Sit back and marvel
as you spread your joy.
Your warmth
Correction:
You're warmth.

You are fire, my dearest.
Contained but beautiful.
I have always been cold
like the night sky
but you,
my great love,
you are the distant stars.
You burn light into my
frigid night sky.

You are a campfire, my dear
Filled with laughter and song.
I am old dry wood,
gathered to build you up.
You are vivid fire, my great love
And it has been
my pleasure to burn.

How you delight to watch me struggle.
I’m tearing always at these bonds you’ve
shackled me with.
Always.
Like trying to breath in cellophane.
Sinking.
Waiting for the bottom to fall out.
In endings it is said that there
is a new beginning.
I won’t ask for that.
I want freedom.

For too long this mold you’ve cast
me in has been my identity.
Has been my purpose.
Chained to this floor while
the world spins and grows
and laughs and loves around me.

******* your nature.
The weight of your aspect hangs
about my neck.
Labeled.
Contained.
Quiet.
Polite.
Behaved.

I will touch that sky.
I will feel my finger tips graze
the surface of greatness.
I will be so hungry for more.
How will you keep me then?

Catch your breath.
Breathe.
In.
Out.

Hold it.
Feel your lungs burn, ready to burst.
Hold it.
Let go.

Feel your heart?
It's beating fast because it was convinced
that it was going to die.
Your blood is pumping.
Your arms and legs feel alive.
Gloriously alive.

My heart does that when you say my name.
And I love you for making me feel
so close to death.
For making me feel so
Gloriously alive.

Catch your breath.
Breathe.
In.
Out.

Under all the suffering
is a drum beat.
Staccato, like rain
on a tin roof
or the steady off beat
pounding of a heart
filled with fear and love
and it moves in us,
slithering under skin.
A parasite growing fat
on the swell of blood
inside us.
One word and our feet
leave the earth
as suddenly we're
soaring toward the stars
at a velocity high
and strong enough
to break gravity and
punch a hole in the atmo.
We're baseballs, our skin
shed, as we sail over
the parking lot outside
the stadium.
A glance and we're
crashing through car
windshields and bouncing
off of highways.
We're burning up on re-entry
hoping our time outside
the suffering made a
difference, hoping that
one ******* time in
all this stupid, sensless
daily pain that we
scratched important.
Hoping we mattered.
We are high metaphor
wrapped in low fantasy.
We were young and
in love and it was extraordinary,
even though it was
so ******* ordinary,
because it was happening
to us.
Does anything ever
feel that big again?
We are always chasing
oceans inside ourselves.
We contain multitudes,
as sure as I'm alive,
and all of it fades
into nothing,
as sure as I'll die.
I loved like an ocean,
like a wild summer storm.
Burned like starlight
distant and faintly warm.
I once lit up the night
just like approaching dawn,
We burn hot for awhile
then one day: we're gone.

I've spent a lifetime
being replaced with the
family you married
into next.
I've been left behind
walked away from
and ignored.
Saddled with your
responsibilities and never
once thanked for feeding
and caring for the others.
Only replaced
or abandoned
or harmed.
There was a darkness
the second time you
married and we all
suffered, of course we did
but don't pretend
you didn't know.
Don't playact as a person
who didn't see it all.

We sat in the kitchen
and had our heads
shaved by the hands
of violence you brought
into our lives.
We were told to be men
to grow up.
Not to make faces
not to cry.
He'd pass out on his recliner
drunk before the flickering
blue television light
as I balanced our checkbook
at the kitchen table and
wondered about the knife block
and the deep dark Appalachian
woods just beyond the
flood light on our back door.

Eventually the night came
where you couldn't hide it
from the neighbors anymore.
When lights touched the darkness.
I'd left by then.
You escaped as well.
Too little...
But perhaps not too late.

Before he was born you asked
if I could forgive you.
I wasn't sure.
I'm still not.
He looks for you in the
spare room you stay in
when you visit.
He wants to see you
on my phone.
He loves you the way
I did once and I invite you
I beg you
Please, please this time
after everything that's happened
love him back.

Everyone is isolated, if only they
would stop to think about it.
Because regardless of the battles
we fight, the wars we wage or
the love we spread, the love we make,
we walk through our dreams, and our
world with only one voice in our head.

It is not always a pleasant voice, and it does
not always ask of us the things we would
like to believe we are capable of.
Sometimes it will say “run.” when we always
thought we were the type to stand.
Sometimes it will say “yes” when we know
that the occasion calls for no.
Sometimes it will tell us to hate even when
it understands that the intentions were good.

It does not speak in hollow platitudes.
It does not spare feelings.
It does not care that a world exists beyond
the frame it is concealed within.
It is small, weak, self serving, and scared.

My god! Where is the animal confidence?
Here at the top of the food chain of countless
ecosystems, it's secret ambition is to make us think
like prey. Ever watching the ground, the corners the sky
for the predators it knows are coming.

And in the moment, when a plan goes south,
when, looking back at you with boredom glazed eyes,
she says that this was not what she expected, when
you wake from your lonely dreams to an unexpected
noise from a distant room, the clenching of your
bowels screaming terror unimagined.
In the moment when it is right about the
hostile world you inhabit
It doesn't even have the courtesy not to
scream that it told you so.

We are all isolated, with an animal fear
screaming against a civilization it doesn't understand.
We are all lost in a spinning ball of predictable yet
frightening chaos, trying not to listen
to the part of us that wants only our safety.

Cowardice is a word that crawls inside of us.
Digs out a pit in the stomach, and lives there
surrounded in your shame and your guilt
and grows fat.
Because it's easy to listen, to accept
the single minded voice. It is so hard,
so damnably difficult, to aspire toward
a loftier goal, to ignore the voice.
We are all Isolated, if we think about it.

Color my smile in you vibrant shades.
Knowing the edges of my cast shadow
is a freedom of sorts.
Find the stars in my eyes, each with
the name you knew to be true.
Kiss me with any of the seven kinds
that you know. I yearn for them all.
Know me in your slow and steady way,
one hand on the back board one on my chest.
Love me as you always have. Without
condition and with only desperate need.
Sing to me, the songs you love and more so, the
ones you only barely know. I love those the best.
Close your hands around me, and cage me
like a firefly so that I might shine for you.
So that I might make you smile.
Any one of the hundreds you know.

I want to write about the ocean
but only ever manage
verse after verse about fire.
I want to sing about hope
but always belt out choruses
filled with unfufilled desire.
I want to listen to the falling rain
but get so ******* distracted
by all the miserable daily pain,
And I don't know what'll fix it
I'm only ever a moment of falling
away from going totally insane.
I want you to know, I believe
even if it would appear I
only really know how to grieve,
I want you to miss me
and ask me seriously
when I go not to leave.
Because, I don't want to fight
it's like I can see just fine
but haven't got any sight.
Give me a spark, love, light up the night
and I'll drown it in an honest
desire to get just one ******* thing right.
.

Meet me in the forest,
what passes for one here.
Tell me your secrets and I
will tell you mine.
Over flashlight and
blood pacts we will
save our bottle caps
for our whispered projects.
In a notebook we keep the
page for decoding the
language we invented.
Each night we’ll bring the latest
chapters of our story.
In the morning we’re strangers.
We don’t talk, we don’t laugh,
we don’t look.
We’re each others best kept
secret.
One day we’ll decode love,
without the help of invented
language or spiral bound
notebooks.
My god, I miss the illusion
we had built around our
“Love.”

There was a time,
I am certain,
when food tasted better
and summer wasn't humid
and the truth was so convenient
we hardly needed lies.
Well, broadly speaking,
I suppose.
Because, not everyone here
was there, you see.
Not every voice made a sound.
The streets were quieter
but not everyone was around.
And sure, we think it was better.
Whose to say?
Whose allowed?

Open a window and
listen to the violence
the shouting
the generations of impotent rage.
Listen for the cries
of oppression voiced by the oppressors
listen for the center as it
fails to hold but
just gradually shifts right.
Listen and maybe hear
the terrifying sound of sirens
approaching in the cover of night.

We've not grown or moved the bar.
Because the really sticky issue
is that the way things were
isn't terribly different
than how things are.

Color me with Technicolor
like prisms casting light
meet me in the middle, love
'cause I don't think we'll last the night.
Find me in your multi-chambered
beating, hungry heart
because all this screaming,
lately, is tearing us apart.
Whisper sweet nothings
instead of just demanding ***
or start getting ready, honey
to pester whoever comes next.
I don't want to argue,
I don't care if I'm even right
just please come to the table
I just don't want to fight.
No one said it was gonna be easy
but how is it this hard?
I'm pacing up halls and stairwells
doing nightly rounds like a guard.
It was supposed to be transcendent
supposed to lift us off the ground
all we're doing is shouting
our better angels lost in all the sound.
We're still angry as the purpling
sky turns red with the rising sun
and we're promising to fix it
'cause it would hurt more to be done.
Color me in the nighttime hues
the dark blues after sunset
I kiss your finger tips and smile
we both know it ain't over yet.

Do you remember?
Do you recall?
The story starts
the same way,
don't they all?
Once,
There was a storm raging
against the outside
of the building we
were in that we could
hear through the wall.
We both reached for
the same object
at the same time
and there was something
in the casual intimacy
of that brief touch
that I've thought about
all my life.
I've been chasing lightening
through dark skies
and old mythology
and coming up hollow,
empty as a promise to behave
but I'm still hunting
it down as I while away
these humid dog days.
In the soft wet soil
with Nimoy tracking
In Search of...
but finding questions
answered, discarded or
pointless and losing
years in the rabbit holes
that I fall down.
What was the magic
of a moment just after
I knew what I know
but before I knew that
I had no clue what
I know, afterall.
And how do you explain
a longing for something
as ineffable as a fleeting
moment of comfort
wrapped in nervous
flirty laughter?
Once,
I found myself attempting
to recover and laid
out against a bare floor.
You floated over me in
dimples and sunlight
and soft, sweet kisses
or...am I remebering that right?
I'm sitting in the Summer
trying to relate to
Winter how I got
caught up in the Spring
trying to explain the Fall.
Still, fires burn
and waves crash.
Babies are born
and nothing will last.
But for a moment,
years and exactly
one lifetime ago,
I was okay with it all.
I found comfort
in the thunder
and shelter
in the squall.

...
.......
C:\Q&A;>

Question: Is this love?

Tearing pieces away so
the world can examine them.
Ripping apart the whole,
the soul,
for scrutiny.
Hoping with each lost,
shredded piece that value is
traded.
That redemption is given.
Ultimately, though, it is
degraded.
Devalued and purposeless.
Still, the work must be finished.
Still, it must be given,
the words and the feelings
that are foreign,
to you.

Answer: This is incomplete.

...
....
C:\

We cut up this country
in miles per gallon,
punctuated with roadside
attractions and the yellow-green
median strips on highways
painted across purpling
distant mountains and
the ever absent affection
of young parents trying
to put thousands of miles
between the fight and
who was right.
Finally we got stuck,
like an axe in a stubborn tree.
We stopped moving
we grew a fixed address
and a waiting tragic
second act to sit in.
There is nowhere and there
is there and there is
right ******* this second
but we're always here,
just right ******* here,
and broken hearts won't
solve it and tears won't
stop it and nothing can
save us from the darkness
over that horizon
no point in begging
we just gotta live it.
It's funny how many places
have a Cambridge
how many streets are main.
It's ******* darkly
hilarious how often
you'll find a mean drunk
******* and cowering
scared kids.
Have a look in any
old mountain town and
you'll find us there.
Sing a song, Guthrie,
make it mean something.
Teach me the magic you found
in the bottoms of bottles
in the ends of needles
in the warmth of strange beds
and under night skies.
I want to learn to forget
because the limping
is giving me away.
I want to learn to forget
because all this remembering
is ******* killing me.
I'm full up on ghosts
and haunted by old hopes.
Oh, I learned the swear words
and prayers and the little
hours of quiet terror.
Love comes in so many
forms, no one warns you.
We notice all the little details
like a television detective
who only notices the
signs of his ordinary tragedy
in other people's kids.
What a gift we've been given.
At night we put out the
lights and close the doors
and we close the bottles
and whistle from the porch
into deep dark night
for the dog and for
the mystery and we
brush the day from
our teeth and our faces
We lay in the dark
facing the bare wall
and we remember everything.
I miss feeling youth
in my bones and blood
but I never want to go
back to being young.
I'll always love you,
you *******.

There are great cities
coursing through my blood
and old mountain ranges
trapped in my DNA.
I am as much where I've been
as where I'm still going.
I am memories of the
excitement of screaming
life on steamy night time
city streets, routine tragedy
lit in neon lights and
the film noir sounds of
cabs and trains rushing by.
The cold street savy intelligence
that we all ignored to
play pickup on packed
streets, or swim in the
local members only or
smoke cigarettes and wonder
what life'll be for us as
we grow in anonymity.
I fell in love on a subway
platform and on building
tops and fire escapes
where buildings jut like
teeth reaching toward the
star absent moon filled sky.
I recall the pine scented
sidewalkless roads of deepest
Appalachia, the wind cut
rosy red cheeks of chipped
tooth kids scheduling their
meetings in advance.
Finding each other on school
yards and bus rides home.
Learning to love in crisp
mountain air and flannel
wrapped forms.
Building fires and seeing
in her eyes something
as wonderful as the hundreds
of thousands of stars in
the cosmic painting of the sky.
I settled in the brick row homes
of somewhere inbetween.
An alley behind the house
and a wall shared with a
neighbor in a place that
knows and throws
block parties
to recall my first love
and a yard and treeline
in the distance so as not to
deprive my boy of that
uniquely East Coast
forest and the magic of
a night sky full of color.
I long for yesterday
but have learned the hard
lesson of compromising
all that was once my
yesterday with what is now
My today in order that I
make a middle ground
for tomorrow

Regret is a cornerstone on which we have built a lifetime.
Forced from shelter into life,
we live as though mistakes are not expected.
Show me the man,
who at the end of his life,
does not look back and wonder.
Were it not so easy to dwell on our missteps
we would have no room to grow.
We will never reach out and find that we have
always had perfect teeth,
proper endings,
promises kept.
We are small.
We are considerably broken.
Therein is our most valuable attribute.
We are people, **** it.
Whole and complete, with mistakes made,
doors slammed shut and no path but to the grave.
And how magical is that?
Live, always and everyday,
with the past behind you.
Tomorrow there are a million more mistakes
never to make again.
And marvel , my friend,
the glory of being small and considerably broken.

He fell on a bit of errant tile
in a hall made of echoing footfalls.
He felt his face break through to Neverland.
He ripped his head out and threw it back and with great peels of laughter announced he was at long last a Pan.
"Crow all you like." Say the old white men, "No one cares."
And they didn't.

We are the oppressed screaming obstructed behind dynamically lit monochrome Utopias.
We are the forgotten imperfect.
We stand in the cast shadows of those with great power and shoulder all of their discarded great responsibility.
Washed up heroes in this digital millennium.

Great Caesar's Ghost licks the blood from his chops and curls into a ball to watch the passing storm with lazy impassivity.
If this too passes, they thought, what becomes of us?

There stands a sun bleached flag on our satellite. It is bent to give the impression that it is waving.
Once it had so much meaning.
Once it had a pattern, in color.
All of that was washed away in a cosmic bath of radiation.
One of them played golf up there.

I wonder if they brought all the golf ***** back?
I don't know.
I never asked.

I feel like a cover of a sad song.
I'm full of someone else's words
because they're better than mine.
Because honest is so ******* hard.
Because honest takes so much time.
I'm six miles away from her childhood home.
2002 miles from where I was born.
He was born in town.
I want to tell him everything I learned from being around.
I've lived in valleys and mountains far above this ground.
I've lived in cities that stretch as far as the eye can see.
I've lived in towns where my last name is had only by me.
You two have it now.
One by birth, the other a vow.

I feel like a bad cover of a great song.
Almost meaningful but also wrong.
What do I do?
I live in terror that my truth is repugnant
to you.
That if you found out or somehow knew.
I get down, you know? I'd feel blue.
I know we've been here. Deja vu.
Oh, love. My love. Many once. Now few.

I'm an earnest cover of your song.
You wrote a masterpiece, love of mine.
You wrote circles around me one word at a time.
I just want you to hear your words
Spoken in my accent and tone.
To see how I love them. Know you're not alone.
How important you are to me, I cannot say.
So I've borrowed your Melody so that I may.
I want you to know, love:
You're the reason I live.
You're the heart of me.
You're who I wanna be.

The boundaries between dreams
are made up of the finest strands
of silk and carelessness.
One tends to flow into the next,
without elegance.
Without pause.
Without apology.
Someone told me that
life was like that.
I don't remember who,
and perhaps that says all
that needs to be said
about my opinion on
the matter.

Staked to the ground we find ourselves at
the crossroads.
Though no deal is to be struck,
no bargain arranged
and no promises kept.
This is a place for looking
and, if we are all very lucky,
a place for seeing as well.

Stand here with me, in these chains,
and sing me the song that is
the night.
Breath this starlight and look out
on the expanse of our ever
expanding universe.

Do you see it yet?

Pinned though we are,
wondering though we might,
we have to find the single spark,
we have to see the light.

It is here, in the darkness that we revisit.
That we revise.
That we dig it all up and decide.
Because tomorrow, thankfully not today,
we grow toward the sunlight
more efficiently,
as the people we have to be.

We are staked here, at the crossroads,
but when these pins are drawn,
our chains lifted,
we will soar the skies above the crossroads.
We'll wonder, one has to hope,
as we look down on the trail that
had become our prison,
The path here is crooked,
so many obstructions
too many hazards.
The paths lead nowhere...
How did we ever get around?

You are a crucible,
within you are the ingredients
that will coalesce into such
wonderful shape and form.
I am an unlit pyre aching to burn

Find the spark that will
push me to ignite.
Feel for the pressure that
will force your contents to unite.

You will make forever in your own shape.
A fine thing it will be.
People will look on your
achievement and inundate
you with deserved praise.
You are more than a glorified stain.
You are permanent. You will last.

I am almost nothing.
I will blaze for such a short time.
Ash and dust and nothing.
But, my god,
my friend,
my love,
I have such a gift for you.

Watch as I burn.

Decades of industry speak
has polluted the vernacular
our cultural literacy has reached
dazzling hieghts but our ideas
have become threadbare with use
and the element that made art
is missing, lost in algorithms
you can download on your phone
and pimped out by YouTube
video essays and the sponsor segments
that fuel a burgeoning industry
of future exclusions and despair.
We're all thought transmissions
floating in the atmosphere
lords and ladies and battles
and songs and millennia of
triumph and tragedy and strife
replaced with canned laughter
because the sound of our tears
didn't hit the editor's ear just right.
Ten once in a lifetime catastrophic
events in every decade I've walked
this earth have numbed me to
the sense of awe that those men
had as they watched the cloud
rise over barren American desert.
I have seen Death on the periphery
of my whole lifetime and find
that I am so well acquainted with
it that the fear has been replaced
with a muted sense of resignation.
Yes, of course this is how it is.
This is how it's always been.
If we just keep "yes anding" to
the absurdity of every new day
we might claw our way clear to
the surface and breath rarified air.
Or we'll end up as Sisyphus
pushing the Gordian knot of
centuries of tangled unsolved
problems for all of time.
Or we'll be lost in scattered airwaves
when we fail to hold viewer interest
and the channel gets changed
to a more colorful and exciting
kind of suffering.
We're not historically good
with the Nielsen numbers
because we always shoot
the Blue revision.

I went to church as a boy.
Learned my saints
and my psalms.
Memorized "and with you."s
and The Hail Mary
(Full of grace, you see.)
Drank the wine
ate the Eucharist.
Spectacles, testicles,
wallet and watch.
I sat at each station
and read my reading.
Said my prayer.
At some point I wondered
if god was even there.

I went to school in my youth.
Carved swearwords in desks
and learned an insane amount of math.
I sat through pep rallies
and detentions.
I read poems and novels
and text books and notes.
Passed to each other in class
(Check yes or no.)
I didn't know the diiference
between *** and love.
I often wondered at the
line of trees I could see
from the window.
What kept me there?
Who held the power?

In my childhood I fought a monster.
He looked like a man
and smelled of a bar.
He seemed a giant
as he loomed over me
(I'm six inches taller now.)
I remember his thick fingers
meaty from blue collar work
pressed against my eyelids.
I remember my head through
the hallway wall.
I still have that uneasy
feeling before bed.
I sometimes wonder
if one of those times
I never got up at all.

Years and miles
time and tide ago
my world was very
different and I wasn't
in control.
Tonight her gentle
breathing fills our room
and the sweet laughter
of our son fills our house
and I 've never been more happy
and I've never been more proud.
(He can count to 30 out loud!)
And I pray to an absent god
that an unknown power
taught me better.
I hope I got back up.
I do sometimes, when it's late
or I've allowed my thoughts
too much free reign, wonder
if maybe one day
my sweet little boy
will have to fight
a monster, too.

It's so strange how it changes scale.
See, my whole life I've been the star.
At the center of the tale,
head and chin over the bar.

The story is yours, now.
So casually it changed hands.
Started, with a sacred vow
two meaningful matching bands.

And you look a little like us
a little like them.
Borrowed expressions of fuss
on an unfinished gem.

My identity changed overnight
without the help of a phonebooth.
I'm become "Dad", my new birthright.
I was me until you altered my truth.

You amaze me, kid.
I watched you learn to smile.
Knocked me right off the lid
every loss just one more for the file.

And one day it'll be over and done.
One day you'll leave me. Get up and go.
When you're gone what do I become?
I'll be empty? Take of me for you to grow.

Out the **** light.
Away with feet and shoes.
Laces drawn and Velcro snapped.
He runs his personal miracle mile.
From dawn to dusk,
wake to quick to finish.
He sleeps now. The shades
closed, the world soft and still.
His breathing ragged always.
Patience and peace his only virtues.
Tomorrow!
Tomorrow will blaze.
Will burn.
Tomorrow!
He’ll ignite his dreams, and track the
ever elusive spirit of this country
to it’s rest chamber.
Buckled saber, shield aloft
he will vanquish the soul and
in it’s place he will carve himself
and his future.
Tomorrow.
Patience.
Peace.
Tomorrow.
Always.
Out the **** light.

There are talcum powdered noses
     And perfume floating in the air.
She makes a graceful exit, before she
     makes a triumphant return. Still they
Are dancing. One step, two step, back and
     forth across the floor. Clumsy feet and
old soda cans, clothes, an empty pack of
     cigarettes. Nervous glances, not at the
obstacles but at each other.

         She had never danced before, not really.
         Not like they did that evening.
Sure,
         there had been feet on top of her father's
         shoes, and the faux waltz she would do
         with her older brother when the radio in

the kitchen hummed a note they enjoyed. Those moments
were only for seconds at a time.
                    Never like this,
             never because she meant it.

She didn't know how to dance, she never had before.
It was so much more ****** than she thought.

In time she would come to compare the two
moments. Her first dance, with her first love.
Her first night with him, her first “night” at all.

               Clumsy movements dominated both.
               Stifled laughter, serious glances mingled
            with nerves and ecstasy. It wasn't like that
                           in the movies.

In the movies, there was no wet spot on the sheets.
Still, they danced.
           Awkward,
                    horrible,
                            amazing.

                          ­                  They danced that night for the first time.

                                                            The­y dance now.

The gears have spun their
final rotation.
The beat of this place has
finally died down.
Now we dance.
There is a song that
shoots from our core.
A rhythm that we spend
our entire lives denying.

Step charts discarded, we
pave the world beneath our
unsure foot falls.
I swear to god that I lived once.
Now, if only for these moments,
these short and wonderful
seconds, I will push my face
through the obstinate surface
of this dying rock and
I will live again!

It is blue and here I am in
the middle of it.
Bleed your hues into me.
Free this romantic from the
tired bones of this warrior's flesh.
Pace before me, let the hunger
wash over you, let it come.
Rip from me the beating essence
of this song.

I will be yours forever in this
moment, if only you will
follow me. If only you will close
your eyes and put your hand in mine.
I can take you to the streets in
my head. To the heaving city
alive behind these green eyes.

Give me the chance. Forgive me
the past, the indecision, the
false steps, the wayward consequences
of my misspent life.
I will burn the world down,
leaving tinders in my wake,
blaze your name across the face
of our worthless world.

Dance with me.

It's a little like drowning
or being set on fire.
It's cold comfort
warmed by desire.
There are peaks
set so very impossibly high
and valleys deep and low
but both got a view of the sky.

I fell in love with
a beautiful dark Irish rose
and I burnt alive
because of the freckles on her nose.
For more than two decades
I've been captivated by her.
Watch as she makes an
honest man from a ******* liar.

I've never had the words
not honest and not true
to tell you the depth
of my feelings for you.
Come fly with me. love.
Let's blow on the breeze
let fingers touch blue sky
and toes scrape bare trees.

Soar with me toward forever
if you've got the time to spare.
Let me write ten thousand words
unable to explain how much I care.
There's fire around me
and water where there was air.
You're a part of me now
in my skin, my lungs, my hair.

There is a darkness in you, Paul.
It races from the electric life
of your thoughts,
from your finger tips
and your deeds.
It pools on your heart,
like mercury.
It is a source of great,
terrifying,
strength,
and deeper sorrow.
Move with it,
but don't let it consume.
Keep this light,
that we've built from small
acts of kindness,
from the love that passes between
our eyes and our mouths.
Carry it,
like a torch,
and let it guide you
from that darkness.
But remember:
Light
doesn't expel dark, love,
it only pushes it away awhile.

When the last bell chimes.
Sordid tales in locked journals,
kept in places all too familiar.
There will be light to balance
the steady rain.

Chained to burning pyres,
echoes of long ago nights of fire.
Sing the song that you learned
from the dead.

Leave through the hidden door,
push out against the giants,
barely kept at bay,
because dreams are such fragile things.

But in your moment of greatest need,
when the dark surrounds you,
when crimson falls from the skies,
you may find the trick.

Spread your arms,
wide as you can,
tip forward against the wind,
and fly.

I once reached into the skies
to pull down the light that
would serve to guide your way.
I was never asked.
I once tender hard labor,
and the lashings of crooked teeth
and stained shirts
to find for you the bauble
you so requested.
I grew old under your
careful tutelage,
until such an age I reached that
the hair grew thin and the
spittle became obvious.

O' the wonders you found in me.

I was such a shell
in the time before we fell,
cradling each other through the shakes
like new born babes,
to the Earth.
Together we found lost
realms which we would hide away
from keen eyes and pointed
questions.
Together we squandered our
time and our money on things
we called our adventures.
If only to smell the sweet
lavender and honeysuckle of
your skin, freshly bathed.

I once crossed a canyon on foot,
such days of thirsty work,
to bring you back the sunshine
we would rub into our smiles.
I was not asked.
I once learned the quick, dutiful
motions of a trained glassblower
so that I might make for you
a thing as beautiful and fragile
as yourself.

It is here, as the skies we once reached
grow dim that I find,
after all the effort and all the
painstaking labor that,
together as we promised,
our greatest work is rewarded.