There’s a before
                                                     then an after

                 and the in-betweens

      which is all that really matters
  after the beginning~and the ending

we’re born,                                    and we die

                   highs
have a few
                                  a whole lot of
                                                           lows

  but nothing means not a ******* thing
  if you know what I mean, you know?

That thing we had
I’m sorry that
I walked away before
giving it or us a chance
to even dance, to
become something, sadly
still, my heart
I’m happy for the
more than nothing
thing we had.

At night, time passes by
like shadows that were not there
the morning before when I
opened my eyes as the sun rose
from dreams that left behind
their hind tracks to show where
I have been lingering in the forest
of many seasons, something to go by
while the hunter quietly closes in.

Sometimes I drink by myself
like too many do, maybe you, too
when the wind blows like it does
here on the coast when it’s clear
and the light of dead stars come
down to swim in your circle of blood
while thinking back about the sisters
of boys I used to run with, oh, you know
we’d give our trigger fingers just to
touch them again, but the war keeps
seeping back into us like the poison
that pours into our rivers and creeks
from long gone cotton fields now paved
where the clouds of those days
are all that gets weighed in at the gin
I swear, there’s a pattern to all of this
like the weave of a tight skirt on a girl
who I once fell in love with in school
I went all crazy from watching her twist.

There’s a kind of grief
in a long leaf pine
with a scar cut deep
in its bark from lightning
that shines beneath
a winter’s moonlight
all alone out there
down by the water
like a man in a wheelchair
grieving for a daughter
at the end of the dock
hard and gray
old as the rocks
and cold **** waves
that break in time
along this god forsaken
piece of coastline.