Years ago we four stumbled
drunk down neon streets
and ate takeout chinese
on a marble park table
encouraged by a man who
made bird calls for drinks.
We were alive.
So ******* alive.
You flirted with every girl
in every bar we ever found
ourselves careening into
like flights without navigators.
We made dumb jokes
kept almost exclusively inside
and ordered manly dark
colored beers and whiskeys.
our loyalty without question
or peer we stayed steady.
We found the booth in the
corner to squirrel away
from the noise and the others
and talked about music
and comic books and youth
until we were drunk enough
on spirits and company to
talk fear and hope and pain and love.
Capital L love, boys.
You feared there was no one
out there waiting for you
and the two of our four were sure
we'd found, in those blushing
soon to be brides waiting at home,
our reward for long service.
And you worried you weren't
the type for settling down.
And in some ways we were
all right, in some ways not.
Love was a mystery
and we're talking history.
I loved all of you then.
Just so you know.
I love you all now.
Although,
it's been a long
time since we've all been
together, you are still who
I mean when I say
"my friends".
For what it's worth,
and I hope it's worth plenty.
It's been years, but not quite twenty.
I talk to other people now in group
chats and conference calls
and there are loyalties and
inside jokes but you guys,
the four of us they are not.
Good guys. But not like us four.
We were real friends.
Brothers by blood and by calling.
Young enough to care
too much about one another.
No one could replace you
though far away you might be
you still burn away in memory.
One of us will probably be
laid down in that old pine box
before we're all in the same
room again, and that makes me sad,
but the future waited for
no man and time got away
from us.
You were the best friends I ever had.
And we're distant these days
parenthood, careers, conflicting
schedules and life styles.
Nothing broke us up, no blood is bad.
I would trade our time for nothing
but I wish I'd known that
small and simple fact
when time was something
we all still had.

This world is a nightmare.
It is something dark and sinister
and destructive and
wrong.

It is made up of people who
do not laugh at their faults,
people who do not think for
themselves when others are
willing to do it for them.
People with no capacity for wonder,
no drive to learn or to grow.

Every time someone stands for something
or tries to help they are cut down
by simple minded people
that are afraid of a world where
they might yet be proven wrong.
Every time a leader rises to right
a wrong he becomes some small piece
of the problem he set out to fix.

We do it.
We are poison. We are poison.
A product of a tough planet.
A **** or be killed kind of people.
But we could be so much more.

If only we tried.
We can still change.
We have only to find a reason to.

We inherited a nightmare, from a
generation of people who meant well.
We were given a promise of a bright
future and delivered something foul
and expired.
We don't have to settle for making
it bearable. We can change it.
Fashion it into something we can
be proud of.

We are so small, so insignificant.
Yet we are so great, so mighty.
We can accomplish so much.
If only we tried.

Why can't that be reason enough?

What if there was no moving on?
Once in our hearts and never gone?
What if the hurt was forever?
We always haunt our every endeavor?
The tears only ever seconds
from falling.
Our hearts moved one minute
and the next stalling.
What if that ******* song
must always be avoided?
And no matter how hard you try
you always feel exploited?
That bar open to the public
but forever closed to you?
And it always hurts too much to open
up and let in someone new?
What if, once we get broken,
we never get to be complete again?
What, seriously, what are we supposed
to do then?
Would we work harder?
Fight longer?
Or would we be more careful
with the words we say?
More open to seeing things
the other way?
Or would we lock ourselves away?
Why bother trying if it always
ends the same ******* way?
Better to lock ourselves behind
doors another day.
Better to be alone
than torn open and left on display.

The moon is a soft blue
colored gem, floating somewhere
above all of the worries and concerns
that fill, day in and day out,
the ever waking, eating, sleeping
hours of our lives.

It's quiet blue light reflects off the water,
mirroring it's hidden world without
complication on the now
molten lead waves as they crash
onto the half sand half pebble
beach on which they stand.

There are shouts in the distance.
A bonfire, beer wrapped in aluminum
and the company of people they
will meet only once and then never again.
Stories they will share,
no great secrets, but minor insights and
a shared sense of wonder.

Were you here, he would sing to you.
A song so wonderful and sad that
you would be as whales are. Communicating
in somber notes and ancient melodies.
The weigh of the song would pour tears
onto your pale white skin.
You would love him then,
as you had loved no other before.

As the waves fall on the hard and calloused
skin of his feet and knees sending cold shivers
up his body, he watches as the full moon
describes his world as a dream.
He marvels at the smells of salt water and the
slow rhythm of waves and beach as they meet
again and again throughout eternity.
Later he will be at the bonfire.

He will share stories that mean nothing
he will drink and dance, but he will not sing.
He will miss you. Wish you could see
what he does.
How can it ever be the same?

The past exists in my memory
as a prolonged scream.
Unfinished nonsense bellowed
at the uncaring sky
or roared down the maw
of the savage beast I'm
still terrified I'll become
before finally being published.
I can hear the rough draft
in my hard and swollen throat.
We were so ******* Once upon a time,
y'know, once upon a time.
You and me, babe
my god, we were yesterday.
In the mornings I wake up,
sore and aging away from limber,
and I miss who we were
and I worry about who
I'm still becoming
and the only
benefit of age
I've so far discovered
is the knowledge that
I always will.
We don't ever get back
the people, and places
that we've lost.
They're gone,
but so is 17
and so are we
and so are they
and ******* it all, so am I.
If you're not careful
you'll fall into a nostalgia trap
and you'll stay until
you discover that the only
way out is to remember that
we're never really happy
not even then.
We carry a little sad around
always.
I know, I know:
That's hard to get
nostalgic about.
What can I say?
We are so yesterday.

Gods once walked among us.
They loomed overhead
and we felt comfort
and had no fear in their presence.
They made us feel small
and also powerful.
They taught us jokes
and how to snap or whistle.
They showed us love
in it's most gentle, gracious form.
They fill us with wisdom
coded as stories from their youth.
And they left us far, far too soon.

They burned you in
a pine box, but removed
your rings.
We got a bag of ash
to fill the ******* wound
left in the world.
Stiff upper lip.
Locking the doors behind
we all found ourselves
in different rooms.
We didn't just lock out
the world, we locked out
each other.
We learned to grieve
and we learned to die
And learned to do them alone.
The gods are dying
but we still worried
that people might think us
weak.

I agonized over the words.
Arranging them in different ways
structuring a cyclical ending
to tie back into the begining.
I wanted so badly to make
you proud of me, one last time,
using the only tool that
had never failed me.
Using my words.
The dead are not shamed
but they are also not proud
and furthermore
I don't even remember
what words I said.

I remember you.
I remember all of you.
And I still remember
what is was like before
I carried all the years
and the sad around with me.
I remember when songs
didn't make me remember
just because they're somber.
I used to be whole and complete
but time has turned me
away from the loving face
of those long dead gods.

Rain was crashing against
the shoreline in angry sheets
and you were yelling something
at me through the cacophony.
I didn't know what you said
but I knew you weren't smiling.

Half of my lifetime earlier
I was in the basement
orchestra practice room.
She was there, weeping about
harsh criticism.
I thought she played beautifully.
Everything about her was
beautiful.
She kissed me, then
but I turned around and ran.
I didn't know what else to do.

When highschool ended
I sat her on a bench outside
of the eatery we both worked.
I told her that we were
done now. That it was the
wise way to go.
Distance, I told her,
has always proven too much
for me to overcome.
She said she loved me.
I said I was sorry.
I didn't know what else to do.

Her successors didn't have
better luck.
They would love me
and I would run away.
A heart meant to break.
I thought, if you really care
for them you'll leave.
I thought, you're not capable
of reciprocation.
You're not capable of love.

I had never been in love
but I had not been kind enough
to have always been alone.
I used to wish I had.
I don't pretend to understand love
but I know this much:
It is like a tragedy and a miracle,
you can't manufacture it
it just happens to you.

You shouted into the oncoming
maelstrom words I didn't know.
Couldn't hear.
Your eyes were strong
you're the strongest person
I've ever known.
I shouted back,
"I love you."
Lightning crashed in the distance
and that oh-so-serious face
finally turned into a smile
and in so doing
it broke my heart.

We got in the car and
looked out at the road ahead.
"Pick a direction." I said.
I'd been desperately poor
and so hungry I couldn't
bare to eat.
I'd been on buildings
so tall I thought I might
touch the sky
and valleys so low
one worried the levy
wouldn't hold
but I was 17 just that once.

I recall throwing back
my head and screaming,
full throated, into an
empty night sky.
I once called the rain
in a mall parking lot
just outside of Baltimore.
I got so sick I thought
I'd die on an NYC subway.
I traveled with you
across this country
for just shy of 3 months.
I was 17 just that once.

I was three years in exile
in Dover, Delaware.
I felt cold Chicago rain
and New England sea breeze.
I've labored in Floridian humidy
and dressed against the
chill fog rolling in off
San Francisco bay.
I shoveled snow in Alaska
and got chased by fire ants
into an above ground pool
in Austin, Texas.
But I was only 17 that once.

We got into my beatup
old car, loaded with
the Spartan bag of clothes
we'd learned to have ready
to go over a lifetime of
sudden and drastic moves.
We'd stop for beef jerky
and drinks.
We'd stop to see the sights
we wanted to see.
We'd stop to get off the road
and stretch our legs.
"Pick a direction." I said.
I was only 17 that once.

"Second star to the right."
You said.
"Straight on 'til morning."
I finished.
We were Peter Pan
Capt. Kirk.
We were teenagers
graduated from provisional licenses
and invincible and racing the dawn.
On the horizon was the future
and all the possibilities that entailed.
You and me,
my little brother.
The second star of our
stupid little story.

In Kansas you joked,
"I don't think we're in the Bronx anymore."
And even though it had
been years since we'd
left those streets behind
we laughed like criminals.
We weren't whole anymore
but we weren't totally broken
yet, either.

"I don't think I've ever been in love."
I confessed below an
open night sky filled with stars.
You punched me in the arm
and smiled the same smile
I had known all your life,
"Party ain't over yet, man."

I woke up yesterday
and I was thirty-something
but I remembered
the wanderlust of
yesteryear and I remembered
how much we'd been through
and I thought I'd give you
a call. Let you know
as long as we have one another,
Brother, we're Peter Pan
Capt. Kirk
And even if we're not
in The Bronx anymore,
The party ain't over.
Not for us.
You're still my second star.

One warm night in 2004:
I'd chased our old friend
around until finally
he collapsed onto that
bench in the quad.
We sat on the low wall
and looked at him.
"You're a good friend."
You told me, " You're always
making sure everyone is okay."
You asked what he'd taken
I told you it was on my list
of questions to get answered.


A year before:
I heard a knock
at the front door.
I opened it to find
you with our old friend.
"Heard you missed your bus."
You'd said, "Campus seems empty
without you."

Months later I bent over
to light a cigarette off the
glowing orange of
your cigarette.
Twin brief embers lighting
the cramped backseat
of your car.
You smiled,
and looked at me with
lightning in your eyes.
"We're kinda kissing."
You told me.
You moved closer...

That night:
You lit a cigarette and handed
it to me to light my own.
Our old friend slept it
off on the bench.
"Who takes care of you?"
You asked.
I told you it was on
the list.
"I could take care of you."
You'd said.

Before:
We were parked by my house
you had set off the
automatic locks on my door
so I couldn't get out.
I raised an eyebrow at you.
The ionic power between
your eyes and my heart
felt like it'd tear me apart.
"You can kiss me, you know."
You paused, "I want you to."
I moved closer...

We didn't last. We were
on an escalator at a mall
when it became official,
only I don't think we knew that.
A friend made it official
not us. Our friends had
the best of intentions.
But...
I moved further away from you.
I wasn't ready.
You weren't sure.
There is an outdoor table
on campus where it ended.

That night:
Maybe the moment
didn't matter to you
but it was the moment
I decided.
We'd already broken up
but everyone thought...
We thought it too,
that we might
not be finished.
That our flame might
be rekindled and burn
forever.
I put out my cigarette and
I turned back to
our old friend and I said,
"We've tried that. Didn't work."

We were stunning in
the dying light of the moon,
full of consumed caffine,
mouths like ashtrays,
the whooping roar
of the cracked passenger window.
Music playing low now
so we could hear the breaking
hearts in our voices
as we raced dawn for
that distant horizon line.
******* we were beautiful.
Invincible as a wall that
has yet to be knocked down
and full of the confidence one
has before they've made the
very big and important mistakes.

You and I and our secrets
sat in parked cars in dark
parking lots and talked about
pain in a way that only people
who've never really been in love
can talk about pain.
You turned the radio up
because the lyric that would
change my life was about to
come on and you stared at me
and I counted the freckles
in your eyes and on your nose
and we learned, second hand,
what each other's brand of
cigarette tasted like.

One night you layed on the
hood of someone's car,
was it mine?
and you said you couldn't
wait to find out how this
all turned out and I said
you were beautiful and
you were and I don't
remember where or how
but maybe we're still
waiting to find out.

I miss them now,
old friends and lovers.
But the night is not long,
not anymore, and the days
bleed together
and I can't find you anymore.
Maybe I'm not looking,
not really,
not like I used to.
Nothing is how
you remember it.
But hold on to the
memory, anyway.

I spend my days
strapped down
holding my breath
and bleeding out.
The world grows and
changes and is
ravaged by time
and tide.
Frost blankets the
morning world
and heaters go on
to warm the windows.
When the sun finishes
the cold night air
envelopes me and
if I can stop the bleeding
I will go home.
I'm getting older
how is it that time
is standing still?
I hear laughter
like distant thunder
with ears cold
and raw.
Skin chapped by wind
fingers shaking like
Electric Football
and dreams dying
on the vine
words dying in
the cooling evening air.
Sudden phone call
as a car changes lanes
without blinker.
Swearing into the phone
but alive
what passes for alive.
Breathing hard angry
clouds of chilled air
in rapid bursts.
Knowing the embers
in my heart are
burning low these days.
I was going to set
the world on fire.
But my spark casts
no light. No heat.
I've become November
In early August
because the playing
is done and the laughter
is over and only
the work is left.
Turn on.
Turn wrench.
Turn in.
I'm going to turn this key
And I'm going to hope the
engine turns over
so I can leave and
so I don't freeze.

If the world ended
Now,
would any of us notice?
Would it be difficult
to see?
Could we plug in the
coordinates in our GPS?
Would it be a whimper?
Would it make a lot of noise?
If the world ended
Now,
would any of us care?
Could we divorce ourselves
of the tasks we have left
to do for the day?
Would we keep all our
appointments?
Would it bother us
at all?

Every now and then
I get to dreaming.
I've found victory in defeat
seen a loser win.
Saw joy in the midst of sorrow
and seen sadness in the midst of sin.
I seen monsters with hearts of gold
and grown folk with feet of tin.
I reckon everything that breathes is dyin'
whether it got scale, feather, bark or skin.
And we talk a lot about where we're goin'
while tryin' to forget where we been.
Maybe that's the big secret to happiness
among temporary and mortal men.
I've gone on a while now about this an' that
and things beyond my own mortal kin.
I guess I just get to dreaming
but only every now and then.

Occam's Razor blades burn through the air
around us.
Because You blush when you laugh.
Because I pay attention when I joke.
Obvious.
So ******* obvious.
Because I swell to see you,
and you meet me among the clouds.

Frustra fit per plura quod potest fieri per pauciora

Obvious.

I can't tell you. I've told you a million times.
But it's too hard to say it right.
The words are difficult.
I love you like a religion.
I worship you with the devotion of the faithful.
I know, the atheist claims faith.

I love you like the spot behind the
living room recliner that a dog hides
behind during a thunderstorm.
I love you like a thunderstorm.
I love you with the depth of an
Irish song about heartbreak.

I don't know how to do anything else.
Because you blush when you laugh.
Because I notice.
Because I...

Obvious.
So ******* obvious.

Pin back your hair
with flower and bone.
Decorate your house
with river skipped stone.
Breathe in deep
the musty smell of loam.
Seal all your letters
hang up your phone.
Leave your bank
discard your loan.
Redefine the outside world
as a part of your home.

We ran naked down to the fairy cicrles
and laughed like sweet summertime.
I know it seems a thousand years
and triple that number of miles
away and ago. I know. I know.
It can't happen tomorrow,
never would today but, old friend,
it could be one yesterday away.

I loved you like family
and held you like hope.
You smiled so darkly
and bound me in rope.
And tragedy followed us
wouldn't let us cope.
Happiness a breath outta reach
and way beyond scope.
We refused to talk about it
pausing only to mope.
A tired old story, perhaps,
filled with tired old trope.
I once asked for my freedom
you called me a dope.

This morning I plucked a daisy
like the ones you'd put in your braid
and remembered a life we were given.
Where we were forced to behave.
I won't ask you to recall it
I won't force you to be so brave.
I no longer have my fire, my spark.
I'm hollow now, my world bare and dark.
Happy, for sure but much less gallant.

Sing me a song
in six or so notes.
Float me away
in several old boats.
Bundle against the cold
in scarves or in coats.
It's coming day over day
regardless of votes.
We've become empty
as brand new totes.
Spectacle without substance
like parade floats.

When I was young
the tragedy made me a hero.
Today I've become
just a man.
It's all gotten better
but it's all out of my hands.
It's not what I expected
I've learned not to plan.

Flashlights flicker a thousand miles away.
Old men, wrinkled and sagging,
like memories, they fade.
Drop by drop they slip away.
Into the ether.

Clouds. Fog. Haze.

In dreams so clear, what alert dissipates.
The candle still burns down to bleeding wick
(On both ends, as ever it was.)
As voices cry out,
Soft as age or over ripe fruit.

But here, by now, and there, in the end, it all melts into one.
Time catches up.
Speed was never to blame.
(Though we all thought we could out run it.)

The bile bubbles venom.
Rage turns an ugly shade of green.

All the while, as it'll ever be;

A thousand miles away, children play.

Looking back on failures
in life and love, measured
in observed movie trailers,
push some away, others treasured.

We were distant stars in inky night
pulling apart even as we embraced.
We were not the type to hold on tight.
Our travel sacks worn and shoes laced.

We'd trace a path toward finished
and sing our songs about oblivion.
And of course our feelings would diminish
We didn't know the towns we were livin' in.

And so it goes with old flames
you'll always be a part of the story
always something sacred in our names
a faded american flag kinda glory.

We were part-time lovers
in full-time pain.
We were like old song covers
we just didn't sound the same.

Raised on absence and responsibility
we've moved from one catastrophe
to the next with no moment to pause
and take a collective breath.
We are a generation growing old
adrift on a raft in these choppy
oceans of neglect.
We are atuned to a universe
that doesn't care if we live or die
shoveled into our mouths were promises
of better lives if we got degrees
if we gave up our needs and forsake
or learned a trade or worked long
long hours and never took a break.
But here in the future we're broke
gainfully employed with no hope to retire
no pension party planned
one day, we're expected, to arrive at
the work site and simply die.
No paychecks left to send
no gods left to ask why.
We're a turn of the century generation
watching old mistakes repeat themselves
but being asked to wait our turn
if we wanna complain,
there are two or so generations ahead
of us who still have the floor
and one nipping at our heals
demanding so much more.
I think the world will forget us
and our arbitrary, necessary pain.
I think they move on to Z and Y
and treat them just the same.
Stiff upper lip, chums. It pays to be silent
in fact your silence is brave.
The generation that killed tradition
walks toward the same traditional grave.

Broken eyesight and
shaking, weathered hands
reach toward the open
ocean and take in
what is there.
I wish I'd loved you
like you'd deserved
like you'd wanted me to.
Mixed into my hair
are strands of white
and I can feel the decades
in my knees and joints
but you'll sleep, forever
only ever twenty-something.
I should've missed you
when you were gone.
I should've felt your
heart through phone lines
and digital lines of type.
While you were one
of the many and not
one of my lost.

I know you wanted me.
I know you cared.
I know you were open.
I know you were always there.
If I'd been better or more
if I'd been different
if I'd cared...

I want to apologize
because you deserve it.
Because you always did.
And because I mean it
and that changes the
shape of the thing.

I'm moving closer,
all the time,
to that waiting pit.
But you beat me there,
by more than a little bit.

One of these nights...

I will race through broken homes
and closed doors.
I will feel the driving rain
against cold momentum.
I will reach out into the darkness
and know that your hand
will meet my hand.

I will feel around in dust bins
and old insecurities.
I will climb over mountains
of stone and of doubt.
I will believe you when you tell me.
I will try to.
I swear I will.

One of these nights...

I will watch the tail lights fade
into memories we make.
I will force away the guilt
I will...

...One of these nights.

You know what?
**** it.
Let's just be on fire.
Least we'll be clean.
Sterile or whatever.
Like ****.
Because God forbid we
live our lives behind masks
and doors.
We are more, oh so much more,
they claim,
than an estate.
This is not captivity
and we are not kept.
This is the contract we sign
when we agree to be a part
of a society.
We have to protect one another.
We have to put each other first
Because they are not other people's kids,
they are the future.
Our future.
So obvious we joked about it.
Called it a cliche.
How in hell did you forget that?
This short sighted nonsense...
It's for the birds.
Open the country
but close the boarders?
You want a police state?
Wait until the collapse.
Bad choices and hypocrites
Will have us there soon.
They've dismantled the programs
designed to save us
and whine about being stuck
in the flood.
You know what?
**** it.
Let's just be on fire.

He fell asleep for the
final time surrounded by
three generations of
loved ones and friends.
He had planned, before
the accident, to run some
errands and get to the
bank the next morning.
He'd written it down in
his ratty old day planner.
For years his oldest grandson
would struggle to decide
if the great old man had
gotten the semi-mythical
Happy Ending
or if his unfinished banking
chore proved there was
no such thing.

Bury me in concrete
so I can't claw my way out.
When it's over I wanna
be finished and done
but I'll probably always
need help sitting still.

I could while away infinity
in the stone cask in
which I will be interred,
what a word, what a day.
I suppose I'll wait to hear
someone undoing my works
so I might begin, gamely,
to spin in place.

Should I be awake when
it's over, when it all ends
I don't know if I'll want people,
family and friends,
to surround me or not.
I don't know if that's
The Happy Ending
and I have given it much
great thought.

I do my banking online, now.

I have waited my entire life
to disappear when a truck rolls
by in front of me.
One day I will vanish.
I'll be gone and no one will
ever know of my exploits after
my stage exit. No one will ever know
because when the truck is gone
so will I be.

I want to fix this small world
we share. Dig out all of it's tiny
problems and over blown drama.
Work so hard to break it down and
build it brand new and better.
They will all want to thank me.
Praise my altruism.

But the truck already rolled by.
They will wonder if I'm somewhere new
fixing other people's worlds
and expecting nothing but a sudden
and final exit.

But no one will ever know.
The job is done.

Pages float from the empty window
to the busy city streets.
Pages of our diary, the one we kept
so the ******* world wouldn't see.

But wipe your tears, smile with your whole soul.
You see, it's the freedom of the act
that we have to cherish, that we have to embrace.
Look past the shame of our secret story,
and find the beauty we've now shared.

You see, it's our lives on display for those people.
It's our words and our days and our ways,
and it's out there, and it touches people.
We have made the world aware of our lives,
and in so doing, they have found a part of
who they are, who they wish they could be.

In every person, holding one of those pages,
there is a little bit of you, a little bit of me.
There's so much beauty in that, can't you see?

I've spent counted years
terrified of what those
hands could do.
I'm forced to keep a record
of their works,
a tapastry of scar tissue
and memory seared into me
like a branding.
I have shaken awake
like colors swirling together
into screaming horror
in a paint mixer.
Every choice I have made
good, bad and indifferent
has been informed
by the childhood you
stole from me with
your violence and
your base, spiteful meaness.
You drank yourself,
nightly, into oblivion
and took the day you'd
self-medicated away out
on three scared children
and still not a day went by
that you didn't make
sure they knew how
******* big you still
thought you were.
I was convinced you
were evil incarnate.
That you were larger
than life and too bad
for good to touch.
You took my mother from
me, turned her into
a sobbing wreck,
alternatively apologizing
and pretending nothing
was even happening.
It was so cruel, so precise
it just had to be on purpose.
You drove me so far
into the darkness
I was a lifetime finding
my way back out
and I assumed you'd
known what you were doing
and I learned to hate
everyone and everything
and I started with you
because you taught me
to be that way.
You taught me how little
to trust, how unhelpful
hope can be, how a little bit
of light or laughter only
makes the hurt deeper.
You turned me into an engine
of spite. You taught me how
worthless love can be.
How important it was to be
tough, unfeeling and cruel.
You taught me to be exacting
in my actions, and people
praised me for the lessons
you cut into me.
With distance and with time
I see a different you.
Beaten, as you beat me,
scared and lost and
small, so very ******* small.
You had no designs
no great plan.
You're a little man
who felt big by hurting
some kids.
Nothing original there.
You're an ordinary monster
and I'm not afraid of you
any longer.
I wanted you to know
I do not and may never
forgive you for what
you did and what you are,
for what you made me,
but I do understand.
You made sure of that.
Maybe that was your plan,
I don't know.
I think perhaps you were
not smart enough
to have a plan.
I learned to always have
a plan.
With our cruelty you
accidentally gave us cunning.
I know, it bothers me to
think you may have helped
me in any way, as well.
But I have always had a plan
I have one still.
I have one right now.
Wanna know mine?
I plan to die with the knowledge.
My plan is to make sure
my son doesn't understand.
You must've been so lonely,
you oridinary monster.
I don't need the company.

They lie spread across
bloodied battlefields
with the fallen and
The Nephilim of old.
Swords caught on bone,
sheilds that cover
against the heat of
liminal hellish landscapes
still within sight of the
large golden gates
behind which sit,
on impossible throwns
surrounded by hosts of
horrifying misshapen
monsters of eldritch
origin and madness born,
The Father and Son
and the third ethereal
component which completes
in some small but huge
and mysterious way.
Among the carnage stands
our hero, his sword turned
so the dullest part faces
toward the legion he
stares down, his shield
strapped to the bleeding
useless arm hanging
limp by his side.
His cape ***** behind
him in some breeze
which brings no relief,
it seems impossibly long
and so too does his shadow.
And look, o' sons and daughters
in the darkest part of
his shadow we are huddled
against the noise and the heat.
Between us and the bitter
finish our hero digs his
feet into the dark, dusty ground.
His countenance grave
but determined. His brow
a tight triangle, his lips
a small drawn line,
his eyes narrowed.
We desire his victory
but expect his defeat
and we know we will
both be safe and also
tell his story, regardless
of the outcome, because
of the time he's providing.
But that should he lose
should he fall in his attempt
we will love him
for all of time.
Stand tall, sons and daughters
but know always that
the hero, our hero,
he shakes, ever so slightly.
His eyes are set
and grim but they are
glossy with tears he'll
never be allowed to shed.
He stands amid death
and consigns himself
for us but he still
must die alone
and afraid.
But then, o' sons and daughters
so do we all.

I believe in love now,
in ways I couldn't explain
to myself as a younger man.
I can just about wrap my
head around the ending,
at least I think I can.

We're not made to suffer,
even if it seems that's
what's most likely to be true.
We're made to come out
the other side limping but
knowing what to do.

I don't understand forever
because I don't think any
of us ever really can or will.
But I'm familiar with right now
and what it means to love you
not for forever but still.

Outside: I can hear the cars race by.
Horns blare out their dull song.
Radio broadcasts barely audible over
the outside world around them.

When movement strikes these bones
I rise with nothing and wander
to nowhere.
I stand among parking lots
and trees.
Among people and night skies.
Sun and moon.

My soles are worked almost bare.
There is peace in solitude.
There is life in movement.
There is a quiet kind of strength in
looking forward.
I want to be a part of these things.
I want to feel them stir in me
until they are all that is left.
Until my thoughts are
consumed by them.
By the chill wind against my cheeks.

Until I am a new man.

Battered by the words
thrown my way I hesitate.
I know what needs to be said.
I know how to defend myself.
I know how to fix that tired
arrogant smile of yours.

You never walked the mile.
Never carried the load.
You never faced down the barrel.
Never lived as a boy without sanctuary,
or as a man without a hometown.
Nine words never changed your life.
Six seconds never changed your world.
Love never found you, and you’ve never
hunted for it, not in earnest.

The sacrifices for friendship are a burden
to you. Do you even know how truly
pathetic that is? Could you ever?
You’ve never fought in the night,
or run throughout the day.
Never let your blood stain
those you trust so that their own
might be spared.
Never so much as lifted a selfless finger
in repent of your nine selfish ones.
Never been so happy someone died
instead of you, only to hate yourself for it.

You are a boy. A man child.
Hold onto that arrogance.
I could blow it away with a
sentence. I could show you a world
where love and trust and hope are
tantamount to survival.
The world is cold and dark and
amazing and you haven’t the barest
idea at all.

I open my mouth.
I close it.
Sleep well, you sad
wonderful
man-child.

He was all bible verse
and the broken, fraying
edges of song
gone slightly discordant
after having waited for
so ******* long.
He wondered at love
like you or I worry at
a scab on our arm,
with constant picking
and scratching
and sudden serious alarm.
He claimed he shined
like Summertime but knew
he felt more like Fall.
He was often scared
and frequently lonely
but so are we all.

She loved him from
a distance with a small
measure of shame
but would still have
melted into giggles
if he felt the same.
She waited for someone
to tell him,
to let her secret slip,
she waited for others
always because
she was terrified to trip.
At night she'd sit
outside her apartment
and stare at the moon
and pray that something
would happen and that
it would happen soon.

They lived lives
side by side and
from faraway
in quiet solitude
and creeping isolation
day by endless day.
Never touching
moving toward the
patient, waiting grave
they could reach out
and touch one another
if they'd been brave.
There is no making up
for lost time or
missed chances.
Nobody else will
ever hit the floor if
at first no one dances.

Lovers in mourning stand at
odd, opposite angles and reach
for one another through growing
animosity and they watch
with trepidation as the love
that had named and defined them
presently withers to nothing.
Maybe once they had hope
and maybe once they could
lift hands and touch pain away
maybe once they had each other
Guide posts in the darkness,
made suddenly impossible to read.

Walking down the street
on the way to a lifetime
of further nonsense
a tune sprang to mind.
Simple and sweet as a
a summer day.
She once whistled it while
you swept the dining area
of that apartment you'd
shared together.
A cleaning song,
she'd said,
from when she was young.
You'd not heard it before
she whistled it to you.
Now it lives in you, too.
A vestige of her youth
that you'll carry forever.

Patchwork people
A little yesterday planted
to grow today.
Tomorrow is another
person's problem, perhaps.
Once they had each other,
Lovers in mourning.

There is peace in this place.
Not the kind you read about,
there is no comforting smell
or quiet atmosphere.
Only peace. True and complete.

There is a stillness. Uneasy at first.
Eventually it goes. Subsides into
a kind of white noise.
Constant.
Dependable.
Careful.

All at once the sky heaves
the rain falls about your contours
and makes clear what we all try to hide.
The blush on your cheeks is
so endearing I forgot for a moment
to look away.
It might have been then,
or later perhaps, when you
swelled to me on the rough
burlap like couch,
that I first truly saw you.

There is a stretch of road
in a far away state that
will always be ours.
There is a storm that will
always belong to a moment,
which while now passed is
forever only seconds away.
There is a satellite which will
always carry our love song
across state lines and shared history.
There is an expression, which I
do not now remember
that will always be mine to give
to you.

There is a temporary nature to
the things that are forever.
I took so long to figure that out
that the first time around it was ignored.
How many moments were not
glorified when they occurred?
How many should be?
Really?

There is a peace here.
It is not neat, it is not still.
My god the commotion of this
peace is deafening. The anxious
feelings inspired by this peace are
maddening. Some days it is hard
to imagine how we will survive.

There is so much anguish,
so much pain,
so much heart break.
So much love.
There is a peace in this place.
I would trade it for nothing.

I’m flat on the table staring up at myself.
There is a small smile on my face.
As though I understand something.
I’m younger on the table.
A decade?
More?
What did I know?
My god, I was young.
My hands move.
They are weathered.
Beaten and old.
Veins pop out in odd places,
at odd angles.

I’m sitting at the table looking down at myself.
I’m older now.
Wiser, I hope.
There is no smile.
I tell myself that wisdom and smiles
are not mutually exclusive.
I hope I’m right.
No more cameras.
No more pictures.
I can’t handle it anymore.

Life is made up of
pit stops filled with
people you knew.
Long stretches of road
between, empty of all
but your own company
until you stop again
and meet new people.
You stay with them
for a time but eventually
all relationships end,
even the ones we
promised each other
were forever.
Maybe especially those.
We make promises of
time we cannot live
long enough to fulfill
with the casual unkindness
of a natural disaster,
mercurial as a sudden
daylight summer storm.
And so we bow, hand in hand,
with the current round
of players fretting the stage
with us, or else slip away
with an Irish Goodbye
in spite of what we always
said we had meant to each other.
Still, we go back to that
dusty, lonesome stretch
of jagged road and head for
distant horizons.
And we feel bad,
maybe, in measured hours,
but mostly not at all.
Life moves on and
we find this sitcom's
cast of characters from
school or various jobs
replaced by the next
group from school or work.
Group chats will one
day go inactive and
the constant chirp of
digital friendship will
be as silent as a confession
of teenage affection caught in the
back of a young man's throat.
Some days we'll hear a
familiar laugh or see
a once discussed TV show
and it'll draw it out:
we'll have moments
when we miss the days
when...
But, don't let yourself
dangle when you hang up
on those thoughts,
because it may be sad
when one thing dies
but it isn't really the end.
Nothing is ever really
The End.

An Experiment:

Imagine a place without pity.
Where the strong survive
and the weak must force themselves
to create in order to achieve.

Imagine a world were no one
sits around feeling sorry for themselves.
Where things get done and no
one complains about the toll.

Sounds wonderful, in it’s way.

A Reality:

When you told me about your
Father, about how he died.
You leaned your head on my
chest and sobbed uncontrollably.
After all that time, years, you still
felt so raw and vulnerable.
I had never really seen you before.

Your pity allowed your grief to
wash over you. To throw some dirt
in the hole you had been tossed into.
Not enough, not nearly enough.
But your pity allowed you to take a step
closer to getting out alive.

My pity, as you rocked ever so gently
with tears. My pity, as you rubbed your
face against me leaving the smell
of you in my clothes.
My pity.
My pity let me love you that day.
It let me love you in a way
that hasn’t gone away,
that hasn’t faded.

A Truth:

As wasteful and useless as pity
is, I wouldn’t want to live in
a world without it, because it
is a world wherein I don’t love you.
I couldn’t bear to not love you.

The feeling is catching.
Fire, from person to person,
life to life.
The soles of our shoes to
the meanings behind our
labored breaths.
In storm drains the
detritus gathers.
Kept, like secrets, from us.
Remnants of our wasted days;
our whispered nothings.
Our shouted everythings.

Fiding the purpose in these
things keeps us from looking
too deeply at what
really matters.
Because ******* these
age lines, these race differences.
******* what's trending on Twitter.
We are the ravings of a madman.
We are angry but we hope
so much for peace.

We find our message,
the one we're certain that
we were born with, and
we become fire so our
birthright might carry.
So that we might carry.
We are angry,
in the soaked detritus of
our storm drain.
We shout everything
in the sake of peace.
And the feeling is catching.

Born on election day
his first act was to keep
someone from voting.
Broke two ribs on the way out
and never allowed to
forget it he thought himself
little more than a burden.

He was no fan of contact
but had only been conceived
because his mother had grown up
love-poor and thought of
her swelling belly as a remedy.
He always did seem to disappoint.

He would look after the
others, the newer solutions she'd
swollen with since, in her absences.
He didn't find purpose
he wasn't sure there was
any to find
but he early learned obligation.

They were little ghetto geniuses
destined to die in the poverty
they'd been born into
and cursed to realize how
****** up that really was.
High scores on tests and
whispers of potential from
the crueler adults,
sad eyed acknowledgment
from the kinder ones.

He got pushed around
moved about. Shushed and insulted.
He got beaten mercilessly
but refused to let them tie
on the puppet strings.
They would make efforts
with violence to change him
into the shape they liked
but made him into spite instead.

He grew distant and removed.
He let no one in.
He hated himself
and the world
and everyone and everything.
He recognized the cliche.

Lost for days in narcissistic
self inspection he emerged
with no better understanding
of himself or the world.
He thought as little of himself
as the violent world did.

He carried around scars
and thought his misfortune
meant the world owed him.
Sure, he was wrong,
but he only suspected so.

In time the world changed
when after years he finally
looked around and noticed
that everyone else was
suffering too.
It wasn't a happy ending.
Is there such a thing?

Behold a generation of wasted potential.
Earnest effort discarded
the waiting pit held out as sacred,
reverential.
Call it nihilism or laziness,
call it in condescending tones
the failures and flaws,
gaps and cracks,
that will always best us
and hold us back.
Nevermind that the hills are higher,
disregard that the times more complex.
We are, as you say, wasted youth on young flesh.
One more unwilling sacrifice before the alter, burning at the pyre.
We are thirty something, educated
or dropouts, breathing pollution
and struggling with impulse control.
We aren't more, we aren't less.
We are here to be emancipated,
relegated, blamed and hated.
We're still here, that's something, I guess.
Behold a generation of wasted potential.
Earnest effort discarded
the waiting pit held as sacred,
reverential.
And we're here now, ******* it!
Struggling beside you, fixing the world from the trenches.
Our hands are ***** from work,
our hopes forgotten,
We turn the gears with crescent wrenches,
fight the fear with sarcasm and
inclusion.
We know a debts coming due soon.
So do you.
Behold a generation of wasted potential.
Be in awe of their effort.
And maybe they aren't doing their best, but at least they continue to search for ways to make it better.

We are a multitude
of bad decisions.
A myriad of choices
which require revisions.
We are a cornicopia of coulda-beens
all wanting what could be.
If offered the genie's dilema
we'd change it all, wouldn't we?

We are hugging a spininng
ball of dirt and water
wrapped around a burning core
on a space ship with no rudder
and we close our eyes
and cross our fingers
and know, absolutely, we're on track
but the doubt still lingers.

When the universe exploded into being
the debris were set on their courses.
Like beads of rain water on glass
like rows of race horses.
And with the right math we could predict
where everything will land.
What then do we think of free will?
Is it just accidental cosmic sleight of hand?

I don't got answers, haven't picked a side.
Would that cancel choice?
Diminish those that have died?
Does it rob the world of song? Of voice?
My parents had a theory or they lied
I don't know. I leave it for you to decide.

Once we trod the surface
like behemoth gods,
we moved through the world
like great ships under coal power
caring nothing for what
was in our way
or left in our wake.
And we could've been more
careful
I think we can admit
but ******* it's difficult
to slow down during
the doing of it.
When dawn came we were changed.
Softer round the middle
thinner in the knees
grayer at temples, perhaps.
Oh how gums and hairlines recede!
Payment for our lifetimes of greed.
And sure I've regrets,
what of it?
Sure I've been brought low,
who hasn't?
But ******* your eyes and see
how I stand whole and complete.
The years have caused me to bend
but nothing has broken me.

On the other side of almost over
you'd think I'd waste less time.
I'm still idling, I'm just closer now
to the finish than the starting line.
I was so proud of how far I'd come
in moving out of the dark
but I assumed there were miles more
turns out the number is quiet stark.
There are mountains of things
I swore I wouldn't dread.
Loves allowed to wither and
important thoughts left unsaid.
I wish I'd made an actual imapct
an impression in the Earth
a record of how I'd mattered
not just a certificate of birth.
I doubt I've left behind impression enough
for you to love me when I'm done.
I'll be remembered like that car
in grandpa's garage that doesn't run.
I'm pretty sure I'll be remembered.
Although, perhaps I won't.
It doesn't seem right or fair.
I don't want to stop. I don't.
But like the sunset lives at the
other side of every single dawn
some things are writ large and forever
and pretty soon now, I'll be gone.

Find the path you took
to get here and walk inside
your own footprints.
Marvel at the difference in size,
were your feet ever that small?
Was the sun brighter?
Did cooling pies smell better?
Were doors held open more often?
And really, really were people more
polite and civilized in those
hazy distant times?
The shoes I wore as an infant,
as a toddler, all white and blue
sit high on a shelf, forgotten almost,
in the basement of this house
that I own with my wife.
My kid asked to see them
for whatever reason a six year old
has for wanting to examine a world
he is still puzzling out and I obliged.
They were not, in my hand
as I passed my youth to my son,
himself in his own yesteryear still,
as I remembered them.
The bottoms of the shoes were thin,
practically cloth, in fact.
He looked them over and
then handed them back
and all unchanged he smiled
and returned to his play games
and so did I, but I waited a beat first.
I let myself feel the weight
of those shoes, heavy in a specific
world changing way, and then,
like the boy who'd asked to see them,
I put them away and moved
on with my day.
Were things better when
these feet left those prints?
So small and insubstantial
in the soft dirt are they.
Eclipsed by the prints
I now leave today?
Or do we just hope/remember
it that way?

I held you captive
in a chance photograph.
Tucked into a small
notebook filled with
page after page of tired
unfinished verse
I travelled with you.
Moved from end table
to locker to glove box
I carried your cage with me.
When I got lonesome
or things seemed too
difficult for one person
to bare, in those moments
I would take the photograph
from the little notebook
and I would absorb you.
The curve of your smile
the shape of your nose.
I swear it looked just like you,
except the eyes were wrong.
Usually there is a light there
that makes everything around
them brighter and better
and more important
but from the cage,
as a prisoner of time
trapped in just that one
singular moment,
it wasn't you anymore.
I couldn't push through
and live in the moment
with you.
I was hundreds of miles
from home
and horribly alone.
I had your photograph
and though I treasure
it still, there is no going back.
I had learned that
when it comes to prisons
where the bars really are
can be misleading.

A prize fighter stands and sways
a lifetime of bruised flesh
and broken bones keeping
him on his feet after the
latest in a long series of beatings
has left him here again
in that nebulous space
between living and dying
and still he hasn't got a prize
he's still got no answer.

There is a question burning
away in our cores and we
ask the universe every day
in different ways and often
for very different reasons.
Some of us have a theory
a hope locked away
a secret wish
but none of us have an answer.

He could get up again
but he doesn't know if
he'd make the count
doesn't know if he counts.
After the pain and the
abuse, after a lifetime
of violence
he doesn't know what
matters or if he ever
even did.
Blood and sweat are moving
in rivulets, slow and uneven
threatening to blind him
and his opponent is still
out there, moving
unlike the blood and sweat
in tightening
circles around him,
waiting for him to fall
or failing that to
start beating him more.

I want to believe we get
better as it goes
that time doesn't march
away from the best version
of ourselves but it's
more difficult to tell than
one might imagine.
We were stronger and faster
yesterday than we ever
will be after tomorrow
but that day's knowledge
makes a difference, too.
I hope.

Maybe he'll win the match
maybe he won't
the pain follows forever
and the glory is gone
before he'll really be
able to enjoy it.
There might be more
to life than endless battery
and constant recovery
but he's only ever known
the fighting and he
learned years ago the only
secret he's ever needed
how to take a hit
and still stand up.
Damage is inevitable
like death.
The boxer flirts with
the inevitable
in search of
an answer.

When it's over will tired
bones rest below the surface
in dry dirt and clay or
will they be compelled, once more,
to rise with the dawn on
forever unfinished work?
And which would we prefer?
Because tired and beaten
is a scene we've rushed toward
eternal silence to be done with
but the sacrifice is tomorrow
and tomorrow and tomorrow.
And sure, trudging uphill
through pain filled rooms
with congealed blood pushing
in our viens is hard
but the sun may still rise
on the sweat of your brow.
And when it's over will
there still be love?
Will there still be need?
And what of the stiffness in
our backs and the sharp
stabbing looseness in our knees?
When the time comes do
we just stop or is there some
idea shared of what might
come next?
Would that be tragic or
would it be best?
When it's finally all over
will they wake in mourning
and live in slowly healing
lament?
And will he, after looking
at the total collection of
my life's works and worth
still respect me in the morning?

Cryptic warnings in
dusty old books.
Lose floorboards and
cuts from fishing hooks.
Memories that aren't mine,
transferred over airwaves
and across time.
Lifetimes of bitter motes
metered out and measured in
Television tropes.

Sam and Diane until Rebecca
moved in.
I recall Coach's signature move,
taking it on the chin.
Frank until Winchester,
Better or worse,
Hawkeye and Trapper/BJ
ever perverse.

It's not who I am.
Not steps I've taken.
I remember it crisp as
overcooked Bacon.

I.
There was a time,
remember?
My God how you smiled.
Your perfect crooked teeth,
the freckles on your *******.

All of it, designed to keep me.
How I love to be kept.

II.
Some nights, when there is no
noise in the hall, I think of you.
I wonder where you are, if you're
sleeping, if you're laying awake,
as I am, thinking of the other.

Even in this time, where conversations
are carried out blind on airwaves
and in text, I dare not call.
I don't want to wake you.

III.
Ours is an odd kind of courtship,
this dance we do. Around each other,
around city limits and state lines.
Two drifter souls, trying so hard
to find intimacy.
Trying to find one another,
no matter how far our feet travel,
no matter the distance we put between
ourselves. We search for one
another.

IV.
We lived together. Tried to
co-habituate,
remember?
It wasn't the disaster we thought
it would be. So long as we
had each other. So long
as we didn't bother each other.

We feel like we bother each other now.
We keep our distance.
How we love our ******* distance.

V.
I reach out for you some nights.
I try not to tell you that.
My hand, moving
of it's own accord, feels for your
warm body next to me. Searches
the cold, empty, silent sheets for you.
I try not to tell you that.

I don't know whose benefit I'm considering.
I don't want to hurt you, or
destroy us. We are too wonderful
too magical to mess up.
I just can't keep my feet from wandering
away. From bringing me places
I've never been.

I'm not in control of my hands and feet.
Not anymore.
It wasn't always this way.

VI.
Remember?

There is purpose in truth,
but no truth in purpose.
Every course set is the perfect
opportunity to take the wrong turn.
Life is not precious, and certainly not protected.
Living is both these things,
and for good reason.
Interaction through a phone is
fine for the moment,
but strap an embellished bed sheet to your
back and jump from a plane
and call it forever.
Find in yourself the spun steel which has
always been part of who you are.
Reach for the things that are denied you,
because no oath is more powerful than the
ones which are occasionally broken.
Fight your ingrained faith,
but never lose your principles.
There are millions of people who
will sit in millions of dusty corners of this
world and examine life,
and so pitiful few that will prove it.
There exists no boundaries.

I saw a child playing.
He was alone, in a huge field.
His arms extended, too far
away to hear.
I'll bet he was making airplane
sounds.

I found a note you left me.
It was scribbled on the back
of some old notes, for
something I was sure
I was going to write.
The missive was short.
Just long enough to
say you loved me.

I stand alone on my post.
Twelve hour shifts.
I would like to be sleeping.
I would like to be home.
But there are so many
bills to pay.
There is so much to do.

I was told that what I had been through.
The k through 12 of the
****** thing was meant to
prepare me.
That college too was just
the short version of
the real world.
Except no one has any fun
in the real world.
I feel under prepared.

I find myself alone.
In a big empty field.
There are cars passing,
little arguments from the
back seat.
Little glimpses of other
people's life.
I extend my arms, and run
in tight circles.
I'm too far away to hear,
but rest assured.
I'm making airplane sounds.