Tick, tock,
Thump, thump,
As the minutes go by,
The heartbeats seem to grow more strained.
Up at night,
Pacing,
Moving,
Weary from the constant movement,
Never resting,
I sit,
A temporary reprieve,
And then up again.
Walking,
Waiting,
Listening,
Terrified,
That at any point,
I could stop and wait to hear what I always hear,
And it will be silent.
Hushed is the house,
Creaking in slumber,
Like a great breath in the foundation,
And all else is silent to my broken ears,
Save the ringing when I strain to hear,
The inhale,
Exhale,
Of my loves ones.
I go to each door and stand,
As still as can be,
Watching for the rise of the chest,
A stirring hand,
A fluttering eyelid,
To remind me-
They are here,
They breathe,
Their hearts beat.
Every night,
I cannot rest,
Haunting the hallways,
Peering around doors,
And I wait,
Impatiently,
For dawn,
For the time when life is clear,
And the nightmare of death can be put to rest,
And only when the sun rises
And my beloved speak
And laugh
And move,
Can my restless limbs,
And shallow breath,
Be put to rest,
With the moon.

The days drag out,
Unbroken by sleepless nights,
And a bone-deep,
Brain-deep,
Gut-deep
Weariness.
Restless,
Uncomfortable,
But too tired
And too spent
To give to where I am and what I’m doing.
After the sun goes down,
I pace, despite the fatigue,
And let my imagination run in the dark,
To satiate that squirm beneath my skin,
Even if only briefly.
I gently place the needle on the record,
And strip down to a slip,
The sound of vinyl humming over my bare skin,
In a caress as intimate as the satin I wear,
And there it is-
Apparent,
Immobilizing,
And I know-
I have to satisfy it.
At first, just a sway,
Side to side,
Left to right,
Rocking front and back,
One foot,
Then another,
And spinning,
I’m swinging,
Rolling,
Working muscles that hadn’t moved
In what felt like years.
From my bare toes,
To my stiff neck,
To my tingling fingers,
I unravel that itch,
And dance.
Leaping
Twisting
Grinning from ear to ear,
I move like it’s the first time anyone has ever moved,
And I shake off the whole day,
The whole week,
Every worry,
Every word that weighs on me,
I dance,
Until my shoulders feel no burden,
And the ache is thrown from me,
In the shake, rattle, and roll of dance.
My feet don’t stop until the soles blister,
And my arms don’t still until the sockets are weak,
Until my fatigue is true,
And not the creeping,
Crawling
Drain on my bones,
On my soul,
On my everything.
Until the tired makes me smile with gratifying exhaustion,
And my sheets are a reprieve
And not a ritual,
And my body can rest,
Now that the itch is gone.

The world from here looks like an endless landfill of human trash,
Crime, pollution, hate, and death,
Fill our ears and eyes and noses from the moment we wake,
Till the moment we medicate ourselves to sleep.
The air is too hot,
The people are too many,
And when I walk down the street,
I feel like an ugly alien,
But there’s a little place,
Nestled in the veins of the city,
And at night, when the air is heavy,
And the sky is quiet with darkness,
The doors open to this little place,
And the people go inside.
In this little place, everything is so lovely,
Even when the beer grows warm,
And the rain floods in through the poorly sealed garage doors,
Even when the powder on the floor is spread too thin,
And there’s not enough seats,
And the old curtains haven’t been dusted,
It’s perfect in every way.
Here, in this place,
The bar is unevenly lit, but it’s got what you need.
The old, black chandelier gives you just enough light to see what you need to see,
And the stage always has instruments,
Playing away your blues.
The curtains and tapestries swallow up the sound of the outside,
And when the music starts, you can pretend that you’re somewhere old.
A time with saxophones and an upright bass
That cry out an ode to the dancefloor.
It calls to people,
In trousers and Mary Janes,
As they swing, ****, and lindy across the concrete to the sound of their anthem.
Skirts swing,
Shoes slide,
And the people close their eyes when the notes are especially smooth.
Glasses of watered down scotch and lipsticked martinis are left at the tables
And inhibitions are left at the door.
Low, sultry tones resonate through the creaking wooden platforms beneath the tables,
So no matter who you are,
The cat swinging his gal on the floor,
Or the one nodding from the booth,
You can feel it.
But everyone,
Everyone down to the big man at the door,
Has to get on their feet.
The music is too sweet,
Too good and too smooth,
Not to try it on.
Gotta try a little taste of that jazz,
That old swing,
That smoky blues,
Whoever you are,
Oh, you’ve gotta try a little bit of that.
Someone takes someone else,
And off the people go.
One foot, two feet, three feet, four feet,
And on the floor, they slide, swing, and ****,
To the excited fluttering of everyone’s collective heartbeat
Beat,
Beat,
Beat,
Into the microphone,
You can’t resist,
Whether you’re “good” or “bad”,
If you dance, you dance,
In jeans, in a dress,
Suspenders or sweats,
If you dance,
You dance,
That’s all there is.
Someone sings out your deepest woes from the stage,
And you shake, rattle, and roll,
Until your feelings are all over the floor,
You don’t need love here,
You don’t need any of it.
There’s no husband and wife,
You can’t go steady,
Romance is a faintly remembered legend,
All you need here is dance.
Rhythmic pounding of feet against the ground.
That bass starts to strum,
And everything you thought you felt is replaced,
Replaced by air moving through you.
If you thought you missed someone,
Think again,
If you thought you had unrequited love for someone,
Think again.
Here, the people hop, skip, and glide from wall to wall,
And whatever they felt before,
Flies off of them like dust.
Because we’re the dancefloor people,
And we can’t feel a thing.
By the end of the night,
You’re lucky to breathe,
Feet red and sore,
Body wrung out like a rag,
There’s nothing left to feel but your mattress and a gratifying ache in your limbs.
The dancefloor people can’t see the kingdom of trash,
We can’t see it from here.
Spinning, wild and hot,
Just trying to stay on our feet,
Grins splitting weary faces,
No, we don’t see that bad, bad,
Ugly, ugly,
Earth.
We’re the dancefloor people,
We’re aliens, we’re characters in a story,
And when you come looking for us,
We’ll swallow you up,
And you’ll be dancefloor people, too.

I miss people I can’t name,
I lament events I have not seen,
I have memories of things I did not experience.
And I do not know why.
Everyone is like a child to me,
Experiencing life for the first time,
And I watch with nostalgia
And wish for such blissful days of naivete,
Which I cannot remember.
I am robbed of my memories,
Wholly and completely.
I was given a false life,
To trudge about and complete,
Stuck in a green skin,
With faux potential,
And a trim of ink black resentment,
Made to live in solitude while I wish for my old life,
Mourn my friends,
And live in spite,
Watching the world grow old with detest as I grow with it.
I know that our species has a soul,
Some of which is so beautiful,
But I cannot bear to watch it’s endless pattern,
Time and time again.
It weakens me.
It wears me thin.
It makes me hate.
I am not angry with them,
The children,
The newcomers,
The unawakened,
I am simply old.
I have been old for so long,
That I cannot remember being young.
But that is our way, isn’t it?
We age every day,
And forget every morning,
And we pray every night that the next life will be different,
That we’ll wake up to a skin that’s all our own,
To people who remember us for who we are,
Entirely.
I have few wishes,
Because I have learned that nothing you can imagine,
Could be quite as beautiful,
As God’s gentle plan,
But I have always wished, despite this,
For a time all my own.
Where I can be born, live, and die,
With everyone else,
And feel whole, and vital, and real,
Instead of like a phantom in a foreign land.
Perhaps the future will bring a piece of paradise,
And God will say,
“Come home.”
I dearly long
For my final nightfall.
I dearly long,
To go home.

So strange,
That a window this small,
No bigger than my notebook,
Shows the vast sea of clouds,
Far above a rolling storm,
Lightning flashing beneath us
Like electric eels that live in the sky,
And endless galaxies beyond,
A little rocket ship,
Braving the horizon.
And as we descend,
Another smattering of lights appears,
Like a reflection of space on the surface of the earth,
And I know we’re here.

I miss you,
West Texas,
You more than most.
I miss people
And things
But I’ve never missed more,
Than I’ve missed you.
One day, I’ll return to you,
And we’ll be together until I die,
My dear West Texas.
Some say your deserts are unbearably hot,
And I say,
It’s easier to make shade
Than a fire.
Picturesque cacti,
Blooming in the spring,
Sunsets that put oil paintings to shame,
And wild mustangs escaping man’s unyielding possession,
Just like me.
I can see them running along the dusty banks
Of a wide river in canyon carved by the Great Artist Himself,
West Texas,
I want to drive a rusty old truck through hot afternoons till frigid nights,
Miles and miles of sweet loneliness,
Until it’s just you and I,
And I can watch your brilliant display of stars move
Across the endless horizon.
Desert owls,
A serpent’s rattling warning,
Creatures that crave solitude,
As I do,
Emerge in the night,
Like the neon lights of lonely bars in the middle of nowhere,
Sweet prickly pear in perfect harmony with Jose Cuervo in my glass,
A tribute to my lonely West Texas,
Singing me a tune of cicada chirps and desert winds,
And the jingle of spurs on concrete floors,
As the men,
As old and covered in sand as the bar itself,
Make their way in from isolated jobs miles away,
To listen to Tejano,
And sip on that cactus nectar,
Distilled by the Great Bartender
For a night like this,
In my West Texas,
Perfectly lonely,
Perfectly perfect.
I just want it to be me and you
And your hot red sand,
I want to see those yellow blossoms bursting from the deceptively spiny hands of desert life,
I want to hang a dusty, wide brimmed hat above dusty leather boots when I come home,
I want the sky to explode with color,
As a reward for enduring a long day of the heat,
And when the rare jewels from heaven fall, and nourish your cracked ground,
And peace is sworn between all animals,
Predators and prey,
For that moment,
So that all may celebrate the loving dew sent by our Great Caretaker,
I want to dance on your planes,
Twirl in the rain,
And let the drops fall between my lips like the crevices of your canyons,
Brought to life when you are,
Slumber when you do,
Live each day as you live,
My sweet West Texas.

My grace,
My love,
My soulmate.
She drapes her majesty in mountains, oceans, rivers, plains, canyons, swamps, rivers, and rocky shores, big cities and small towns, deserts that bleed into forests, and anything and everything that the world could offer.
She extends her arms so far, you couldn’t reach the fingertips of one hand to another,
Not in a single day,
Not without ignoring her beauty.
I love her from her masterpiece sunsets
Down to her rusted shack tin roofs,
From her lush green fields,
To her sizzling sands,
I love you,
Texas,
My Texas,
From the freezing floods of January,
To the hot, dry death of July,
And I’ll never let her go,
Even in death,
I’ll be buried in the sandy loam,
Under the sticker burs,
And wild flowers,
And let my love nestle me in her embrace,
Long after I’m a pile of chalky, white bones and ancient cowboy boots,
I’ll lover her until the ocean cuts away her shores,
And the wind wears down her hills,
And the parasites drill holes in her ground,
And build streets on her fields,
I’ll love you,
Texas,
Until the end.