i wanted to be more than life stuck in these bones,
but they're intent on running.
i thought i'd be content with settling down
but i think they are hunting for something.
i can see myself moving from city or town
though its hard to feel more than motionless
when about a month maybe more
is all you'll make an appearance for.
i'd like to feel more than simply life in these bones
but right now they're only good for aching.

matching socks hide away my weak feet for a while
but it doesn't take long for the absence of skin--
reminding me my brittle feet are breaking,
creaking, wary under the weight of heavy bones.

my hands feel empty.
but doctor's say nothing's missing...
i know i'm losing something to distance
you can hear it if you listen.

i keep replaying the sound of your whole life splitting
its way from mine
a misgiving sound for a while i'd been wishing
not to listen to, but i
decided to make it into an alarm clock instead
to keep me from dreaming too big, because
nothing scares me quicker from sleep.
i'm relearning how ferocious
your memory could be.

and only when you look you will see
inside your reflection--half of what you should be
not a would-be, but a could've-been
stuck with ******' half-life personalities
singing for their expiration dates,
cracking under your empty gravity.
breaking, fading, floating away from reality.
it took too many broken bones
to realize how unbroken we weren't supposed to be.

myself personally, i think there's no sense in
looking in the mirror
when i see no more beauty there.
i could let loose these slippery bones
and collapse on the floor.
and i figure to stay here a while, because
i can't sleep inside silence anymore.
city sounds don't cut it, so
i let your memory whisper faintly to me
but not so gently, more in line with a taunt
composed of words like,
"you are the thing that carved the me
out of me
so of course i had to set myself free."

but you can keep talking to me
and choke out all the mystery
this is near to death--
it's half misery, half meant to be.
it's all left me.
you haven't been living the right way
and it's left my body empty,
boneless.
it's let my body empty-out;
crooked tendons pining towards you.
a sorry skeleton, crawling,
unable to keep it in the ground.

There's something empty in the songs
That made me think of you.
Frontmen sing the chorus wrong
And the guitar's not the same.
The sound does come
And fights to belong
But goes the same,
And slips by, it tries,
it saunters along.
I'm unsure in my mind
If they are the same songs.
So I'll try to write my own
But they don't love me the same
They don't know
How to trick my own heart
And rip it with games that
Sneak like secrets into melodies.
They don't know how
To make melodies.
I don't know how
To make melodies.

The moon is a cold place to stay
But I go there any way.
When the sun sets
It's where I spend my nights
It's where I drift out of day
And out of sight
Clear into the fictionless dark.

On the white
I steer into scripts of stars
Where I don't have to sleep at night.
I'd rather have this than any answers.

My love,
I'd been looking for answers
But I haven't found any, just waiting
For weightlessness
But the moon is heavier than I thought.
My blood is coating what I want to forget, but
I think my mind is heavy set on
Keeping my memory pale.

I don't know where to build my future here,
I've knocked on every door
Homeless and stuck with fear of
Finding country sores haunted with
First date ghosts and empty parks fighting against
Thoughts of you.

White whales in a man's empty sea
Full of sinking cabins in ships
That sailed out to the sky to say goodbye.

The star-skies are my empty ocean,
Ready for wreckage and I didn't guard my heart for waves, I...
I didn't scare my heart with tales of
Dying far from home.
I have nowhere else to go
I have nobody else to show
How blue the whole world looks
When it's just you, your ocean and the sky.

Have you ever watched the sunset come around,
Forgetting to include you?
It makes the horizon a blank enough place after,
To forget land for a day or two.
I want to forget it all with you.

The days where your smiles keep coming
never-ending,
Up-end me.
I earn those split lips and some teeth
Like currency.

You are why I stutter through stories

i wish i didn't feel like I rhymed with you.
like two words supposed to be together
side by side,
in the same sentence,
or else in adjacent lines.
maybe even one apart,
for an alternate rhyme.

we at least belong in the same stanza
or even two consecutive ones,
separated by an empty line.
surely there's space enough for you and I
in the same poem, i'd imagine,
with only a few letters in between
serving as a distraction.
i'm sure the poet would see fit
to put us right by one another,
seeing how well you and I rhyme together.

Why does the heart take so long to drain?
The past sticks on the sides like syrup.
Pause the drip. Freeze.
Let the heart harden
Hold its heaviness in your hands.
High above your heads in Gods cloudy tatters
To be heated by the hung up sun
So it expands, then shatters.

You let the world slip inside your bones.
Somewhere, the suffering of life hides
Between that hollowed rib cage, floating.
Echoing off the sides, moaning
In a corresponding murk.
Why did you let it in there?
Why do you keep it caught?

Open it up,
Let holding hope
Be more than enough
Than keeping loved ones hurt
In that thumping heart.