it's funny when you think about it:

of all the wasted words spilled between the two of us
and all the pens i used up,
     in scribbles by my bedside,
and all the keys i tapped,
     in a maniacal panic during sleepless nights,
and all the phrases and sentences and paragraphs spent
trying to capture her and her mind on paper,

the last words I ever read by her,
a short story written for a class I took many years before her,
were really, really awful.

thought i was ok.

then that picture came up—
the one of you smirking
with your brow slightly notched.
and i remember
that time we sat on that hammock
and talked about life,
and kissed on the roof,
and ****** in your bed,
and we looked at each other,
and you gave me that smirk.

after i finish beating myself
up I remember
that time we sat on your bed
and you said "affection shuts me down"
and i rubbed your head
and i said goodbye–
i checked my phone
to see if you had made a mistake;
to call me back
to talk to you,
to kiss you,
to *******.
the screen just smirked back.

I stood
vastly alone in the center of a massive torrent of people and chewing-gum-stained walkways.
I looked
up at the red brick behemoths with metallic teeth dripping freon-compressed drool onto unsuspecting charlatans.
I wondered
what life was like in this storm before their gentle hum breathed life into each apartment, all while the sun scorched the windows.

the ceiling above me is an egg shell white.
i know this because i painted it.

at night,
thanks to the glow of my twenty-first-century typewriter,
it is gray.

but not the ghastly gray of a winter's sky––
not the reminding gray of an old man's hair––
the gray of charcoal from a pencil that writes too faintly.
faint enough that you squint to force it out against the pure white behind it and the blue line below it.
and when it appears to you, formed and shaped and sounded out,
it tells you everything you needed to hear.

shouting is usually the first thought
-- A fit of wonton rage at your inexplicable beauty and charm that my fragile feeble and all together fickle mind can't contain.
But I step back.

That's insane.

So I admire.
From afar.

Because that's easier, after all.

"totally one with nature."
she typed into her iPhone.

it hit me sometime later that graduation is life's greatest metaphor.

you show up early confused about where to go
you stand in a line that you're not sure you belong in
you march, following your peers, hoping you're going the right way
you fill out a form so someone older than you can correctly pronounce your name
you sit around and listen to adults talk, but you don't really pay too much attention
your name is called, a few people clap
then it's over.  

and you stand outside and ask:

"what now?"

i think its weird
the cacophony and the swirling
bodies that ritualistically
converse and bend.
almost as if they were taught it.

i asked a friend,
who had been there a few times before,
what was it like.

he told me,
like everywhere you will ever go
it has its ups and downs.

summer there, of course, is the best.
unabashed, careless frolicking
days at the beach and sipping ****** beer.

but winter, too, is beautiful,
cozying next to a warm fire
with whiskey and hot mug of cocoa.

the road there is bumpy
but once you get there it's mostly smooth sailing.
'cept for that rough patch in the middle of the town.

finally I asked him,
how do I know when I'm there?

and he let out a sigh that lasted a little too long,
and he looked me dead in the eye,
and he said,
     when it's gone.

mommas don't dream their sons grow up to be writers.
but when you see the beauty in the trees in letters and words
time doesn't pass in seconds or years,
speech is with purpose, life becomes narrated.

i saw the most mediocre minds of my generation never pick up a pencil, brains hysterically naked.

mommas don't dream their sons grow up to be writers.
     they wake up eventually.

the cold vein of IV brushes my face
it awakens me to my father's tippity-tap to his workers far away
the muted news channel on the screen by my shaved head
that shows the face of the most hated man, now dead.

i understand now that doctors are not soulless.
though they may talk too much
    and are as funny as moss.
'cuz when he asked if there was anything else bothering me,
    he looked for an extra second.

We learned about Sonnets today.
The Italian, Spenserian, and the English –
Sing-songy, loving and full of word play.
Sometimes I pine to myself and wish
I could write a wondrous poem for all to read.
Unfortunately, it is just not the case.
The lines come to me at a tortoise’s speed.
I scribble, I stumble, I omit and erase.

A rough draft emerges, hated and wrong.
The rhymes are average, the meter is off.
The whole thing sounds like a bad 80’s song.
If you were to read it – you’d scoff.

So I ask the question that poem was supposed to state:
Will you be my Semi-Formal date?

smoke plumes from my core,
morphing in the daytime gray
that is synonymous with
unpleasant thought and being.

burning from the center out,
laying down, letting the fire
rage from the dark to the light,
the soul to the physical world.

a rotten stench flies from me
which alerts those around
to the dying person
that lays in front of them

still, with nostrils flared,
they stop, say “Hi”,
follow with a smile and a wave,
continue trotting along.

“our fathers were better men.”
the thought drifted away like the smoke from my mouth.
i wondered if my father had thought the same thing --
and his father before him.

that’s when it scared me.
someday my son will be sitting, smoking a cigarette --
just like his father told him never to do -- thinking:
“my father was a better man.”