I will try to measure my life
in codes for digital downloads
and in the many hundreds
of hours I've spent alone.
I don't know how else to do it.
I don't know how else to make it fit.
We never know it's finished
until it finally is.

One day we don't wake up
and we live in fear until it's over.
Because we don't know the
measure of us.
When my life is over and examined
what underlaying themes
will I find present?
And how do I prevent it?

And what of unfinished business
and loose story threads?
Do they get picked up and continued
in some later person's tale
or are they frayed too much for mending?
Am I too concerned with the ending?

Can I map a life to
Campbell's hero's journey?
Is the living as predictable
as a story circle?
It's certainly not as entertaining.
Do we reach apothosis
without a threshold being crossed?
Are we remembered fondly
or are we eventually lost?

I don't know the answers
but I sure wish I did.
We are thirty years from collapse
and riding a very fine line.
I need to learn not to fear
the fast approaching ending
because we're running long on story
but very short on time.

I stand on the forecourt
another job bound to drag
late into the night
in some other state
very far from home.
I'm staring across the street
waiting for other people
so I can get back to work
and I see the houses.
Like rows of uneven teeth,
different colors. Satellite dish
on that one.
Little differences.
I am suddenly consumed by
the enormity of all the
unfolding lives.
How I stand among them
but don't belong.
How my own life is miles
away and missed.
How we are all vital
but we are all strangers.
You read my words now
see these thoughts.
In this moment of wonder
which I here record
you have known me.
I wish I could know you
but I stand here
a stranger.
I intrude on your lives
and we'll never meet
and that's odd to me.
We're all out here, alone,
leading Stranger's lives.

Everything has strings attached.
We're all waiting for it to start,
for our lives to finally,
******* FINALLY,
kick into gear.
But we can hear it calling.
Oblivion.
From a house, or a street
just a little further down.
And it chills to the quick,
to the bone,
one and all.
It calls us, friend, by name.
By our name.
How can we argue that?

I say we bleed out on filthy
tile floors in truck stop bathrooms.
The wound we walk through life with,
the one inside our hearts.
Let it bleed away.
Because, we are so ******* tired
of twin self destructive
thoughts chasing each other
through our minds.
Endless searching and finding,
for our trouble,
more trouble.

I will burn my heart out in the looking.
I will.
I will **** myself.
Shame myself.
I will lie to, twist up and hate myself
if it gets me where I need it to.
I am without hope or principle,
but I have a dog in this fight, friend.
You'd better believe it.

So shout it out.
Echo it down like mountain top hollering.
Make sure we all know.
We all hear it.
Make sure the whole world knows.
Remembers us.
We were here, future.
You don't scare us.
We were ******* here.

Be brave in the small hours.
We have it in us.
And time is tall, right now,
but as we move it grows so short.
We would **** and dishonor for tall time,
in only the space of a piece of lifetime.
We know it, and we know it well.

We get *******, though.
We move from place to place,
and from person to person.
We move, as best we can.
But the strings,
they bind us to earth and we sink.
Unable to drown, we breath in water.
And in the distance,
calling us by name:
Oblivion.

Through this window there is light.
I cupped it in my hands,
careful to keep my fingers
from opening.
I dropped it into that old
soda bottle I kept around,
for reasons you never understood.
I hide it under my bed,
wrapped in a scarf I had left
over from that cold winter.
It’ll be my sunshine.
Mine and mine alone.
Of course, if you whisper
the right ***** jokes,
throw the right smile,
kiss me under the stars
until I feel like that boy with his
soda bottle of sun rays again,
if you will do these things for me:
I will fish under my bed,
unravel the scarf,
unscrew that lid
and finally, after all these
years, I will watch the
sunlight dance around
this room with you.

I remember having to break
the binding so I could see
the full image.
I remember the pools of dark
shadow defining the world.
I remember the pithy banter,
long before I knew the word
was pithy.
I remember the smell of it.
The wonder.
I remember how fragile
the two staples that
held it together were.
I remember putting it
down and looking up
at my Uncle and telling him
that one day I was going to
be Spider-man.
Perhaps I remember best
him looking down at me,
smiling his knowing smile
and saying,
“Yes. Yes you will.”

My whole life I've been
waiting for the music to swell.
I've been wincing at raised hands
and obidient of Pavlov's bell.
I've been thinking about the end
and what that might mean.
I've run with sudden violent shudders
I've never run clean.
I want peace and solitude
like a snowy mountain cap.
I've been lost. It's been
a nightmare without a map.
I'd secret away lits bits and bobs.
Some string, a subway token.
We used poverty as excuse, but we
weren't just broke we were broken.

I like the stinging numbness
of eating radish slices.
I like the quiet oblivion
of heavy rain.
I like to imagine that
this will all lead to crisis.
I'd rather leave behind the past.
I'd rather not focus on pain.

I often dream about dying.
Walking the room at
my own funeral and
wondering why no one is crying.

I locked away my heart
at a tender age
because it hurt to feel
and for reasons left off the page.
I put it in a cold, high place
locked it and told it to run.
Told to always hide.
But you journeyed there,
chased it down and picked the lock
releasing all the horrible
truthsome **** inside.

You could be better.
You should be more.
Instead you're this.
This miserable ******* chore.
I woke up this morning
and wrote the note.
I finally knew the ending.
It's tucked in my coat.
Why you ask did I not just
put it in the mail?
How could I have discarded
it, should I fail?
This is how it is
how it should be.
A little secret, reader,
between you and me.
You're free, of course.
Free as birds.
Not that it matters,
they are only words.

My best friend said
I like my endings to be sad.
Maybe he's right. I don't know.
But those are
the only endings I've ever had.

Your hand on the side
of my face, gentle but firm,
as long as you need
no need to squirm.
Your eyes steady and alive
burning from your core.
your voice whispering
that I deserved more.

Whether it'll be heaven
or it'll be hell
I'm not sure or at least
I cannot tell.
I'm feeling amazing
I'm going out on top.
In the distance the music
begins to swell.
To celebrate my short drop
and very sudden stop.
Swing life away.
Free as bees. Free as birds.
Of course, we both know,
these have been only words.

I will give you sweetest comfort and sweeter lies.
I'll tell you that everything will be alright. That everything is fine.
You're the best. You're so ******* great.
You'll be remembered. Laid in state.
People are trying to improve. I've seen it.
This is real. Big. Stand! We've no time to sit.

Sympathy for the devil is the order of the day.
Sit back and relax. I assure you it's well underway.
And listen, some people are wealthy and lucky and full of despair.
Some are in love but married into the wrong pair.
You wanna be happy? Grow up, kid.
Happy is cheap. Remembered is big.

And if it gets bad, dark and cold, no worries. I've got your back.
Sure you're running in a hamster wheel but on the wrong track.
And there is comfort to be found in living just to die.
But I'll always be there and love you. And why would I lie?

Locked away
in tiny clenching fists
are the stories.
The ones we always meant to tell.
Without these parts,
you know the pieces,
we cannot seem to build
the plot and your story...
I mean, look how it falls apart.

Could there be a moment
(take your time, think)
when all of this *******
falls away and only
you and I and the truth
of you and now
and me and then
remains.
Like coffee grounds.

How many cigarettes
does a day take?
I mean, what really gets you?
What sets you on fire?
My god,
how we need to be
on fire!
We need the light,
y'see,
because it is so ******* hard
to see in the dark
without it.

Color your language,
pepper it with purple prose
and profanity,
to tell the story that
sits like a stone
in your heart or your throat.
Because no one
(Seriously, believe me on this.)
can tell your story for you.
You have to take the pen,
look on your works,
and write it large
against the world.

Your story
(Beautiful as you are. Has to be.)
needs to be seen from the sky.
Open your mouth, love.
Tell.

distant burning signal fires,
complicated knots in lines
of tightly wound rope.
star sounds resonating
on frequencies our own ears
are not properly aligned
to receive or transmit.
blood stains on
fresh white linen that
won't come out and are
too difficult to hide.
that one lopsided too
toothy smile, all coy
and unassuming under
slightly uneven bangs,
that cast us away from
the shallow water like
a siren song.
the rusted out bottom
of a wheelbarrow that
you'd hoped to have
one more winter with,
and that odd earthy smell
blood gets when it's
settled beneath your
fingernails overnight.
language is a failure but
math hasn't the terminology
for vivid human memory
Life's like that, I think.

If you were a place
you’d be a temple in Tibet.
You’d be cold as ice,
and hard to reach.
You’d be fraught with
danger and legend.
I could get lost for days
with no attention or
assistance.
Yes.
You would be a secret
temple in the mountains
of Tibet.
I would find you looking
for an answer, a cure
a purpose. Looking
for completion and peace.
I would leave
whole and calm
and perfect.

I was born many years
and hundreds of miles
from here.
On any given day all
I really want is just
to disappear.
I don't know the truth
but have told thousands
of clever lies.
I'm one half a practicing
prisoner and one half a
series of goodbyes.
All my little life it's been
what've you done
for me lately?
I'm soured on bitterness
and hoping to appear
at least stately.
I don't know where things
are going. I don't know
how it'll end.
I'm trying very hard
not to lose it. Not to snap
but to bend.
I don't know how to
talk to you in scrawling
lines of text.
I'm worried about
the future and everything
that comes next.

Mutter your words
across these invisible channels.
Tell me, spare no detail,
the ways in which you have missed me.

Tonight I am selfish,
because you are here with me.
Tonight I am complete.

Reign it in, lest you scare them all away.

Kept in chambers, buried so deep within
that they can be seen from the sky,
I spy you treading the ground of my
empty grave.

Steal my youth, if you believe yourself
my better.
But be warned that even freedom cannot keep me.

Get it together, or it will all fall apart.

Keypads and sorcery, and all points between.
Feel free to use me, as you might a tissue.
I am one among many, and always have been.
I am far from unique, factory issue.

But who can say, at four a.m.,
that they are fine and well?
Life is various bedlam faithless wonder and mayhem.
Patiently waiting to ring the bell.

Step back and breath. Don't let it fall.

Because you wake beside me in our shared bed.
Because you love me with blue eyes.
Because you promise me with sweet lies.
Because you are my living heart and head.

And in a moment, when all of this is done,
when you lay your head against my chest,
when our souls plead for sweetest rest,
will it matter which of us has won?

The boy king shuddered
under another massive
weight, a crown made heavy
by the varied day to day
concerns of a kingdom
that was his to command
to preserve and to save.
If he seems curt, or haughty
or even rude,
please keep in mind
the pressure at his magnitude.

Looking back at the
boy king turns a man's
stomach in Gordian knots
loving him for what he is
knowing what he'll yet be
and hating all that he is still not.

No one's flying to the moon
or day tripping to Mars.
No one is wishing for a brighter
tomorrow from a field of stars.
We are still captives, tied to earth
for all the good it'll do us
waiting for a chance to blow this scene
before the world starts to rue us.

The boy king yawns and curls up
ready to hibernate away again.
Sleep in, best you can.
You will always be a boy
but the blood and fire
are callimg for a Man.

I'm so full of nervous energy
but I haven't got air to shout.
I'm scratching at understanding
with no clue what it's all about.
I'm six hours of sleep away from
another triple shift and I've slid
from past to present on the
slideshow of stupid **** I did.
The one that plays in my head
when all I want is anything else instead
the voice that tells me
better off dead
than loosed and unhappy
mean and angry and underfed
I'm so tired of talking to myself
about myself, I know you didn't ask
apologies sent but unrecieved
Still, I'm not undertaking the task
I complain out loud
to an audiance of me about how
I still don't got **** figured out.
I've heard so many answers
but none of 'em make any sense.
If I learn to love myself how
does that repair the fence
That I put up to keep all of them away
so I don't have to deal with
what all of 'em have got to say
I think we've learned talking doesn't work
and if I can't get a few hours sleep
I'll be another day running empty
How do I make me feel better?
What's the cheat code or the trick
to getting over all this *******
I've reached the breakdown
where it all falls apart
and I'm lost again
still not knowing where to start.

I sit and wait on the call.
Problem solving as a summons
lit high and bright in
dark nighttime skies.
I wait for the call.
For the pull in my blood
screaming toward labor
toward love or toward war.
I am consumed in patient hold.
Call me to action!
Drive me, like a weary stead
slathered in foam from effort,
into your biggest ******* mess!
Unleash me, like a hungry Karmen
starving and deep, on your worst foes.
I long for purpose.
I beg for need.
I don't know how to apologise.
I only know how to plead.
I don't know how to compromise.
I only know how to take wing.
I await your call.
But the phone sits still.
It just doesn't ring.

You went upstairs to go to bed,
but you never came back.
Or rather you didn't come back
under you own power.

It was MEs, stretchers,
and tear stained sunrises we never
saw from the kitchen floor
where we wept.

The arrangements were made,
open casket confessions and so little else.
You were ashes by the days end.
No mantel piece resting place.

Because it's not fair.
Because nothing ever is.
Because you were so young,
because we weren't ready.

Because your love was so vast
that it would light up the room.
Because you taught us to close our hands
and catch starlight in between our fingers.

There is a hole in my soul.
An error in my morning light.
I can still smell the tea.
How you loved strong tea...

"Black as the night and
sweet as a stolen kiss."

Memories of your made up language,
the one so few of us knew fluently,
will always dance in my brain.
To think, I failed Spanish.

When, days later, we opened the microwave
to find your cup of tea,
the one you left out every night,
you were such a fan of strong tea...

How are we supposed to go on?
Where will the hand be that is meant to guide?
I had never cried over tea.
I had never cried over much of anything.

Imagine my surprise,
my sweetest mentor,
my treasured care giver,
when my shoulders began to shake.

Fire burns across the universe.
Lighting it up, showing all of it's
darkest flaws, and brightest gifts.
It is this fire, burning it's way
across the cosmos, building one
on another, crafting this place as
infinite, as eternal, as unending,
it is this fire which brings us to
the place where we will all see
the beginnings and the ends of
our tired songs.

The fire rages still, waiting it's
long wait, it's silent smoldering,
waiting for us. And we will join
it, that is not something that can be
stopped or denied, only delayed.
Energy is forever, it will never fade
it will never leave, it will only become
something more profound, only more
amazing.

We are that energy, and it is our
life's sole purpose to end. To wither
and fade into some lost and tangent
flow of energy, one more wisp on the
cosmic winds. But it is with this purpose
that we become great, it is in the joining
of matter and time that we will be complete.

Fire burns across the universe.
I will one day burn with it,
until then this energy, this body,
this me.
I will become eternal.

You were brought low
by ******* pomp and circumstance,
fed a line of nonsense and
made to shutup and dance.
But I remember when.
When you held strong
as the levees.
Stood firm as trees
and thick as blood.
I remember you, love
and I remember you
at your best
before the flood.
I don't think I ever
told you
because I'd never tell
anyone,
but I used to
wanna be you
in spite
of what you done.
That was before
everything broke
and the rivers swelled
to run over and they
ran over bad.
That was before
we threw away
all that amazing
stuff we didn't know
that we had.
Now there's just
this place
all dim light
and broken trust.
After the flood
everyone else dwindled.
Disappeared and forgotten
until it was
just us.

Try brevity, they tell me.
Short and concise.
The distance between points,
not stars.
Essential employee,
stressed out,
hurting financially,
most of the time I'm scared.
I'm also...
I dunno...blond?
I still don't really know
my father.
I guess that's now.

I'm a father. A millennial.
I've seen several epidemics,
I remember AIDS after school specials.
I remember the towers and the rash
of tragedy that followed.
I've survived two recessions,
a war and Y2K.
Hell, I remember where I was
when they killed Superman.
Is that enough, y'know?
Probably not.
Fill in the blanks for me.
History is in the books
But a man's life is in his hands.

I'm worried about now.
I'm terrified of what's next.
I held your tiny hand,
soft and new in my hard
calloused mitt, and watched
as you learned how to smile.
I quit smoking years ago.
Hardest thing I'd ever done.
This?
This'll rip out the heart of me.

If the heavens were to part,
if the earth were to crack,
if everything we knew before
and everything we now know
turned out to be a wonderful
fiction, would you find me?

                                                There is a path. It is not long
                                                it is not dark. It does not wind.
                                                It is simply there. I have looked
                                                for purpose there.
                                                          ­             It is gone now. So much is gone now.

Between stale smoke, making circles
as it leaves our table, and conversation,
which does much the same, we found
ourselves in undiscovered territory.
You had not known that there was a
place inside me that you had not lovingly
explored. You did not know that when
you found it, you would not want to.
And in you, my god in you, I found a
place that was all at once not as inviting
as you had always been.
I need to know more. I need to find this place.
I need to map it out, and leave an imprint there.

                                                They should know who we are, that we were there.

Raindrops are battering the window. A storm
rages outside, the kind that knocks over trees
and lights up the sky a million times. The
kind that reminds us that the war on nature
has not gone unnoticed. My favorite kind.
Your warm body is wrapped in mine.
My arm feels dead. Just below the elbow.
Your pressure is slight, but constant.
I can't decide if that is irony.

                                           I gave you a potato. I told you that it
                                           was more permanent than a flower,
                                           more useful.
                                           I told you that I loved you like I loved the potato,
                                           like I could never love a flower.
                                                                ­                               Forever.

I'm waiting for you now.
Waiting for the heavens to open,
the earth to crack, and the wonderful
fiction that is my life to collapse. I'm hoping too.
Come find me.

In the absence of hope they found this
dark, damp, ******, dreary place.
Where the music of the spheres
and the dream of what "might"
mingle, both together, in the dirt.
The cynic and his assertion of  the lives we lead,
his theories on those that seek it out.

Somewhere in the soil the tale is told.
The men who fought the snake, on both ends,
come out on top, only on top, but never
the victor.
In this place where light meets dark,
and grey prevails.

The Aching Question burns ever on.
Answered only by the cryptic riddles,
the matters of opinion.
They fight their very Nature.
Battle against the soul of the ****** thing.
Dreaming of a sunrise in these lands
where it only ever sets.

The message, writ on stone wall in cold blood,
rings of failure with a clarity and echoing presence.
Haunting the waking hours,
reverberating defeat in every small triumph.

A vigil was stood over the keep,
which in turn,
kept them all.

Did you know your gums recede?
Or how you're never free?
The Endless march of yesterdays?
The difference a paycheck makes?
  It's so easy, it is, to lose a friend?
  How, in moments, you feel young again?
   Bruises form like rock under your skin?
   Having to buy your own recycle bin?
    When your spine cracks when you stand?
    How hard it becomes to walk on sand?
     Your muscle turns to dough?
     And no year ever goes by slow?


Did no one tell?
You're not walking hell.
Did you not know?
It's a Road we all must go.

When she was young
a lightening storm
brought her to life.
The transformer exploded
and six city blocks went dark.
She grasped along in
pitch black for the taper
of a candle she kept.
From above the doorway
Jesus looked on from his
usual perch, arms akimbo.
She wondered if he could
see her in the dark
then hated herself for the
clearly blasphemous thought.
Thunder rumbled dangerously
in the distance but the rain
had not yet begun.
Unable to find the candle
see felt her way around to
the door and then down
the stairs, knowing people
would gather in the darkened
streets outside and hoping
for the safety always promised
to be found in numbers.
On the stoop she found neighbors
and oppressive Eastern shore
humidity and summer heat.
At first she heard talk,
people wondering about dark
clouds and the specific
response expected from ConEd
and then, arriving all of a sudden
and with no announcement or
warning, the pounding sheets
of rain came and brought the very
unique quiet that loud, heavy rain
carries inside it.
She dashed into the empty
street, raised her hands and
kicking up water like she was
at a theme park, she played-
She danced like a wild thing-
In the pounding rain and
the deafening silence and the
temporary darkness
and with great peels of
laughter and a young
women's smile she danced
herself to life in the
storm under the powerless
Electrical lines.

I have tried to ****** Time.
To bring an end
to the movement of the spheres.
I spun counter to it's pull
but fell to the Earth
before the grave deed was done.
I have tried to slaughter God.
To wash the stain from my memory
Cossacks, draped around me,
habits dutifully worn.
Keep the others away from
that one.
He's not the same.
I have tried to fell a Giant.
Pushing back with every
ounce within.
Muscles tearing from the work,
and all the while coming to find
I needed this more
than I would like.
I have tried to drown a memory.
To dig a well so deep inside myself
that the bubbles will one day
simply stop.
As though somehow this one act
would forever redeem me.
I have tried to rewrite history.
Each swift movement of my pen
erasing the things I've done
the places I've been.
This clean slate will be all that
is left of me.
I have tried to overcome.
To find that place
where all is well and
my work,
such labors I have preformed,
can finally be
done.

There was time still!
My god there was time.
Time to do the millions of stupid
things we always talked about doing.
Time to run and dance and play,
like dogs or like children.
Time for so much more.
So much more.

You stole it away.

Thousands of fireflies, trapped
in mason jars, with air holes
poked in the top.
How were we to know that they
would escape?
We were so young.
My god we were young once.

You had those Velcro shoes,
you had such a time trying to
remember what Bunny Foo Foo
was supposed to do.
I'm not sure I ever let you live it
down.
I remember those Velcros pounding
the rain puddles next to my cheap
fish heads, a long time ago.

I loved you then. In those days
when tomorrow was an eternity away.
When eternity itself had no meaning
to us.
It does now. It has so much meaning
to us now. You saw to that.

Lesson learned. Damage done.

I hated you for a long time.
I hated you so much that it stirred me
from my sleep, shaking with quiet rage.
There was not a horrible word invented
that I did not call you.
Sitting in that church, that ******* church.
Spectacles, testicles, wallet and watch.
Who were these people?
Did they mean anything to you?
You *******, just answer me.
Just sit up, you *******.

I don't hate you anymore.
It's not that I came to understand,
like you said I would. It's not that
I grew up enough to lament.
It's just been a long time.
It's been such a long time.
You would have loved what we've
made of the place. You really would have.

When I see a picture of you, rare though
they are, I do not wince. I do not cringe.
I do not scream.
But I also don't cry, I don't long, I don't
wish.
I do pity, I do sigh, I do care.
There was so much time, Corey.
There was so much time.
My god was there time.

Freed from these old bonds
I stretch my fingers
(in order that I scrape the sky)
And plunge, headfirst into
the still heaving earth.
My time is fleeting, here and gone,
But this mark will keep.

If not a monument then
I will become a stain.
An oil spot perhaps.
They will point at it
sitting there on the unmarked ground,
and marvel at the odd shape
it, I, had pooled into.

I will shake a nation,
If that is what it will take.
I will grow out my nails
and carve my initials
into the face of this living rock.
Pushing back the guise
that forever labels me;
"Temporary."

In my hour, waiting to see
if the gates will come, I will long
to feel your gentle knuckles
stroke my weakened cheek.
"You mattered, old friend.
They will not forget."

I have misread “meek”.
I thought it was the wise, but weak of
skill, of body. Rich in mind.
Brilliant, crafty and clever.
It was us, we were promised to
inherit the Earth.

I have come to realize that I was
naïve, young, and a little too hopeful.
Now, with jaded eyes, and a cynical
heart I realize, only now, that it was
never meant to be us. The clever
are not meant to rise to the occasion.
It was always going to be the meek of mind.
Like it has always been.

We are outnumbered in a war I never realized
we were fighting.
How did this happen? How did I not see before?
The phrase that inspired hope during all
those years of catholic school, of
nuns hating my left handed writing, of
priests telling me that atheists like me
were horrible people.
All that time being told to look, but not see.
To listen but not think.
To move but not dream.

How did I not see?
“The meek shall inherit the Earth”
It's a warning. It was always a warning.

Tonight, my god, tonight!
I will meet you,
the first and last time.
Your cloak and dagger
existence, your
pallor of decay,
your dark dreams.

I will walk from this
comfort to the hill
by the moon.
Water rushing somewhere
below us.
I will find you there.
Patiently waiting.
Chess board before you,
sickle in hand.

I will meet Death tonight.
I will laugh at him,
turn my nose at him.
I will take the challenge.
I will rise to the occasion.

Tonight, my god Tonight!
I will be immortal.

I dream of walls of fire and ice.
I watch them clash and arrive awake drowning on acid in my throat.
I long for apotheosis
but just get ready for the fight.
We line up in neat rows
to take hit after hit
and smile gap-toothed grins
as we spit the blood on
the pavement at their feet.
Rubbing our gumlines
to feel for new absence we
move with practiced discipline
to the back of the line.
Maybe, just maybe,
if we sell more time we can
get struck once more today.
We cower and we wail
and every ******* morning
we're back in line for more.
We talk the talk about
using our sick and vacation days
and we aknowlede that he'll only
be this little once
and we sob and we break
and we queue so that we
can bleed.
During our freetime,
the great modern myth,
there are yards to mow
things to fix.
Here a new socket, spackle there
and so much shopping to do.
Errands before we can
finally get back in line
to fight.

On the horizon on some distant day
there will be death.
There will be sleep.
If we can find the time
to lay down.
If we can just survive long enough
to hear the bell.
To get to heaven, we're told
you gotta go through hell.

I'm gonna tell you a secret
but I'll dress it up as a lie
I don't speak the language
and I don't know why.
I often dream of a distant wood
ceiling of green, shafts of light beaming
and the calm interrupted by
a horrible steady screaming.
When we were young I wished
to trap moments in frozen jars
left overnight in the fridge
to keep them as the the sky keeps stars.
Now looking at the rugged lines
on my worn and aging hands
I hope for rebirth but watch our
heroes travel to distant lands.
What becomes of us when
the clock winds down and tonight ends?
Do we push at an obstinent earth
and continue to hope it bends?

The truth is
you aren't the
one who got away,
my long lost love,
you're just the
one who didn't stay.

There was no life
we could've comfortably
lived together
We had that one
******* summer, kid,
we never had a chance
at forever.

You wanted more
when I needed less
you needed better
but that was my best.
I know the love was real
we tried so hard
but temporary was
always part of our deal.

I know it isn't easy
swallowing a bitter pill
can be tough
And although I love you, madly
sometimes even love
ain't enough

I know it's still an ugly uphill
at thirty-five
from the **** soaked
floorboards of a punk rock dive.
I know you quit
but two packs a day
still leaves a scratch
in your voice that don't go away.
And look, hands up,
I know what you're thinking
but the gut don't vanish
when you stop drinking.
Turns out the weight
was Marley's chains
and we'd carry it every day.
Bruised bones and daily pains.
Our long told and retold
haunting, if threadbare, refrains.
Soak in the empty memories of
hard nights and bar fights
burned out stars and candle light.
Weathered skin and the
hungry, open and waiting pit.
There is a high cost to livin'
even the way we did it.
Times up, sales final.
Pipper's callin' and
the wind howls through.
Make your wishes, friends.
The price is comin' due.

How does one begin to end?
Start from here and back again.
It seems we spend our lives trying to die,
yet each person's success makes another cry.

It's when all the hours and minutes are spent,
that they begin to seek atonement.
But if there was no purpose, would that be so bad?
Couldn't we find value in all we had?

From Rattle to Rattle, a human life.
Though it is not meant to live in strife.
While we can move from form to stance,
we should endeavor to make ourselves dance.

Why must we mourn the flame,
Do we believe death is a thing to tame?
If the goal is not to live well and die...
...Then, if not...why?

The pain is all at once sharp and subtle.
Something you can work with,
but not use.
There is no advantage to this.
The hour hand seems frozen
in place.
Time has given up.
It has finally surrendered.

This moment stands triumphant.
You are witness to the
Second Victorious.

There are thousands of other
moments that would have been
better.
Moments of small bliss.
The warmth of a lover,
her weight beside you in bed.
The accomplishment of a job,
finished and well done.

The arm hangs flaccid.
The elbow at an odd angle.
There is no break, just the
dull fire sensation of a shoulder
ripped out of joint, yet again.
The pain that you've learned to ignore.

It is just this one moment,
this five block walk to where
you know in your stomach that
you need to be.

There is no way to make it.
There is only the quiet comfort
of defeat, and the joy of
the coming darkness.

The knot in your stomach turns.
The tears work their way, protested
against, from your eyes.

Ignore it.

Don't give him the pleasure
of defeating you.

There are these things...

Things I don't know how to say.
There are things I can't articulate.
Things I never learned to speak.
Perhaps, lost along the way.
I've hated myself for so long
it's difficult to know if I can change.
I feel different some days but
don't know if it means I've
stopped or if I'm happier
but still hate myself the same.
That hate grew inward and festered.
It attached itself to my identity
and became who I am. Innate.
I want to get better. I do want to change.
I need to see improvement.
To somehow rise above my fate.
It's just that...
When certain feelings are too big
or are too much like pain
I bury them somewhere inside
and pretend they never came.
You watch me with those big eyes
and repeat the things I say
and I know I gotta fix it.
I know it's not a ******* game.
(Language!)
For you I make the effort
I try to find the crooked path
back to good, and healthy and sane.
I love you, little bean
more than I hate myself.
I love you more than it's
possible for me to say.
Kiddo, I hope you know.

It's just that...

There are these things...

I wonder sometimes
what I'll miss
when I'm gone forever
and there's still...this.
Long past the second death
the last time you say my name
will the world still turn?
Will anything be the same?
Running around on earth
people with my blood
in miniscule quantities
long after the flood.
Children's children I'll never know
doing jobs that maybe aren't yet
and all the time I'm dead
all of my doings done. Settings set.
It's hard to picture nothing
we don't have a reference
We ignore it, outright, best we can
pretend it's a preference.
Anasi speaks gently
as he wraps the fly
"The end isn't real.
All endings are a lie.
The story keeps on spinning
long, long after you die."

My city has a heartbeat.
I can feel it thunder beneath my feet
as I race across her massive face.
She has a whisper, not a voice like we know it,
but a whisper always.
Telling me what she wants and
more so what she needs.
The wind, roaring through my city is her own voice
and instrument, it plays her mournful song.
The song has only three words in it's composition.
Vengeance, justice and hope.

Steam pours from the manholes,
distorting vision, adding one more
in an endless number of reminders that
my city lives, my city has a presence.
Has a pulse.

The gear, the pulsing brain of this
once airborne metropolis,
sits still against the night sky
she remembers as her former company.
Her companion.
From here, from this vantage point, I can see her.

She's more or less a mile,
in any direction from this point, long.
Her streets are a complicated maze,
a spiral built on a grid.
Her boarders are round. She was once known
as the circle city, another grim reminder
of her days above it all.
Within her boarders there are millions
of nooks and crannies. Hard to find, hidden away spots
that people can live in, work in, or hurt each other in.
Her people are aimless.
They are concerned,
they are worried,
but they are proud.
We used to be something,
and one day we will be again,
she will be again.

From here I can see her.
In her entirety,
like no where else in the
whole of her body.
She's beautiful.

I used to dream, my old friend,
how I dreamed.
In sleep I was a maker.
A creator.
I built and I drew and I crafted,
instead of living and breathing and consuming.
I was costumed like a fan at convention.
Dressed in the trappings of a sage.
Bad word.
God.
Dressed in the trappings of a God.
I will bow in my own worship before sleep.
Such sleep.
And in sleep I will dream.
Dreaming the dreams that let me do.

Now I mostly just am.
I don't dream. I sleep.
I just...am.
I wonder all the time if it'll change...
See me, friend, wilted on the vine.
Never knowing if I'm worth it.
Bad word.
Matter.
Never knowing if I matter.
I would like to.
I wonder if the world will wait for me.
I hope it will.

One day I will become.
I will be, finally. I will be.
I will stand in the fires of the firmament.
I will rise like the day or the phoenix
and grasp the tools, hammer and chisel,
in my two finished hands
and I will turn,
turn dear friend,
toward the work.
Such important work.
Wrong word.
Dire.
Such dire work to be done
and when I become,
when I become, old friend,
I will lift my fingers, ignite the sun
and get the ****** thing done.

You wanted the truth behind the lies.
You wanted to see the forest from the tree.
but you never actually wanted to see,
You never actually wanted to open your eyes,

Find the fire from within me?
You want to seek me out in burnt out husks.
You want to make blood packs and secret trusts.
But you lack the vision to simply be.

So here, in the now and then, we find the key.
We send the message to a hidden place,
deep within us, just behind the face.
And finally, our arms spread out, we are free.

There are secrets and distances
kept between us.
Small dark truths we dare not face.
Large scary facts left buried.
Yet...
There you stand, shovel in hand.
Prepared to uncover, unearth
and learn all about me
and us.
But, my love, word of warning:
you can never not know again
and once it's all been exposed
you'll have to face the future.

Here: Take my hand and walk awhile.
The future is scary.
It's full of uncertainty
even those of us that have found
the truth have not found the path.
And yes, now it's all out there,
a public manuscript of secrets
but look, love, I'm here beside you.
Sure the facts are now present
between us but absent is the distance.
I know the future is a scary thing to face
But you don't have to face it alone.

I'll follow, four steps behind, into hell fire.
I'd topple the champion of that dark place,
just to feel your hand, gentle on my face.

I struggle through the wound
of Earth's cracked crust,
to find the simple solitude of us.

Reborn again man, with cradled brow in hand,
I will force my way down the aisles
so that, together, we may stand.

I bow my head, and repeat all words,
I fight back my mind's latest coup,
so I may find the courage to utter, "I do."

In this world, all of it's sights and wonder,
I have found only peace, your hair pinned under,
my eyes focused, laser, as I watch you slumber.

If you've the gumption
you can watch the soul
burn right outta me.
Any minute now it'll
hit the ground in
a smoking heap.
You can marvel as my sails
deflate and gasp, the scandal,
as all my dreams crash
to earth like space debris.
We're not looking through
rose colored shades
we're here to talk on
the whole uphill thing.
I don't know if it's left
the station or not
but I don't see even
dim light down the line
and I've been at this
platform for ages
waiting on a train
don't come.
I was made in the image
of failure and loaded to
the brim with potential
without drive.
Cast out into a world
with nothing,
told about plenty
and mocked as I struggle
to survive.
I am the king, lord over
all I see, of having just
enough rope to dangle
like a possibility above
an ocean of
try hard dissimive noises.
Metaphor pushed here
beyond the breaking point.
It's hard to describe
with words
but it was painted
in violence clear enough
for me to understand.
Without pressure gasoline
goes stale, left in cans
in the garage until it's
only usable in the lawn mower.
Online influencer culture
leaves me cold,
television shows are barely
on TV anymore
and the lives of friends
and family are curated for
timeline efficiency to the
point of unbelievablity.
No one posts about the fight
or the bad vacation.
No one admits that their
kid says a lot of real unwise ****, too.
Cursed with lackluster
millennial ambition I now find,
nearing forty,
myself in compition with
Instagram accounts of people
I have known for years
but never see and
I hate it.
At least from the bottom
of the well you can
see the sky,
at least from nothing
one can still hope
to climb.
The final embers of my
soul are dying out
growing cold at my feet
where they fell
and I wish I could say
they burnt like a
funeral pyre throwing
light into the starless
night sky and warmth
like a blanket across
the world around me
but I'm cold and it's
been dark a very long
time and the train
has yet to arrive.

I'm looking for artisanal  language.
Prose with a maker's mark.
Words that contain perfect imperfections,
evidence that a person first touched these letters and then my heart.
I need a personal touch to color the paragraphs that fill these pages.
I wanna see the hands that craft a stanza in the body of the text.
I want something real and alive.
I want these words to burn with the incurable human spark.
I'm on a quest to look at the tome and see the beating heart of the man.

I once read a note you left on the fridge and I could read in your word choice the shape of your smile.
My god! I would read volumes of your missives left throughout our life on CVS receipts.
They contain a warmth that I can feel even in memory of them.
I don't know if it is talent
or magic
or love.
Or all of the above.
My words...I guess, I fear that they're hollow.

Do they reach you through space? Is my pen alight with intelligence?
Does my writings evidence my soul?
I don't know that they do.
Certainly they do not seem to.
I've tried different theory, different pens.
I've written sonnets and songs with this and also the other hand.
The results are robotic.
Bland.

I want to explain you, my love...
I don't have the words.

Drops of blood, a little each day,
have become my love letters to you.
Scraps from labors rendered,
meals paid in sweat and fatigue,
the only gifts I can give.
I don't know if the rules are the same.
Once upon and long ago seem
removed from me by oceans
of various "who can recall"s and
"I don't give a ****"s.
I'm not sure if it was ever easier
or better.
I only know that it is hard and
I am worse.
My god, how you can greet.
You hug and you kiss and you express.
It mystifies me, these strange magic
that you and yours possess.
It is alien to me and to mine.
We are not a talk of love kind of people,
my family.
I don't know how to whisper beauty at you.
I only know the work.
And the work, my love,
The work is for you.

I'm going to hold my darkness over your head.
I'm going to make you feel small and stupid.
My history will become the mountain you must climb.
I don't wonder about it anymore:
I'm the worst.

Always you want two things; it's never enough.
Two things which can't be had at once.
Always.
Of course I'll ask you how.
Of course I will.
Two things. Always.

I've been ******* hunger desperate and shelter poor.
I've been a hard luck, street wise,
charity case with no coin freely given.
A mean little ****, tempered in tragedy and shame.
Most my time was spent in various
states
of decay.
In urban squalor and late night tattoo parlors.
Picking my monster up off the sticky barroom floors.
Returning to nothing and knowing,
all the knowing,
neglect measured in pounds of
what am I to do about food this week?
All that knowing and twice that knowledge of abuse.

You don't care.
This is about your precious ******* feelings.
This has little to do with plans.
Nothing to do with me.
Feelings.
Let them be your unremarkable guide.
Let them.
Always.

I'll hang my history over your head.
Every ******* time, I'll do it.
I know it's wrong.
How could you argue a point
that could possibly quell my fear?
Because I am afraid, you know, I am so afraid.
I am one bad week, one bad decision away.

I am within reach of returning.
Always.

Don't argue with me, love.
Please.
I don't wonder anymore:
I'm the worst.

Sifting through all the
fractured metaphor
from the lost and lonely
boy I was before
I find the train,
no longer a silver snake
moving like desire
across rails on tree
dotted mountain ranges,
but abandoned and disused.
It is hulking, still.
As imposing as it ever was
but it is also suddenly
made of fragile rusted
parts that look so solid
from a distance but flake
to shale like dust at even
the gentlest of touches.
It is not smoking, though
there is clear evidence of fire,
but even the most persistent
embers burned out and down
and away a long, long time ago.
No, it does not smoke or burn
it merely festers.
Growing outward in decay
even while it shrinks
inward from structural damage.
It is no longer a machine
built for cool, honest purpose
it has become a wreck.
Still, if you find ways to
explore the innards of the wreck
you'll find bird's nests,
foxholes, **** from animals
big and small, bird song
and flowers and wild grass
growing up throughout the
twisted metal hull of the wreck.
The engineer's compartment
with it's no longer working
shifters and radios is
overcome by flowering vines
and the sweet, damp heaviness
the forest has under a canopy
of dark green leaves.
Moved from what it was
assumed was to be a life's work
and robbed of the purpose
behind every one of the many
design choices it does not
sit, not exactly, it seems to
lay into the countryside
as if it shrugged before
embracing the gentle *****
of a lover's chest.
It is desolate in this place,
The wreck,
but it is somehow still
very much alive.
I hope there is meaning
in the discovery,
but have grow tired
from reading between
every single
******* line
I'm not yet dead, my love,
but I've begun to wither
on the vine.

How do you not see the things you can do?
How can you see your life,
this thing you've built
by yourself and with your own power,
and not see the triumph within?
Because who cares if you're not
what we all thought we would be?
Fortune and fame are such
trivial things when compared
to having nothing, which
(To let slip a small secret of the universe)
is all we are ever given,
and making from it something.
What you do?
How the **** does that matter?
Why would it ever matter?
You are what you are,
my friend,
you are what you have become.
But, hold your breath this is a big one,
you have managed, somehow in spite
of all the **** this world has to offer,
all that is forced on you,
you became yourself.
How amazing an accomplishment is that?
You, sir/madam are an amazing,
an astounding,
a fantastic
accomplishment!
How do you not see the things you can do?

You fall backwards and
slide into the earth unbidden.
The contours shaped to a tee
around your every line and curve.
You fade and slip without remorse
or resistance to be found or given.
You may wonder why
I smile as you snarl and venom.
You've spent years throwing
dirt on my name
to match the petty and
filthy needs you crave.
Go ahead, dear.
I've spent this time
digging you a perfect grave.
You made poor calls
and I've made mistakes.
We've been together when
we ought to have hit the brakes.
You've considered me nothing
more than target or fodder
but this isn't a fight, love.
This is a ******* slaughter.

A cresent Halloween moon hangs
in the bruised-dark October sky
like a crooked smile or a victim
and we talk sweetest poison
about long ago, far away spring
like it has any meaning
because it's gone now and we're
all still here and there is
no fixing that or replacing
the wasted hours we've spent
longing for yesterdays.
No how-to tutorials or quick
video essays that'll point us
toward the thaw and the chill
inside our bones will serve
to remind us of the flaw
in our planned escape
like clotting blood or
traffic stops wait for us
in those dark, lost hours
we remember so ******* fondly.
Maybe we'll run this too
so far into the ground that
it'll plant like seed and be
fertilized by our *******
dead dreams until it grows
into something not too twisted
for us to recognize and sing
spiritual around
because hope springs eternal
if you've got the money
the rest of us just gotta learn
to enjoy all the leftover suffering.
Here, they say from wifi
and airwaves and bandwidth,
is some free advice,
This is not financial advice:
long is the night, the night is long
and even the bard didn't
know how to burn it into sunrise
but with your hand in mine,
and a little hope and a little time,
we might see an April sun
in this nighttime October sky.