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.

Helicopter searchlights
probe the area around
our home as the haunting
final refrain from long ago
plucked guitar strings
fill my brain, the kid sleeps
in summer heat so strong
the a/c fails to fight it
the baby next to you
and the window unit
as grandpa slowly dies
in the finished basement
and life goes on in every
lit window with variations
of the same song
played in blue or as a dirge
or a 4 chord pop tune
or stilted verse and endless
repeated bridge.
Mumbled or strummed.
Power chords or hummed.
Played different as snowflakes
but played all the same.
I thought it would be
blue collar poetry
with gearhead love stories
or porch swing sincerity
in cable knit sweaters
or even fire escape nights
with the radio on low
but this ain't so bad.
I don't know.
I knew life for it's
difficulties, spoke hardship
like a native tongue
and expected to get covered
in dark earth right about
where I'd begun
but the joke, says John
the joke.
So I trudged all those
miles in beat up old shoes
and wrote punk rock
love songs but had in
my secret heart the blues
because love always seemed
bitter and days always long
and hearts seemed closed
and everyone was gone
should it have ended exactly
like I thought, I'd have been
ready for overstayed heartache
grim poems left in typewriters
cigarettes left burning in old
brown glass ashtrays
once white now yellow walls
The sad old static inside
us one and all.
Like tin foil on braces or
the derelict old mall.
Decay by commission
a corpse by design
ending in omissions
and claims that I'm fine.
But the joke, says John
the joke.
Youth is ending, the sun
circles the western bowl
and hopes are different
when dreams don't come true
and nothing is the same
in the absence of you.
My hair isn't thinning
though my teeth are now long
and I'm so far from the beginning
I've forgotten the original
shape of the song.

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.

I tell truth couched
in lines of metaphor
and marvel when you're
unable to decipher it.
I riddle my feelings
at you in digital media
under assumed names
and lament how you
can't see how I feel.
I pretend at such depth
but swim so close
to the surface I can
hear sing-song sounds
gurgling in my ears
and still feel the warmth
of sunshine on my neck.
I move with eyes
open in shallow water
but pinch my nose closed
against the current
to prevent it from
invading me with
the honesty that will
break me completely
in two.
I look at you through
this distorted mess
and apply new paint
to the same tired
******* wreck.
I sink when I try to float
even when I hold my breath
but I lie about it
about everything
if that isn't too much
to tell.
Did you believe me
when I said I was beside
you during those laps?
I was waiting in the shallows
crouched to seem in much
deeper than I am
and hoping that you
would pretend you couldn't
see through me for a while.
If I closed my eyes
and fell backward on the
surface of the lake
would you agree that
I'd floated or would
you tell the truth
for my sake?

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.”