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.

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.

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.

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.

Kept in small places.
Inhale: Breathing in rain.
Leave this place to the winners
the sinners
the last people standing
when the rest fall.
Remember: That crystallizing moment,
at the eye of a raging storm
when everything made sense
at long last.
Turn away, retreat if there is time.
So little time.
(Receding hairline)
We have so much to do,
so much left to say
and so much to make up for.
So very much.
Atone: Do not repent.
Make up for the things
you have done.
Wrought.
Smells like sidewalks,
after a storm.
The very storm we
run from and we
run to.
Exhale: Visible breath
like winter.
Frozen rainbows,
light trapped by the cold.
And we wait for all of
this to thaw.
Spring...
Summer...
Fall,
and those left standing.
Here in these lives,
these apartments
and homes.
These spaces
and people
where we are kept.
These small places.

I can't seem to **** my heroes.
The flood is coming
the Earth on fire
and my mark is invisible.
Still.
My swollen head echoes
words, profound or silly,
down decades of failed attempts
to soar the cloudless sky.
Icarus falls from great heights
but got so close
and I flap my arms like crazy
but can't get off the ground.
I've drowned in oblivion
with Van Gogh and Platt.
I've lived as riversmooth as stones
and felt their number crashing
against me but have never
known the taste of silver.
I've weighed myself down
in insecurity and anxiety
and come off as insincere
and mildly neurotic.

I'm waiting for the flood.
It's coming, after all.
Maybe it'll wipe a clean slate
on broken earth and make
gravestones of us all.
Equal in obscurity
unknown to a waiting,
impatient universe
hosting a party at which
we'll never arrive.
Still.
Still...

My heroes call to me.
They advise.
They say, "Hard work."
They say, " Timing."
They say, "Luck."
Beyond the pale blue they call
back to me not to waste my
time with something I
don't love.
They say, "Throw it away. Write
what you know. Become a lover
of your works."
I want so badly to please them,
but I love it all.

The flood is coming.
Still.
Time is running out.
Everyday an EOD email
arrives to find me toiling
but not at love's labor,
perhaps,
but a labor of love, nonetheless.

I can't seem to **** my heroes.
At least not before
they've killed me.
"**** your heroes",
My heroes say,
"The flood is coming."
And I love them,
still.

I believe that I am capable of anything.
I believe I am great.
I know that greatness is a part of me.
Liar.
I'm a ******* liar, is what I am.
Nearly thirty years I've done nothing
with all I've been given.
I'm overweight, I'm lost, I'm a giant of misplaced ego.
I am so ******* tired of being so ******* poor.
I am sick of living in a rut
and knowing--
In my ******* bones, knowing--
that I'm the only person who can pull me out.

I remember being young, sitting cross-legged
in your living room as you watched scary movies,
through your fingers as always.
I remember being brave and strong.
I cannot reconcile the me, sitting beside you,
trying to lend you my courage,
with me, balding and fat and constantly afraid of failure.

I recall my--
Pathetic!--
schoolboy flirtations with greatness.
I remember the adulation from my peers.
Liar, I remember the adulation from the peers
I picked.
The ones I decided to be around.

I am poor, and tired. I am beat down by the
riots and the killings
and the people running my country into the ground,
with my knowing--
in my bones, knowing--
consent.

I don't want to be great anymore.
I'd settle for good.
I could be good, I think.
Liar.
I hope.
They aren't mutually exclusive,
like I thought they were,
sitting cross-legged in your living room.

I whisper a truth to myself, now,
across years, across my lifetime,
"You would trade good, you liar.
You would trade good for remembered.
You would trade good for Great. And you know it."

And ******* my lying eyes, I do know it.
In my ******* bones, I know it.

The window is rolled down halfway
so I can let the ash off my cigarette.
The music, which holds special
meaning to us and faceless others
who have been touched by it,
blares from the dying speakers.
The yellow lines snake ever onward,
winding parallel to each other.
Forever yearning to meet and always
being denied.

The sun went down so long ago
that it is daring us to watch it rise.
We are six cans of monster, two packs
of Red 100's and eight hours past
caring what the fickle thing decides to do.
We are also two days past the desire to
sleep at all.

We tell jokes, poking fun of the things
we don't dare in polite company.
Enjoying the kind of monsters we can
only be around each other.
We share tales of our ****** deviations,
more candid than we've ever been to
anyone else. The lesser experienced,
namely me, blush profusely at the
notion of where parts of us have been.
We lament lost love, unmitigated failure,
wasted potential and the million little
white lie excuses for why we've yet to
become the icons we dreamed ourselves.

When finally sleep begins to win the
battle for control of our eye lids
we take turns behind the wheel.
The window is never rolled up, although
I'm the only smoker aboard.
It's constant noise a reassurance that we
are still moving.
Though in what direction is anyone's guess.

We'll know our destination when we
get there. We'll know when our bodies
cry for food, or *****, or our girlfriends
cry for us to come home.
Mostly we'll know when we can't
go any farther. When we have to turn
around.

I'll always remember our late night
“adventures”.
I'll be an old man, waiting on the
final stroke of any clock I'll ever
hear, and I'll still be listening for
the reassuring sound of wind rushing
past my half open window.
Still feel the cold in my fingertips.
Still feel the warmth and laughter
in my heart.
That has been your gift to me, my friends.
I cherish it always.

Some nights the panic wins
and I spend hours dwelling
on my accumulated sins
and the healing has started
but the bruises and swelling
have not yet departed
and I wonder if medicine
could put it all back to right
like years ago, it could have been
if you and I had survived the fight.
These tired days the whispered shout
all ancient grudge and new regerts
are all I got the time to think about
it's difficult as quitting cigarettes.
I wake from dreams about drowning
and search for meaning in mistakes
the face of god in toast browning
the ring of truth in well known fakes.
And maybe one day it all ends
and maybe we're all that remains
healing is over but nothing mends
a group of kids and growing pains.
I want badly to get better
I try hard every single day
But I still worry and fretter
and watch as it all slips away.

I've got my father's name.
First, last and middle.
My Grandfather's eyes
set deep and haunted.
I can wiggle my ears
I've got double jointed
ring fingers and thumbs.
I've got Grandma's nose.
Like everyone else
I'm living on borrowed time
waiting for the far off day
when I finally get what's mine.

In my life time I've been
bad, lapsed and formerly Catholic.
I've stood on both coasts
and wondered at forever.
I've got a thousand legacies
I've failed to live up to.
The third to have my name.
I've wilted under a night time
sea of stars and lamented all
I had failed to become.

Before you were even
the size of a bean,
my beautiful baby boy,
my precious PeterBean,
I refused to burden you
with the legacy of my name.
When you were born
I held you and realized
I had never known love
or fear or wonder until
you came along and taught me.
My brother smiled
"He has your nose."
I laughed,
"I know."

When I was young I
spent hours rubbing dirt
in these wounds but
they never seemed to
get any better.
I swallowed all that poison
I was fed like a
good little boy
for years and years
until the lining of my soul
eroded and the anger
started to seep in.
Now I walk around
trying to spit the taste
out of my mouth
but I don't get better
and I don't stumble
into happy and I cannot
stop being angry in that
deep place where I keep
all my other secrets.

Lessons from our fathers.

When you give someone
your love you give them
power over you.

I don't know how to
just say the words to her,
and while thankfully she seems
to know anyway, I want
to say them.
She deserves to hear them.
But there is this wall of
something that feels like shame
that I can't get a leg over
and it leaves unspoken words
trapped in my throat.

Familiarity breeds contempt.

I want our family to go
to events and laugh and
have friends. I want us
to produce light like
small suns of positive energy.
But I understand that
silence is the same thing
as strength and that mystery
is more welcome than
bad character.

I may be trapped in the mine,
but I am not the canary.

I want the boy, our boy
to smile and hug and laugh
with me.
I live in terror of the day
he starts to look at me with
the same mixture of fear
and anger that I gave him.

And many lessons more.

The truth is:
With enough time and talent
you become brave enough
to stop trying to sound
so ******* clever and you
learn to just say the
simple things in simple terms.
It's difficult without you.
I will always suffer for you.
I'm going to be proud of you
until I'm gone.

I know that.
I know it.
But it's so easy to leave it unsaid
and so hard to unlearn
these lessons.
I'll keep trying to do better.
To be better.
But the mine is deep
the secrets dark
and the mine holds
fears a lifetime
in the perfecting.

Excuses are like *******...

And many lessons more.

I found a letter you wrote
when you were thirteen
and it doesn't bleed right
it barely reads right.
In youth there was fear
and lightning and violence
and sure maybe you weren't
complete but you were whole.
An island on which only you
could stand.
You could look into the distance
but you couldn't see forever
and maybe it scared you
but it didn't really matter.
You didn't deserve forever, anyway.
I read the letter and didn't
see you anymore.
Time and tide have long since
had their effect.
The island has gone
the violence
the silence
the fear
they've gone, too.
I look out into the distance
and I can see forever
but this letter,
these scared pages,
they aren't me
and by that, I mean you.

Sometimes,
The world, I have been told long ago
by people I have since forgotten or
hold dearly, runs on “Sometimes”.
Fueled by the occasion that exceeds expectation
or explanation. Once, in every life, if not
more often, we are all the exception
that proves the rule.
In these moments, when tears fall, or hearts
swell, when memory and present exist in the same
place, and impossibly at the same time, the world
itself heaves, shrugs and thanks us all
for the way we struggle.
How we long, how we need, to feel one more time,
or for the first time, the way we felt when...

Sometimes, with the lights dim and the rain
threatening an otherwise sunny sky, we reach
out our hands, and we hold onto the very fabric
of life and time and love.
We want to squirrel it away, secret if off to
some quiet place where we can visit it when we like
and live it when we need a reminder.
We know that we can't, that it's these moments,
these seemingly small or random moments of
epiphany or joy or pain or rage, it is these
Sometimes which make the world spin, which
make us spin.
So we release our hold on the stream, we relinquish
it to memory, locked inside ourselves we hold onto
this piece of providence. It is no longer real, it
does not breath with us as it once did,
but it is ours, forever, and no one will have it
from us. No one can.

Sometimes,
If not for Sometimes, where would we be?
Life would be shallow, a dreamless place,
noisy and surrounding, but pointless.
It is the Sometimes that turn the gears of the
world, and it is the hope for Sometimes that
turns the gears of our worlds.
Let us turn The Gears of the World, as
only we can. Let us Sometimes, one day, and hope
until then.

The shadows of my past whisper to me,
The scared boy huddled, fetal, listening to the
violence from behind his locked door,
the weak kneed love struck teenager,
the confident man, holding his future
torch like before him, they call
to me, whisper words in my ear.
They say, or so I'm told, that the world
runs on Sometimes.

I've been thinking lately
about tumbling into space.
Spinning heel over head
through the cosmos
in intergalactic freefall
for the rest of always
and how familiar that
would feel to me.
I've been thinking that
if I could change the entire
fundamental makeup of
the slowly migrating universe,
to warp space and time, would it
be to my benefit to do so?
Small changes ripple outward
having profound consequence
on things we cannot even
fathom the connections between
and is it right?
Is it Good, capital g,
to make those changes?
Is it worth the risk of
losing this to illustrate
the profundity of it?
If I could move stars
would I do so for you?
If I could compress gravity
enough to warp time
would it even matter
that, from a
specific perspective,
we'd technically have
more time together?
I've been thinking lately
about forever
because it doesn't exisit,
it's an abstraction,
a thought given etheral form,
but it is also the only unit of
measurement that feels
consistent with what
I feel for you.

I drank all your poison, every drop.
didn't know to beg for help or to stop.
Surrendering to vengeance I've bought?
Suicidal intentions? Perish the thought.
I was born complete. Now I'm not.

Don' you forget me. Don't you dare. Please stay and love and care.
Come mornin' I sure wish I could be there.

'Fore I was rubble I was a man.
I'm not nothing, just nothing that can stand.
Can you fix this barren, empty land?
And create something else to spec? To plan?

Feed me sweet poison, if you think it'll help.
Treat me badly, like some churlish whelp.
But beware the skyline, my dearest friend
'Cause that sun is gonna set and this'll end.

An' listen, you're gonna remember me like the lingering taste of fruit.
I'll be seen in muddy footprints and a discarded roadside boot.
I'm gonna matter to you, I'll stick around like an elm and soon take root.

Don' you forget me. Don't you dare. Please stay and love and care.
Come mornin' I sure wish I could be there.


Build me like Lego.
Bake me like Eggo.
But don't forget to let go
before darkness falls and we go.

Forgotten as flowers on a grave plot.
Loved as long as unbraided hair.
I do care. I'll miss you a whole lot.
And come mournin' I'll be there.

You saw me brought low
broken, bereft and grievin'.
You stopped on your way
to pick me up when I was bleedin'.
My god, I recall your taste! I felt you
in empty veins as a powerful needin'.
I kicked the dust and wallowed in the dark
but still you just kept on believein'.
I wish I'd been different. Wish I was better.
Despite your wishes, despite your pleadin'
I was never there for you
I couldn't stay. I'm the best at leavin'.

Late night on the subway platform
you whispered, "I'm in love with you."
and thought the train would cover the sound
and I let you continue to think it true
because I didn't have an answer
I didn't know how I felt about you.
Life changed for both of us
we were two kids without a clue
and we've grown in my absence
we've our triumph and our rue.
We've grown in ways alien to each other
in times of laughter and in blue.
Time isn't flying, old friend.
Time already flew.
And look, I may have a regret
maybe one or two
a half dozen, hundreds
let's say I've got a few
Listen, I've got the love of my life
and I heard and hope you also do.
I don't wish any harm
and I don't want anything from you.
I just thought you should know
when the train passed I loved you, too.

I.
Where does the time go?

With cupped hands going slowly empty.
Ignite like a sun in this very room.
Burn for us.
Burn.

II.
I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Falling.
The wind rushes by.
Accompany this flight with taunts.
You cannot achieve.
Over and over.
Falling.

III.
I’ll never be you! I don’t want to be you!

Voices echo back.
Bouncing off tile and brick.
Distorted.
Words that don’t fit
in sentences that don’t make sense.

IV.
I just have to get out of this town.

Turn signals switched like muscle memory.
Showers taken like anniversaries.
Faces cycle through.
Features changing only with time.
This is forever.
Escape.

V.
How did I become this person?

Read to me.
Teach me the stories.
Tell me the values.
Whisper life into these bones.
I ache to fly.
I see your sky, the clouds soft and perfect.
I want that.
Show me.

It all basically happened in Vegas,
Which is to say it was outrageous.
But when the car pulled away,
and we examined the remains of the day,
it turned out what most of us had was contagious.

The sheets still warm with you and me,
I am overcome with the same old guilt.
A shame that whispers,
like a dark secret down cobwebbed allies,
my own hidden name.

How, I lay and wonder, as the
sweat cools on our skin,
did man ever grow if the result
is always this?

Obvious, though it is.
After all, here we sit.

He would open
The Amazing Spider-man
and climb inside.
Swinging the urban
canyons of Midtown
and never noticing that
it was much cleaner than
those same streets were
only hours earlier
when he walked fast
through them.
He fought the bad guys
and laughed at all
of Spidey's quips.
There was the constant
background drone of
screaming and the
constant threat of real
violence, undetected
even by Spider-man's
wonderful Spider sense.
He landed neatly next to
his hero and rescued the
poor, innocent New Yorker
and he prided himself on
the restraint he had to
never ask the only question
he ever had inside himself.
He never even said why.
He closed the book and
crawled into bed and curled
up, his eye on the space between
the edge of the door and
the doorjam, where the light
would be when it started.
His breath was shakey
his knuckles white.
Inside him he held the question
"Why won't anyone save me?"

Blinking back the bright,
arm as a shield against the light.
Lost in open spaces.
These free and empty places.
They shout it from rooftops
and bellow it at full stops,
"Run. Run and hide"
This is open forum, long form suicide.
Every verse a kind of hopeless rant,
from broken homes and men who can't.

Dreams are a curious thing...
Sheltered ears.
Scattered light.
Repressed fears.
Conquered might.
The ever present sting...

And y'know:
******* my eyes,
and sweetest lies.
******* these false starts,
and bitter hearts.
******* this fractured life,
and this endless strife.
******* my hell-bound pride,
and the day I'll have died.

Was it tough to live it all?
To build a cage and watch it fall?
Because, man, look at it...
Passionate anger and the waiting pit.
Look, it's all an excuse to grieve.
That said: How can we ever leave?

I am digging through the zietgeist
for complicated meaning
and answers to questions
I've been sorely needing
but finding my pop culture
references are all aging
and the rest of my peers
are through staging.
The construction has long begun.
They've moved toward purpose
and still standing on this lonely
hill I find: I'm the only one.
I put my dreams and hobbies away.
I became a toolbelt
a punch card, a rope begun to fray.
I think I thought I'd be him again.
That man I so briefly was
at the lip of the wolf's den.
But I don't know how to mend
I don't know that man well enough
to even know start from end.
Gone at the turn and kept in
place still running until I've become something with which it's easy to reckon.
Where's that **** and vinegar gone?
The blood between your teeth?
The last fading embers of your dawn?
No one gets to do it again, my friend.
It only goes around once.
To each one start and one end.
I'm getting sick and tired of painful truth.
Give me pleasent fiction to enjoy.
I'm short on time and long in the tooth.

Yesterday has fallen like
Autumn leaves or
capitol siege.
History written small
in cuniform apologies,
and arterial bleeds.
Uttered oaths
and guttered hopes
Ashes now where once, Oaks.

And still we try to remember
what's better forgotten
because the outside is tempting
but inside we're rotten.

Nostalgia as commerce has
become the way of today
kicking sleeping dogs
which growl to just lay
Watch us pull on childhood
begging it to stay.
Riding on horsebacks we're
still unsure will obey.

In abandoned towns filled
with waving ghost dolls
and in the fiber of desire
that lives in our phone calls
We search our yesterday for
thunderous warmth and applause.
but with questions unanswered
and great worrisome cause
I wonder if given a chance to redo it
would we do more than pause?

We are the look back
finding at near forty
all the things we lack.
Hoping tomorrow comes
and brings it all back.
Knowing it can't unless
we lay a solid track.

I've been nearly forty years
spent just picking at this sore
and if bleeding me is winning
I wish I'd been keeping score.
I don't know how to stop
it hurts worse than it did before
And if I don't start walking out
I'll just be crawling back for more
I wish I had something to sing
an answer or solution or a cure
but all I got are worries mounting
beating anxiety over what's in store.
White coats and medication
can't seem to fix what I tore.
Deep woods remedies and meditation
not even workouts for your core
Mystics and religion give scripture
and then walk you out the door.
Should you want to find me,
though I can't imagine what for,
Follow the trail of blood I'm leaving
'cause I'm too weak now to roar.
Trying to see a light ahead to follow
but can't stop staring at the floor.
I thought love could save me
if I wasn't such a ******* chore.
Don't ask me, after my years of looking,
for answers, love. I'm still not sure.

There is a part of me that loves it
when you haven't washed your hair
in four days, loves the smell of it.
There is a part of me that doesn't understand
your playful nature about ******,
but loves you for it regardless.
There is a part of me that watches you
play your video game even though I'm
pretending to be caught up in my book.

You told me that your eyes are blue
when you are happy.
I confess that at first I never noticed,
that is until the day they weren't.
Eyes like a mood ring, we are
a curious species, and you a prime
specimen of the lot.

Your weight is so slight to me, even though
you never seem to be happy with it.
Beating your hands against your thighs,
complaining that most girls aren't so
thick. I don't understand how you can't
just look in the mirror and see that you're
beautiful.
I don't understand that you can't see your
life swelling to burst, infecting the world
with laughter, and with joy.
It seems so obvious to me.

Five years into the experiment of us,
and I am utterly captivated by you.
This is not a freak occurrence, not some
strange collection of lies and comfort,
every time I see you, I can feel my cold,
cynical outlook melt into the
living, breathing, screaming word of hope
you create around you.
Your own personal bubble of paradise.

I have green eyes always. Dull and uninspired.
But you can see the storm there,
just behind these eyes, these old man's
eyes on a young man's face.
(Remember when they said that?)
You, of all people, can see through the disguise
of my eyes, you can see into the heart
of me.

I stand in awe of your movement.
Did you know that?
I suppose not. You're every move is a
miracle to me.
When I freeze, so struck by you,
I see the slow smile spread, the giddy
joy that moves from your lips to
your limbs. That compels you to
run for me, across crowded rooms,
empty hallways, and filthy bedrooms.

My god are your eyes blue today.