A summernight in Mid-July
We'd talk and talk until my skin
Was covered in mosquito bites
I didn't mind, I let it sting

Those bites they kept me company
In the days you weren't around
I itched and scratched so angrily
They could stay forever on my account.

We wore our shoplifted morals
  on our very backs.
Shirts stained in lust and
  revelation plain.
Lost in odes to obscenity
and ****** light in boxcars
  to Ocean.

Fake wisdom chainsmoked
and chained up pressed
  to the radiator, burned.
Seventeen looked twentytwo
  and felt about a hundred
But danced like we were
young again in the ethereal
  glory of the night.
But the nights turned to
minutia as we packed
Luggage filled with memories
on an outbound train to
Adulthood and Adolescence
was left waiting for you
  by the tracks.

Trains trains trains
life and love gone flying
by at a mile a second
and the seconds are precious
and the miles are precious
and all the precious miles
and minutes still fly fly fly
speeding on train tracks
and we wave as friends become
blurred faces waving back
from portholes zipping
in opposite directions
and we becomes I and you
and I don’t quite know you anymore.


And this used to be beautiful:
  Writing gibberish on
our arms and legs
when we ran out of paper
sleepless nights pouring
forth beautiful poetry
and utter catastrophe
twinkle-eyed laughing .
  Driving streetcars through
Los Angeles to go get high
at the top of the world
and peal out when
the coyotes crash the party.
  Summernight shamblings
and skinny dipping
and kissing caressing
ashamed of nothing.
  Learning that peace
is only a word
until love breathes
life into its
lungs and that we could
breathe with each other
and breathe in each other

But our kindred fire
flickered and roared
only to flicker again.
sunken embers haunting
fingertips reaching,
but too far now to
ever touch again.
Charred and depleted,
flying in the tumult
of cyclone wind,
Memories stripped bare
and standing blasted by
the sands of time until
smooth and unrecognizable
they fade from our minds
Ashen shadows of smoke
from locomotive top-hats
chugging endlessly onward
to opposite stations.

                                                 10 October 201o

dreaming of drinking and grinding up smoke
laid-back and laughing while having a ****
summernight fireflies flash through my head
while i doze through delirium snug in my bed
with summer's lost loves and old friends gathered 'round
we play and we love as the stars settle down
the night sky above paints a portrait of grace
and we lie on our backs and we soar into space
we fly free, we are young, we have nothing to fear
and our latest new love whispers red in our ear
those words we've been waiting forever to hear
and we are back on the earth with our dearest held near
the world's just right now, in our favorite arms
as fingers trace skin, weaving delicate charms
to love and to lust in the grass under sky
open wide to the world and to gods passing by
we sing out our paeans to pleasure and loss
we have yet our whole lives still left to exhaust
and there's nothing for us in this world but our need
each for the other in word and in deed
we roll in the grass and we burn up our hearts
'til we're lost in each other and coming apart
one in the other we dance in our sins
and the juice of all summers drips sweet down our chins
awake in my bed, i was them, now i'm me
and that mythical summer i'm longing to see
now forever is gone, but these visions remain
of a dream of lost love sought forever in vain

I can’t live without you
You are the comfort I thrive for in everything that I do
The low hum in my ears I fall asleep to
Calming me like a constant tick I strive to keep you coursing through each vein of mine
You soothe my skin like a summernight rain
Washing clean the muddy cuts and grass stained pain
Bringing me closer to the moon hanging by a thread
Like a lighthouse illuminating the shore you alleviate my dread
And you bring me back home to my warm little bed
Your chest is the only place I’d want my head to rest
Without it I’d never sleep again, though I’d try my very best
But there will come a day and time when
all of that will be gone
And I will sit alone humming our song
Wishing you were there with me, singing along
Wondering where my peace and comfort went
No matter how many unrequited letters I sent
I suppose you didn’t understand what the words I wrote meant
You were nowhere to be found when I needed you the most
Abandoning me in anguish but then about yourself you’d boast
You left me alone pleading for guidance from the Holy Ghost
And even he ignored me
He wouldn’t give me a sign to see
Was this how it was meant to be?
I pace and pander
Through harsh thoughts I meander
Once your love, now simply a bystander
Yet I still wonder where my comfort went
Like all of a sudden my perfectly placid emotions were bent
Leaving no place for the bubbling steam to vent
There was nothing I could do to retrieve my companion
You dropped me off here to abandon
Scorching my heart like a *** of boiling water to place my hand in
Once on cloud nine
Instead on nails equally as long and precisely more fine
Oh why couldn’t the Holy Ghost give me a sign