my hometown waits for me
like a lover
on the wrong side of a passing train window.

ill be back
but i wont be the same.

and we'll both be disappointed
in each other.

you are all infinite
you, my children of the night
pagan wanderers on destinies lips
patrons of the streets, lonely, empty, wanting
I seen a generation fall
I seen a generation crumble
and be reborn.
You my midnight sorcerers on deaths hitlist
listless and searching
I seen the dance of a power divide
Ego denied, angry id, broken steps
steps
steps
steps
we walk steps in the open,
we talked talks of confession to the night
it held us, comforted us
We the unwanted zombies
of unheard promises and dysfunctional rational
you are all beautiful
undaunted by the lines
the crooked lines, cut mishapen, disater mishappen
Cheers to my world, my surrounding reality
scared and scarred by tomorrow
tomorrow
tomorrow
tomorrow
My vagabond lies, my homeless truths
You, my enormous, analytical algorythms of disobedience
of disorder, of chaos
Musicians playing perpetual reqiuems
Jazz of the dead, jazz of the wanderer, jazz of the beautiful
Show your hand, yell your claim
stake your play.
concrete mazes, blinding buildings, urban solitute
I have found you, I have seen you,
you poets of denial, poets of disaster
Prose of temptation
Words of lament
Speak to me my children of the perpetual night
My children of music, of poetry, of paintings telling me the broken down minds, the sacrificed
economy of love
I am lost in these streets
I am at home in the unknown
I am nothing but a dream, denied
We are together
all together, here, here and now
Lost together
Crowded solitude
Lets be solidified as one
You, my children are emptied of being full
full of unknown, full of yourselves and filled with *****
Drunken stories of lullabies lost
Pour me another, make it a double. doubled down truth
hit me
Cigarette stained finger tips
Plucked tense strings,
Strings so tense you could feel their vibration
We sit, listening, ears pointed at God,
Waiting to be lulled into compliance
I have seen your cigarette stained
Finger tips
Pluck strings of lament and prophecy
Sing me into your future
Oh beautiful melody
Oh wandering progressions
Telling tales of my transgressions
Oh trusty chords
Lovers speak only lies,
With cigarette gently sleeping between exhausted lips
Let us lie here
Here in this desolate desert moonscape
Forlorn homeless shelter
New antiqued flashood of home
I have seen us staring
Staring into the void,
Into the fullness of emptiness
These are not just dreams
Fevered and sweating out the ingested fungus
They are the dystopian dreams of
Every young adult novel
Of every science fiction, battered, back pocket edition
Dog eared, notes in the margins, yellowed with love, book.
They are the lost bibles of us,
Of our current histories and our future stories.
My friends
Gathered, exuberant, broken and shattered
Passing time on the the stools of inebriation
Come forth and be counted
The artist hang burnt offering from crimson skies
Sacrifices of the soul
Sacrifices of humanity
Exercises of humility
Stand here before me and and be chastised
A public flogging, a private shaming
A social satired informal gathering
Gaining peer reviewed synthetically blended praise
The dab hazed hipsters
Losing time,
faking time,
Cutting lines, sparking fires inside
Burn
Burn
Burn
Lose me in the iridescent, fill me in with acrylic
Wash me out with acid and cry-
Cry over me, cry with me
I am nothing, and we are everything.

Hello, my dear friend.
We meet once again;
a unique sting of longing
do you never fail to produce in me.

St Leonard's red monolith
stands atop Church Street Hill;
ever a friendly face before night's backdrop,
oddly menacing in the artificial light.

The two churches rise as we approach,
over the bridge which begot your name.
St Mary's stares longingly towards the other;
St Leonard's stands warden looking ahead.

We swing past The George;
those same folk are ever making merry.
Though their hair ever greys and thins,
the same can't be said of their love of mirth and ale.

Up Squirrel Bank; it feels steeper each time.
The Bell and Talbot has changed hands so often,
its once merry hall now sits doubtingly,
sheltering a few with stories of their own.

I'm back in my home; the silence is deafening.
The hearth is cool, no-one is in;
a chilling reminder of days gone by,
before we grew elder, seeking thrill far from your eye's reach.

I've breathed in the freshness of your fields;
I've felt your soil upon my face,
your water up to my knees,
and your birdsong in my ears.

I know not how many more years you will be 'home',
but by name or by heart, you always will be.
I've seen your warts and all of your sorrows,
but you, sweet Bridgnorth, will I always love.

South Florida
if you were a body part,
you’d be an armpit.

You’d be a bulged vein
on the side of a forehead
forever locked in a scowl
behind sunglasses.

You speak the language of horns
middle name, finger
blood type, combustible

You're a melting ***
that's boiled over the lid
sweating salt water at the brows
eyes red as the brake lights
in the maddening brightness,
you’re torrential daylight
heating nerves like greenhouse gasses
waiting for a reason to explode.

You’re a tropical motilov cocktail
no one can afford
2 parts anger, 1 part stupidity
full of yourself in a souvenir glass with a toothpick umbrella
You're all image

You’re all talk: the curse words
breaking out the mouths
of the angry line mob at Starbucks in the morning
You’re the indifferent silence
in the arena at the Heat games leaving early,
showing up late
due to the distance
from Brickell to Hialeah,
West Palm to Pompano
the gap between the entitled and the under-paid
a skyline of condos in a third world country
You’ve always been foreign to me.

You’re winterless, no chill
you attract only hurricanes
and tourists,
shoving anything that isn’t profitable
out of the way like post-storm debris
into the backyards of the Liberty City projects,
onto a landfill off the side of the Turnpike
Hide it beneath Bermuda grass,
line it with palm trees
if only conceal your cold blooded nature:
I see you.
You are overrun with iguanas,
blood-******* mosquitos
hot-headed New York drivers
not afraid to get hit

You get yours, Soflo
and you'll go as low
as the flat roofs of your duplexes
and the wages that can barely pay the rent to get it
latitude as attitude
temper as temperature
if you were a body part
I swear you’re an *******

south of the brain, one hour
in all directions,
I’d find you.
You’d impose your way
onto my flight to the Philippines,
to Seattle, to Raleigh
You’d follow me like excess baggage,
like gravity,
bringing me back when asked where I'm from:

That area north of Miami, I’d say
(the suburbs, but whatever, we are hard in our own way)
I'd show you off on their map
like some badge of grit,
certificate of aggression
I know how to break a sweat
walk brisk, drive evasive
ride storms in my sleep
I know you, I’d say,
“He’s a friend of mine.”
and I’d watch them light up
and remember
the postcards you've sent them
of the sunrise,
welcoming brown immigrants
onto white sand beaches
You were foreign to us
yet raised us as your own
in the furnace of your summers
iron on iron, the forger striking
softness into swords
built for survival
I'm made of you

my South Floridian temper
cools down
in your ocean breeze

if you were a body part,
you'd be a part of me
a socked foot in an And1 sandal
pressed to the gas pedal
as my drive takes me north
of your borders, far from home

I see you
in the rear view mirror,
tail-gating
like a sports car on the exit ramp
the color of the sun.

Hell draws closer and closer
While the sun rains on the unsuspecting
With this asphyxiation,
the sweat beads
The world I was born in, filters out the weak

UV beams on all the eyes can see
Its immoral waters, it's continuity
No condolences given for those who can't handle the steam
This is the sunshine State, the land of selfish means
And unforgiving gleam.

Houses held up like puppets.
Pylon-wire branches spread out;
assuring the land wont drift far out to sea,
or melt into the earth with subsidence.

Cotton-wool-candy-floss caught up in cranes,
wind-whipped, white-wash, wispy, whippy clouds.

Do you remember when we waited in line for 99s?
The sky was busy with boats, the sea so blue. No, I mean...
And I had strawberry syrup dripping down my cone
and a multi-coloured sticky chin.
We watched the boats going out, coming in;
then we joined the rest to say goodbyes.

        All the hands were wagging; electric flapping.
        Water splashing up against the dock.
        The arms propelled the ship.
        Gemmed fingers dancing farewells;
        the jangle of bangled wrists;
        waving in the air, propelling the ship away
            to retirement paradises,
                          honeymoon bliss,
                                         champagne seascapes.

Always in the middle this place,
on the edge of a million-gazillion other worlds.

The rumble rattle of engines as I walk along
to look out at the reeds; on search for quiet idleness.
Leaves rustle, tickled by the breeze.
A train passes in-between;
                   on its way, on its way...
I sit on a bench nearby and hear a hum of life amongst the hedges.

Then,
walk back
with orange light bouncing in and out
of windows' winking eyes;
watching the chalk line,
aeroplane trails in the sky
cut through the blue.

We are always trying to get away
The Winter is dark, and cold, and im terrified
because I might get bad again
I would move far away
Somewhere warm

When we grow up,
We grow out of hometown angst
you made me find the beauty in Winter
The beauty in such a familiar place
Memory
Family
The places where we were happy
Why are we always trying to get away

You came back and you said
“I forget how much I miss this place”
“I forget how much I miss you”
You bought a my Chemical Romance album on vinyl
It’s comforting to know you still have as much angst as I do

We climb to the top of the parking garage the last time that year
Alice is gone
Off-white paint replaces her face
I still lock arms with you like I use to
It’s cold
But its beautiful
You hold my face in your hands
I look away to see our entire world encased in ice and orange lights
You sometimes feel like coming home
Like my hometown

It’s early
I saw the footprints in the snow and remember years ago
seeing footprints in the sand and realizing the people who left them had their own thoughts and feeling
The fresh snow glistens and I suddenly found beautiful
The wind took my breath away
Not figuratively
literally
I can’t breathe
Why don’t I have a ******* scarf

We have unfinished business
At 3:35 in the morning you texted me
“I guess we could kiss again”
You’re like my hometown
When I look at you
I see cold nights in your car
Hands somehow finding each other in the dark when we aren’t looking
The pier
Cutting my foot at the lake, you kept telling me DON’T LOOK DOWN IT’S NOT BLEEDING THAT BAD
it was.
you bought me ice cream after

You’re like my hometown
you’re memory
Family
The one that made me happy
Why are we always trying to leave

You bought another My Chemical Romance album on vinyl
And you wrote a song about a girl with pink hair
and someone you called a “rambunctious ****”
You have so much angst
but so do i
I miss you.