Tick. Tick. Tick.

We're moving, so much faster.
Push the stop, let us off,
condescend if you must. Go, scoff.
We're moving toward disaster.

This wasn't the plan, not the one I made.
I wasn't looking for love...
I'm so ******* sick of...
This is so little, this is so done. So staid.

Faster now. Faster.
Tick. Tick. Tick.

I don't want to see the finish line.
I want life, sweet and long.
This feels right, and that's so wrong.
It's okay. It's just *******... It's fine.

                         But speak soft words against the moonlight.
                         Because it's dark as pitch, and I'm your knight.
                         But when it falls, as it must, as it will, as it always does
                         And, sweet pea, I can see the end, but I can't save you because...

Tick. Tick. Tick.

These are the hours of my life.
Watch as they fly away, gone is the day,
when I held you and watch us sway.
Ring upon your finger. My little wife.

Tick. Tick. Tick.
Faster, ever faster.

And now, around the next bend,
Where our children will play,
and laugh away the lazy day,
Tell me you can't see the end.

Every Empire falls.
Every reign ends.
Every time.
Every Time.

So tell me, whisper into
my ear if it makes you more
comfortable, my god the things
we do for comfort,
tell me, my friend:
How will this Empire end?

Will it be in fire?
A large bang, followed in course
by smaller ones into a
rubble and tear filled
oblivion?

I think it’ll be a whimper.
I think it will fall apart inside itself,
so slowly and so quietly
that when it’s over we’ll
wonder if it ever was to
begin with.

I’d like it to be a fire.
I’d like it to be a boom or a bang.
I’d like it to end in glory,
if possible.
I’d like it to end with you.

Somewhen I will know truth from lie.
I'll be forgotten. Somewhen I'll die.
We will burn the candle down to wick.
We'll smile as we know every single trick.

We are seed, tossed to birds.
We are empty hours and hollow words.
Without a purpose but filling a need.
Monitors left absent a scrawling digital feed.


Tomorrow the sun will burn
Our stomachs will move and churn
That angry old moon will rise.
And our lips will tell innocuous lies.

We'll scrape the bottom of every barrel
Our eyes always wise but also feral.

We will be small gods with small needs
Big on mood but lost for worthy deeds.

One day we will love without earthly fear,
With wild abandon and endless cheer.
We will release all that we've pent.
Now only embers. I am fires spent.

We are echoes of the
long departed.
Built on the hopes
of our mothers
and from the bones
of our fathers.
If we're careful we'll
never leave a mark.
The tapestry of ancestry
will reflect us present
and unharmful.
The legacy protected
and complete.
But what if inside us
a rebel happens to live?
A troublemaker playing
devil may care with
the precious family name?
If we're brave, perhaps a little bold
we just might leave a stain.
Just might be remembered.
Just might turn out great.
And should we not,
should we fail,
in that we'll have to hope
there will be some grace.

Questions about tomorrow:
What happens when
one day everything is over
and all is at an end
and the next day we
all still have to go to work?
What do we do then?
Will it only really end
when finally money
doesn't spend?
Or will they find another
way to make us slaves?
Will we ever walk into
Plato's light or are we doomed
to stay in Plato's cave?
For what purpose
do we carry this load?
Is this building to something?
Or will it all just explode?

Fears about now:
The planet is in death throes.
We're killing it and
the clock to fix the problem
has wound down.
Journalistic integrity
can't survive the
new News cycle
but it has made it easier
for politicians to
take advantage, to lie
and to somehow become
childish shades of what
they once were.
Violence has become
one solution,
reticence another
and while I agree some
people say ****** things
freedom of speech
is never expanded
when it is taken away.
Kids shouldn't be afraid
of dying in schools.
Every generation leaves
business unfinished.
Every generation marches
us closer to the end.

One day no one will be left to remember any of us. The stars will blink out and entropy will advance. Intellectually, this isn't difficult to know, but practically it's barely worth considering. Tomorrow is still coming and we will need enough sleep to make it to the other side. We can worry about the rest at another time.


My mother dreamed me
the president of the USA,
my father was whip smart
always knew what to say.
My grandfather came here
for the promise of tomorrow.
His mother bought passage
beg, steal and borrow.
I look at my son
and am broken hearted.
We are just echoes
of the long departed.

Spit my name out.
It isn't at home in your mouth.
Step away from the failure
of every ******* day
and embrace a future
of doing things a new way.

Kept in small rooms
the twin furies stretch.
Then push against boundries
until little is left.
They blink into the darkness
and wonder what's next.

And the fires, guys!
They've still not gone out!
The whole thing's still burning!
The smoke stings too much to shout.

We're so close to the end, now.
I've never felt worse.
I'm scared and I'm tired
and there is always more work.

No one's coming to save us.
It's up to us, hope as we might.
The world's on fire
and we still haven't a light.

Every year it gets farther away.
The cowardice, the jealousy,
the pain, the heartbreak,
the anger and the fear.
With time it seems so distant.
I don’t fall asleep facing the
door anymore.
I don’t dig inside myself
when trouble arrives,
or lament my station and it’s
hopelessness.

It took so long to see
what this world could offer.
To find the wonder.
Now that I am here
I pride the ability to
wonder, to create, to think,
to dream and above all
else the power to endure.

Life is trial.
It is test and failure.
It is pain and affirmation.
Light is strong and good.
Wise and powerful.
But there is no teacher
as good as darkness.
This I know.

I find myself in search of
a mountain.
So I may preach my own
sermon on the mount.
To an audience of one.
I hope that if my words
carry the right gravity,
my volume high enough,
my content strong enough
that you will hear me.

My message would be clear:
Endure. Build this nest
inside, where no man can
reach, and hold it.
Each year past it will grow.
You will be so filled with hope,
so unafraid of the world
and the dark, ****** terrors
it has in store.
Endure, my friend.
There is so much to look
forward to.

Everything is over, everything ends
ecxept the daily weight and strain.
We were promised purpose
and fed catastrophe and disdain.
We were given sugared dreams
of sunlight but left out in the rain.
We were sold on endless mindless
pleasure and walked away with pain.
We want for things to be different
but it's always the ******* same.

They saw the hard turn coming
and steered into the skid.
They didn't ask our opinion
because heaven forbid.
The bottom of the jar is broken
don't matter that you got a lid.
Parents climbed to safety
but didn't leave ladders for the kid.

We know the ship is sinking
we've water to our chins.
We live in constant hellfire
but have committed few sins.
We had a promised future
it's been chucked into the bins.
Nothing ever seems to start
but everything begins.

From every drop
springs just a little more.
An urgent pounding
against the bedroom door.
Because it's out with
the pilot light,
it's in with the
same old fight,
and it's back to work,
the same old way.
Every ******* day.

You say you believe
that love is the answer.
I don't know,
but hate is a cancer.
And it's miles and miles
to beat my retreat.
Some days it's  ******* the sound
of my own heartbeat.

I'm not another hack,
building out but holding back.
I live in the here in now, or so I say,
until the noise starts.
Rent's late.
Time to pay.
Every ******* day.

I would love, you must believe me,
to see peace.
I would love to lay my head down
and finally get sleep.
But there's work to be done,
there's hours and hours,
and so little ******* sun.
But if you stay with me,
hold hands and live with chance,
I might feel like I can be free.

But the knocking never goes.
We're not some dead beats,
though heaven only knows.
I'm spent from all my mediocre feats.
I can't find my bed and lay,
because the noise doesn't go away.
Every ******* day.

Liars sit on gilded thrones barking orders into intangible every-*******-where and we plug our ears and we hum our throats hoarse but we still hear it.
We still hear it.
We hear everything.
You ran away and for office and I know what it meant and where it ends but I don't recall the lines of revolt forming like ants in formation against you. Neither do you, you *******. Doesn't matter. Never did.
We know everything.
I know late night talk radio vocabulary and I weild it like armor to protect me from the ******* conspiracy and the wild denials of things we've always known and I'm left cold and run-on.
I saw everything.
Inside the backrooms where the ******* deals get made there are secrets passed like currency and this gets exchanged for that and we're all smaller and less and our souls are laid bare before hungry jowls and damp fingers.
Everything is negotiable.
You want to stand, sycophantic, before me and prattle on about values? You value nothing. This is nothing. You cut up and sell the American dream to the highest bidder and sleep sound as houses while we burn with impotent rage and the gnawing feeling failure provides to giving up.
Everything is for sale.
And maybe, just maybe, we deserve you.

Everything breaks.
Because porcelain isn't shatterproof.
Because glass can even chip.
Everything falls, everything breaks.
The truth, were words to be used
for things aside from lying,
is that while we remain strong
on whatever frontier we choose,
there is always the truth.
Everything fades.
Though, and lets be as honest as we can,
when the sweater turns from black
to gray, does it change
the thing?
My god,
Everything Breaks!
Could you imagine a world
where life isn't, day after day,
all this **** is the same?
Listen: Everything Breaks!
            Everything falls.
            Everything bristles.
Life isn't just short, lovers & friends.
Life is cruel, honest
Life is played in blue.
Could anything be...
Lose yourself in the light of
days without sun, dance for awhile.
Who the hell would run for fun?
Do all your vitamins protect you
from graying, fraying?
Did--
Interruption: Everything Breaks!

In youth I followed bitterness
and poverty down the
95 corridor and finally found
perfect gasoline rainbows and
humid sudden summer storms.
I found your wide, wonderful smile
and freckles and love and
so, so much more.
I know you fell long ago
and have built up around
your landing spot a lifetime
of interconnected infrastructure
and much of it has lost the
sentimental spark it had
when, so many years ago,
you first erected it. I know.
Maybe now, so far down this
road you met me on,
the feeling is more distant
inside you than once it was.
Changed. Mutated. More
a memory of great passion
more than a physiological pull.
There is comfort in my doings
and stability in my works.
Fond familiarity in my features
and that is enough for me.
All you need do is love me
in the echo left behind
from your fall.
I can live as ghosts do,
on half recalled longings
and in the phrases and inside jokes
in the little smiles you give me
like when rereading a favorite
book or laughing at a scene
from a movie you're fond of
in spite of repeat viewings.
I don't require any more.
Stretch your wings into the flames
of the pit, my love.
You've landed, long ago
and set about your calling.
I'm still lost in you, as ever
and I'm still falling.

I want to tell you everything,
but I want it direct and true.
No sing song nonsense like I always do.
I want to tell you simply about where I've been, about what I've done.
I wanna tell you about what I've seen.

I don't know where to start.
Where to begin.
I want to trim the fat from
this cut of meat and leave
it serviceable, tender
and lean.

This place in my head where the story lives
is cluttered and filthy.
Slightly out of use.
I want to scrub and polish the dirt
from these floors until you can see
the notes of starlight glittering
in the reflection of its sparkling clean.

I want to wring the purple
from my prose.
And every sweet lie from my throat.
I wanna wipe the slate and speak
and for once say just
exactly
what I mean.

The truth is blunt.
Any attempt to sharpen it
turns it into a lie.
I watch tv relentlessly and the secret
is I do it to hide.
'Cause when the movie ends I'm terrified
that I'll see my stepfather
in my reflection
on the darkening screen.

And listen, I swear,
that's not what I am
or what I want to be.
Ripped from my bed at three am
all held breath and violence
and varied screams
taught in his bitter
drunkard's mean.

My own father loved me in absentia.
MIA, but through no fault of his own,
a tale as old as two Christmases
with the slight twist that extreme poverty gives.
Happiness did not shout in
my lifetime.
It was nearly extinct and
like any dying animal
it would just wail and keen.

I want to overcome and improve.
I try so hard.
I've tried on all these shoes
and found myself miles away in my efforts.
But the monster he made lives
just below my practiced and
patient lean.

I want to be honest.
I want the power to say these truths.
Because even though I live afraid
my heart explodes with love
for you, my littlest man,
my tiny king.
I'd die to make you smile,
my sweetest Bean.

I used to be so ******* brave.
Now filled to burst
with impotent rage.
Biting my tongue in traffic
shaking like a gun in a hand
curse words broken in my empty mouth.
In search of a lighthouse
we're crashing against the rocks.
Taking our difficult feelings
and cramming them into a buried box.
Desperately trying to be a better man
trying so ******* hard to be kind
asking for permissions and hearing,
"Go ahead. I don't mind."
We're still trying to find heaven
but only crashing to the ground.
A thousand elevators all lobby bound.
Waves, twisted metal, flames, wrecks and
impossibly deafening sound.
I was a he/him millennial
identifing primarily as mad
now to one little boy I'm just dad.
To all these brand new fears
I'm now a slave.
I'm ******* terrified, buddy. But I swear,
I used to be so ******* brave.

Find in those dark places
the spot of light.
The driest spot in a damp place.
The warmth inside this bleak cold.

Find in yourself the beauty I see.
How every freckle is a road map
for my mouth to yours.
How each white hair you find
is another moment I would never trade.

Find in me the purpose that I struggle with.
Take my hand and lead me
to the place atop that hill where
all the turmoil will finally be answers
to my endless questions.

Find me, if you are of a mind to look.
I have searched your eyes for
my own reflection, and on the
rarest and happiest moments,
I have even discovered me there.

If discovered, and one so hopes it will be,
I can promise you that I will in turn,
with every ounce within,
find you.

Tomorrow I'll blow away
scattered across eternity
on a warm summer breeze.
Tomorrow all that's left
of me will be these blinking
transitor tube memories.
I had planned to build
great things but those
dreams are long
abandoned and now
given up completely.
Sifting through dimly
glowing embers and other
remnants which once
were so amazing and
tomorrow will be nothing
of consequence, I suppose.
Maybe we'll look back
and marvel, I mean
who really ever knows?
Tomorrow I'll be burnt
up into nothing more than
a history of almost was
and a future filled with
hundreds of could have beens.
Nothing really matters
except how everything does.
Tomorrow I'm dust
and you're searching for
the warmth of another
glowing fire somewhere
in the night, just beyond
this fork or that turn.
Tomorrow it'll be over
but tonight, I will burn.

Tired and beaten.
Clothes ragged and moth eaten.
Trudging the last few sad and broken miles
crushing the disappointment of our lifetime of trials.
And a whole world for a bit of rest!
Bunched up sheets and pillows our nest.
Age may serve to wash away our rage...
But it's still a tear soaked journey to the grave.

She stands on mountain tops and old lofts
and buildings that reach steel toward the sky.
From here there is perspective,
if you want to call it that,
A certain willingness to fear.
And she soars on scary because
the butterflies feel like dying
and nothing has ever made her feel
more alive.

She packed a hundred regrets
into the lifetime of one.
And they ran from her then,
because they were new and grown.
She called after them as they flew.
She tried to run them down. But the clouds kept them.
And she was without.

She would trade the ******* world to fly.
And who wouldn't?

Where has the wonder gone? Where now is our youth?
She tried to trap it and keep it and learned the only truth.
She couldn't hold it any longer.
If only she were stronger.
But darkness doesn't need to blink.
All we do is wait and worry and think.

She tried, for a time, to sleep forever.
In dreams seeing things that awake she had missed.
She spun the clock hands backward
a hundred thousand times.
It never came back though.
She'd missed it and she cried.

She'd trade her ******* soul to make it right.
But she can't....


....Try as she might.

This time of year always
brings the memories.
Here they float
to find me in my melancholy
evening hours.
Float, days gone by.
Float.
Snow, four or five feet deep,
walkways carved into
city sidewalks and streets
and dreams of Americana
countryside livin' carried on
radios tucked into our
windowsills in front of the
frosted glass world we
could almost make out.
Float, ancient melodies.
Float.
I sat under an umbrella
in the rainy season,
feet dangling from the edge
of the fire escape, toes
just about grazing the surface
of the rising flood water.
Escaping into comics about
heroes living in our city
and always wondering why
they never came around
our neighborhood.
Float, my childhood heroes.
Float.
Suddenly suspended in nothing
I am afraid of that
ship, of those memories.
I swerve my head
trying to steer away.
So anxious I become
conscious of the weight
(Of the wait)
and worry that I'll sink.
I breathe slow. I blink.
There in the distance...
Here you float
from somewhere deep down
and long, long ago:
A blanket laid against the
scratchy roof surface
our backs to hell, our
eyes to the bursting explosions
of color against the night sky.
Our beating hearts beating,
for one night only,
for each other.
Your hand finds mine
and my face is hot
and I'm unable to look
at you, but you are all
I want to see.
Float away, love.
Float.

If your name doesn't even
grace the leaderboard
who remembers you?
If you vanish in the night
who will confess they always knew?
Who mourns the fallen tree
no one was there to hear fall?
Who listens against the wind
for the strangled call?

Is immortality within our reach?
If not, who will be here when we're gone?
Listen, because the end is coming.
As sure as the coming dawn.

Can we fool the march of time?
Will a lick of paint make us new?
Will the wondering ever stop?
And if so, what then do we do?

Immaterial concerns, perhaps.
But who here can know forever and ever?
And, look: if we wanna survive this
we're gonna have to do it together.

You'll never see this.
Jesus Christ, There is a finality in that.
I can't believe you're gone.
I can't believe you'll never see this.
I'm going to miss you.

I know it's flat sounding
but it's true.
You'll never know the impact
you had on my life,
how important it was
that I knew you.

You once said to me that
you were trying to build me
into something greater.
“A better Bonsai tree.”
I hated you more than I ever hated
anyone in that moment.
But the wisdom of your
words has shined through.

Though your hand was not there,
and was in fact joined by others,
my roots have been tended,
my branches bent in ways
subtle and amazing.
I stand this Earth as,
while not a lovely small tree,
a mature and compassionate man.

You will never know the
way you've crafted me.
You'll never know how I've
grown because of you.
You'll never see this.
There is such ******* finality in that.

I will dream in technicolor failures!
I will pass time waiting on the lawn.
Bored and vapid and given pause to yawn.
I'll send my hopes in colored mailers.
Drowned in nostalgia and memory,
another 30-30 something casualty.
And together we chase the white picket,
acid washed American dream.
And with loaded backroom schemes
we seek to find and punch the given ticket.

Where there was two we invite three.
He'll have ten fingers and ten toes.
Wide masculine shouldered and elbows.
He'll be, I hope, a lot you and a very little me.
He'll have a chance, ******* it, he will.
He'll be alive and screaming and needing.
His mind and body young and always feeding
He will draw from this earth until his fill.

I hope for so much more than I have got.
We take on water so fast without balers.
I dream of tomorrow in technicolor failures.
Help me, love. I'm twisted into a knot.
I need so badly to understand these things we do.
Our rings and our tiny king's teething rings.
I need to be kind and true and bold.
I need so badly to have and to hold
him and you.

We left him so little and wished him so much.
Isn't it a sad twist of fate?
Isn't it just something you love to hate?
Ruins where buildings should be. Nice touch.

Someday I will be a parent.
It isn't that I wouldn't like
to avoid it. I would.
Loving something so completely
is a scary prospect.

My mother, regardless of how
we feel when we flew the
nest, built a world for me.
She never cried when they
stole our money.
When the insurance wouldn't
cover her surgery.
When the world got so
hard to live in, that there didn't
seem to be a point.

She wept when the teacher
told her I had talent.
She held me close to her,
rocking gently and smiled
as the tears rolled down her lips.
You were always worth fighting
for, my little one. My little
boy blue.

I saw her spend what little money
she had, from waiting tables,
from nursing, from a million
jobs she worked.
She spent it, not on the shoes
that her co-workers said she
had to buy, because her ankles
looked so sore, her knees
felt so weak.
She bought me sketchbooks.
Hundreds of sketchbooks.
Never a regret. She smiled.
She was proud of my talents.

How can you love someone
so deeply?
How do you watch as your
own idea of who you
are is ripped away?
I don't know that I have
that kind of courage.

I will be a parent, perhaps not
young like my parents were, but
a parent nonetheless.
It is inevitable. I know this.
I hope, regardless of how
I felt when I flew the nest,
that I can be the kind of
parent that never cries, except
to acknowledge how important
his child is.

I want her to know, when
my own child comes to visit,
that it has talent. That I
support it.
I want her to know that
I'm proud of her.

I want you to know how to like yourself,
because I never did and I've spent an unhappy lifetime
stuck with me.
I want you to be cautious where I was reckless.
I want you to understand the cost of your actions,
because I never cared for consequences and now...
consequences have become me.
I want you to learn to let people in all the way.
I want you to know how to be honest with yourself.
I've let no one in completely,
not even myself.
You can't be free if you can't be honest,
says the liar.
I want you to know your limits
and to approach them fairly.
I've spent 30 something years thinking
I was the exception to every rule
and now that they're all broken
I have no clue where to go.
I want more for you than I've allowed myself
because I love you
and I've never loved me.
You look at me to teach you these things
but I don't know.
I don't know how, buddy.
If there was a time I could've learned I let it pass.
My ambition, little one, has never equalled my potential.
Please, please if you learn anything from me
let it be from my mistakes.
However, if there was one thing I wish I could share with you,
one thing I think I do that you should,
it would be loving you.
Love you, buddy.
Please.

I'm here to get broken,
to be torn into pieces.
Discarded on the floor.
I found you so I could be remade,
Built up from nothing,
so you could make me more.

Break my heart,
burn my soul,
scar my history
with yours.

Glass fragile and brittle.
Prone to watch you pout.
I want moth eaten dreamscapes,
but I just keep bleeding out.
I'm tied to this iron ball and chain,
drowning like you need me to.
Writhing here in pain.

Feed me your bitter poison, love.
Bleed me with your leeches.
Push me, dear. Push and shove.
I wash away like chalk,
Temporary and incomplete.
I need you, sweet Hemlock.

Don't ever leave.

I am tired flesh
and splintered bone.
Somehow I've lost my way,
but I'm not alone.

These four limbs,
that are my cage,
have become my home.
Buried with bottled rage.

Clip my smile,
so it can never widen.
Loose my mind,
and let it glide in.

Freed from bonds,
I move my feet.
Door to door,
until we meet.

Time is a Springsteen song
in that it may not have happened
at all to anyone but it almost
definitely happened to all
of us, if you squint around
the details, a little.
There was no front porch
in my youth with it's old
wood boards creaking
under foot as we danced
to the tinny sound of our
portable radio playing the
eras of blue collar rock music.
I don't have recollections of
suped up hotrods and
engine heavy motorcycles
tearing up the east coast
suburban streets as white
knuckled operators behind
the skid learned to forget her
or just finally felt something
come alive inside 'em again.
No dark red hair blowing
in the wind as her long skirt
sways like a flag to the movement
she keeps her hips in time to.
Somehow, though the details
are so different
I find I still miss it.
I remember tapping our
feet to the open car door
deep bass beat, sirens calling
like the song of our people
in the distance and the
hard to describe but always
present constant low hissing
pressure of warm city streets.
I remember swaying with
her in place, my hand on
her shoulder as she smiled
and laughed at my lack
of "Island rhythm" and I
know she wasn't named
Mary but it was still American
yesterday and I remember
it all in weather beaten sepia tone.
I remember riding our bikes
to get pizza together
a group of us, trying to
stay together, but not get
noticed by the cops,
and the weird anxious
feeling of forever and fleeting
that mixed together just
to trouble my thoughts.
We were going to be young
forever and we were never
ever going to die.
We'd be in love forever
and we'd always see eye to eye.
I don't know what became
of you, I hope you're well,
we've reached the age where
looking backs hurts me
more than I know how to tell.
A million years ago,
yesterday, that intangible
all at once way time works
if viewed extrademensionally,
like a helicopter taken
to see our old city from above,
it looks the same, but different.
It's all at once and it no longer
looms over you and makes you
feel small and also like you belong,
somewhere in all the mixed up
time stream nonsense we
went out of our way one
Thursday to get guava and cheese
empanadas from that hole
in the wall place you like(d)
run by that Korean guy and his
Mexican wife.
Your skirt never kicked up
to the far away sounds our
radio played, but somewhen
we shared that emanada
and even though it hurts
and even though I'm somewhere
farway from your view
it was my pleasure to have
been able once upon a time
to dance with you.

What is this even?
He writes about writing
and the world is possibilities
Probabilities.
Maybes.
My god the maybes.
And I wonder all the time,
"Is this too much about me?"
Because I have no idea if it comes through.
****.
...pomp and circumstance is the measure of the day!
I know what's next
I'm destiny, made manifest.
Sheer will power capped by shear valves
and sure the plumbing works
But let's talk about the cost.
Brass tacks.
Numbers.
******* it all...
He writes about writing,
lacks understanding.
He has no clue what any of this is.
What any of it is about.
And, yeah, in our 30s we aren't...aren't...
We are no longer figs, Sylvia.
No longer plums.
Not yet prunes.
**** it.
Leave it.
Start fresh tomorrow.
With fresh eyes and...
He writes about writing.
Y'know?
Get it?
Do you get it?

Kept in the plaza,
by the booth
we once laughed
away an evening,
(How does time get away from us?)
There is a locked box.

My heart is kept inside.
There is only one key.
Crafted by birth and
shaped by a fire inside.
(I have stoked that fire to keep us warm and alive.)
I don’t possess the key.
I never have.

Follow the twisting pathways,
fight through the crowd
and deep inside a dark room,
high on a shelf
(So high I can barely reach)
You will find the box.
Unlock it,
beautiful eyes and dark hair,
quick wit and wisdom.
Unlock it, My love.

Set me free.

There is so much orange
in these polluted sunsets
and they're beautiful but
the silver lining is breaking
and all of our silly smiles
are starting to look just
exactly like when we're faking
Where is our blue collar hero
callused hands soaked
in motor oil and turning wrenches.
Wasn't he supposed to dip
his toes in Americana
and save us from corporate concerns?
We while the time away in
Endless forever
composing sad love songs
tinged with sepia yesterday.
When will he get here?
I hope it will be before the words lose all meaning and the world burns.
I don't know what it'll take
to hurry it along
we're living on our knees
and breathing in every lie
but they're stalking like lions
in deepest night
waiting for the funeral
but they can't have it until
we just give up and die.
If we take this step
they warn and they warn
it'll mean our very sudden end.
If we insist they remove the scourge;
but still I feel my sneaker move
my toes weightless at the ledge.
And I smile, 'cause baby,
you'd better sing me a dirge.

Fire lights the sky,
messages in flame
and human remains.
Blown out store fronts,
and the anguish writ
large on their faces.

"Who among you will save us?"

Hero is a broken word,
weighed down by the too tall
myth of song lyrics and
epic yarns.
There won't be a signal,
reaching toward the stars.
But attend this quiet vigil,
and weep for us all.

You don't brave fires,
or tough stinging barbs.
You don't fight hunger,
or exhaustion, or flesh wounds.
You smile, when it's called for,
you go a little out of your way.

No one is coming to save you.
There is no help on the way.
But be brave, my friend, because
the story isn't over.
When we die, we just become more odd.

Thousands of years from
right ******* now
they'll find us decorated
in the 21st century version
of hundreds of fox teeth
strung together on lines of
hair and they'll speculate
our importance to the tribe.
They won't know our
sharing of posts about
out of state listings for
our jobs making more money
with more paid time off.
They won't care that we
often got home the afternoon
of the day following the
morning we left for work
and in this way they'll resemble
best from our point of view
the folks who employ us.
Will crypts be discovered
hewn deep into the living rock
of our dying Earth or will we
have to find our dead through
the thousands of lines of
scrolling text that we
leave behind us when we go?
And if so...
What is the value of human life?
The price point, as econ 101
would have asked me to
specify, to be immaculate in my
words. Allow for this
question to haunt us all:
How much?
How many crumpled
peices of cloth infused paper
with numbers printed on them
for the sanctity missing?
In dollars, what is the cost
of a human soul?
Sure, once in the past, it was invaluable
but late stage capitalism
has taught us some
new lessons and I'll bet
it's got a value now.
I'll bet its dropped already.
Appreciably.

Let's talk, you and I,
let's talk about the end.
Discuss, with me, how it'll
conclude and where,
now that is,
we're meant to go.
Let's talk about growing up.
Growing old.
Let's talk about the light
and how it fades and bleeds.
Let's talk about the surprising,
and ever growing,
number of yesterdays behind us.
And the number still ahead of him,
because he hasn't even had one yet.

I want to find courage and depth.
I want the strength to face death.
I want you and I to believe we're not next.
I want to take this land with you,
length and breadth.

How we're still young,
but how that measure changes.
Falling sand, love.
You and I.
Falling sand in an ocean of sand.
I want the world for him,
and for you.
I wish, so often I wish,
that I could stop it briefly.
Just have this day for awhile.
But I understand.
I know what stopping looks like,
and I've seen so much of it.
Stopped and stopping.
Too much.
Falling sand.

I think, or I've heard,
that love will see us through.
I don't really believe that.
Do you?
I wish it could be true.

Let's visit this subject,
after perhaps a little time to think.
I don't know what waits,
and frankly,
I think it might be nothing.
But you know that, by now,
you know so much about me.
Let's talk, you and I,
about how we're closer now to the end
than the beginning.

He sailed to sleep
on oceans of bitter
angry tears wept
into his pillow
across years of pain
and neglect.
The only time they
noticed him was
when they hurt him.
He didn't know why
he would sit on
the floor and look
up at them and smile
but he always did.
Like he missed them.
Loved them.
The smiles would
sink in his sad little
ocean of weeping
until on the other side
a broken and bitter
man emerged.
He never cried.
He barely felt anything.
This man, lithe from
dodging emotional
connections and clean
friendly physical contact,
seemed more than just
put together. He seemed
superhuman in his way.
He was special. He was funny.
No one could hurt him
or think around his
sometimes cruel machinations.
Inside he wished he
could look up with a smile
and be treasured and loved.
He wished his life had
been softer, less hungry and
much less afraid.
He wished he didn't have
to be strong and cynical.
He wished he was wrong
about things more often.
Wished he could afford
to be, in fact.
He wished most of all
that he could die.

He doesn't know where
the line is between
discipline and abuse.
He's so afraid to get
anywhere near it
that he worries he's
becoming a brand new
kind of bad parent
in the generational saga
of bad parents he has
always been a part of.

Now there is the sweet smell of love and the warmth of our home.
Now there is you and me and him.
You guys.
My loves.
However, long ago, in another lifetime, in my youth.
In the city.
Long, long way down the road.
Years ago now I met her.
Older than me, a few years.
Friend of a friend's cousin.
Tall, lean, smarter than me.
I was hurt on the day she brought me into her room.
It was noisome with the smell of ***
and I was just old enough to recognize the odor.
I remember now the strange sinking tug in my stomach.
This is what it feels like to have your opinion of someone change drastically.
Visceral.
My head was still filled with puritanical Catholic nonsense.
Dogmatic ******* held with firm resolve.
I limped into that room broken
and left much the same,
except everything about me was different.
Years and traveled roads later I found myself changed by another room.
Another girl.
Another stop along a road that would eventually lead me home.
We are roadmaps for each other.
Geography.
Charting routes over troubled seas and loyal earth.
Finding ourselves along the way and again when we arrive.
Once, years ago, I misjudged a girl because I was unfinished and young and her experience scared me.
I was cleaner, less road dust.
I wish I could tell her I was sorry, but honestly she may not even know.
May not even care.
I was wrong but I was still many miles from home.
Many miles from you.
Geographically speaking.

I heard a ghost story once.
It left my mouth tasting sour
my mind turned dark
my mood bleak and dour.
I was spitting for weeks
but the taste didn't come out.
I'd been screaming for hours
but only managed to shout.
Everything seemed bigger once
in dreams or in our youth.
Maybe that was just me
maybe that is the truth.


There was once a house
where a murderer lived, high on the hill,
that we were afraid to walk by
because we'd heard he was there, still.
The curtain would move
you told me smiling wide,
I couldn't prove it but
I suspected you'd lied.

You mocked and you jeered
called me a coward.
Dared me to approach
and my stomach soured.
I stood out on the street
for a long time with shaking knees
before coming to my senses
and retreating into the bordering trees.
I could hear your laughter
even as you called my name
but I didn't turn around.
I couldn't face my shame.

One autumn I plucked up my nerve
and visited that haunted old place.
I walked through the front door
a chill in the air and sun on my face.
It was clear that no one lived there
and had not for a great while.
There was graffiti and trash everywhere,
holes in the hard wood, cracks in the tile.
I looked out a broken window
at the street down below.
I swear I could see me
as I was so many years ago.

I heard a ghost story once
in which I was the ghost.
No hooks for hands
no sounding heavenly host.
Just a man standing in an
empty house all alone,
looking back on the years
and thinking, my how you've grown.
Everything seemed bigger once
in dreams or in our youth.
Maybe that was just me
maybe none of this is the truth.

Once a giant they fall through night skies
and into the empty loam where truth lies.
The greatest among them, coward now and small.
It wavers and wans where once it stood proud and tall.
All things, they are told, eventually fade and die.
All things retreat rather than give or try.

And so they crash through dim and distant tropospheres,
through fatally close and relevent new world fears.
They are trapped by binding digital text.
Caught forever in one server rack or the next.
They are ancient relics that once screamed hope at a void.
They are now cold, ignored and most of all annoyed.

Notice me, no one hears them cry into the intangible nothing.
Notice me! they keen and wail and empty makes the noise ring.
They are surrounded by their own unheard pleas.
They are bound to die forgotten and on their knees.
And what then becomes of us? You may ask.
Who, if not the giants and the old gods, will bring us to task?

There is no longer a force pushing us to crisis.
There is fear and there is cold and here is echoed lifeless.
And are we willing to reinvent the past? To pay these prices?
To walk with old giants and call them good and righteous.
If we were better we could fix this open blindness.
If only we weren't weak, tired and so bitterly indecisive.

If we only had one small chance. One good clue.
If only we could make manifest choice and brand new.
In glades we sip from blades of forest grass a rejuvenating dew.
If only we numbered in many and not in so damnably few.
If we could turn these broken gears and feel red rather than blue.
If we could be anything but ******* me and ******* you.

Your heart will
pump enough blood
to fill over a million barrels
with your single lifetime.
You'll pump a river of blood
before it's done.
You'll shed roughly 44 pounds
of skin in your life,
assuming you're an American,
it'd be measured in kilos otherwise.
That's the average weight
of a six year old boy.
You'll breathe about 300
million liters of air
before you dress up for
that ol' pine box.
Your heart will beat more
than 2.5 billion times
and it'll break a few times, too.
You'll probably have a bad
habit or two that you feel
will diminish you.
You're going to say something,
some day, to somebody and
it will fundamentally change
the way they always looked
at the world and you may not
even notice you'd done it.
And of course somebody
someday, somewhere is gonna
do that to you, also.
I hope you hear a sweet song
and let yourself cry.
I want you to sit and listen
to the mystic sounds the world
makes when the sun goes down.
Look out over the ocean
and listen to the waves lap
against the shore and feel small
in that peculiar way that makes
you feel powerful, too.
Kiss somebody in the rain,
if you're so inclined, they're
a miracle, too, and they may
have been waiting their whole
lives for a kiss of that kind from you.
You don't have to move mountains,
you've a river inside.
You don't need to worry about
the end, it's ending all the time.
Stand barefoot on rain wet
sidewalk and smell the city
after a storm.
I don't know what we're doing.
I've no clue why we're born.
But I believe our greatness
are often forgotten or ignored.
You may never do anything
of value, living in poverty
and wearing a basic shroud
and maybe you'll never know
that when I look at you
I'm so very proud.

Yesterday I held you, buddy
in the palm of my hand.
You'd crawl up my chest
when you'd nap
in search of warmth and
the steady drum of heartbeat.
I watched you learn to smile
and I celebrated your
most minor accomplishments.
That was you and me, little guy
that was us, yesterday.
You drew a monster today
on a coloring book page
and it looked vaguely
like the monster on the cover,
you'll never believe how much
that my heart broke.
Tomorrow you'll be grown
the next day you'll be gone.
The world spins
uncaring circles through
time and space.
I looked out a window
and watched steam rise
from a gutter into
a beam of light on
a rainy night.
I watched the dance of
temporary and forever
and felt small.
I watched you light up
when I came in the door.
You laughed and smiled
and screamed, " Daddy!"
I felt powerless in a
brand new way.
Pages fall away from
the calender in the hall
and I want them back
I want more.
You'll leave one day
and maybe I'll already
be gone.
My father never told me
his story.
I never asked.
I am proud of my
independence and will
one day be proud of yours.
Doesn't make it hurt less.
Doesn't give me any more.

The longer a blade is held
to the grindstone
the less remains.
Sure it gets sharper
but quickly it also
gets thrown away.
We are not axes, my friends.
We are not tools.
Not meant to be used
and discarded
and played like fiddles
like fools.
Don't compliment me
on my grind
It's meaningless.
It isn't even mine.
The system in place
requires the hours,
extreme in their need,
in order that I may
look on a family
that I can then feed.
When you take a blade
to grindstone it is
because the edge is poor.
When you let it rest
from that friction you'll
find it can do more.
Sharpen when needed
allow time for rest.
Give the people a minute
let them catch their breath.
We are not broken
but the system we labor under is.
We don't need to be sharpened
we just need time to live.

Who couldn't see that coming?
Veiled venom
and a world that is succumbing.
For this you shatter my good time.
How does it matter?
So ******* asinine.
You tell me how hard it is to get by.
Myriad reasons, I'm sure,
with infinite failures to try.

So, we're a material culture?
What a novel concept you've exposed.
Can you imagine?
How numb we'd be
if you hadn't disclosed?

Sell me a different song.
I know all the spots
you think we went wrong
Sing me a new pitch.
You've got options
but can't tell which is which.


Yes, living is hard.
We all come out a little beaten,
a little charred.
This I know, and a long while, too.
But that is why we do
all our living while we're alive.
Takes too much energy, otherwise.

I am not little anymore.
I have learned many things,
none of them may be taken back,
or altered to lobotomize
me into the child you miss.

I am a man now.
Albeit not the best example
of the lot. Perhaps not
even the best example of
humanity in general.
But grown, nonetheless.

I cannot change this.
I don't want to.
I know it is difficult to
see that I'm angry often,
that I'm bitter,
and worst of all that I
often hate the things you love.

I am not little anymore.
I wouldn't want to be.
Better of worse;
This is who I am.
It is who I have to be.
Hate it if you must,
but it is also
What you made me.

Did you stop smiling
when they plucked
the stars from your eyes?
Did you cry out in pain
when you first began
to understand this life?
I hope so.
I hope you didn't just
let the moment pass
you by.
We learn to suffer
because to suffer is to learn
and we think that makes
it alright, but we never
get to hold the child we
were. We never get to
say goodbye.
We become cynics
born to burn away,
born to die.
Our innocence is borrowed
from the universe.
It's just on loan.
We have to give it back
when we're done with it.
When we're grown.
Knowing that we live
in mourning of
who we used to be.
Do you ever wonder
what became of you when
you stopped being me?
It's probably alright.
It's likely just fine.
Still, I hope you wonder
about it from time to time.

In the face of this wall we stand and laugh.
Not because it's funny,
anything but at times,
but because we just don't
know what else to do.

Had you stayed,
beyond your time
here and there,
there would have been so
much more for you to see.

I recall that the news broke,
and it rained.
Did it ever rain.
It rained as if in response.
I embraced a man in the street
and we felt something for someone
that wasn't ourselves for the first
time in our short lives.

Because you didn't stay,
we can't reflect on the power
of those odd days.
How they shaped us in ways
that we couldn't have predicted.
But you didn't stay,
so it fails, not falls,
on deaf ears.

There was an old man,
who had a sinister plan.
To take his own life.

Alone, you are but two.
Caged by bitter words,
and a history shared
with so precious few.

Together, you find yourselves one.
Free from bonds that chain you down.
Etched large against the bluest sky.
Your song sung full flush in the sun.

Each fractured piece of your hearts,
keep so high out of reach
in little boxes on tall shelves.
Chained like drowning to your arts.

When, on park benches and this cold street,
with the flicker of the reckless
and the knowledge of the very bold,
you find, now and always, your hands meet.

In the dark wood, where the stars
whisper stories to the fallen leaves,
we sit in robes of cobwebs and moonlight.
In search of lighted windows,
skeletons hanging from fire escapes,
perhaps punished mariners
caught by East India on open city seas.
Oh, we have our secrets
and they are kept.
Silence like mausoleums.
We cast will-o-wisp lights
from corpse candles and laugh
smoke into cold night air.
Walk inside the flashlight beams,
roaming ghoul haunted city streets.
We sit in gutters and divvy our spoil.
Yesterday's joyous revelry disappeared
in the digital blue light of tomorrow.

I have walked these halls,
through eight nights and nine days,
I have waded through
the lies and false promises
of these tired days,
in this tired time.

There are no great men,
and if there were who would
even welcome them?
Who would match?
There may have never
been a time for great men.

I will find the door,
thousands of them, all
the same color,
all the same width,
they all open on the same
******* place.
Still I wander, still
I search.

You'll always be twenty-three.
Always.
And that kills me.
You were older than me.
Now...

******* the futility of it all.
******* ******* it all!
I wish that I could punch a hole
in the world with my words and
find you.
I wish you knew.

I just wanted to tell you..
I just thought you needed to know,
at least once before everything is
broken headlights and crushed
tomorrows.
Blood and pavement and a median.
Crushed glass and a world
standing hollow without you.
I wish you knew.

I think I loved you once.
Think.
Coward.
I need to find you some days.
**** this tired world and it's
arbitrary thefts.

Your name should have a million hits a day.
You should have been...
My god how brilliant you were.
Like a jewel and like a genius.
You should have been forever.

I guess, in a way, you are.

You were a part of my life,
and a much bigger part than I ever would
have had you believe.
Did you know that? Had you figured it out?
Perhaps not.

A year since. Fifty-two weeks.
More in fact.
It was May.
Day after my brother's birthday.

******* it.

You were older than me.
October to my November.
One month that you lorded over me.
One month.

You'll always be twenty-three.
Always.
Forever.
Now...

All my little life I've been lonesome
waiting for permission to feel like someone.
I've taken late night cab rides to nowhere
looking for something I still can't describe and it's unfair.
Have you ever felt like life was living you?
Have your days felt forever rather than few?
Have you ever wondered when you'll find out?
Have you started as a song and ended as a shout?
And my ears are ringing with the clashes
of late night cigarette ashes.
I'm trying to look at my hobbys
as something that'll save me.
But I know it hasn't worked lately.
I'm writing discarded definitions
in tired lines of worthless ambition.
I've spent half my time in finding,
but came up empty in reason.
All the endless searching is hurting
and lack of cause is my demon.
I'm tired of waiting on sunrise
and I'm always finally belonging when I'm leaving.
Kismet is ******* and I'm wondering how long until I get it?
I got six puzzle pieces from the wrong set
and making them fit isn't making ends meet.
I'm trading mental health for gas receipts
and living just to be seen.
I'm trying not to think of hope in a vacuum,
but I'm lost for reasons why not to.
I'm not looking for favors,
or easy ways out for good behavior.
I just wanna put down this hammer
cause the noise is making me crazy.

Twenty miles outside nowhere
we finally broke down.
The engine had been knocking
but oh so **** faithful.
The last hundred or so miles
had been the worst.
The suspension was all but gone
and sharp turns were met
with fear and anger.
When the trip started we
were so **** happy.
The engine purred like
rolling laughter and our smiles
ticked off miles as we headed somewhere.
But we've totally broken down
and finding ourselves with
no power and still miles from nowhere
we finally begin to talk about it.

There is an art to saying,
“Hello.”

It is a small and wonderful
art.
Hard to learn.
Harder still to practice.

I’ve never learned the art
of,
“Hello.”

I’m a goodbye man.