The truth is I don't think of you
much anymore,
but when I do I think of you
laughing
late at night, happy
under the stars
with a love for another
in your heart....
in a city that isn't ours.

I'm okay,
I'm just fine.
And I'll say whatever else
I need to keep you around this time.
I'll say all's well,
Life is perfect now.
And I'll hide behind a smile
Because you always loved that best.
I won't pry,
I won't fight.
And I'll keep the decay from sight,
For I'm dying, and you're lying.
There's no love here,
Not while we're both alive.
lmt

She sits alone.
Many think she's lost in her own thoughts.
Sometimes she is.
But,
Most of the time she is lost in the world around her.
The people around her serve as a distraction from her own life.
She'd rather create stories for the people who pass by,
than think about her problems.
Fabricating stories of love for the couples who walk by.
Wondering if those who walk alone need a friend,
like she does.
She almost gets up to ask the people with the long faces if they're okay.
But then she remembers-
no one asks if she's okay.
Partly, this makes her angry, but
mostly she feels relieved.
What would she tell them?
Would they understand how she's feeling?
She doesn't even understand how she's feeling.
So she stays aloof, distant.
The observer.

A three-day-long rain from the east—
an terminable talking, talking
of no consequence—patter, patter, patter.
Hand in hand little winds
blow the thin streams aslant.
Warm.  Distance cut off.  Seclusion.
A few passers-by, drawn in upon themselves,
hurry from one place to another.
Winds of the white poppy! there is no escape!—
An interminable talking, talking,
talking . . .it has happened before.
Backward, backward, backward.

I've been looking for you all around

I can't find you in old photographs
And sometimes I can't reach you by phone
    But when I look in the mirror and see my smile

*I know I've found you

My words, they flow like estuaries,
From my fingertips to the seas,
Spindly, twisting, winding veins,
That run through evergreen plains.

Each word is rich with emotion,
Like the countless fish in motion,
Some vibrant, some dull, some,
Alive and some, floating with bellies above.

When thunder roars and lightning strikes,
And the Heavens in the sky start to cry,
My feelings they overflow, flooding over,
And all around must take cover.

For the once beautiful waves, are now,
Violent, destructive, and they plow,
Mercilessly through the haven in my heart,
Wrecking my world, part by part.

When I was young,
& dumb,
& drunk,
caught in that summer between teenage rebellion
& shipping off to towering landscapes
begging for rigid responsibility held
in the embrace of adulthood,
I sought to sharpen my wisdom
by dulling my senses and searching
my timid teenage soul.

When I was young
& dumb,
& drunk,
trespassing on the high school roof,
staring out over an empty parking lot,
I told myself,
and beside me
the fellow undiscovered,
misunderstood teenage dreamer,
the basis of the harsh reality we face:

Everybody is looking for
the right person.
But no one is trying to
BE...
the right person.

The silent gasp of sudden
drunken realization
elapsed his lips before he could lasso it.

The realization that neither of us
could claim we were just,
or striving to be
anything beyond bewildered and lost in
the confusion accompanying coming of age
kept us company through
that dusty summer night.