You need to know this. Whatever this is supposed to be.

You know what I mean when I say this.
If I look at a star, a bud of a new flower to be blooming next week
The scars on the arms of the man waiting
Sitting right next to me
Of I grab a zippo that's been in the sun
The burns make my hands drop it
The world around leaves me spun
I stare at a fire I built
Amazed at what I have done
But still the world leaves me at zero to one

I stare at the sky, and the plant, and the man
Wondering how much longer on my legs I can stand
Because everything I look at my eyes stick to like glue
Everything, anything, brings me right back to you.
As if every single element, atom and nucleus groans
At the day I was forced to remember with such darkened tone
That I have always and remain standing alone.

Now, this time, I mean this moment, the present
Had allowed me to see what is quite not and quite relevant
If you little by little continue loosening grasp on the covenant
Than I shall rip off my skin for the evidence
Of ever having painfully been welded against it
My due penance.
Remnants.

If I am forgotten, do not lift a mind's memory's frame to remember
Do not look for me, for my picture will have been completely dismembered

For my own real-life self's internal tremor,
I will have to rip every photograph so as to never remember.
Someone said forever.
Forgotten means never.

If you take a moment to focus your mind
On the countless theme songs, and background noise of my life
Be it through the love and the pain and the might
And maybe one day I'll get word you decide
To leave me at the riverbank where I had taken root

Mark that day on a calendar closest to you.
On that day, that hour, that millisecond in time
I will spread my arms and rip my roots and the vines
Off in search of another place unconfined.

But if--every single **** day,
Every counted passing hour.
You feel you really are that future-blooming flower
With your vines crawl up towards that sunlight that is me
Use your lips to find mine and I'll cut you from your tree
And in my heart's vase you'll be free.
All that fire will be revived, relived, remembered.
Nothing is extinguished or forgotten.
Deep down I know I will not allow myself to grow putrid and rotten.

My love feeds on your love, my lovely beloved.
As long as you're alive, it will be in your hands.
Without leaving a vine wrapped around my legs.
This life is our land.
Calling it ours, one day hand in hand.

Moving my glass in a circle, listening to the ice and cup collision.
As I go on and on and on, the ice melts, as does my vision.
But I'm alone, my most frequently taken decision.
Followed by correcting my morning away in revisions.

I'm caught in my hammock, tangled like a fish in the netting.
Watching my hand pick up that bottle in this repetitive setting.
And wonder of your pulse, and if it's been forgetting
Those moments, that at this point, seem to be getting
To be all that I am.

Forgetting Sundays.
Or the stars with salt and butter, to feel better.

By forgetting the corner shelf, each handwritten letter,
Forgetting long drives, how making a bed with two people is best.
Being car sick. A beer to pitch up the tent.
Gazing up at the redwoods.
A single tear rolls, a fire burns as tall as we stood.
Tied together on that forest floor.
Tighter than the knots before.

It means,
Forgetting the inner dialogue of those people walking down the block.
It's never getting the hang of how that door unlocked.
Forgetting a **** good teammate for cracking word games.
Forgetting that medicine bag that was actually lame.
Or that plate under the bathroom sink with old dried up paint.

Visiting a farm, the salsa, debating on the shirts.
Deciding who really wanted to sneak into the abandoned house first.
Someone sitting at a bar, typing the night away.
Live music, completely failing at spoken word that one day.
Waking up as two kittens. For hours to play.

It means,
Forgetting the harmonica, and songs that lived inside it.
Reaching dead ends with GPS, so we had to guide it.
Laughing for hours on a porch, smoke winding around our fingers.
Mimosas, a most satisfying breakfast smell still lingers
Answering a phone as if faintly afraid.
Remembered the songs I heard; the exact time and the day.
Leaving notes around to be discovered and sweet.
Shaking hands with the world, all those random people we'd meet.
We never went to the BBQ at the corner car wash.
Always owed the store next door a dollar.
How I would sit on that chest as you walked back and forth, deciding what to wear.
Smoking out the window.
Finding socks everywhere.

It means,
Forgetting the run to the bart station after bar hopping quests
--Those in hopes you'll say yes to that one invitational request.
Always on missions to go see and eat things we hadn't before.
Driving to that one restaurant where kids worked the floor.
And there were no prices for the plates.
Staying up late.
Forgetting how the white people dance and we laughed.
This is how you dry two sweaty hands.
Promising all the adventures we planned.
The day you tried to get me to drink the green goo. Ew.
I still drank that whole glass for you.
Helping you even out the dirt in that backyard with a slab of wood and a string.
Those songs off Pandora I attempted to sing.
A Red Bull accompanied by other snacks in a bag.
Picking you up there, and later setting one of my pillows on fire.
I packed everything but that **** set of plates.
I laughed at your knee socks, BART running late.


It means, all these things that might ring a bell;
If you can forget them, you forget me as well.

vii..xii

Those eyes.

**** winter, cold from the inside.
Shared beaches together.
The sand had a picture of a house in a future life.
Wonder how long it took to be washed by high tide.
Remember standing there looking at the house's uneven sides.
With two smiles stretching at least ten miles wide.

It's still cold from inside.

Nothing is indestructible.
We all know most things can be broken.
At home, in your friend’s toy chest
Breaking things in a place you’re considered a guest
I guess,
Breaking a bone hurts. I know through some testimonies
I wouldn’t know, but maybe eventually
That ninety or so broken degree
Painful message sent through the spinal cord holding me--
Together.
Underneath the thin material having been tethered.
The spine surviving endless stages of weather
Holding on to claim being a backbone helplessly held together
Hoping through each trimumph the chronic pain might feel better
Only holding onto the self as a go-getter
As life’s building blocks as the brick setter
The rain picks up
And life’s damp becomes wetter.
Just let her.

Things, as if they were pushed right over the edge
Smashed, or broken, as the smasher’s true pledge
It’s not me. These ten fingers deny
To be responsible for all the pain felt as the time passed me by

Maybe it was everything. The endless rotation of our planet.
Maybe it was this or that. ****, I have had it.
It wasn’t everything, or anything, or anyone or body
It wasn’t the unerasable ink splatter and splotting
It wasn’t the wind that knocked me over
It wasn’t the colors you’d paint me
It wasn’t the night,
It wasn’t the morning,
It wasn’t the past or present cold mourning.

It was not my limbs or the joints, or the ligaments that compose me
The fragments and pieces ] glued together intravenously

Each psalm taken in the hurricane seasons’ wrath
One, after another, too broken to cast

The two unequal hands ring based on the hour
Whose sounds was the ring of a shared life now gone sour
Because being ignored, as if I never existed is power
Unconsider yourself, at least today, that forever blooming flower.
I might be a million things. But of those not a coward.
Today you took the title with a medal to show off to the people you know
Welcome to the black and the white swan’s big show
At this point I’m the raven, she’ll never know
I was too drunk to function at the end of the show.

The curtains begin to rise, and I watch in surprise
How exposed and naked are the both of our lives
As your patience has taken time to disguise
Replacements as substitutions for the nature of the styles
We have to live life in the ways that we fight
Hoping for what we want in the end without struggle
How about perfection? I said on the double.

And those two uneven hands of the clock are due to change places
Ticking away at our concept of time
And aging our faces
The weeks pass us by
The days and the hours
Ask me who if not both of us are the coward

The giant dump truck grinds up countless materials
Making fragments of the things that existed for real
And what lasted in the bins of the emotions free wheels
Making internal rationalizations for what I tried to feel.
It’s over and over on what I wanted to seal
Were too many things to remember?
Dreams turning it all too, too real.
Turn my mind inside out I begin to expose now and peel.
How long will it take to forget
Or to heal?
I don’t know what to call this.
And idea or what’s real.
I’ll tell you what the heart asked for his final meal
Peace to believe what we did have was real.

Life keeps grinding up what treasures I’ve collected.
Forget what memories I ever recollected
All I’m asking is that I remain intact and protected.

But no one can guarantee me that.
No one can ask me to offer up my hands frostbitten with your cold
No one can ask me to bluff followed by my own fold
No one can ask me the number of me having been sold.
There was one dream and I bought it.
Except the belief in the memory is what I’ve left to have fought it.

I don’t ask or expect to ever be repaired.
But you didn’t break me, so why were you ever so scared?
Maybe for the immeasurable amount that you actually cared.
But today’s findings have left me quite frankly impaired.
I didn’t exist to you at all. I was the invisible man.
I use all my abilities to understand as I can.
But nothing makes sense to the invisible man.

So he hopes and he hopes for just one part of him to be seen.
One of his hands through the smoke in your overly-woven screen
To knowingly be holding one of yours, when your reality’s clean.
I’m the invisible man.
Pretending not to see me was a game played unclean.
I hope one day in your life he exists.
Parting through the smog and the fog and the mist
As I feel forgotten in both my clenched fists
What's left is to let go of  those fogged moments like this.

vi.xxiii.xii

The chair she sat in, was no chair at all.
Her own face glowing on the carpet’s contours, where her hands
Held up by standards wrought with my own hands
Doubled the light reaching from the fixture
to my twisted, internally suspended transistor
Being my inner projections
Of this minds sickly infection
That began to eat me alive
But perhaps to each his own reflection
Reflecting light upon life’s table
Bouncing off the walls
The glitter of her eyes rose to meet it,
To the ground my pride might fall
Pouring all that was left,
Watching it trickle down fast.
Into the vials, beakers of broken glass
There is nothing, no one left accused,
Somehow it hits harder,
Sitting there so confused.
I held down my sense of sorrow
Drowned by it, I feel the seams tear.
The logic of all this left me eluded.
I was doing my best to have honestly concluded
The game is only half finished! Press your timed moment
Feeling the moment slipping.
Fighting to clasp it and hold it
  
Inching up closer, I smelled your hair.
As I fought every instinct, to reject my inner care
Lunging at this injustice of forfeit wasn’t fair
But that’s what was to happen there
I’m looking at this game through a window
Feeling my face grow flush
This move was not spoken of
Or thought of very much.
Here I was, feeling things I’d lost
But this game was such a challenge
I never calculated costs
Your whispers of the next play were playing in my ears
On repeat, as if to render  and digest all my own fears
Of the loss of this game I actually learned to love
But then push came to shove
We lost track of our places.
A voice raises.
Where is your ROOK?
WHERE IS MY QUEEN?
I almost wish to miss the signs,
The gaps left in between.
And then we stare at the board.
Consumed by our words.
I start to whistle and sit terribly still.


I’m a wreck. I can’t even see where my last pawn went.
--Stay with me. Speak to me.
I'm not the best with words.

--Why wont you talk to me?
Haven't we gone over this?


--What are you thinking? I don't know what you're thinking.
You linder in my nose again.

--Did you hear that?
My cardiovascular system pulsating on the floor?

--Do you know? Do you see? Do you remember?
I remember. Those are pearls that were my eyes.

--This is just not the time.
Perhaps.

You like the way I write about you?
It’s so elegant,
So intelligent.

What the will I do? What the about tomorrow?

I have a show to play at ten.
If the sky decides to rain, I know your car door will be locked at 5.
But its perfect to play a game of chess in the rain. Or rather, when it’s raining.

My eyes are forced open. There is no other than the raven at my chamber door.
A fool in love never more.
A sonnet for tomorrow
For my only known Lenore.

The water is too cold to consider moving forward.
Gazing across the water for so long, the sky prepares for dusk.
And from the river bank or the water, it seems to be enough
That it is the same sunset. The warm colors make calls.
But those were the words bouncing in my inner skull walls.

And still, because this view always beats the other horizon.
Keeping both eyes faced forward.
The west busies my eyes then.
The spaces between me and the water is where the pain lies in.

And sometimes from deep in my core.
I think I might hear a call from the opposite shore.
I just glance over, my body's too weak to explore.
But that was just a bird call, from the top of a tree.
Nothing less, nothing more.
Wondering when the sounds will be calling for me.

I watch her swim, on a side farthest from where I can see.
There's no current, but the water looks as if it's moving her this and that way.
The wind hasn't picked up, and she's floating away.
I want to stand up and yell, but what would I say?
I can only know this is as close as I can be today.

I recall the times you swam so close I could touch you.
You lost a feather this morning.
Who knew what I'd get myself into.
Holding on tight to the grassy land
Reaching out to grab your lost feather with a careful hand.

Your feathers haven't changed. The same white, edges so smooth.
Following the middle's solid groove.
From the other side you look at me.
But neither of us move.

I want nothing more than to touch you, when you swim past me I stay thinking.
Knowing my boat might have a hole, and I can't have you see me sinking.
So there I am, left to contemplate linking--
My hope with your chances, to the stars that are twinkling.

My spot on the river bank is clearly love stained.
I don't think it will ever be gone.
No matter how much it may rain.
I stay looking west, imagining a rip in the horizon's thinner part.
Then the earth and the sky would be peeling apart.

Maybe leaving nothing but the two of us left.
Oh, man, but it seems like such a mess.

I know it is simple. The water is too cold for me to be.
I wish to leave.
But can't unless I can take you with me.
I imagine us finding our way through the stars.
Forgetting all about the planes and the cars.
But I can't start thinking about all this.
I look across the water; you're still much too far.

Both changing, as we gazed, each of us half of one desire,

"Maybe tomorrow," I hope, as I find where to lay.
Just out of arm's reach you settle in,
and whisper--

"I missed you today."

Brushing my hand against perfect skin.
Like water through my fingers, air on my cheek
The smell, the taste, all of her
Make me weak
I can’t speak

Outline every curve, muscle, and line
Tasting her from the sides;
then from behind
Glowing after the light isn’t shown
Wishing these ears could really hear the moan
With the drip
Down those lovely thighs
Melting into each perfect breast
And both curious eyes
Unleash, relieve her
Feel and conceive her
This soul open in front of me
An everlasting rose, quenching my thirst
It is me who wants to go first

The shoulders. Designed and perfected
Pulsing; another rose resurrected
Feeling a rhythm then feeling another
Shallow breathing, in and out of the other
Ear, nose, hand, rose
Long neck below the lips I crave
Sweet, sweet smile, a tongue misbehaved
Powerful, slick, when breathing my name
The mist from her fountain
Last night when she came

Her hands, each finger, each knuckle
Unlike a ligament, or tendons, or a bundle of veins
Touching, being touched, give, take, point, aim
So many watches, numbers on clocks
Demanding to be acknowledged, but
A trembling ****, does not cause a disorder
Or have small hands making life grow shorter
Her insides make room, my hand in her time
So slender, so delicate, constantly to remind
There’s nothing  else of this kind

Wet lips, kiss, taste, devour
Painting her picture minute after hour
Her fountain is my ***** body’s shower
Hearing her voice’s forgotten power
Her calves can hold the weight of her world
The perfect size, length, a curve when she’s curled
I feel her shiver
Imagine her skin on my skin
I deliver
My self, entirely to her pink, red rose
Deaf to her hunger for the next dripping pose
I hold her close
Feel the life in her body
Wanting to give her mine
As my eyes become cloudy

Her hair, softer than my skin can feel
Pull remembering I’m awake, it’s real
Her lips on mine, a leak then a flood on her tongue
My love and her body will keep us both young
Drenched
Lost in her waves, for this there will be no cure
I stared at her hands, wanted mine inside her
Having hers inside me
My world changes, eyes opened to see
She is free
Her body is the sun, the leaves falling from a tree
Touching me
To spread the feeling
Of the skin that is free
How sweet

Is that curve against curve,
Smoothed out by a craftman’s eyes
Each hair placed gently, each smile, each line
Like a toy, I wind and and I wind
Breaking the dam, and then some of mine
Hearing her come as my life’s wind chime

Her body. Is a connection of twists and turns
Like a map I must remember to learn
Every muscle flexes with mine
Even our sweat beads are frozen in time