Mistah Kurtz—he dead.

      A penny for the Old Guy

      I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

      II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer—

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

      III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

      IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We ***** together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

      V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
                                For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
                                Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
                                For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Words conduct orchestra
emotions dance to tune
I watch ,
Spellbound.

While you were sleeping

The miles we've walked are far greater, harder than this trivial trial we face
But somehow we're down on our knees.
You see, I don't believe in a God that demands his subjects to kneel before him
Perhaps that makes me a non conformist
But I never did take pride in anything except being an artist, dissolving what remains of me into my craft

I saw a stranger yesterday
The homeless man who made the street pavement next to the convenient store his home
He smiled at me, and from a spasmodic reaction, I smiled back and waved at him like I would an acquaintance close enough to greet but further to stop and engage in small talk
He didn't have lines on his face, it's as if he doesn't frown, but laughs and smiled just enough
To dilute the benign darkness in his soul.
It occurred to me that at that moment he could've been as free as a bird
Here I am, surrounded by all these walls
And yet I feel so far from home

Melancholy poisons us all
Don't ask me to heal, as if you don't have scars from going against the odds
The other day you were talking about death, and I got reminded of how we were never quite the same after my car accident on your birthday
You suffered my scars with me
But every jab reality threw
The truth cut deeper;
That perhaps this whole time I was the cinder block that hugged your ankle tight
Down to the fathomless depths of an unfinished novel about fate

It's hard for me not to see the future when you're so ferociously in love with me
But we poets know how to stroke forever and dance on the edge of destruction
Sometimes i think we're tangled up in the lines we drew between us and I don't know how to set us free

Laughter does not visit us often as of late
Tears are starting to leave a permanent trail on your tender cheeks
But you know only pain replenishes my sinking ship, with tanks half full of empty hope and temperament I can only dream of, and I shall use it all to drive us forward

I wrote beautiful things about your eyes earlier today, like how they ooze light,
nonchalance and sadness at the same time.
Like how even after having lost one, I can still see our unborn children when I look into your eyes.
Sometimes your eyes make me think of how life is so much like a race,
to nowhere
And I'd rather be stuck in this moment with you
Now...here

I love you now and I'll still love you when you wake up many years from now
With snow on your hair and fog in your eyes and contours on your face
My mind is a forest of mischief and you were the little innocent girl playing with matches and now I burn ceaselessly just to keep you warm
my heart is a lone island of beautiful and endless discoveries and you're the explorer who landed on my shores
But no matter how dark, or how bright my reckoning; my adventures
The one constant thing, is you

i broke
myself
trying

to
fix you

I read that he lost a suitcase full of manuscripts on a
train and that they never were recovered.
I can't match the agony of this
but the other night I wrote a 3-page poem
upon this computer
and through my lack of diligence and
practice
and by playing around with commands
on the menu
I somehow managed to erase the poem
forever.
believe me, such a thing is difficult to do
even for a novice
but I somehow managed to do
it.

now I don't think this 3-pager was immor-
tal
but there were some crazy wild lines,
now gone forever.
it bothers more than a touch, it's some-
thing like knocking over a good bottle of
wine.

and writing about it hardly makes a good
poem.
still, I thought somehow you'd like to
know?

if not, at least you've read this far
and there could be better work
down the line.

let's hope so, for your sake
and
mine.

she calls me
she calls me & I don't answer
she calls to say her grandma
is failing fast & the twins
aren't sleeping & they're angry

come on over I say
I only have two calloused hands
& a sixty hour work week
bony feet & a bottle of
chocolate wine & I ask if she's ever
slept four on a full sized mattress

the boys will be fine I say
bring both elmos
a set of pastel paints
& you can run your fuzzy-sock feet
up my legs & warm your small hands
on my space heater heartbeat

grandma will see good Friday
& easter sunday I say
& probably even her own
late April birthday
barely audible as the boys snore
like miniature sawmills
through peppermint toothpaste
ringed open mouths

the last thing I feel before sleep
is her smile stretching across my
bare chest & her hands catch fire
& wander toward a cooler spot of skin

I almost wrote a poem
saying it would be
the last one
I ever write for you.
                   I almost meant it.
But I reside in a forest of words
I long to lay upon your feet.
You are the only tenant.
Though I have already seen you hunger
for a wood more abundant with beauty.
You yearned
for the abstract; the colorful.
This is where I failed you, love,
for all I have to offer
is the pattern of my handwriting
against a bleak sheet of paper.
How is that to contest
a canvas
that turns heads
with its baby pinks and powder blues?
So I lay here
in the woods
that swarm with lost things,
longing to see the sun again.
And I am always reaching
      and reaching
             and reach i n g
But I am never quite there.
I lay still in the forest
with an abundance of almosts.

Sometimes,
bravery
can be
as simple
as deciding
to love
again.

I would leave in the morning
And you would follow me a while later
We would keep quiet to keep it a secret
No one needs to know about you and I
And we would take the train
Going to someplace you love
On the train, our fingers found their way
Into each other amidst the crowd