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.

Every fear I possess,
every lie I can attest,
and here I stand, head held low,
until I clutch my heart in death throe.

Alone in an empty room,
I can recover here,
heal as healing dictates.
But here, in this safe,
still place,
I can smell you.
I can always smell you.

But kept from the truth,
in these waning years of my youth,
I can reach past it, through it, and into you.
From there, I hope, you can feel me, too.

In life, we are told,
there is hope.
I would trade an
eye for half a chance
to see you.
My love,
these hours keep us,
alone and apart,
My love,
I know you,
my work of art.

How you thwart,
my cleverest, my sweetheart.
my attempts at recovery.
My love, how I envy.

I have these pieces,
remnants of you,
scattered through my life.
A jacket, red flannel,
which I am afraid to wear.
How do I measure up to it?
A series of cloth belts.
The rise of a man who
had, in a long ago,
in a far away,
mastered this art already.
Tucked in a box, a note in your
wife's handwriting,
like a treasure map,
laying out the path to take
to find the things
that are all I have you.
Because the photos aren't you.
You did not smile that way
in my memories.
The photos are a ******* lie
that tell the story of man
who grew old an abandoned
me on this **** planet
with these monsters shaped like men.
They are not you.

I look at my things,
my random crap...
What will I leave?
What of this crap, that I treasure,
will be me one day?

I can't find your voice.
Everything is disposable
all of a sudden
and I've come to find out
that we are too.
All of us.
We become the trash
that our children are afraid to
throw away.
The measure of our lives
a series of fuzzy memories,
photographs and knick knacks.
Possessions, sir.
That is what we become?

We are so much more.
Aren't we?
Of course we are.
I remember your hand on the
seat of my bike.
I remember the way that you
could laugh with your nose,
smile at us with your eyes.
Blue. They were so blue...
I think back on the lessons.
You taught me to love, sir.
Did I ever thank you for that?
Of course I didn't.
Of course.

You're a little wooden box
on the night stand next to my bed.
An envelope with my name on it,
the last of your handwriting I have.
You're an episode of the Power Rangers,
I know, I can't believe it either.
You're in the way I love, now.
The way I feel it, the way I show it.
The Experience that you taught me.
You're in the presence of a flannel jacket,
that I haven't earned the right to wear.
You're not in the photos,
you're not in the jacket;
Neither am I.

As he falls
from orbit
he feels the friction,
the heat,
engulf him.
Moving at more than
175,000 miles per hour
he precieves time slow.
He wonders if
there will be
Anything left of him
to crash into the
welcoming dirt
of his home.
He can smell ozone
and a small rational
part of him worries.
He is surprised to find
out that he is still
capable of worry.
Moments ago he was
surrounded by the
seared meat smell
of the cold vacuum.
He is a fading light
in the sky over an entire
world of experiences
he has had and will
never have again.
He will be nothing
or debris depending
on angle and speed
and his own weight.
Moments ago he was
weightless.

There are bodies in motion.
Bumping into one another,
as they drift through time
and space.
Each new contact creates
a slight deviation in their course.
They spin off, tangentially.

Here in this city, where
ambulance sirens make
the sour notes of our love
song, I sit missing you.
Missing the contact.
Missing our slight deviations.

There are moments in life.
Small moments, little lies,
things on the edge of memory.
Things that while to an outside
observer may seem totally
                    Innocuous,
are the very foundations
on which life is built.

I keep your jacket around.
I tell myself that I can smell
you on it.
I tell myself comforting lies.
I've had the jacket too long.
You've been released from it.
Your scent is extinct.
How will anyone ever know
what you were? Your smell is gone.

I found the note you left.
You remember that book you
let me borrow. I am ever out
of things to read.
I found the note. I read it twice.
Twice more than I read the book,
so far anyway. I would love to see
the world with you. To show you the world I see.

There are no photographs of you
yelling and waving. Of the pride
when I crossed that stage.
There are only my memories of it.
I wanted to share you with
the world. I wanted them to see how amazing
you were. At one time there were six generations. Now there are none.

I remember your temple throbbing,
that solitary patch of hair on your head.
Remember when I filled that desk
with dissection worms?
I made you old while you were still young.
I've been long gone from that
place and that time. I remember you still.
Black board justice. I don't even know if you're still alive.

There are moments in life.
Small and stupid. You're a
Part of them.
A part of me.

I never remember what song was
playing.
I never recall the weather.
I can’t force the patterns to align
in a way that will let me see
the time on any nearby clock.
I don’t smell something in the
wind that will take me back.
But your eyes, blue and
filled with tears.
Your mouth, the lower lip
****** in slightly. Your
teeth pushing it so it looked
as though it would burst.
Your words, I’ll always remember
the words.
The sentence that defeated me.

Where were we?
What had we eaten?
Was anyone else even there?

“Aren’t you going to kiss me?”

I’ll always hear that in my head.
My gift for memory is tied to
the people I want to remember.
It always had been.
But you, my love,
I remember you best of all.

I can feel his words
carve themselves into my skin.
Twisting in me always,
over and over
and one final time, again.

So tell me, baby, what're
we headed for?
You and me
and silence
and the old crimson door.

Several cycles of sun
and then moon,
twenty. Thirty-four.
I had fresh knees,
a strong breeze,
a straight back and more.
I had miles and miles of history,
headfuls of lore.

That was years ago, now.
More ghosts than memory
and sanity
will allow.
And even without
I'm still haunted,
by specters of fear and
shadows of doubt.

Right ******* now, I've got a fever boiling away at one 'o four.
I got salt and moisture bleeding from, it feels like, every last pore,
but I can't sweat you out
Not anymore.

Real talk:
I can't leave you behind me.
And I've tried.
I've burned the heart outta myself,
Buried me alive.
But this heartbeat, this cold sweat,
sweet memories and alchemies
All of these...
They survive.

With ease, with grace you slithered
into my air.
You breathed your chloroform,
noxious and stale
through the uneasy silence of this tiresome song.
The very word of your presence
chill and forgotten.
Quomodo Ego diligo vos.

The sheets are so cold,
I reach to feel you there.
Books and papers,
a cigarette case,
some silly stuffed **** thing,
left over one night.

Pulling pieces from a mason jar,
words and phrases.
The missive unclear.
Stashed away, here it can harm no one.
The letters familiar in hand.
Irgendwie Ich Liebe Sie , einmal nun jetzt

Oh that elegant flow.
The loops of a madman,
crazed and alone.
You taught him so many heartbeats.
Your long prattling song.

The painting rests by the end.
Short fevered work,
on one of the seldom afternoons alone.
I recall white walls,
toast with strawberry jam.
Loud, obnoxious music.
Brushes in water sticking out of an old can.

Who but I would remember?
Quomodo Ego diligo vos.
Now, perhaps more than ever.
Irgendwie Ich Liebe Sie , einmal nun jetzt


I feel you, wrapped in my skin.
A guest in my most earthly of homes.
Do you know how you intrude?
Even now, as the din has died down,
The curtains have closed.

A pen and the car keys,
insignificant things with no night table on which to rest.
Here, next to me have found a home.
Once there was you,
vile and lovely
warm on that side,
now abandoned.
Forgotten and cold.
Aborted as always.
Irgendwie Ich Liebe Sie , einmal nun jetzt

There is a beauty in
fixing what is broken.
In the act and art of
finding and mending.
We break so much,
we really do.
We're in constant need
of you to make whole again
what we have rent and ruined.
Just one more job.
Always another. And another.
Burn out those daylight hours
and drive home in the
twisting tracer lines of
Van Gough like light.
Eat your lonely dinner
cold from the microwave
where she left it and
live in quiet terror of the
night you open the door
and find nothing there.
That will be the warning
stones bouncing at your feet
before the avalanche of
your life falling apart.
We break so much,
we really do.
And yes, your tired hands
have proved the beauty
in the ability, in the process
by which you mend
but there is beauty in
the masterpiece we make
before it is broken.
There is art in the act
of not breaking a whole
and perfect thing.
One more night,
you hope it lasts
one more every night.
But you know, even
with care the machines
will break down.
It's what they do.
You know what happens
when they're neglected, too.
Of course you do;
You are in repairs.

They never forgot the
distant sound of bells
or those specific autuminal
decay and cinnamon smells
or the long procession of cars
coming over the asphalt swells.
If it was cards the swollen eyes
and thin lips would be obvious tells.

Still, they recall the lingering
odor of well dressed bodies at mass.
The kids in ties and shiny shoes
who looked nothing like in class.
The ornate handles the men
grabbed at each side made of brass.
The long walk to the open pit
and the strangly bright artificial grass.

The man in black spoke low and loud
the warnings and lamented lost joys.
The older women wept, the men
clenched jaws and shushed all noise.
The children thought of homeroom jokes
and shared comics and borrowed toys.
They all touched on some unspeakable
truth not yet totally known by little boys.

When the day was over and the
workman's efforts finally done
the men gathered at an old bar
and toasted the setting sun.
They sat in tight circles and whispered
not about games or distances run
but about a brevity they couldn't fathom
and the unforgotten report of the gun.

The young men wondered where
they'd found the small coffin.
Had they built it special just
for the the day? To see him off in?
The old men spoke hard words
but their tired eyes would soften.
Box wasn't special, they wished for
different but built them often.

I find it hard to say,
I say it's hard to find.
I'm over a bail of hay,
and broken of spirit and mind.

I'm lost in the woods in the dark.
I'm running out of time.
I struggle against pitch black and bark.
I want to be happy, but worry it's a crime.

And can we be real for a second?
'Cause every new day is a ******* chore,
and I am always tired and terrified
teetering on the precipice of a steep decline
in mental health or personal wealth
out of luck. Out of time.
There is no ******* context.
Only words.
Words that always have to rhyme.

Let's pretend we're happy. Let's dance.
You and I will keep perfect step, we two.
We can set the world alight given the chance.
Become us and not just me and not just you.

I need you to tell me that I'm not alone,
that others feel this from time to time.
I'm feet of clay and heart of stone.
I'm useless ******* meter and ******* rhyme.

I love you. I really do.
I need you.
Believe me when I write.
I wish it was easy to say. I wish I was better.
More.
I'm buried in style but wish the substance was there.
On better display.
I am a museum of hidden exhibits.
Tradition in the place of honesty.

I love you.
I really do.
I hope you love me, too.
But I honestly haven't got a clue.

Claw out your eyes,
bite your tongue.
The things I've done for you,
and you'd leave me here.
To die alone.
Here.

Sew your ears shut,
break your hands,
this is my life.
You have twisted me,
perverted me and made fetish of me.
To your purpose, and yours alone.

But here, in the still of this night,
the moon high in the sky
and this shaking in my bones.
I will call forth the rain,
because I alone know it's secret name.
I will make flesh your fear,
I will watch as you live it through.
Tonight is the night I leave you.

Here.
Alone.
To die.

Waves crashed onto the shoreline
on the day I was born.
In future: Gone will be I
and the shoreline
and the day I was born.
But the Ocean will keep.

The world is on fire.
I wasn't sure if you had heard.
We used to walk these gardens,
before the flames arrived
to steal our memories of this place.
I used to think it was heaven.

Our lake.

I always thought you
would sit beside me.
Thought you would watch with the
same pent up rage as they
destroyed all that was pure.
You always hated when I
skipped stones, as though somehow
I had tarnished the surface of our lake.

Our lake.

What have we done?
You were never so far away.
Once I could reach out and
feel you there,next to me.
You made the wind beautiful.
I don't know if I ever told you that.
It seems a silly thing to think of now.

Our lake.

The world is on fire.
In no small part because of us.
I wasn't sure if you had heard.
I don't know how else to tell you.
I wasn't sure how else to put it out.

The past is like a hangover
memory in my skull.
Barely remembered and sorted
in headachey chaos.
I don't recall, in detail or
even in any semblance of order,
the events of my youth.
I know this or that thing happened,
but when it happened in the
sequence alludes me.
I don't remember where my
head was or the other worries
I had the night we were over
or the day we began.
I can't picture giving you
a rose and dancing in the
hallway of our workplace.
I know it happened, you told
me it did.
I don't remeber tying your shoes
for you and imparting any
wisdom, poor or great, but
you told me all about it.
You said I brushed the hair
from your eyes before I really
saw you for the first time
and that my doing that made
you really see me.
The events, kiddo, gone like
smoke on a breezy summer
afternoon by the ocean,
but the feelings I'll always
recall the emotions of the times.
I remember feeling things bigger
and stronger than I ever had
or have felt since.
The sequence is meaningless
but the emotions meant everything
to me back then, and they have
all been shadows of those feelings since.
And that's good, that's exactly how
it should be, after all.
Yesterdays were for dreaming
of tomorrows, todays are for
thinking about yesterdays
and tomorrows may never come,
but I'll still have loved you all
as best as I could with the
limited powers that I have.
So, here's to the feelings we
left in yesterdays in the dim hope
that they'd help shape today.
And here, raise your glass higher,
Here is to tomorrow,
I know we ****** it all up
so, let's hope it never comes,
or arrives very gently
and does little to worsen
our poor headaches.

Plunge into icy depths
I remember waking to
****** knees on the sidewalk
outside your house
hungover and so *******
desperate.
I remember the cold in
your eyes and my bones
and the words,
"Go home."
I remember the walk back
stiff and aching.
You spent years bloodletting
only to move on to
another chump when
the veins ran dry in me.
I crashed into puddles
filled with frigid Feburary
rain water and felt the
frozen blood move in
disused chambers of a heart
I was certain you'd ripped
out and mounted to point
and laugh with him and your
friends, who never liked me
at all, anyway.
Nothing hurts so bad as
the first time your heart
shatters in your chest.
*******, the skill with
which the damage was done,
like a surgeon or clockmaker
set to careful work at the task
and equaled only by the
precision with which it was
built up again from the ruin
by nimble fingers and
careful consideration, sweet
words and earnest patience.
And it was months before
I felt the "*******" inside
me leaking out
and months more before
I felt nothing at all.
One day she said something
and I smiled because it was
funny and you didn't cross
my mind at all and I didn't
know it had died then
but that, that moment with
her, was the end of you
living inside my heart.
And we didn't last either
and I don't know what
became of you or her
but love isn't made to
stretch and rebound
it lives inside all the others
and it waits with quiet
patience for you to
search it out.
Love is out there,
again and again,
just waiting to be found.

There is guarantee of neither
wisdom or age,
and to have either there's
a price must be paid.

Feelings are the ocean,
you may surrender or fight,
but they'll wash over you
regardless of might.

Speak softly,
the replacements are on the way.
They'll have our voices
and rob us our say.

One day we'll be Romans.
They'll trod the roads that we pave.
They will discover our ruins
and puzzle in the silence of our grave.

We're not eternal or immortal.
Perhaps we're a coded line of text?
Incomplete and unfinished
without the line that comes next.

Fall would bring down the
leaves and reveal the
entrances to their secret
tree forts.
They would wave *******
in their faces and pretend that
the early morning steam
of their breath was cigarette smoke.
They would laugh like maniacs
when the teacher wasn’t looking,
and be as quiet and innocent
as babies when he was.
The sun gone down, the last
inning played and the first
street lamps came on they could
be found under blankets,
reading scary stories by flash light.

When the winter arrived
they slept near the cold
glow of televisions.
Tomorrow screamed of
Baseball, and school books,
and notes passed in class
to the girls they pretended
to hate.
It would beg them to throw
off their shoes and feel
the sun warm blacktop
on their bare feet.
It would whisper secrets
of life, new things discovered.

When spring came around they
would chase through the
tall grass, looking for Pokemon.
They would accuse each other
of contracting cooties from
their spring fever addled crushes.
They would send away UPCs
from the backs of their comics
for the prizes, treasures untold.
In the evenings they would study,
and write and miss the summer.

As summer finally came they
would gather together, their
days at long last free for planning.
They would make additions to their
tree houses, tell fictional stories
about how far their old crushes
had let them get.
They would wrap on the side
of the old TV every Saturday morning,
when the static interrupted the cartoons.
Tennis ***** were made for bouncing
off the sides of houses.
When the air grew cold at night
they would string a clothes line
between their beds and the wall.
A sheet hung on it made an excellent
tent, a flash light a fine camp fire.
They would tell each other
what they would do when they
grew up.

I've got my still beating heart in my hand
and a deep ******* wound in my master plan.
Im heartsick from carin'
what jacket Melina Trump is wearin'.
I'm scared to death of the future
and wondering how big a suture
it's gonna take to fix all the broken
in this system I've lost hope in.
A beady eyed orange inside the Rose garden
preaching hatred and no pardon.
A cycle without warnin'
the American dream in mourin'.
**** scared of a media he says is lying
while the country he stole is dying.
And I'm supposed to nod and smile
but I want that racist ****** on trial.
From the seat of highest power
we're being told to cower.
I want my promised better tomorrow
where great change isn't followed by sorrow.
So, you racist old liar, tell me when
America is gonna be great again?

I woke up to find myself
a million meters down a hole
I dug myself, lights out
fight bitten and looking
into darkness for a savior.
Thousands of travelled miles
ago a monster stood in my skin
and maybe I deserve this
slow burn punishment. I mean,
blame it on the rage or...

... There are hollow ringing notes
crashing off the walls and the back
of the inside of my head.
Playing cymbals behind my eye
Symphonies for my inner demon.
Young men wrung out and hollowed
used up and swallowed. Thrown away
like fastfood wrappers on the floors
of cars we would drive late into nights
thinking of beds we don't dream in...

...At some point you age out,
you ghetto geniuses,
and find a hostile world
not quite the fish bowl you
spent your life looking through.
And you write hundreds of thousands
of lines in the pursuit of high art
and praise and accolade
and" let's face it" fame
and never write one word that's true...

...you are always that little monster.
No matter where you go
how big you grow
or the quality of what you do,
No one will ever be proud of you.

I blink into darkness and hope
for help or better for rescue.
I find myself, some days,
looking at cherub faced photos
of myself from infanthood
It's been hard practically since
day one. I'll always wonder
if life had been different would
I have built the monster
in the skin in which I stood?

Is it senseless when the young die?
Is it without purpose?
Were they unable to live a life
of meaning just because they
had so little time here?

I have seen them lost, all around
me for a very long time.
13. 14. 15. 15. 16. 17. 17. 17. 18. 23. 23. 60. 64. 64.
Were you able to live lives full of
purpose? Were you able to
prove to us that you swept
this broken world into dizzying
thrill while you were here?

If I could ask, would you tell me
that you regretted it?
That you only wanted just a little
more time. We wanted that
for you as well. With all our
hearts.

Were your last thoughts profound?
I'd like to think that they weren't.
No one seems to understand the comfort
I get in the idea that the last thought
to cross your mind would be
a mundane one.
Would Spider-man be able to beat G.I. Joe?
Is there something wrong with my CD player?
I like swiss cheese, I don't care what they say about it.

I am comforted by your humanity.
Big and small.
I hope your last thoughts were small.
I hope that when your light went
out, so early in your day,
that you weren't plagued by
questions unanswered.
I think you made an impact.
I don't want to think your deaths
were senseless.

There was a story told when we were younger;
A marvelous thing filled with pathos and adventure.
We would admire the teller as well as the hero
as our minds soared with bright eyed wonder.

When were the myths replaced?
Where did they go?
How does one trace their way back,
through mires of time and innocence lost?

They mourned them there,
In the burned down chapel.
Roses were placed,
ever with care
The long gold locks pushed manageable
fair.
Speeches were spoken,
by boys long before they were men,
Of loss and of pain and of things forgotten.
Things gained.
Where are you now?
Are you still standing in the rye?

Rain mixed with dirt,
purity and decay.
They wondered how the young
could rob them this way.
A light, barely lit,
with so much wick left to burn,
Pushed into the wax.

In the story that was told, good found it's way.
The hero stood triumphant,
the black hats dismayed.
We were there once, you and I.
With your ******* beautiful eyes,
You and I saw a world to shape.
Bend, gently as ever, to our very own will.
We were so close our fingers grazed the surface,
sending ripples dancing through the water.

******* your eyes.

They mourned them there.
The dark ashen chapel yard,
Your hair pushed back and fair.
It seemed so soon.

******* your beautiful eyes.

Seven words that are better left unsaid.
Steps descend from here to
the farther room, and within
there is the chained box,
a demon soul inside.

There is no way to win this.
No chance to come out on top.
Stand still, and line up,
better to be dropped on the spot.
For all the effort, and so much
of our precious time, and here we
stand, our empty hands a
reminder of what we haven’t got.

Gift me with this silver tongue.
So I may sing for you the dirge
of our day. Explain it with the timbre
and the fire that it has not just earned,
but perhaps even deserves.

Find me, just please god, find me.
There’s a distance between us.
I know it wasn’t always there.
The day in, day out daytime fuss.
The hard won raking against our coals.
I wonder if it will ever be enough.

Lightyears away sit the
burning embers of the night sky
and I cannot chart the
distance between stars
with factors or maps
but given a tall ship
I will navigate a course
through ink-dark midnight
and light signal fires
in cosmic bodies for
you to find, I will brave
the darkened void
leaving light in my
frieghtened wake
to guide you by.
We spent years
passing in the night
before you refused
to let us pass you by
and two decades later
I return the favor
because a lamp burning
against deep and endless night
only works if, by turn,
we endeavor to keep it alight.
The waters now are calm
and that's a deception of
the deep, luring us into
complacency and rocking
us in time with each heart's
pounding and specific beat.
I'll stay awak at the helm, love.
I'll fight the dark and push off
sleep. I'll keep us afloat.
Water tight and far from
the ever present brink.

She moves like low fog
settling in place
leaving no sign or signal
or any particular trace.
It isn't on purpose
oh no, dear me, far from
she longs to be thought of
gladly marching to your drum.
She spent her life in
hope and holding her breath
shambling from one approval
to the next like living death.
She heard them throughout
like a distant echoed shout
and learned to care for others
learned to just do without.
Build us a temple
fit for the age.
Make us some content
and watch them engage.
She longed for the one
who would light up her life
so she kept walking
along the edge of the knife.
She thought she knew what
was needed, round about
but finds herself coward
and so full of doubt.
She was taught right from wrong
and where to begin
She was made to know rote
the varied qualities of sin.
She was oh so prepared for
the tightening noose
education metered in daily
lessons and routine abuse.
Made different from the others
but told not to stand out
She blended in like kale
was as common as grout.
Talents were hidden behind
practiced and placid modesty
average and ordinary
plain yogurt, not prodigy.
It is a difficult journey
when you try to atone
and she knows that, she does
but she is terrified to be alone.
She slaved under winter freeze
and through summer melt
and hoped to be noticed
or have her absence felt.
She often worries about
what she's already become
but has no clue that it's over
that the damage is done.

I read the passages of giants
from the scattered debris of their wake
and I feel my soul splinter
and my shoulders quake.
I don't have these powers
the qualities that work to seperate
the detritus like me from
the very best, the great.
They have booming prose
with gravity and magnitude
and my own scrawling throes
is more often slim, crude
they belong in company on Olympus
while I merit only solitude.

I've divided the individual
failures of decades of hate
from the love shaped residual.
I can't see lost or departed hearts
among the horizon line
and the myriad false starts.
I am now about six months shy
of the burning need
to work harder or even to try.
Love what's left or don't bother
it's all only finite time
and I can't go on any farther.

Life is what life will be, I guess.
All inherent need and ache
for hours of pain and stress.
I'll grow and change until
one day I don't,
it's not about won't or will.
Things work out, they always do
one way or another it ends
with or without me or you.
I love you just like thunder
following the fury.
Drowning, love, going under.

It's only a moment to bare.
It's a whirlwind, a maelstrom
but it's only short term care.

I think of love in
terms of distance.
I look at life as a
motorbike journey.
I've never bought a
second console controller.
I know solitude with
the same warm
familiarity as my
father's laughter.
I'm a go-it-alone man
in the age of teamwork.
And it isn't working anymore
like it used to did.

I wish I could lay my head
gently on your shoulder
and explain how the
suffering never seems to end
or how the breaks are
still broken and I'm never
actually on the mend.
I wish I could open up myself
and bleed out toward healthy
but instead I hide the pain
and become accustomed to
always playing pretend.
And it's now all broken links
on chains that no longer bend.

One day I won't wake up
and the choices will no longer
be mine to make about
where I go and what I am.
I hope I learned to love you
like you need and deserve
and I hope that...****.
I hope, little guy
that I told you
I said the words
because I mean them.
I am insubstantial
and meaningless
in my specfic silence
unsaid as a life story

I know that I bite
every time a cautious
hand is peacefully extended.
I know I break things
and people and promises
that are not easily mended.
I know your love was
gifted with purpose even if
I thought you'd just pretended.
You warned me to step lighly
while I was busy checking
all the boxes I had offended.
I'd asked for so much more
time and patience then anyone
could be expected to have lended.
I know you haven't heard
from me in a long while
longer than I'd intended
but please, read the text
and message back, I've oathes
sworn that I'd like amended.

When I read the lyrics they were different.
I’d spent the last twelve years
singing the wrong words.

I sang words filled with hope.
Words that moved me to act.
That challenged me to better.
I sang words of my own invention.
Words I didn’t know were wrong.
.
Twelve years ago I was telling
myself to persevere.
Today that song came on.
I opened my mouth and waited.
I like my words better.

We give the world nine months
to prepare for our arrival
and almost always no warning
to prepare for our departure
and we wreck up the place
in the time between.
Some party we got invited to,
we'll lament, but the music
sure was a comfort to dance to.
It's only ever a heartbeat
from just being over
any and all random second
and we're still arguing
about what love means.
If we could line up all of
our days, end to end, and count
all the seconds we'll ever get
it would then be a great deal
of time we wasted worrying
but the line would be longer
still just to have the chance.
And maybe there is no solution
to the problem of this deep
anxiety about the finish line
and maybe the world stays
broken in the wake of our
wasted lives and we just have
to learn to live and die with it.
And maybe the questions are
a waste of time but what else
do we have to do but to ask them?
Because that beating sound
your heart makes, the normal
drum inside you thudding
away your sinus rhythm
isn't just a comfort, it's a warning,
it is a ******* countdown
that could finish on any
random beat or counted second
and the place will be wrecked up
and the party will long be over,
the dancing died with the last
strangled cords of the music
and yet, one single heartbeat
from done and we don't still
don't know what love is.

She crosses the room.
Sets her things down
and sits beside me.
“What do we do?”

There are platitudes.
Overcome.
This too shall...
Words are false and hollow.
They don’t prepare you
for these challenges.

Envelopes filled with bad news
and money owed pile up
on the little table by the door.
“What do we do?”

Tired eyes search tired eyes.
There is love there, but far too
much struggle.
Life was not meant to be
a battle.
Love was meant to prevail.
To guide.
“What do we do?”

“I don’t know! I don’t ******* know!”
You shout. Too loud.
Too sudden.
Tired, so tired.
This is now.
This is who you are?

She smiles. Holds your hand.
You smile back. Weak and defeated.
“I know, baby.”
She says.
“I know.”

I see my city from a distance,
small points of light inscribe
the shapes of it's skyline against
a dark blue and purple night
and I know I am near home.
I lead a tired life
in ratty sneakers
and find myself on Pratt Street
well after the bars have closed
but before the sun.
I walk these streets and think
about the years of pavement
under my feet and the
people who populate my memories
and my city.
There are lives, being lead
in the quiet and ignored way
that city lives are,
behind every lit window.
My city isn't defined by
the height of it's buildings
and there is little neon,
but if you are very silent,
and more than a little patient,
you can hear her breathe.
My city is a portrait,
from Monument to Key Highway
and all points around and between.
I stand, in the stillness of the
streets well after the bars close,
and know that my story
has been played at different
points throughout her heaving mass.
And it is played now, by me and
the many millions like me.
We are a city united in our mutual
distaste and love for the buildings
and lights and cross streets
that house us and are our
home.

Thirty years ago was yesterday,
it's amazing how fast it all goes
considering how long everything
has always seemed to take.
Hours ago, I was a boy
learning life lessons from
twenty-five year olds
without a clue about
what they were doing
and struggling in the
everyday poverty we all
pretend isn't as ordinary
as it is. As it always has been.
My parents, not yet
forty years old when
I graduated high school,
didn't keep their vows
but many parents didn't.
The whole homes I saw
were odd to me, alien
in their completeness
and intimidating in their
warmly expressed affection.
I always knew, in my bones
and in my blood, that
I would be better, even
incomplete I would look
whole from a distance
if I could just guide the
narrative and live the
white lies about hope
and promise I would
someday see a tomorrow
that made yesterday look
small in it's distance
from today.
It was seven lifetimes
living this lifetime
and it still happened in
the blink of an eye
and everyone tells you that
it will happen that way
and you believe you understand
but I didn't.
I sure thought I did,
a million years back
when it was still
five seconds ago.

Years Ago:
We ran around in the snow for hours.
Shed our coats
and watched as the steam
rose from our skin
into the night sky.
We marveled at body heat
and cold air.

Yesterday:
I crushed what was left of the snow
into a rain puddle
and stepped on it.
It felt violent and wonderful.
I watched as the water
moved the tread prints
further and further apart.

Now:
You’re miles away,
watching the snow melt.
You’re looking at your phone,
wondering if you should call.
If I’m free. If I miss you.

All the time:
There is no window to
the past, no way to reclaim
what we built, there is
only now.
There is only the horror
and the glory of now.
I miss you, more than you know.
But I am not free.
I may never be.

I can't seem to stop
thinking about the end,
about the final moments
the life I've worked so
hard to finally sorta
start to figure out
is over, finished
I've spent most of my life
selling my time to other
people and being largely
cheated on the deal
and I'm at the point
where the sand is
no longer in greater
amounts on the top
of the hour glass than below
and in the distance I can
just make out the rounded
edges that will mark
the empty place where dry
bones will soon lay at rest
and I worry what you'll get.
Will my legacy be something
you can hold high?
Will you reach into your memories
of me in times of difficulty
to use words spoken to you
in my atonal version of
warmth to help you get through?
Or will you just feel left behind?
Everyone leaves, given enough
tide or enough time.
Everybody goes foward toward
a reward of some kind
and they fade in the middle
distance as you sit behind.
It happened to me, too.
So, should you feel abandoned
when I'm no longer around
I'm sorry, buddy. I really
didn't want to go,
so long, goodbye.
I really hope you can
forgive me, but it's up
to you to do or say.
Tomorrow belongs to you
I still belong to yesterday.

Restless/awake they live
in separation.


On his night stand there is a ring.
Thick and black and full of a promise.
Next to him, as he moves in his fitful sleep
there is only an empty half of the bed.
In dreams she's there
(all freckled kisses and soft hair.)
next to him.

Miles away she turns the ring on her finger.
Small and gold and half of a whole.
She smiles at the dark night sky,
knowing that somewhen he went to sleep
without her.
She knows he'll toss and turn
(his smoker's mouth like an urn)
and reach for her.

Love/longing they know
in isolation.

My song is a lifetime,
wasted in triviality.
Crescendo close to daylight,
although the sky is ripped and torn.
The meaning of it,
if any can be found,
is vague and small,
the sound is all too loud.
My song is made for screaming,
from a higher vantage point.
Building tops and cigarette shops,
feature in the refrain.
And always, beating against the backdrop,
the steady sound of rain.
My song is a broken chain of failure,
and small independent success.
It is lifting to the ones who need it,
it takes little time to rest.

I run my fingers across the surface
of the water.
Above ground pool.
I'm eleven.
You stare out your window,
you know I'm there.
So very Romeo.

I call to you.
I throw stones at your window.
My god, the innocence in an age
before cell phones, and Instant messages.
The freedom of love before email.

You press your lips against the glass.
Puckered. A kiss.
You didn't wear lipstick.
You were young still.
Little girls weren't yet taught
to think they were adults.
The grease from your lips left an imprint.
It wasn't shaped like a kiss.
It mostly looked like your cheek.

Above ground pool.
My fingers damp across the
always blue ripples of water.
So very Romeo.

There were notes, folded into tight and
puzzling shapes, and passed in class.
The checkmark appreciation game.
I kept them.
Unchecked boxes.
They were in my pocket.
They're gone now, but so are you.
So am I.

When I kissed you I had my eyes open.
I didn't know any better.
It was nothing.
A peck.
Everyone thought
we would be married one day.
I like to think that you knew better.
So very Romeo.

I remember your vigor.
You used to pick me up
and spin me around your head.
The sheer masculinity of it
was nothing short of
inspiring.

“Tomorrow, I'll wear it tomorrow.”

Now I watch as you sit,
reclined and growing.
Your hairline seems to move
more every day.

Were your ankles always so thin?

We eat in silence these days,
in halls once filled
with laughter.
The spoons are too short,
or perhaps the bowl is simply
too far away.
It's so hard to tell.

“I'll put it on one of these days.”

That tie you used to wear
lays on the bedside table.
I asked you to wear it
not too long ago, thinking
it would force you to remembered
the man you once were.
It lays there still

I stand in front of the mirror
for far too long everyday
and wonder if you see in me
the decline I've seen in you.
My arms used to be so strong.
We used to be so strong.

I hate that ******* tie.

I've seen churches on fire and wondered what that meant.
Is God's judgement final? Is his wisdom all spent?
I saw the parishioners teary eyed, jaws muscles tightly knit.
But, like, how does this help me understand the world or where in it I fit?
I don't know if it's courage that you battle the darkness every day
Just because you know how much I want you to stay.

I gotta be honest, man.
I don't know how to be happy.
I don't know how other people do this ****.
I don't know much about life or happiness or love.
But I do know: it's gonna have to come from us.

Life can be dystopian. It's a long relationship with violence.
I've known it to be twisting pain and having to suffer in silence.
We are clenched little fingers, nails dug deep into the palms of our hands.
We are all odd, emotional nationals of strange and distant lands.
Sure, I mean, we were born and raised in the same places.
But we stare out from foreign countries behind the eyes in our faces.
What works for you, my old friend, will not work for me.
You bask in shining, brilliant light but I gotta squint just to see.

We'll lie and say we're happy.
Say we're just fine.
We try to believe it, too.
But we just feel like we were left behind.
Like, somehow we missed the day they taught this ****.
How is everyone smiling in timeline photos?

Everyone's got perfect teeth and an audience to keep.
A life of happiness, assuming we don't look too deep.
I wonder if the pervasive sadness is in the water or if it's just in me.
I hope for end of tunnel lights and locks to fit this ******* key.

Keep up the fight, my friend. Don't quit. Stay.
I know it's ******* hard. I know. Find a way.
I love you. I need you. Don't you dare leave me.
I'll fit the mold. I'll be what you need me to be.

My limbs ache in captivity.
I stretch in these shallow confines
and feel hard wall and harder resolve.
Freedom will be mine.
If only for these minutes
or that hour,
My god, if only for today!

I have watched you spend
time.
I have seen you preform these
great labors.
I have noticed the effort,
the struggle
the care
with which you constructed
the perfect cage to keep me.
I think you proud of these
walls and this narrow slat
that light can trickle through.

But there are so many things,
so many things, friend,
which you have left unconsidered.
Yes, you have left me no key
and yes, one would be useless
were I to have it.
Yes, you have forced me to
stay. Yes, you have created in
your trap a mechanism which I need.

You must sleep. In those dark hours
I may yet steal away.
You never thought I could learn to
need less and want only one thing.
You built this cage to keep who I was.
You didn’t consider who I am.

I will be free.
I will be whole.
I will feel the wind against my back.
I will not look back,
I will never try to find you again.

You keep me for now,
because I don’t know how to
be anything but kept.
I’m learning.
I’ve had a good teacher.

Between you sits a shared order of fries,
silence, anger, regret and of course, lies.
She licks your wet blood from her claws,
and glibly recites a litany of your flaws.

I'm right here.
******* it!
I'm still right here!

And you holler at the open night sky
clutching at your wounded inner eye
and the question shoots from your core:
"How much is enough?"
The answer, as always: More and more and more.

I mean, what the **** is personal privacy anymore?
We're splattered across digital realms like slasher movie gore.
Trying to communicate complex thoughts as sharp as swords,
using no more than one hundred and forty ******* words.

You don't have the means, your heart now a ******* wound,
to put a dent in the argument against you she's crooned.
It's like sitting before the cosmic mind for a game of chess.
It's like defending yourself when you've only ever been a ******* mess.

I am mountains of doubt and rivers of fear.
I haven't gone anywhere. I'm still right here
I just need you to see me, my love. My dear.
I'm still right ******* here.

The dreams of dead men
are absent of purpose
Dreams lose meaning when
living stops.
Dreams may not
die, but the same
is not true for
you and I.
The dreams left behind
by centuries of the dead
suddenly become empty.
They are hollowed out
and meaningless as soon
as the living turn cold.
Dead men are stones
and the mountain ranges
that define our world
see nothing and think nothing.
Land does not dream
but we hang purpose on
things.
There is no meaning
in the words of the dead.
There is power, perhaps,
but the dream behind the words
is for the living to define.
Stones and bones
and empty words.
We build on the dead,
raising shared visions
into being.
We build on the dead.
We should be in no hurry
to follow them.

I think maybe
you been on my mind, baby.
Stop.
Letters in the post
missing you the most
texts left on ghost
and every word outta your mouth is fire
and every step is climbing higher
and you and me, which one's a liar?
'Cause we're scant yards from the pyre
and it's overwrought and in under the wire
but my eyes droop and I tire.
Stop.
The last shelter you take in the storm
is the the only spot I'm safe and warm.
I kept buzzing but got lost in the swarm
blended in style, substance and form.
No.
Real now.
I miss you.
When I'm out here on the road tired and alone, I miss you.
You're on my mind.
Not always, but often.
And sure, we've been together a long time
but I don't want anyone else.
I'm miles away and covered in sweat and dust
and my knuckles bleed
and
my skin cracks
and my dream fades American
and I miss you.
I always do.
This much, only, is true.
Stop.

Storybook ******* finds
a hero riding in on horseback
with grave purpose and noble intent.
Saving the day, or the damsel.
Kissing the problems awake,
rending the wolf's innards to find her.
Building the machine or spell that somehow fixes things.
Hard and dark, like burned wood,
are his eyes.
Broad and strong are his shoulders.
Trite and compromised are his deeds.
And so, in fiction we are saved.
In fiction we somehow still need saving.
Karma is a lie, kismit doubly so.
If there exists a path through the dark it is only because other damaged and broken people trod it there.
We don't have noble intent, we don't have hard eyes, but we occasionally accidentally build the mechanism that fixes things.
Not in whole.
Not completely.
And not even well.
Almost never is it perfect, occasionally it is better. But it is change, nonetheless.
It is change!
It is a start.
It is grave purpose.
Storybook ******* be ******.