Everytime I pass the street, my eyes linger on the pedestrian bridge.

It's fairly new.

And wouldn't be there if it wasn't for what happened at the corner.

A woman and her baby, or maybe she was looking after this baby, they were standing, waiting to cross, when a car took a turn too sharp, too fast, too whatever, and the baby was gone.

For months, maybe years after, the street lamp was covered in stuffed animals.

But now there's nothing but my memory of a baby I never met and a bridge I'm glad exists.

I wonder what her name was.

I wonder if anyone thinks about her when they cross the bridge.

I hope they sift my name through the ashes
and remember it as gentle and kind.
I hope to God they crack a wrinkled grin.
For then I too can peacefully decay.

i look out into dark, savoring the quiet, the stillness of new dawn, wondering who die today, whose life will end and whose will change forever, sending a shock of wave of pain and grief from an epicenter of a dead soldier

who will die today, whose mother wife daughter will cry today, whose father son brother will fall today

the sun has risen, reality has set in, its time to ride, its time for some to die, we roll the dice, who will land snake eyes

to sit in the humvee, knowing you are playing russian roulette, you can’t  have hope, no inkling of a dream, lose the desire, it is the only way to survive, knowing you may die, give up all hope, consider yourself dead, be grateful at the end of the day when you are not. the drive down suicide alley, like the walk up gallow’s stairs. now i know how they felt. you surrender to fate. you stop thinking, you stop feeling, you go numb.

no longer in control, my life is no longer mine to live or die

i don’t believe in You, not since i was a boy, but i pray, that if we hit an IED, that i die instantaneously. i don’t want to lay on the ground, feeling the horror of dying, crying that i want to live, screaming out for my mother like i’ve seen happen to other guys

there are things worse than death, the living hell of coming home in pieces, physically damaged, emotionally traumatized, spiritually disillusioned, which slowly erodes and destroys your life. a new war, another battle, this time at home, fought in your head. the cycle of trauma 6-9-12, addiction, depression, how long do you let yourself free fall till you hit rock bottom

i am a man, i am not suppose to be afraid, but i am, i can’t show or say, not to them, especially not to you. i am not allowed to show fear, be vulnerable, you will lose respect, stop loving me, tell me to man up, in some subtle way

when everyone has left, everything lost, when the pain is greater than the fear. you must, you will, reach out, or die in combat, killed in action, in the war fought in your mind.

After but a moment,
Drowning in a sea of confusion,
All hope dashed against rocks of despair,
Her firm resolve culminates in
V I O L E N C E . . .
S i l e n c e...

"For the one who has died has been acquitted from his sin."—Romans 6:7

After but a moment,
The maiden awakens
To peaceful surroundings.

"...Why are you causing noisy confusion and weeping?
The young child has not died, but is sleeping."
"Then, taking the hand of the child, he said to her, 'Tal'i-tha cu'mi,'
which, when translated, means: 'Little girl, I say to you, get up!'"—Mark 5:39, 41

Her eyes slowly adjust as
Her recognition rushes
With audible cries of joy:
"My Mother... My Father... You look so much younger, you do!
My Brother... and the others! Could this really be true?"

As the sun shines, our eyes rain thousands of tears
For the thousands of years of exquisite delight before us.

"...and he said that something should be given her to eat."—Mark 5:43

She feasts on curing fruit, and does willingly stoop
To drink from the river of water of life.
"In the reflection I see
What could have been,
What should have been,
Yes, what now is true for me!"

Oh, Vanessa, what grand, joyful reunion!
Love...
Joy...
Peace...
Innocence of youth reclaimed!

Please sing me a new song, my darling girl.
Please sing me a new song again.

"Do not be amazed at this, for the hour is coming
in which all those in the memorial tombs will
hear his voice and come out..."—John 5:28, 29

Cross the sea, cross the land, ticking bomb stranded
***** totem in an aged biscuit tan.
Slit-slash, the sun is an open wound
Across the sky that preludes a myriad of boredom's

The wind caught their blank faces and froze them
Thawless, invincible as a corpse and forever
Parading the street. When I was younger
I wanted to sit on a rock and watch history go by
But now I'm not so optimistic, I'm on the run in a sense

Living life on the dime of a lucky sixpence, pensiveness
Only seems to waste time. 'You get busy living' they say,
'Or you get busy criming.'

When you were a little boy
They would lay you to sleep
With small prayers and a leap of faith,
Your angel-blonde eyelashes barely touching
And you would stop breathing periodically,
Gasping into the void,
Creating sounds that would echo against the cacophonous
Tomb of your mind for the rest of your life.
I hear your screams reverberate
In every instance of a Swedish accent.
I guess you were lucky enough
To be pronounced Dead three times.

Of course you'd call it an ice skating accident;
Ever the man, ever the glowing effigy of strength,
How could you bring yourself to tell us how you'd been mangled,
Beaten so badly that your organs broke and bled,
Your ten year old knees
Kissing the carpet of your mother's living room
As you fell and died that first time?
You'd later tell stories about the progression of death,
Colors enrapturing you,
Everything dipped in blue.
There were levels to this,
You said,
And you'd stuck your skin into one that no mortal could have
And yet you returned to us.

Nothing about this poem
Is going to make you seem more evil
Than the vision you've already placed in people's minds.
Thin, pale hands tossing a severed pig's head into an audience,
Those same fingers tracing the path of a jagged bottle blade
Down your arm in a business motion;
Pelle, I'd write an ode to every scar on your arm
If I wasn't sure that you'd already done it.
A heart corpse painted as black as the inside of a closed casket,
Your closed casket,
What was it that ruined you?
What was the trigger that pulled itself
Besides the so obvious one?
A broken kid from a broken home,
What made you run so far away
Only to hide in the arms of those who
Let you parade your mental illness like a banner,
Let you wear your delusions like a cape around your neck?
Who let you climb to the roof
Just so they could cheer for you to jump
With your fantasies and shredded silk hair flying behind you
Before your bones crumbled against each other in skin
Too tender and frail to contain you?

When they talked about you in magazines
Writers were always lamenting the tragedy
Of your cut-glass jaw and your piercing eyes,
Masculine beauty of such a caliber
Wasted on a character so evil and vile
It might as well have blotted itself out against the sun.
What you thought you were
Doesn't define your worth.
You're so much more than a corpse on a bed,
A couple of necklaces made from your bones.
You are so much more than a voice that was
Throttled out of existence by its own hand,
So much more than a statement piece.

For years after your death
Your family would receive packages for you in the mail
From bookstores around the world,
Tomes of witchcraft and ancient magics,
Spells designed to enchant and bewitch,
Pelle, were you trying to necromance the Dead?
Were you trying to take the parts of you
That felt less than human out?

If I could talk to you,
If I could say one thing,
It would have been what I've told
A dozen friends who've jumped in front of trains,
Called me from mental hospitals,
Called me with guns and knives in their hands.
I wish I could have told you
To wait one more ******* day.
In one more ******* day your father would have called.
You might have had a ticket back home.
You might not have a strike through your name
On every online page referencing your work.

The screaming may have stopped,
The air raid sirens in your head might have dulled
To the point where you wouldn't have felt the need
To blow them away.

If you didn't feel human,
If you felt like this was all a dream and that you'd wake up soon,
Why are we still living in the remnants of your nightmare?

I’d like to wait a moment
I think I’m in deep.
my eyes. ever so gentle.
my lips, light as a butterfly,
lovely I sighed.

rumbling inside
starting to pull away.
wrap around me.
all that my heart felt.

pull back,
I had done something wrong.
I had done something weird.
wearing like a cape,
watching me run

memorial magic disappears
& I am left grasping
at nothing, again.

He was a terrific actor and his name was Ted Cassidy.
He portrayed Lurch and Thing in The Addams Family.
He decided to be an actor which was a good choice.
He was six-feet-nine tall and he had a deep voice.
He was the narrator during the opening credits of The Incredible Hulk TV show.
He died in January of 1979 which was forty years ago.
He starred in a few episodes of Star Trek and once in Daniel Boone.
When we lost this man at the young age of 46, we lost him too soon.

I visited my harbor
A refuge among the waves
I walked among giants
And touched the cold firm ground
And rocks that formed foundations
Of communities and families
Of a world handed down

I saw the faces of my elders
I felt the hands of my grandmothers
On my shoulders
As I scrubbed the stones clean
The sun shone on my neck
Warming me as I worked.
One last rinse of their headstone

And my task was done
They sparkled and smiled
Back at me
And as the dates in the stones held fast,
My clock continued to advance
And I left knowing I felt better
Their embrace was healing.