I just want to say something real,
that lasts beyond my time.
I wanna know I mattered
before the number called is mine.
It may not matter that I tried
it might be futile to do my best,
and I'm not asking for accolade.
No need for Glottaman's rest.
And listen: I know it doesn't
matter, that it's all random chance.
I know that music only plays
until the end of the dance.
But if you could know
what comes after your fall
would any of that change
anything you do, even at all?
All stories end, all books conclude
and we don't always know when
and if we're lucky the mark stays
in the middle for as long as it can.
One day its over and every tomorrow
becomes one dreamless, endless night
there are more pages behind the mark
and the ending is already in sight.

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.

So there's this dark room, right?
When you walk in, there's this odd
warmth rising from the floor.
I know, crazy.
But here's the hitch:
The warmth isn't mechanical.
It doesn't have the familiar consistency
of Air Conditioned heat.
It feels like animal warmth.
Human warmth.
How weird is that?

Anyway, what happens next is the lights.
They go on like crazy, all over
the place. It's bright, is what I'm saying.
So you throw your hand up over
your eyes, who wouldn't yeah?
So while your hands are up,
and your blinking back those
bright-light style tears and everything
you feel something on the small
of your back.

Creepy. I know, I know.
What's going on, right?
That's the crazy part,
I have no idea either.
I guess I never will.
I changed the channel.

We got history wide and
terrifying as the sky
and we're screaming a
million different versions of why
at crashing waves and
a big hollow lie.
I don't know if it'll get better
but we've just got to try
because one day soon
it'll be over, spent as a sigh.

If we had the ******* music
we'd need a key change
a drum coming in over this
slow chorded refrain
marking the start of something
anything that might just
breathe life into me again.

Smoke off musket barrels wafts
toward the forever just beyond
the sapphire sky and mingles
within the clouds there in a dance
waiting to expire against eternity.
The blood seeps into the ground
but somehow does not spoil
the earth it contaminates.
Take from that what you will.

The ship tears apart as the
lighter front end lifts from
the cold black sea and shudders
in the air before screaming
it's seperation in the ancient
moans of protesting metal.
We build them much bigger now
because we dare and we do
and we never ******* learn.

We got a history, you and I,
volumes enough to publish,
big as the whole ******* sky
and it'll be gone forever
just as soon as we both die.
I don't know how to take comfort
in forever in this blink of an eye
but if I know anything at all
I know how to say goodbye.

The ghosts of
mothers and fathers
move in us all
still.
Unfinished
as the first draft of act three.

Listen: we are the heirs
of memories.
We are the inheritors
of bones and dust.
Ours is now monochrome
end of broadcast days.

The blue of
her eye.
The spiral in his
hair.
The toothy wide
smile.
The thousand yard
stare.

Shockwaves and echoes all.
Static on old television sets.
Guitars with repurposed frets.
Poetry borrowed from cemetery pall.

The aftereffects of
the dead, are we.
Bright sunny you,
big gloomy me.

Echoes calling through
the mists of time
with different words
But the mistakes?
The mistakes are the same.

Not repeat or homage
but with certainty
pastiche.

We are the shadows of
tombstones,
in many and
varied ways.
Built like roads on
these thousands and thousands
of graves.

Historical nonfiction
on endless
repeat.
Each of us a clip show,
nostalgic but
still,
obsolete.

I will live and die a man,
and that much I know is true.
But when the word is through,
will it say the same for you?

Because the message is clear,
if at times somewhat condescending,
that life matters more than it's ending.
It's purpose doesn't lay in it's rending.

And if honor isn't the purpose,
for which you struggle through this world,
how will you know when you become unfurled?
All this talk has my ******* toes all curled.

Love is not the answer,
but I believe it is a cause,
And when we stop to contemplate the flaws,
we are given to moments of real pause.

Because it's almost over,
and I stand before the hands of time.
You will kneel before, as I arise,
and stare in awe from your house of lies.

We are ten thousand miles up
where the air is thin.
We're pushing against the fourth wall
begging just to be let in.
Our hope like giants humbled before
large and ancient gods.
Wishes lost in prayers or dismissed
with quick and somber nods.
Generations aching to wake
like a Phoenix and in fire be reborn.
American dreams cast like scattered light
or ripped hair and shirts torn.

The heat pushes down
the humidity will not break.

Fog rolls in off the bay.
In stagnant pools of cool salt water
the mermaids lay.
Children race down lamp lit streets,
they run and play.
And we pull and pull
but only push away.
We speak volumes of print
without anything to say.

Tomorrow calls for rain.
Tomorrow calls for rebirth.
I fear it will have little worth.
If we're only ever reborn in pain.

You've spent a lifetime torturing
yourself over history
and too many repeated mistakes
ignoring platitudes because
you don't want to feel better
you just want to hurt.
Hurt then.
Hurt like hell.
Until the pain becomes
steel in your bones and
your back becomes straight
and your gaze inherits the
cold of the metal inside you.
Hurt until you're finally complete
until you're whole against the sky
like portraits of powerful
figures depicted from low angles
whose own history shares
the darker hues of the painting
that lives inside your own heart.
Hurt until you feel better
but you'll never feel better
not really, none of us do.
We can't bleed out regret
it isn't that kind of poison.
Hurt until you don't.
Then get up off the floor
dust the pain from your
too apologetic soul,
grit your teeth like you
always do and instead
of hurting on purpose
by picking at the scabs
still growing over those mistakes
finally let the wounds heal.
Go out there, hurt and limping
and unwell in so many ways
and just try to be better.

I'd like to think that Adam
would rake his fingers through Eve's hair.
Like a comb.
I'd like to think she would rest her shoulder,
his smile as infectious as her laugh,
against him as he brushed the day from her hair.

I'd like to think that Penelope,
brushing  her fingers on the nape of his neck,
would cradle Odysseus while he cried;
In the bed he had made,
but they shared.

I want to believe that, had things
gone another way, Romeo would
welcome Juliet home each day,
as the sea welcomes her storms.

I need to know that love
makes equals of us all.
That life grows inward
as well as outward
when two souls touch.

What are we?
If not two people engaged in
this single life we have made?
I don't know my way, my love.
I am lost
without your hand
gently squeezing my own.

If I could just pull the
stars from the sky,
one at a time,
I could rewrite the
universe in a shape
more pleasing.
If I could just exert
the confidence inside
I could lead us all
toward the burning
tomorrow alive inside
my head.
If I could just fix the
myriad things *******
wrong with me I could
stand tall and become
a person of record,
worthy of note.
If I could just forgive my
mother I could put
these old demons to bed
and be whole against
the sky or at least try.
If I could just forgive myself
No.
Never that.
If I could just get out
of this bed I could empty
the sink of ***** dishes.
If I could just make the bed
I could lay tomorrow's
outfit down and feel like
in all this ******* I
for once have a plan.
If I could just get this laundry
done the constant dull
echo of time-distant pain
would go away and I
could feel like a person,
for a change.
If I could just learn to love myself
No.
Never that.
If I can just hold out
until he's in college and
she's happy I will
die with that *******
wrench in my hand
and not all of it will
have been a waste.
If I can just hold on
I could wade in just
to my nose and struggle.
Wait for it to end in dignity.
Still, it is remarked in refrain:
it isn't over!
Not yet for them
but my sun set a long
long time ago.
The sky is dark now.
If could just find the light
I could trace the awkward
footfalls that lead me away
back beyond those distant
moon-leaden waves toward
the swaying city lights
where, in our home with
him, I will find you.
I will breathe deep
close my eyes
and hope not to sleep.

***** and giggles.
Thrills without frills.
My god, the things you consider
mantra.

How have you become this
sad, blind, pathetic person?
Where is your animal force?
Your keenly tuned force of nature smile?
You never had a chance.
Never.

You scream in shades of
burning gasoline.
You cry in tuneless guitar strumming.
You move with mechanical imprecision .
The very soul of you is the very sole of you.
Was it always so?

You were never so repulsive as when
you begged me to stay.
You couldn’t keep the dawn lit,
and I refused to be your book of matches.
The things you said, the things you did.
Phone line regrets paid in full.

I know you have the strength, if only you
would bend without breaking.
If only you would dream without
having to borrow.
If only you could remove the sepia
tone from your expectations.

We were only children.
Kids playing pretend at happily ever after.
Now you’re gone.
I never told you that...

“If only” right?

I have built my home
in the silence between screams.
I've earned my keep
with shattered back and bad knees.
The ends are no comfort
and I still weep over the means.
I wish it was a happy story
but it's always been just as it seems.

Foot prints in the snow
left for you, should you follow.
It's not exactly easy
and it leaves you god awful hollow.
But there is strength, not peace
as bitter a pill as one could swallow.
And everyone talks about sunlight
but there is no sign of Apollo.

There is little of love
and nothing to help cope.
There is limited patience
but endless miles of rope.
There are boundless depths
beyond measure or scope.
There is almost no light
and absolutely no hope.

There is roof over head
and no view of the sky.
Everything is truth here
there is not one comforting lie.
I'd make attempts to give up
but can't be bothered to try.
I have built my home
where good has gone to die.

I cast out into the dark
letting the line drag across
the surface of a river
lit by neither moonlight
or halogen bulb and I ponder
the ever increasing presence
of entropy in our universe
and mostly in our own lives.
I haven't got a reference point,
nothing to point to on the
far horizon, no lyric pulled
from an oingo boingo song
and given false depth now
that it can breathe without all
the stifling context it had before
it was excised by way of example.
I've lamented a mouthful of
purpling nonesense and let the
truth go understood, perhaps,
but most certainly unsaid.
I am concerned now with what
happens at the end
because credits won't play
and I've prepared no coffin
in which to finally lay
And I'm tugging so hard at
my beard that my bottom lip
is flapping in a silent mockery
of language and I don't know
what it would say to a lip reader
but it means stress to me.
I've got lives at stake
and mouths to feed
and one thought starts
and sorta then just bleeds
into the next idea until
it becomes a nightmare
of neurotic over think
just like me.
I had my hand on a metaphore
that was, generously, unclear
but the truth is difficult
to parse and I'm not sure
how to start or with what chart-
The sun has gone down
on things I thought
were forever and the
sudden impermanence
was a shock to my system
that is still rippling out
like the water around
the fishing line I've cast
into the dark.
I'm too old for
wait and see
but I reel the line in slow
and what I hope to find
on the hook
out there
in this dark?
Frankly, I don't know.

Fog still clings to
the dips and valleys
on the battlegrounds
of my fathers.
Sirens still echo off
the late-night faces
of the tenement buildings
in countries where my
last name was first uttered.
Since before man walked
this planet the rivers wound
through desert stone and left
deep furrows of earth
behind them and they will
when once more man
doesn't walk this planet.

Hear as history calls us
from chambers of our
minds and we are brought
back to scope.
We are forever made small
by the billions of footsteps
that walked this path smooth
before us.

Innovate! I dare you!
**** your heroes
by replacing them
or live a solitary life
forgotten by history!
Perhaps that's too humble
but when I sit by the ocean
and look out on
Eliot's mermaids
I know deep down
that history will one
day be forgotten, too.
Remember, the heroes call,
no one is forever.
We all, one day, bleed
all the blood we'll
ever bleed.

In the heaving metal
and mortar monster
of my home, in the winter,
steam pours out into
the cold and ignoble air
from man holes and vents
in the sidewalk.
The stream of hot human
refuse so very much
warmer than the heavy
eastern seaboard air.
And there is beauty in
the impermanence of it.
There is wonder in
the brevity.

Yesterday was today
and not long away
is tomorrow, soon to
be long ago and forgotten
but there is blood
in the soil of the
ancient battlefields,
relativistically speaking.

Nothing is immortal.
Nothing is forever.
Maybe this is a reason
to look at your legacy
and really try.
Maybe it's an excuse
to be as happy as
you can be before
slipping into obscurity
when you die.

Your judgement rains down
like machinegun fire,
but I grew up in a viperpit
full of violence and ire.
You wonder why I'm distant
but I was raised under attack.
Struck down in the moments
before you swore you'd be back.

You want to share credit
for my accomplishments but
where even were you?
What claim has your absence
on these things that I do?
I made myself from your ashes
like some backwards phoenix
worried at all times of the you
inside my double helix.
I went booming across the midwest
chasing the Thunderbird
and nuclear aftershocks.
Hoping any moment to be stirred
to freedom by these mythical hawks.


I was awoken
consiserably broken
and while I've done work
glass just don't uncrack
and there's **** from which
we just can't come back.
I don't know what to say
don't know who to tell.
I'm sorry, Pavlov
but we can't unring that bell.

I love you.
I always will
I've tried not to
and here we are. Still.
You watched them turn
me into this horrible closed off
monster shaped man
and then demanded explanations
for why I am what I am.
I've not got it all fixed
but I'm trying.
I've got a past to escape
and the cracks aren't uncracked
but they are traced in painter's tape.
I'm gonna be better
I'm gonna likely die trying.
And the credit will be all mine
in spite of your lying.

I wanted more but here's
what I've got.
I want to be whole and normal
but ******* it, I'm not.
You weren't there to teach
or to provide or to even try.
I wasn't worth staying for
and I still don't know why.

He awakens in dirt and sand
and rises, flinching, to suffer.
His days are spent in toil
and his future is destined
to be just as grim and unforgiving
as the landscapes of his moods.
As ****** and callused
as the workman's knuckles
of his hands.

He spends most of his time absent,
his boy growing while he labors.
He wishes it was different
but knows his place.
Some men build pyramids
others just push the stones.
There are worse things to be
than a man pushing the stones,
he wants to believe.

He trys to remember that most
of the time he's happy.
He thinks he is.
Hopes.
It seems like mostly he's frustrated
but really he's just sad.
Tired and sad. Not hopeless,
not exactly,
but aware that there is no hope here.

Lightning crosses like sword blades
on the distant horizon
and he feels empty
when he sees it happen
because all of sudden it
matters that he was alone.
His life has been filled with moments,
experiences that he's always treasured
but now he sees them for true.
They, like his life,
happened to only him.

At night he curls on his stomach
and falls fast and dreamless asleep,
he is always tired.
And although he knows it won't
solve anything
(why would it?)
he finds a small measure of comfort
in the fact that
if we're all fading
into nothing, anyway
at least it's all happening
under the same indifferent stars.

Fractured light cascades in.
                     Flowing, ever wider, ever wilder
          with each passing moment, leaving
great pools of heaving color on the desk by
the notebooks I refuse to keep.

I.

There stands a building, overrun
by the very nature it once fought
so proudly to keep out.
It's walls hardly more than crumbled
stone, it's staircase, hard white concrete
interspersed with moss.
You keep a cozy home here.
Your beagles run about, guiding
lost or lonely travelers to your
warm and inviting den.

II.

The hallway was long, dark and
under water. The people floated about
still trapped frozen in the moments
that must surly have been their last.
At it's greatest spots the roof is so
high, the tile so dense that it
seems like a subway, a train station.
The blue lips of the people around me
seem to whisper pleasant lies.
Seem to call me, as though a touch
could wake them from forever sleep.

The sun's rays do not touch these places.
                     They do not know my works.
         How could they? Why would they? They don't belong.
The light breaking in are from the passing ambulances, cabs
and cars. Sounds I have learned to ignore.

III.

We are never more pathetic than when we
are swinging. Each time we hang back, we let
our heads dangle. It feels like that moment
when we lean our chairs back in class.
Proudly stride on two legs, and know
absolutely know that we are very near
to death. We reach through the world around
us, bending the color and light, forcing the
air from our skin and our bones and we hold
on to each other. We are so very near death.
We are so young, so close.
We swing on, and we open the same door,
again and again, only to find it still
closed.

IV.

My teeth are falling from my head.
They are healthy, they are wonderful
bright and shiny white, like they never
are, and they are falling from gums.
New ones grow in, without the irritating
itch that I remember from my youth,
but with bursting skin and a lack of blood.
They come in immediately. When I look up there is
food. So much food, the smell is so good.
But my teeth, my new teeth They are
too dull to chew. Soon they are falling out
as well. I shove them back in, pushing
them hard through the broken gums
but they won't stay. I don't know why
they won't stay.

When I open my eyes to the dull buzz of the alarm
                     My head swims, my brain reaches for the
         last few remaining images. It tries to put them in order,
tries to make sense of them. But nothing seems to fit.
There is only me, the light, and the desk. My works are in order.

I had a dream that
I was young.
That my lyrics were
unwritten,
my second verse
unsung
the final bridge
still hidden.
I woke to the same
empty sky.
I trudged to work
tired and old.
I wonder what you see
in me, love.
You're fair and wise
with all to offer.
I'm lowly and small
you're place is above.
I work and toil, sweat and bleed
but cannot fill the coffer.
In youth we made sense
but no longer seem to
you've grown out of me
but have yet to leave.
I'm full of points but
the good are few.
But you hold my hand
whispering, "I still believe."
I search the histories
for why
but am unanswered
and left cold.
I have burned this candle
down to bleeding wick
and myself along with it
all ash and regret.
I don't know the magics
or the secret trick
to accidentally be happy
at least, I don't yet.
In dreams I'm young
and so very strong.
I take your hand
and love the sweet notion
that life, our lives
are more than song.
We're giant as moons
pulling on the ocean.

I'm remembering...

The chlorine damp of your hair.
I'd never seen you in a bathing suit before.
You saw me and bit half of your bottom lip.
It wasn't sultry, we weren't capable of that.
Not yet.
It was bashful. Age of innocence.
You were shy.
And ******* me for not noticing.
Failure to recognize.

I'm remembering...

Observing the grass stains on the back of my tee shirt.
I had lay down on freshly cut grass to take in the smell and the blue sky.
I wondered if grass could bleed. I hadn't rolled around.
I know grass doesn't bleed. I know.
Not yet.
Age of innocence. Season of ignorance.
******* all this knowing.
It's left me undone.

I'm remembering...

The bottom fell out of my stomach when you smiled at me.
When you laughed. I remember the weird mixture of fear and hope.
Two parts coward, two parts poet.
So many warring hormones. So much lost time.
Not yet.
I recall thinking.
Notice me. Notice me!
******* it! Notice me!
I've been here the whole time.

I'm remembering...
Long walks at night with holes in the bottoms of my sneakers.
The stale taste of cigarettes mixed with crisp night air.
I can hear you breathing, even now, on the other end of that digital tether I had in my left hand.
You were hundreds of miles away and falling asleep to the sound of my voice and I was young and so were you and we were alive!
I'd love you forever, I knew.
But Not yet.
Not yet.
******* we were so alive.
So far from the waiting pit, those days.

One day I'll look back on now and remember...

But not now.
I am undone with knowing.
With failure to recognize.
Age of ignorance.
Soon, the pit. Sooner every precious day.
Not yet.
******* it all, it'll come. And I'll be here.
I've been here the whole time.

I have seen a man saved by a secret
another destroyed by a truth.
I have heard the halted
whispers as they cascaded
down the hall.
I have heard the mournful
melodies, and I have sang
them all.

There is a scratching at the door.
Once, then twice.

There have been different fears
which have coddled and gripped
us all.
Consume our thoughts and
drive actions, we can't
believe we've done, or saw.

Once, twice, three times on the door.
I hear that ******* scratching. I wish
to hear no more.

They swore that the nervousness
would pass.
A weak, meager thing,
bested without much effort.
It is here still. I can feel it in my
bones, moving with my skin.
Seething in my mass.
Calling through
the walls.

One, two, three.
One, two, three.
Simply maddening.

I keep a truth at arms length,
and a secret to keep me safe.
I keep it in my vest pocket,
where no one dare disturb.
There are two things,
of which I know are fact:
Life is a love song,
moving with grace and tact.
And life is a funeral march,
all attention rapt.

I do not envy the one that
must make the call.
The boy, whose words had always
been so soft and wonderful and funny,
but are now like warm razor
blades on the eardrum.
It doesn't hurt at first, it's too quick.

“Burn him.” The child said.
“Leave only the memory of his deeds.
Let them be, as they were, forever.”

There are no burials today.
No funerals, no dirges.
There is only hot flame licking
the gaping wound left on the
earth, there is only the sound
of the wind rushing past our ears,
and the comfort of forgetting.
But not the release of sleep.

I can smell the ocean, and feel the world
from this ******* apartment.
I see it now, as I must, as a place
that used to be filled with wonder,
with rebellion, with futures.
It has these things still, but they are
a pale interpretation of the place
they once knew. It has changed
for them. They must live each day
hoping that their deeds will leave
a legacy behind them.
Will leave a memory

In tossing and turning the realization
dawns that it is still not finished.
After what has happened, he will still
find his way back to the beat.
To the ever changing path.
To the slow march toward
the pyre. It is how it must be.

“Burn him.” The boy had said.
The men had listened.

They live with themselves only
holding onto the thought that
it will continue.
Only with the thought that somewhere
out there, even after they have
made the way to sleep,
the Boy Hero sits, awake,
hoping his words can one
day be filled with Laughter
again.
The Boy Hero does not dream this night.

I
I want to stop the hand from turning
Moving it's slow circles around the face.

It looks like it's stalking prey. I often wonder
if that is intentional. It is, after all, killing my

time. It moves my life away. I wish to grab the
****** thing, twist it back like a neck in a violent movie.

II
Corey's mom would spray perfume on her pillows.
I would lay against them and breathe her in.
He would ask why. If I wanted her.
I didn't know how to say I only wanted her scent.

III
Now it appears to be an absurd mustache on a pock
marked face. It's nose dull and flat. It has no eyes.

How horrible it must be that way. Blind, but still
useful. Put on display, but unable to see your captors.

It is pity now. How can I be angry with it? It is lashed to
the wall, it rests on a desk. That is it's life.

IV
I remember laying in a field with you. Looking up
into the sky, just before night. Brightly lit clouds
mingling with stars. We would make up our own
curse words. Our own private arsenal of slurs
we could never get in trouble for. One day we
realized that these words were harmless as all words
are harmless. They have only the power they are
imagined to have. Imagination had so much power once.

V.
The blind monster cannot chime. It merely glows
to tell me how much of my night is still alive,

long after it ought to be dead. I don't pity you. I hate you.
You are counting out my life in silent movements.

I try so hard to look away, but the numerals burn through
my eyelids. Informing me. Commanding me. “Watch this.”

There is a huge portion of
his leg missing.
He has a cane these days,
though he didn't used to.
He hobbled up the streets
of the Catonsville intersection,
even beat me and my car to Towson
once.
He did this during the triple
blizzard. During the crippling
heat wave. During the frost
covered fall mornings now.
Always his sign reads
“God bless you.”
Always he smiles a genuine
smile, all the way to his eyes,
when even the most limited
amount of change drops into
his ***** palm.

His skin shines with the dirt,
beyond age or race he is filthy.
The skin around his wound has
begun to turn green.
I've asked him, for me, to see
a doctor. Told him I'd wait with
my car if he wanted to take
the home boy express.
He can't afford to be off the streets.
For him, if for no one else,
time is money.
No matter how small.

I worry for him.
But only for an hour a day.
And only because guilt is easier
to manage than shame.
I have heard all the arguments.
All the cynical stabs and jabs,
and I confess that I have agreed.
But for an hour a day
I still worry for him.

I'm glad someone gave him a cane.
His leg looks bad.
Worse than ever.

**** it.
Let's stare into the abyss
you and me.
Lets turn our backs
on pop music optimism
ignore the little questions
and walk, hand in hand,
into the unknown dark.
Forget endings
let's only ever start.
Fight the unsung battles
without caring about the
tuneless song of our
impending defeat.
Let's move our feet with purpose,
let's not just sit and talk
let's take shaking breaths as
we stand together and walk.
I want to feel the static in my teeth
like I bit down on tin foil.
I want the ozone smell
after a lightning strike to
fill my nose with adventure.
I want to feel the rapid
heat of pressure loss
boil away in my blood.
I know the future is uncertain
I know the work and the bills
will long bleed us before
our hearts can pump enough
for us to catch up.
I know the erosion of our souls
has killed the childish laughter
inside us and nothing
is grand anymore, saving the fear
of those stone teeth punched
through graveyard soil
and the names which they
will one day hold.
I want you still.
**** it.
While, I still have the time
I have always been yours,
I only want you to be mine.

There were still stories to tell
before the bottom dropped out
and the whole ******* world fell.
There was a song playing soft
in a further room that was meant
to thunder but only got a cough.
There was time to finish and to start
there were daydream visions
and wonderful, weird outsider art.

That's done now. Blown apart.

What if all the stories have ended
and we're living the the final words?
What if the sky becomes dark and
empty and is absent of birds?
What if the songs have all wound down
and we're resolving notes and not the verse?
What if everything boils like oceans at
end times and all words become curse?

Tomorrow is coming because things can always get worse.

I search for meaning in your
every broken promise and phrase.
I push the dirt from yesterday
into tomorrow's waiting grave.
I'm coming up on truly empty
with each stupid ******* breath I save.
I've wanted honest answers
for every honest answer that I gave.
There could be peace between us
if it wasn't hostile chaos that you crave.
I keep letting you kick me down
because I think that makes me brave.
I don't how to love you like I'm meant to.
I'm unsure why this is how you behave.
Grit your ******* teeth, you *******,
time to finally leave the cave.

The sky is on fire,
it's early July
it's late at night.
My 14 hour shift
ended but I'm
an hour outside Baltimore.
I'm missing out on you.
I know it.
I'm shackled to the
systems of a fading empire
and you'll be grown
and I'll join my dead.
My dead never met you.

I get to thinking about the end.
How it'll be everything.
The little annoying ****
but also the good stuff.
It'll be left mournerless
when it all joins me
and my dead.

The people who loved me.
The people on the losing
side of my struggle
of my timeline.
They never knew me as a father,
some didn't know me as a man.

You belong to the generation
with the bleakest future so far.
I wanted to give you the world,
my littlest man,
unfortunately I am.
I don't have the words.

I'm thinking about the end.
Not the ending.
They're semantically different, sure.
Still...
They are not the same.
I am missing people.
All the time.
My living and my dead.

It's early July,
I'm tired. I feel old.
I feel like a bag of rocks
that used to be a wall.
When I was young,
so many dead ago,
I waited all year long
for the summer.
It was our time,
Goonies one and all.
Summer is different now.

I'm thinking about the end.
TV is over. I feel orphaned.
I used to watch Power Rangers
on a black and white set.
With tuning knobs.
At some point TV became movies
and movies became TV
and they both started to die.

I'm driving down 895
and I see the colorful explosions.
I can hear the pop pop
over the road noise.
The smoke falls and
the streets of Baltimore
are filled with descended haze.
I follow the fireworks home.

I walked you home through
aging arguments and the still
burning fires of dying
digital revolutions.
In spite of missed
celluar connections and differing
philosophy on relationships.
At intersections you'd squeeze
my hand and hold so tight
that my finger tips numbed
until your grip relaxed on
on the other side of the
deserted wintertime crosswalk.
I have dreams about you,
catch weird echoes of your
scent in the strangest places
and times and it seems so
inconsistent with what we were
and who I was and how it
all finally ******* ended.
It wasn't a love story, you and me
even though we pretended
even though we wished for it to be.
You thought I worked
like a stallion, only
after you'd broken me
but you weren't prepared for
the damage that was already there
before you even put a foot
in the stirrup
and I wasn't up to the task
of comforting your constant
keening need for affection
for reassurance, for company.
My god you filled every silence
with discomfort and inane babble
And I could lie and say I tried
but we were both there.
We both know I didn't.
But when the streetlights came on
I'd put my jacket around your
shoulders and hold your hand
and for forty minutes we loved
each other like storybook leads.
We'd talk, I'd brush hair, so gently,
from your eyes and tell you that
I could see the beauty in you
and you'd stand on the tip of
your toes and bite your lip
and breathe me in.
For forty minutes, a couple nights
a week, we were in love
as I walked you home.

The boat gently rocks
in time with the gentle
lapping against the hull
of the waves in the
ocean of abandoned
things in which I find
myself adrift.
I've no oar or rudder
and the sun beats down
on my uncovered head
and I'm so thirsty I cannot
drink and so hungry that
the idea of food makes me
dry heave and the steady
purposeful movement of
the raft slows my mind
and makes my bones weary
and I wonder, often and
for exceedingly long stretches
of time, if you've noticed
that I've gone.
Does it matter at all that
my lips are cracked but no
longer contain blood to bleed
or even that my monotone reaponses
have stop sounding from
the room adjacent to the one
you shout questions you've
long ago had the answers to?
Does it matter at all that
the ocean is vast and I'm
without sextant or stars
by which to find you or that
the chorus of pleasant sounding
compliments you've requested
my presence be has become
silence and void in place of me?
I'm waiting for rescue on this
sea that I've found myself in
and couching decades of pain
about your wishing I'd never
been born to my childhood face
in thin metaphor because
to tell the truth would destroy you
and only one of us has ever
had to suffer these waters
and why not just let it be me?
Navigating your sea has taught me
that suffering proves you care
and if I suffer enough you may
glance at my absence and
notice that I am not there.

Closer and closer still.
Boiled blood and ******* bones.
Hallowed out the marrow
hung on a string around your neck.
Crossed like salvation
But backed with trumpets like judgement day.
Knuckles pronounced like a second language
stand on cracked and stained hands but hold nothing.
And that old sun is setting
future, my love, the future is coming.
Bored like teenagers into the meat of our chests are messages cryptic and final.
Messages written about us and left by others, cross pollination.
Freeform Saturday shopping trips are become the air I live for.
You my raison de'tre.
Stand back and watch us bleed for the future.
His quiet breathing like music between us.
Bring on the judgement.
Welcome the night.
Stand.

Push the ignition on
this endless waiting.
Find the purpose behind
hours of need
with zero payoff.
Find the taxes gone
and the bills paid
and the paycheck empty
and count it another in
a long line of the very
same day.

Post your feelings across
the void and hope
a voice calls back in text.
Because gone are the days
when we could stand
for things and let ourselves
cry out loud enough to be
heard.

Gone is the moment when
the method was undecided
and the purpose grand.
Oh, we know just how to do it,
but our causes have shrunk.
Rebuilding a word with lines
of code
and the promises stolen from us
by three generations
of people who meant well
but delivered chaos and grinning
apathy.

We were great once,
I hear it all the time.
But with the buildings coming down
and the march of what
we can no longer call
progress,
I'm finding a disturbing lack
of evidence that
we were ever more than
what little we are.

Our voices have been caged
by the the things that were
meant to broadcast them.
We have been silenced by
the application of free thought.
Is there irony in that?
Or is it just another sad reminder
of how we destroy beautiful things
because we fail, time and again,
to recognize our potential?

It's the waiting that does me in.
It's this day by day
same old same old
that has it's hooks in me.
I'm a generation trained to
be delivered up what I need.
I want to call out a battle cry
and propel us toward the ill defined
"great" we could be.
But my generation doesn't have
a voice.
We only just barely have a name.

There is an absence.
It's killing me to say this:
I miss you.
I can't believe I haven't evaporated,
exploded,
now that you've gone.
State lines and power lines,
remember?
One less alarm
and it is so ******* hard to get up
in the morning.
One.
It's numbers, every day.
You know?
Arbitrary numbers that somehow
we've allowed to have an effect on our lives.
How did we do this?
How did we become this?
You worry about it too, right?
Two.
God, it's an illustration in futility.
I can't think.
I don't want to think.
To recall.
I don't.
I just don't.
You know how I am.
I can only barely live with myself, you know.
Don't know why I expected...
**** it.
Let's burn down tomorrow.
Let's set fire to it.
We can count the broken days
from birth to graves
and revel in it.
But, you know how I break apart.
How I go to pieces.
Wait.
No.
You left before that.
It was just me.

Sometimes when I lay down my head
I'm sinking in oceans of neatly made bed.

I finally work out exactly what to say
and look to see you're a billion miles away.

Light dances delicate from pane to pane
in the apartment and between bouts of rain.

Heat spreads across my legs and chest
as I snuggle in and hope for the best.

And these are the whiled hours of our very own.
Not the hours bought and paid outside our home.
Flashes of smiles and visions of light
now and then interrupted by the odd fight.
And I'd trade it for nothing, we all always claim.
But we head in to work and trade it for money just the same.

I often wonder what life could really be,
If allowed to be just you and me.
When able we while away or moan and fuss.
It seem to be about currency and not just us.

But aren't they all just words?
Little fingers, smeared with
whatever lunch may have been.
Beady eyes and the judgement
that comes from knowing nothing.
It was hallways.
It was all hallways.

Because there is a kind
of silence
in the moments between
wake and sleep.
A still over
the keep.
There is a kind of noise,
if you tilt your head
just right,
in the moment between
your words.
Like a hiss.

These are sticks,
those there? Stones.
Your words have weight.
Deny it
as much as you want.
That's all it is.
This is rubber, I'm told.
Under here, glue.
Nothing sticks,
nothing wounds.

You give them the power,
if you really think about it.
Sure.
Tell me another lie.
Whatever gets
you through the day, friend.
Lies, justifications
for monsters that look
like a little you.
They make you feel better,
perhaps.
But aren't they all just words?

My whole life we've been
a generation about to collapse.
An abanboned cigarette burned
down to a cylinder of ash.
We get up each day
full of new aches and old hurtings
and we make our commutes
to chain ourselves up to our hauntings.
We find ourselves caught in forever.
Our fingers break, our nailbeds bleed
as we scratch at eternity. Stuck fast as flies
our bodies shake out sorrow and need.
We're preached body positivity
and self ******* care
by billionaires with no intent
to ever ******* share.
We look at heavily curated streams
of the lives of friends, who boast
their picture perfect weekends
and wonder what we could ever post.
Between work and sleep
we manage something like twenty-three.
That's hours a week we don't owe.
For less than a day you can find us free.
People scream at us to fix it
while giving no proffered solution.
The blue strong arm of the system
kills in the streets with no retribution.
We find no solution
from asking or starting fires.
We're just cast away
as criminals or as liars.
I'm not Superman, I don't have the answer
though I really wish I did.
But we aren't Kandor
safe behing glass or lid.
And the wind will find the cylinder
and scatter it to ash.
And just like my whole ******* life
we'll still be seconds from collapse.

In dreams I walk familar hallways
stepping through beams of
dust mote polluted sunlight
and while I know I can't
I could swear, really
that I could almost smell
the polish on the wood floors.
My beat up old black Converse
make sad little squeaks
like a protest
but I keep going.
Even once I've put all the
pieces of the puzzle together
even when I know what I'm
walking toward, into,
even then
I keep going.
I used to think that once
something got broken you
couldn't break it more.
I would take appliances apart
try to figure them out.
I can fix most anything, given
the right tools and enough time,
but I got broken again and again
and there are no tools
there is no time.
I keep going.
In the distance now I can make out
the disharmony of a key ring
hanging from an active belt loop
and drunken judgement given as
sermon more than in the lilting
tones of conversation.
I keep going.
I always did. I was the oldest,
choices had to be made
and no one else was.
The kids were cowering
the blood pounding in my ears.
So, I made them
I keep going.
Nothing can stop me now.