This is a very shortened version of the book introduction (my first oh geez) that I am working on. It's a concept collection based on the moments and people in our life that we often forget or overlook, though these moments create large impact on ourselves as people. We often find ourselves passing hundreds of people who's lives we will never touch. The strangers that allow us in for a short period of time are the people that touch our lives in unimaginable ways.


Do you remember the stranger who you fell in love with on the plane? How your entire life was built in seconds, painted with only the colors in the eyes of a beautiful stranger?
Do you remember the man on the plane that told you everything and listened while your dreams unfurled, so far away from the world that you truly believed in them?
I have always found memory funny. I find the faces of people in the bottoms of bottles or the bass line of an old song. We often forget that their are people who we love so temporarily that we only see flashes of them when our lives are the most human. When we are sitting in a nostalgic playground, or we lay in the dark, believing we can stare at the stars forever.


We are often wrapped up in the idea of someone loving us eternally. Humans are obsessed with the idea of people holding us for the rest of our lives because it is scary to think somebody cannot contain our chaos for more than several minutes. People often overlook the instances in life that are filled with emotion from a stranger.
Our lives are collections.
Collections of so many words that we’ve forgotten and people who’s faces we can’t recall anymore because we’ve only known them briefly. We are all just instances that have led to the person you are today. I hope you have remembered all of the wonderful strangers that have created you. If you don’t, write them down. Keep a collection of the people that you have loved with your all in just a simple moment. Write out your memories and hold them dearly.
These are my strangers.
Maybe it was you. Maybe, to you, I was them. Here’s to you, here's to us, here’s to all the strangers I have ever loved.

I think the moments I feel most alone are within the first few hours of his departure.
The house filthy scattered with the whirlwind of our being
The smell of him lingering in my bed
The feeling of his lips still on mine
The memory of his laugh bouncing around my mind
Those moments directly after feeling whole
After feeling the intensity of his presence
The silence is almost deafening
The vast emptiness left in his wake rocks me to my core

Silence
I'm so desperate to fill the room with noise
To destroy the silence
Music
TV
Running water
Anything to not feel the crushing weight of it all
Nothing touches it
Nothing cracks
I'm alone

I remember thinking it made you weak to regard someone the way I do him
To be surrounded by people and yet feel alone without him
To desperately count the day until I see him again
The way I pathetically wait on his response to inane questions
Wondering if his soul aches for mine, if he feels the way I do
In the end it doesn't matter if he feels exactly the way I do
I am whole with him

Love always presents with uncertainty, fragility, and a touch of modesty
The knowledge of fleeting love keeps you uncertain
The ending of other relationships reminds you of its fragility
The urge to protect your pride keeps you modest, afraid to boast
This is not love, its more
It is being complete
It is friendship
It is trust
It is us.

a series of quatrains*

Anchor’s bound for hell as it falls
Sadly I watch the fast rope slip
It is gone, I need a strong sip
From a sailor’s bottle, land calls

In a boat, earth and moon move you
these deceptive cargo ships hide
the stash of smugglers, I choose
To rock back and forth with the tide

Such fearless ships save lives at night
and daytime too but not for thanks
for it also ferries heartbreak
when lovers part on boarding planks

A message in a bottle lost
was found on a cold Cornish coast
The message read “darling please
know my love will swim across seas”

I daren’t live by sea much longer
Oh! what I’ve seen, fear gets stronger
with every lapping slurp I hear:
the drowned whispering in my ear

Once I fished in this bay of shells
My line was frayed from reeling sharks
A blue whale fought me three miles out
In his bowel I awoke at last

Boat or ship? For now ‘ships’ they fly
A rocking chair, without duty
They float, enchant, sink but don’t cry
shipwrecks are a thing of beauty

And after the storm the wind scatters
You take stock of how much of yourself you’ve lost  
Checking for new scars and bones rattled
Reeling from the shell shock
Picking up the now rearranged thesis of who you are
Dusting off your soul and it’s unrecognizable in the light
So you sit there in silence
Fathoming every reason you’re still alive
You dive a little deeper
Delving secrets from the mind
You can’t describe what you’re seeking
But it feels like paradise
An infinite calm but only out of the corner of your sight
Contact is imminent
But perhaps this isn’t the time
If not now then when?
It’s the same question presented to you at the eye
After you’ve splayed into everything you will see in ice and shadows
But as you are it stands for something out of reach
And then wind picks up again
As every storm is not without meaning

The moment
I stop writing
Or reading
Or singing
I fall so fast
Into the darkness

I do believe in God
Being the word

If you're
An angry young man
Going on 52
Hang
In a gang
With men in hoods
Off and on
Make them laugh
So you know
You're not
A grumpy old one
Just mad
Not bitter
And twisted

Whatever
    You
           Do!
Don't
    Stop
           Drinking!
Even if it means
That you'll stop for a minute
To wonder
It they still sell
That brand of shoe polish
That you like so much
Down at the supermarket
Or you curse
That you have to walk
To the gas station
On top of the hill
To get your fix
Cause you ******* it up
With the closer one
Ha ha
Alcoholic!

When you get older
You get wiser
But
You care
Less and less

And
Less and less
You seek
The company
Of others

Friends
Fade to gray
Family ties
Stretched or broken
Mostly gone
The world vanishes
Into a haze
Of endless repetition

If you're wiser
You keep a shotgun
In the hallway
And a 44 magnum
In the inner pocket
Of the coat
That served so well
For ten something years

If you're wiser
You have enemies
You didn't forget
You didn't forgive
They are ripe
They are ready
They're still young
They're not hardened
But too old
To start over.

You're tense
You're focused
You're sharp

Aromas of
Freshly grinded
Coffee beans
Fresh baked bagels
The first rays of light
Wipe away the fog
The last drops of dew
Not the smell of danger
Clear and
Very present

They're ripe
Take
Away
Everything they got
Teach them a lesson
Trash their lives
**** them
In "self defense"

A new grind
Kenyan
At the coffee shop
A rain of bullets
Put on a hat

Groom Training

Get up you tired old grumpy whimper!
And take the fracken elevator
If you have to
Down to the kitchen
And eat the breakfast
That people who have already been up
For three hours
Have made for you
If they can rise and shine
Day after day
Doesn't mean that you can
But they prove it's possible.
And probably with a lot less fuss
Shower, brush and focken shine!
It's the least you can do

Sometimes it takes
Some pretty harsh
Inner language
To get scruffy old oil tankers
Trying to navigate through an archipelago
Of any inevitably unknown future
to get moving.