The old man sat in the darkness
Taking in what he could see
He smiled, although slyly
And he leaned in close to me

He said the air is different
You can taste it here abouts
Listen close to what's around you
The air is different...there's no doubt

I didn't understand him
He spoke in concepts, not in words
He talked of feeling the emotions
Of people running 'round in herds

He said, I've been here sixty years now
Seen people come and people go
I used to be the barkeep
But, then that's something that you know

I've seen Elvis and The Beatles
Seen Presidents and Kings
I've seen hearts torn all asunder
And the pain that a war brings

I saw Kennedy on that TV
That, one behind your head
I watched him drive on straight through Dallas
And moments later he was dead

This place was just dead silent
On the day that that man died
And hand to god I'll tell you
I was all torn up inside

I saw soldiers in that Vietnam
Fighting for what? I don't know
I saw them on that TV there
I watched them lining up to go

I saw them having rally's
Taunting those who had the guns
I saw them bringing back the caskets
Of the now dead, teenage sons

That TV showed me lots of stuff
It never strayed far from the news
It always shows the Tigers game
I turn it up to hear the boos

I saw King and Bobby on that set
Taken way to young
God, it would have been a different world
To see what things they might have brung

I sat back and I listened
The old man, went on a while
He waved ******* skyward
And said, two more beers ...with his smile

My life has been a good one
I've been alone, except for here
I watch the outside on that set
It was then, we got our beer

I remember back when Elvis died
He was the best back in the day
But, me I liked Sinatra
Dean Martin, Bob and Ray

There was folks in here all crying
singing songs, and holding hands
on various occassions
from Lennons death, to Bobby Sands

I never really took part
In the lives of those who came
To spend their time here with me
I only knew a few by name

My job was just to serve them
Not to be their new best friend
I guess that's why I sit here still
Watching, waiting for the end

That set has shown me good and bad
That one, behind your head
It hasn't worked for fifteen years
We got a new one in instead

It's there as a reminder
more to me, than those still here
That life is for the living
And I'm alive while I am here

He rose and turned back to me
Said, it's time for us to close
I'll be back again tomorrow
To watch more highs and maybe lows

I watched the old man shuffle
To his room, and to his bed
Past the TV he saw life on
On the wall behind my head.

iMac
I can
I done

I always spit the pun

Iraq
Iran
I run

All the way to the cinnamon bun

You know, after meeting her it’s easy to understand why hurricanes are named after people, although I can’t say for certain if they name storms subsequently in her honor or out of pure lust. I really want to know what’s going on inside of her head. I can’t seem to stop thinking about her eyes. All storms have eyes, true, but hers seem to be calmer than the rest. I mean - so there she is, right? - the first time you see her, she doesn't notice you, yet you can’t help but understand. The way she reads books is like she’s memorizing scripture. She carries a sense of reverence with her I’ve only experienced when someone talks about God and I’ve been thinking about her eyes and cathedrals. I’ve been thinking about what it might be like to be her favorite hoodie. Her smile, whether it’s genuine or not, tears me in two and I am ******* afraid of her with lipstick on. I’m afraid that if I tell her I want to kiss her she will think I mean kiss her and not “kiss her”. I wonder if anyone’s ever tried touching her soul. Marble statues know her name, and not for the reasons you’d expect. I’m thinking about her eyes again. I want to know what’s going through her mind when I look at her and see her eyes. After meeting her, it’s easy to understand why my mom warned me about addictions. The kind of addictions where the thought of bare skin and bed sheets leaves you in a cold sweat. The innocent idea of her lips has you craving a feeling that doesn’t exist. Where you’d give every poem you had for just a drop of her eyes. After her, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to look at the stars the same way without wondering how their shine always falls short of reaching the space between her skin and mine. She’s a work of art cast in skin and bone. Eyes. She’s the calm during the storm. I once read somewhere that the girls you read about in books don't exist, but as I watch the way she turns pages like shes being reborn, or the way she walks in late to class sometimes and the whole world seems to notice as the gravity of the room shifts all its attention to her, it’s hard to believe she wasn’t written perfectly to play her part. The way she baptized the asphalt with my car left me reborn at the other end of the steering wheel. You know, she once told me, “It’s crazy to me to think about how most people don't have these problems.” And all I could think about was how to a blank canvas, paint must seem like scars, yet to the artist it’s a release. Eyes, but this time they’re closed. The whole storm, passing around us in a constant story line at 100 miles per hour, and here she is, just as lost as everyone else. Sometimes I fear that my hands might break her, but then I remember that a storm lives beneath her skin and end up thinking about her eyes.

He hurts people.
Not by choice, no, but by design.

He’s like a kitchen knife or a razor.
Hurting people is not what he was made for,
But looking at the way they work,
You’d never be able to tell that.

Hurting people, for example, is not what a razor was made to do,
But it’s very good at it.
And a kitchen knife wasn't made to ****,
But with a blade like that,
Few things are more effective.

He wasn’t made to hurt people,
But when his mind interprets every breath you take as scripture,
And the way he finds earthquakes in your heart beat,
And how when even on the coldest nights
He manages to find warmth in the way your eyes glow like the moon,
How he wonders what it’s like to be your favorite hoodie,
Or how long your smell will linger after you’ve left,
How by nature his thoughts compare fire to your touch,
And ice to your lips,
When you ask him how his day was and he genuinely can’t remember
Because the sound of your voice was the first thing he felt all day,
You’d never be able to tell.

Yes, He will admit it.
He has edges sharper than razors,
And a mind that will cut you into a million fall leaves of every shade of fire.
But he wasn’t made to hurt people.
He just does by design.

It’s what we all strive to be, the idea of being enough. Maybe not forever, but just for a moment. A moment long enough to make everything else seem to fade, but this too will pass and you’ll find yourself wondering why you weren't enough. What flaw made them leave?

You couldn't have changed what happened, and that’s what eats at you, having to live with someone else's choices. She left, he killed himself, we grew apart, they laughed at your pain, and you stood there helplessly watching it happen because that’s all you could do.

She made me feel the way a sunset colors the sky. Her flowing hair rolled over her shoulder blades like ocean waves cresting on the sandy shores of some forgotten paradise. The way she walked -or rather- the way she carried herself, was as if her every movement was conducted by the the wind itself. She was poetry and I was helpless to become a poet in her wake. But she was cold, Her heart was bone dry like a winter night and her motives made alcohol turn to ice. The curve of her hips perfectly replicated a trigger and I could think of no sweeter death than to have one of her bullets be that last thing to go through my mind. It was then I realized how a man could play Russian roulette. The way her lips pursed every time she saw me made me understand why men went to war. Her hands fit the curve of my neck like a noose and there was nothing I wanted to do but hang. Looking at her was staring at the sun and it wasn't until I met her that I understood what my mother meant when she told me not to touch a hot stove, because things that glow often burn us. Yet just like the hot stove, I failed to learn this until I tried.

1.
Tell me…
Tell me that you won’t leave.
Tell me that you care.
While you whisper sweet nothings into a stranger's ear.

2.
Tell me...
Tell me that you could, maybe,
Just maybe,
Like me back
(If I gave you my world)
But don't,
Don't.

3.
Hold me...
Hold me for a moment,
Then let me go.
Say it's for my freedom,
But it's truthfully for yours.

4.
Style yourself as my dream...
Then let me fall
From the sky,
From the glory.
Into the soil,
Into the mud.

5.
Tell me…
Tell me what you know I want to hear,
Even if we both know it’s a lie.
Tell me.
**** me.

I can feel the cold setting in.
Each morning is more bitter and frostbitten than the last.
The air and my thoughts are becoming stale, dry, and unpleasant.
The sun does not warm me anymore.
Like me it seems to have become weary.
The birds are gone.
All life seems to have abandoned this place.
Ice clings to my bedroom window, begging to expire in the warmth of a living room fire.
Smoke rises from the chimneys, covering this world in cold ashes and grey.
A life of color now painted banal and mundane.
I can feel the frozen air seeping in, slowly chilling me to my core.
With every passing night I grow colder and slower.
I have become eternally internally tired.
I end each dream embracing the boreal winds.
Ice evaporates into my thoughts.
I can feel the cold setting in.