We aren't a "thing" anymore
Sometimes as the time passes
Like water flowing over pebbles in a riverbed
And we are shaped by all that time
I forget who we used to be.

If we took casts of ourselves
Would our faces even look the same?

The experience of being with you
Stolen phone calls across the distance
Did it change me?
Eight hours away and you're as real
As this statue of Adonis
And on a pedestal too.

Yet, everything dies and
Somehow we did too.
I'll never forget when you said I love you.
After that, when I admitted I loved you back
I've never felt more weak.
Why?

Because us?  We started as a game.
Who could be less jealous?
Who could take more pain?
Who could love and snap their fingers and walk away?
My darling, I lost track of the score.
Aloud, I claim I won.
But I'm sure you do, too.

Did either of us learn anything?
If we took casts of ourselves now
Would it show anything but wasted time?
Would it show how much my heart is breaking?
Would it show you with your wife and kids?
Would it show me alone?

Run toward the light
Deny it’s fading.
Almost grab it, but just miss
It goes down, First to red
Away to purple and blue like the
Circles under my eyes that show how little sleep I’ve gotten
Fade to a lengthy black and it’s
Called night.

Night used to be your voice.
Your voice used to be
stars dotting my darkness
Like a depth of imagination
that made our words
Into something other than just
words softly spoken.

I’d run my hands down
the whole length of you
Through those miles
Speak of touches that we’d never fulfill
Fade into orange morning with
tender whispers
That were never enough for you.

You eventually said you loved me.
I still don’t know if it’s the truth.
My heart still aches for you though
I never told you because I wanted to seem stronger
That I fell for you too.
The distance that ended any hope of us
Neither of us could live with it.
Neither of us knows the truth.
An unknowing distance.

Night.

In my mind, night symbolizes bad things
Dead as night,
Things go bump in the night,
Missing each other like ships in the night,
Thieves in the night,
“A one-night stand?”
Lady of the night,
“Oh my God! How can you sleep at night?”

It is universally known that monsters come out at night
They lurk in the closets of kids everywhere
But closet monsters with their reaching claws, twelve eyes, four arms,
And purple fur aren’t as scary as you.
In the dark corner of my room by the lamp that was my mom’s
When she was growing up
Did you put your hands on her, too?

I look up and
Coming towards me
a gangrene riddled zombie
Arms outstretched, a child whining for candy
Hot mouth on my skin, saliva in my face
Tongue like tentacles wrapping around me and
I fall into that dark, unfeeling place

Night is when bad things happen to good people
When too-young children lose their too-young innocence,
I try to explain to my mom the things you did
Why I’m chasing light
She says I’m lying because you’re her father
She knows you, and you wouldn’t do that to her
I tell her it was night-time she says,
“Maybe it was too dark to see who it was.”

“It wasn’t, mom!” I scream.
Hot pokers in the form of hot tears sear my red cheeks
When she turns away from me

It was dark, that night
But not so dark that I didn’t know you that night,
That night when you took me and crushed me
And I didn’t have a choice.

But it was you.

A gangrene zombie hiding in dark corners of my bedroom.

A woman passed me on the street today,
a screeching babe hanging on her hip
she had a yellow bandanna covering
a bald head.

She must have had cancer,
but I didn't think about her.
My footfalls echoed on my trip towards the corner market
three blocks down the street by the Mr. Zip
where I needed to pick up butter for my
mom so maybe my sister would stop crying
once she got her scrambled eggs.

A character screeches inside my head like that baby
a little girl whose house was on fire in the
nightmare I had night before last, but I don't think of that baby
as I pass it's cancer ridden mother, aunt, sister whatever
on the streets.

I think of me, and how I need to finish
my next chapter so maybe one day I can
catch up with society and maybe escape the plight
of my own poverty, of my own disgrace.
Maybe I'll be noticed, some publisher will let me
write about this screaming kid and he'll really like what
I put on the table, what I bring to the table.
Like the butter.

The world keeps going, but here I am
I don't care about the world outside of my own perspective and
people say that's wrong but
there's nothing I can do about it because here I am
trapped in this weird vice inside my head where a world
that isn't the one I live dances behind my eyelids
it is where I live, though, but audibly, visually, sensibly
not.

My reality
It's twisted, like the braid of that yellow bandanna
on the head of that cancer patient walking
in the opposite direction of the corner market and
the Mr. Zip.
She's probably thinking about herself, too.

Screams in the pitch black
Turn to butterflies, moths
Lilac wings beating wisps of air
Like wisps of ghosts
Invisible people, touching, reaching
Grabbing, pulling,
gnawing, curling around
Each part of the body at all times
The feeling creeps into the mind
Each and every day

Tossing on the blankets in bed
Latching, anchoring to them
Hands hold so tightly that the
Knuckles are white and
Ache with a deepness,
Like the deepness of
An endless black hole
And falling, nothingness surrounding
Every part of the body
Every part of the mind

Violently flailing, scratching
Clawing, dragging, raking,
None of them win the battle.
It grips us in the times
That our resolve falters
In our own darkness
Our own corner somewhere
between the synapses
firing terror
Our own abyss

Look back on the life of a man
The minute before he dies
While those machines bite into
shallow skin manifest the last heart noises
And shriek terrible monitory sounds,

He’s giving up.

It’s the glow of those machines
that only witness
whatever death he faces

Does he confront them?
Shouting around the
tube stuck in his throat

Does he think back
in high school
when he lost the basketball game
he missed a three-pointer
And he wasn’t good enough
Does he tell the machines that he was? lonely.

Will he tell them he loved a girl once,
Loved her, and left her
For being afraid
Of all the dark in the world.
Will he tell them that he thinks of her

Does he make sure they know his will,
Will he ask them where he’s going to go
Into the shadows of forever life

I think he does.
And I think they answer him,
Shrieks of noises that mark his death
With sudden silence
And they are words that only the dying can hear.

Here’s where poems come to die

A child sits alone,
But isn’t really alone,

His mind fires colors and shapes
Into all empty, black spaces
He hears the voice of his best friend, Henry,
They’ve known each other for two minutes

The child knows his story,
How he came from the same place
that the fairytales do.

The child’s heart is open.
The child’s innocence creates
And Henry smiles, his red
hair a strange color with no name.

And they laugh,
The child watches a small horse
Graze in the tall grasses of the prairie
Henry laughs because he’s always been ticklish
Right under his arms.

They whisper about their adventures
How Henry saved the child from
Oblivion.
From the job of constantly pitting peaches

From the centipede as it marched
To a war beat that only Henry and
The child can hear.

Years later, the boy doesn’t know
Henry.  
And he doesn’t know he ever did.
That was beat out of him
After he stole his first pack of chewing gum.
And looked at his first *******.
This is where poems come to die.

Emotions- empathy
I’m asphyxiating
Can’t contain the irony
The fact that he loved her all along
While I was jealous and
It’s spilling over like a child. Pouring
too much milk into a tall kitchen glass.

It spills into the crevices
In the floor,
Spreads under the round table
Makes way for the wooden legs

Make a mess, sure
But don’t forget
to clean it up.

I want to name my veins
After hurricanes;
This one,
In my wrist, pale blue, yet somehow
I can see the trail, this one
Is named Rita,
Because it washed away
The man I loved in Texas,

The ocean is never as salty as
My cheeks when I kiss him
Through the miles
He counts the stars,
and I try to count them too
So I lay in bed counting stars
That I can’t see
But this popcorn ceiling will do.

Inspiration
Doesn’t come,
Doesn’t last long enough
Doesn’t do her job.

Those Muses
Lived long ago and still think
about visiting
Or should
But don’t

They laugh in beautiful sounds
like singing from a choir
“You can’t write”
they say, “you know nothing,

Of life
Of love
Of desire
Of ecstasy”

But we know
We are blocked,
but we still reign over this
plane of our words

here we find comfort
we find life and existence
we don’t need their control

Humanity stumbles here
Searching for purpose but
We’ve found ours
Us writers, us sunshine seekers
As the pale moon hangs
And doesn’t wholly fade
When the light breaks the east.
We are in two places at once
All the time

We see
Centipedes as steeds
A dandelion
Is a universe
We find hope in the mundane
No need for patterns, seek them anyway
Because the gum on the sidewalk
Is a boat, sailing some sea
Somewhere in a depth of our
imagination
And that is inspiration.

I saw my grandfather today,
He's been dead seven years.
His smell still lingers,
On his old jacket
that hangs in my mother's closet.
Sometimes, I take it
and breathe him in.

His voice, coarse in his
last few fighting days,
used to ring deeply.
I hear him sometimes,
whispers from the air.

I saw my grandfather today.
He was driving,
The same green Nissan
The one my mother now owns.
He had his favorite blue cap on
It hangs in my room,
one in a sea of many
that adorn my
dead-limbed coat hanger.

I saw him,
Same wide starry-eyed grin.
He used to smile like that
when he was racking
up a game of eight-ball
mischievous twinkle in his eye.
Skilled hands
that knew the game
And never lost.

He was there,
same "old spice and everything nice"
scent.
It reminds me of the summers
days winding into hours
I spent them all in the
cool, fan-whipped air
of his game room.
Our sanctuary.

Maybe you know
your own sorrow
when a loved one goes.
Maybe. You know
how memories feel
now that we are hollow
and alone.

Your eyes open briefly
And you wake up reeling
No knowledge of where you are
Why you were lying next to that stranger
Exposed but not vulnerable
No, you haven’t been innocent in some time.

All your problems were gone.  But now,
They’re back and your memories?
Sharp as ever.
He hits you, and that’s your excuse
To slowly **** yourself each night
With a different man and a different drug.

Inspiration
Doesn’t come,
Doesn’t last long enough
Doesn’t do her job.

Those muses
So long ago, still visit
Or should
But don’t

They laugh in beautiful sounds
like singing from a choir
You can’t write
they say, you know nothing.

Of life
Of love
Of desire
Of ecstasy

But we know
We are blocked,
but we still reign over this
plane of our words

here we find comfort
we find life and existence
we don’t need their control
Be the Inspiration

Recollected in Tranquility,
He said;
Take a tempest wailing
her majesty
each crescendo falling
seamlessly
following the next
her droplets
sing in patterns
those patterns we know
those patterns we adore
each more elaborate than the last
those patterns are humanity
each of her drops strike
delightfully ringing
her lilting sounds against tin roofs
And her heart tastes Freedom.

You sit on your brazen altar
worshipped as Venus
for your fake beauty
your feigned sincerity
corrupting anyone who listens
to your propaganda

whisks of dyed blonde hair
fall around your face in layers
so common a haircut
and this, so human
your greatest weapon?

I can’t watch you anymore,
so spiderlike,
catch the weaker men in your web
and with well thought out battle strategies
drain of them of every happiness
until they are broken
and alone

And these games are your life
once, they were mine too
but that was a decade ago
now, I have no desire
to play these breaking games.

White crystals dangling
from frozen tree limbs
symbolize the month of December
that's when your birthday is
Orange lights of numbered telephone buttons
surrounded by endless midnight
for the times we whispered to each other
until the sun peaked over the blue mountains
Yellowed pieces of parchment
that we carefully scripted our dreams on so long ago
my precise artist's hands shake slightly
as I touch the wet, slippery tip of my brush
to a memory on the multi-colored palette
and glide a deep red across the next part of the never-ending canvass
that special color is for my cheeks
on the starless night when you first summoned the courage to kiss me

Hidden deep within folds of twilight
Nestled far between sky and sycamore tree,
Your freedom lies, a weakened prisoner,
Take it.

Each summer day is meaningless
As I think of who she's molding you into
She who birthed you owns the right to your life
Your thoughts

And **** that woman
Who caught you in her thick, encasing, diamond web
Before you could even think for yourself
I say take it!

If not for yourself, for me
For nerf bullets in your chandelier
For piano lessons on cold December Sundays
And why won't you take it?

Shatter those boundaries
The wrought-iron cage she's placed around you
Embrace the foreign sky
For me.

Watercolor recollections,
Bleed away with rain
With the brilliant colors
All longing fades away
To have you hold me.

I miss you
And our hours together
color on pale canvas
like the face paint we used last Halloween
And I’d laugh when you’d tickle my nose

My hollow screams rebound
from every brick of our studio
Fragmented cries of someone not whole
You are in every direction here
Each canvas smeared with paint
is another trinket in your shrine

Like driftwood sculptures bobbing in still water
Long buried memories surface
But no blissful moment emerges
those are buried with you

We fought that night
Like wolves for their young,
Father’s for their daughter
Vicious and unrelenting.
Neither of us really won

But I long to forget
Cobblestone words, sharp
Driven from you in anger
Forced out of your mouth
An orphan wrenched from cold, dead hands

So I place our paintings on the doorstep
And the rain becomes an eraser
The color fades
Like runoff water from mountains

And with our watercolor creations,
All memories drain away
And I’m left with nothing
But smudges of paint on my skin
Inside our paradise.

Cries of the ******,
Laments of the undead,
Echo here.

This place is known for freedom
Yet liberation won’t be given
To the fallen many

Stone epitaphs surround the passerby
Everyone the same
They gaze, unwilling to feel

We will not remember the forgotten
The forsaken who were slaughtered for us
We will not remember.