I miss the excitement of liquor
The bite before the burn
Before the heat
Echoing up from my core
Like the refrain of a cannon's fire.
I miss the tiny suns in my cheeks
and the need to love and be loved
As the magic swam through my veins.
I miss the thickness of words
The gentle barrier between thought and speech
That made it impossible for me to tell him
That his eyes were like Spanish moss
And he smelled like the Northern wind.

I want the jagged forest line
Against the setting sun;
The smear of black across the sky
Where night had just begun.

I miss the way the silhouettes
Of Trees did frame that sky,
The inky way it scrawled across
The blue in craggy lines.

I want the silver moonlight tipping
The horizon-line
To glaze the earth in black and white
And cloak the looming pines.

I miss the sprawling milky way
That luminescent stream
That cut across the onyx sky
Within the starry sea.

I may never walk anything more the same as him
In converse shoes slapping campus pavement,
Than taking down miles in memories
And mulling over trite bereavements.

If all we have left is muscle memory
Where summer grass stroked skin like hesitant fingers
Then I'll sink into autumn leaves
And worry my lip where the impressions linger.

I've tasted Infinity
Acrid on the back of my throat,
Twisting my tongue around the periphery
Of what was both forever and fleeting.

I've dined on the Divine-
A place between The Nether and Earth
Where the smallest of deaths brings
The biggest of discovery-
Sending me crashing
One way or the other.

I've slept with Reality
Felt him slip, cold and hard
Into a place that will remain forever
Desecrated with truth and injustice;
Felt ****** beyond belief.

I've grappled with time
Shoving against a pervasive advance
That colors the way I see
The new line from things I've
Done and said
Built and Broken.

I've breathed and walked
The routes of monster and man
Knowing naught between the taste of blood and chocolate on my tongue.
Savoring both with bitter abandon.
Yet somehow-
My feet continue.
The day dawns.

I've persisted.

I will love you through
Bump and scrape,
Play and study,
Onward over each
Bite and kiss.

I will love you through
Innocence,
Through sweating hands and
Hopeful eyes,
Through long baby hair that
Hid our faces;
Kept our secrets.

I will love you through
Each forgone bedtime
Through this speaker that
Kept us in the same room-
Long after bells sent us
Our separate ways.

I will love you through
Needless others,
Through the ones that mattered
And the ones that don't,
Long after each
Hello and Goodbye

I will love you as I wave goodbye
As you stay behind, skim the other
Side of the delta where we
Came up through adolescence.

I will love you as you hide
The truth, the gentle ecstasy of
Pill shaped promises to
Forget, to leave.
I will love you past each
Untouched phone call
Each slanted gaze,
Each gentle sidestep.

I will love you even as
You choose goodbye
Never knowing I would have
Chosen you, given the chance.
I will love you past the silver fire in your veins
Past the blue-tinged lips
The sightless eyes.

When the love has no where to go
When you are gone
When I am here.
I will love you
Still.

It's not the end of everything
Just of what was left
And how to salvage nothing when
You walked out with the rest.

It was only one chance left
To shape the words with baited breath
And yet what slipped past gritted teeth
Plagues my waking memories.




I'm not the type to barter,
To plead for what's not mine.
But I would trade my everything
For just a touch of time.

"Don't stop dreaming" crooned a voice in my ear
But dreaming re-enforces fear
Slumber comes and shreds my thoughts
Subconscious wars are brought and wrought.

Inside my skull holds evidence of
Bruised purples and nightmare reds
Sleep shreds my mind between its teeth
And wretches it across; bequeath

Across the walls, across the room
Across the shadows, through the gloom

I kept the crescent in the sky
And held what was in both my eyes-
Swallowed back that last goodbye,
And focused where the sun would rise.

Leave me please.
Leave me in this last way.
Remove every shard-
Even the ones that will bleed me,
Leave me gasping like the wake of a severed limb.
Take the parts of you that are no longer Distinguishable from the parts of me,
So I might heal around the edges
Or unravel one last time.

Unclasp your fingers
Your clenched fists
And know the release of
Giving in

Let him drift away
Let the ocean stand between you
As a testament
To the vast expanse
That exists there now.

Stop fighting the waves.
Stop braving the icy waters
Arm over arm
To reach him on the other side.

The water will always win.
And you never were much of a swimmer.
He's just a distant island now
Shrouded in fog
Somewhere over the horizon.

Rest now,
The fight is over.
Your mangled, frantic heart
Can slow
And begin another tempo
When it's no longer bleeding over
An unreachable coastline.

Broken thing, little bird
Still your wings and heed my word
There's always time to fly again
So take a rest my weary friend.

Feel the wind rush through the leaves
Sway gently on the summer breeze
Slow your breath and end your song
My little bird, the day is long.

Oh, baby bird, my little crow
I love you more than you could know
Sleep sweetly, softly, precious one
The night has come, the day is done.

For months I dreamed, (or so it seemed)
That I had lost Orion.
Eyes to the skies on summer nights,
Across the dark horizon.
I raked the skies, the hidden lines
To find that midnight archer.
And yet the stars, silent and far-
Did seem to grow much darker.

This racking need forged at my core
Lives and breathes to want for more
It peers between my bone and flesh
From wall to wall, it's fingers press.

The gnashing, chewing, rending pain
That bows my body up in twain
Seeks the surface, yearns to breathe
I stamp it down inside of me.

Child, monster, cursed thing
Precious, putrid, close to me.
In clips and phrases, peer on through
The world will see a glimpse of you

If I was a mountain

That soared towards the sky,

With craggy snow caps

And stormy grey eyes-



Then you'd be the clouds

That swaddled my peak,

That silenced my thunder

When I tried to speak.



If I was the earth

The desert, in fact:

With arid dry soil

And mud, baked and cracked-



You'd be the rain

The downpour that soothed;

The balm to my bruises,

Relief to my wounds.



If I was the Moon

In the indigo night,

With stars as my blanket

And silver; my light-



Well you'd be the Sun

Just always behind

That lent me your glow

And caused me to shine.

I said I'd wait a thousand years
A thousand years I've waited
The fragile seeds of hope I've hewn
Have blossomed forth-
And faded.

The span of time, the falling sand
That journeys down the glass
Has shivered down to rest against
The last wish of the past

Words I've writ of you by night
Have lightened now by day
Would that I could read them now
I'd not hear what they say.

Truthfully, the beauty of a newly conjured flame
Undeniably must end
When met with winter rain.

Down where the water sprawls to touch,
The banks of where the wraiths of us
Cling beneath the half-mast moon
My memories must not exhume-

The path of fingers, hair and skin
Where one touch ends and one begins.
Or how the words, too high a cost
Curled in the wind- forever lost.

Four years
And the acrid proof still swells,
Drags down my face when I recall
The sweetness before the end.

Even angry
Hot metal hatred ready to
Scour a path to him
Something stronger finished first
Lept back and forth to show that
Words meant nothing in the face of
This.

I've worn a cranial path-
So trodden in the search for
How things go on between Two
When one ceases existing.

The why is evident,
The how has fallen to negation.

I dreamt before it happened,

It happened before I dreamt.

It ended before it could begin;

Began there at the end.

The past yearned for the future,

The future for the past;

But nothing comes from everything,

And everything never lasts.

In the wake of what happened
Sleep beckons me
With half-truthful promises
Of whom I may see.

Half frightened, I’ve spent
Minutes… and days
Fighting the slumber
That takes me away.

Half wanting and wishing,
I let shut my eyes
And pray for the darkness
Of my paradise.

Where you walk beside me
Whole and unscathed
And say through those lips
“I could not be saved.”

Yet stand here before me
With eyes like the sea
Tangible, touchable
And right next to me.

So how can I move on
Or even forget
When dreaming of you is
The last thing I get?

One for one
To equal another
When one's snubbed out,
What comes of the other?
I've done the math
Enough to know
That one minus one
Leaves one a zero.
One half an the other,
A one and one pair
When one splinters off
Then one's beyond repair.

Nobody's enough, no body with me
Nobody loves no one/ No body loves me.

Bring to me infinity
From where it dwells in lore
Or return with empty, wounded hands
And speak of it no more.
For if we are eternity
As one, when brought together
Why then do our faulty lips
Find pause upon "forever?"

Halfway through the journey
Winter came to stay
The ones I met along my path
Chased the cold away

Memories of twisting
Beneath the starry sky
Kept the wind from swirling in
And pulled my spirits high.

Once I was a singer,
Though po-ems tinged my dreams.
The journey saw an end to that
And waking- raced from me.

Shattering and scattered
Like stars across the skies
Out of reach and far away;
I wished on while I tried.

I never really minded though
Or mourned the goals I lost
For losing each and everything
Was freedom's exact cost.

Explaining this to others
Was pointless to me though
For how can others understand
The open road's my home?

I'd seen the seam of wet and dry
Of Salt and Sea, of Earth and Sky
Yet, once upon a yesteryear
When five was close, and ten was near-

The navy stretch front side to side
Spanned far beyond where eyes could spy-
And all at once it rushed to me,
That first breath of eternity.

Then- at ten I once again
Meet the ocean, only when
A set of eyes cast down on low
Wandered up from down below.

And all at once home was here
A feeling that would persevere
With each footstep, my stride would swallow
The Ocean's path was mine to follow.

Here I am, I'm breathless
And you, you're just the same.
My recollections failed to serve you
Justice once again.

The sight of you has chased away
The numbness of my limbs.
My beacon cheeks are fire bright;
My widened eyes; a-swim.

And everything is rushing back
And hanging on my lips,
Unspoken words that surge and rush
Like blood to fingertips.

I wish my eyes were ocean tides
That rose over and crashed,
So I could saturate your core
And make my presence last.

Oh, that those waves could draw you out
And pluck your from the shore
I'd carry you away with me
To where we were before.



*Original, Unrhymed Notes

Here I am, and I'm breathless
And you're just as I remember you
The sight of you has chased away the cold
And I'm a beacon, all flushed cheeks
And wide eyes
My coltish knees locking
And suddenly I cannot make the words
That will carry be across this
Invisible ocean
Break across you like an
all-consuming wave.

Twist my gaze to the side
Through the copper-and chocolate curtain of my hair
Through the sea of faces
And one amongst hundreds
I could pluck you, like the ripest apple
From the lowest branch.

And in this ocean of bobbing heads
Of flapping lips and empty eyes
I'm just floating
Just alone, drifting
Hoping you'll throw me an emerald glance
A lingering lifeline
To reel me in from this
Crowded loneliness.

It was like removing an arm
Severing flesh and bone,
Sawing down through ligament
Until the muscles shown.

I felt the weakness pull me down;
A riptide of lost blood.
Swirling in the undertow,
Yet hiding from the flood.

Alone, the other arm groped
The space its twin had been,
Fingers only closed on air
Around the phantom limb.

Gone and yet still here with me
In everything I do.
Feel as though it never left
Though in my heart, I knew.

And though this piece, this part of me
Is never coming back
I feel it still, so tangibly
As I stay the track.

I live my life in metaphors,
In memories- and muse
Of different ways I can preserve
The echoes left of you.

In me, you are quiet now,
The silence in the snow.
if only I could keep you there
So flowers could not grow.

Within the rain, the silent song
The gentle beat, the soothing thrum,
I close my eyes to drift away
To find some peace, I cannot stay.
Sweetness and soft, through dreams I stray
In soft grey tones, the cloudy day.

Read me, Hear me.
I am existing somewhere
Strewn between each letter that
Your eyes caress.
I'm mingling with the meaning
I've chosen to impart
With riddles, with metaphors,
With everything but
The truth.

I'm tangible.
Whisper my writing and know
That I am a scrawled sentence
Of desperation;
A Vagrant, caught wandering
In the downpour
Without the language
To capture the way
The rain smells, or the wind tastes
Or the earth sounds.

Oh read, and know
That I am crying out
Along each line to the seraph
Of a letter that I've struggled with
To grant a modicum
Of the nonsense left in my heart.
I've cried out
Thousands of words;
Screamed them until they furrowed
In paper, in computer screens
Into the faces of hapless lovers
To no such avail.

At the end of the day, read and know
That my writing is as futile
As loving a dead man,
An errant, wandering heart,
And a depth-less, angry river.

It's Novocaine, in a way
Slathered over my brain
In a chemical cocktail
That's supposed to keep my mind
From the endless cycle of self imposed
Punishment.
There's no On or Off
And therein's the problem
Capping off something
With no particular filter.

To clarify, I'm a bit all or nothing,
And the promise of peace they gave me
Also implied artistry of my thoughts;
The conversely sharp and wonderful inner workings
That once gushed forward effortlessly
Are locked up inside in the plugged up
Pool of sludge.

What a paintbrush they have these days,
Drenching things in black and white;
I see the logic in settling, to gripping these little oval promises
Of a better life for sanity.
This cold clarity enables me to remember
What once was with a measured calculation
Of the good weighed against the bad.

Grey is a foreign object after my descent into the Matrix
Red pill, Blue pill,
I finally understand Cipher.
Somethings are better left unknown
Sometimes ignorance IS bliss.

I sought to forget one
Where others slept
Six feet below
Pristine lawns
And glistening headstones
That winked cheerfully
In the summer sun.
The gravestones were like stately soldiers
All in a line, the young like a mirror
And the old, stooped like the elderly
Telling the story of many rains, many storms
And many moons.
Their tales would momentarily
Fill my ears
My mind's desperate eye
To block a face
That still dwelt amongst the breathing.
A face whose significance
Needed to die
For me to continue leaving.

I remembered the other
Somewhere deep,
Leaning like an old painting
Against the inner curve of my skull.
That precious work of art
Filled my thoughts
While my feet dragged down
Countless miles
Dirt roads
Hot asphalt
And trodden trails.
There in my head,
The lost one,
The keeper of eyes like the sea
Existed only where my memories roamed.
He was not telling stories with the others
Six feet under
Nor did he pace amongst the masses
Wandering as I do...
He existed in the wind
In the air I tread through
In my desperate attempt
To have somewhere to visit.

Remembering to forget.
Forgetting to remember.