All I do is think of you
how it should be me with you.

He is the one who loves you now
leaving me with memories of you.

I have no one to blame but me
I wish I had done more for you.

He is the one holding your hand
leaving me with dreams of you.

You came to visit me tonight
to tease me with the scent of you.

I will wait till the day you’re mine
till then my soul belongs to you.

Well I was too afraid to sleep last night
Stayed up until 4:30
Trying to get you off my mind
I was too afraid to sleep last night
Because I knew you'd be there too.

I was right.

I dreamt of you
In the clearest ways,
Everything was real.
I dreamt of you,
And in that dream
You told me what I wanted you to feel.

In mid-kiss I had awoken
Slow to realize
The words were never spoken.
I lay back down in disbelief
I was still left broken.

They never spoke, but every time she walked into the train
He reflexively slid to the left and made room for her.
And they would travel together sitting one hand width apart.
He drummed his perfectly crooked fingers on his left thigh,
like a horse that galloped towards an unknown destination.
She clasped and unclasped her hands, and
chewed on the dry skin of her bottom lip.

She always switched off her phone before getting on the train.
She assumed he did too because no one ever disturbed their unsaid conversations.
The old man singing I Wanna Hold Your Hand provided the sound track to their journey.
Yet the most endearing sound was that of him sliding his right foot from side to side.
The soft scraping sound soothed her more than any song ever had.

The train ride lasted twenty-five minutes every night,
during which, in her mind they got married,
went to Vienna for their honeymoon,
and had three children: twin boys and a girl,
who grew up to be the perfect balance between the two of them.

His stop came before hers and
She wondered if one day he would miss his stop and
Ride with her to hers.
He knew her beginning and she knew his end.
She may never know any more
But that didn’t matter because for twenty five minutes a day,
all she needed was the soft scraping sound from his right foot sliding from side to side.

I never saw a wild thing
sorry for itself.
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough
without ever having felt sorry for itself.

I am a poor man
sitting on the corner of
Your Conscious
and Your Reality.
All day everyday
I sit in that spot and
beg for change.
But keep your quarters, nickels, dimes
for someone else
'cause all I want is a cup of change.
A cup of change
to water my feeble hope, thorny rose
rooted in concrete hatred.
Roots, like my fingers,
too feeble to hold anything
but this patch of dirt to remind
me, I exist.
ALMS! ALMS! ALMS for the poor of heart!
But keep your quarters, nickels, dimes
for someone else
'cause all I want is a cup of change.
A cup of change
to wash away the muck kicked in my face.
A cup of change
to cleanse the wounds made
by verbal bullets shot out of nine millimeter mouths
wielded carelessly by boys society has deemed as men.
I sit in this spot and fester,
like a dream deferred.
My skin, cracked and brittle
like aged parchment, hangs over my frame
like sheets over antiqued furniture.
I sit in this spot with
arms open wide, heart open wide, eyes open wide
BEGGING FOR CHANGE!
But keep your quarters, nickels, dimes
for someone else
'cause all I want is a cup of change.
A cup of change
to strip the lies and propaganda
from the decrepit facades of your ideas,
storefront workshops left from the age of enlightenment.
My body yearns for nourishment
but I can't afford your lies.
But keep your quarters, nickels, dimes
for someone else
'cause all I want is a cup of change.
Now I'm not asking for a Jesus on Galilee moment,
just a cup of change to feed what's left of my soul.
But who am I to ask for anything?
I am just the poor man
sitting on the corner of
Your Conscious
and Your Reality.
All day everyday
I sit in that spot and
beg for change.
But keep your quarters, nickels, dimes
for someone else
'cause all I want is a cup of change.

Bleach white
Bone dry
the desert of my heart.
the rains have gone
and come no more
a dry spell's come to stay.
the sun bears down his hateful rays
chipping up my heart and
scorching everything in sight
love don't prosper here no more.

a river's come
black as tar,
more viscous and all consuming,
has etched a ribbon through my heart.
by its banks the soil is dark
and the fruits of love are blooming.
close enough for me to touch
yet too far to partake,
this river through my heart

yesterday I spoke to the moon.

after a time, with the distance and all
I hardly expected an answer but when
I felt her sigh, I knew she had heard me so I
climbed to the top of a nearby car and
asked her if she could, please,
repeat that.

she hadn't been spoken to in so long, she confided,
she had grown ancient and old and she felt we no longer
spoke her language and
we no longer cared to.

she spoke for a long while, I felt her growing closer and the gap between us
closing. I felt a calm like the calm you feel at sea, and the
calm you feel in the warmth of another person.

if I reached my hands up I could touch surface and
feel her old majesty.

humbled, I asked if once more she could dust the earth with her wind
and kiss my skin, but before she could answer
a car horn ripped the sound waves open and left them
gagging.

as I refocused, my moon seemed as far away as ever
and I folded myself into my coat and went
on my way, disheartened,
to say the least.

it wasn't until, glooming the night away on my couch,  the 11 o'clock news said
that strange and powerful winds were sweeping the nation,
then I knew
my moon
had heard me.

girl, you're sitting there and I can feel the
hairs rising on the nape of our necks,
the sizzle arising in our chests
and the subtle turn of events when

you get up to leave and,
like flicking off a switch,
you extinguish
me.

there you are:
shaking your fist as if it were a rattle and
aimlessly insulting the air
in front of you.

there isn't anyone blocking your view
of what just might be a good place,
if you let it, a good
moment or two if you
want them,
a good year
or so if you
work
for
it.