It feels like there isn't anything left for me,
maybe there never was,
but I have this biological imperative
to cling to the wreckage.
Oh, maybe there never was,
I was just born a few seconds too late
and everything has been off since then.
The real me is in a different present,
the one where we all belong,
and I am just one of the I's that must theoretically exist,
filling up the temporal expansion of the multiverse
with tragic nonsense
and blunders.
Cut off by the on-coming traffic of better times,
they won't let me merge in,
though I keep trying to get up to speed,
like I could get there, but then the lane ends-
cut off.
Cut off from everything that is truly bathed in the light,
saturated in color, clear in tone, just a little closer to the truth-
just close enough.
And, here, the stars are just holes in the lid of my jar,
and the ocean is just god's tears over his failed creation,
and the mountains are just the teeth that can never bite down,
and
and
yeh, maybe I wasn't meant for the real show,
I was meant for putting the saddest song I know on repeat,
and writing
this
****.

Conspire literally means
"breathe together",
like when a group is in a guided meditation.
"Now let the thought float away
like a bubble underwater.
Now do it with the next thought."
Or like when we lay together,
we synchronize our breaths
to be closer than we already are.
Or when we sing along at a concert,
we conspire.
We gathered at the hospital.
They took out your breathing tube,
and you breathed your last breath,
and I walked out into the rain,
and smoked a cigarette
alone.

Starlight inspires
a warmth within me,
ancestral and familiar.
It's feels like a question,
that's not.
So,
suppose
you were.
My rib-cage is the haunt for this
wonder,
and my spirit is pulling from my body.
Where do you go, spirit?
If that is your real name-
what becomes?
I believe in those I love,
I can't help it.
There are others
that will believe in me,
I won't stop them.
But do I have the assurance to believe in myself?
Well, maybe you could tell me.
Maybe, by token of believing in you,
you would believe in me, for me.
We could make that deal,
if you came to my table-
the stars are so far away-
but you wouldn't, would you?
I just have to wonder,
like a child with no one to answer their questions
-makes me feel so trivial
in the face of the stars
so out-of-reach,
so mysterious,
so long-gone:
like you.
I want you to be real.
And somehow I whisper to the
unbelievable sky
"Give me a sign."

I walk towards you.
Though I never want us to meet,
everywhere I go, I go towards you.
Though we are at odds,
we are meant for each other.
You
are my destination,
my North.
But what
am I
to you?
I wish I knew.

I hear the Gods' creaking words
in my pillow every night,
and I make them my impression
of you, and what I think you would
want to say to me.
Maybe you are their voice,
maybe they are your voice
maybe I am your voice,
maybe you are my voice-
maybe it's just me.
I know, in a way, it is just me.
I roll over, and whisper that I am doing so,
so you can follow me to my other cheek,
even though that's dumb.
The rustle comes up to meet me
"Are ... you ... okay?"
A question I want to hear,
but don't want to answer.
"Secret...", my pillow crackles.
Makes sense, if I think on it.
Maybe it is just me,
and what I would say.
"Excuse..."
Sounds like what I would say,
though I don't know why.
Maybe you're why.
I know, in many ways, you are why.
I roll onto my back, with no warning,
to examine my ceiling.
"I love you", I project from my mind
and into the air.
"Sorry..." the ceiling fan hums back.
I feel the familiar tingle in my nose
of tears that won't be born,
and it turns into a yawn,
which I stifle in resentment.
I deserve to cry, I deserve that much.
Or maybe I get what I deserve, I don't know.
Actually, in a way, I do know.
I know that that's just the way things happen,
I know you are my reason,
I know that I am all I will ever have.
I know
you are why
it's just me.

I want to show you.
My works may not be holy,
but I don't want them to be,
I want them to fit easy in your hand.
There is honor in finding your own truth.
I want to speak it.
I want to write it down
and hide it in a library,
so that you might borrow
my truth in the usual way.
What do you think?
Maybe this word here.
Let me tell you something?
If you build up what you bet
when you first saw it
you would be great by
anyone's standards,
but you would be worried tired.
Be that as it may,
if you must break, and most do,
drink deep from the source,
and it might prove to you
that if you aren't afraid to die,
you shouldn't be afraid to live.

An affecting caress of a hanging branch
thinks of you.
Dancing lights in the blue of sky
know your heart.
More than touch.
More than sight.
Worlds apart.