We live in a house
without ghosts or
previous tenants.
No one has died
or sold their soul
here,

and no one has done
unspeakable things
behind closed doors
here.

No one has endured
flaming words,
burning skin,
kicks and shoves
or broken bones
here.

There are no
spun dust dead cells
come alive as
night prowl swirlings
here,

and no manifestations
of such.

No leftover lives
here,
nothing left behind
here.

only peace
and quiet
here.

But not back
there
when I lived with her
before I lived
here
with you.

Back
there
she said I went crazy
when the neighbors asked
why I slept on the porch
there.

It would have been crazier
had I slept inside the house
there.

What happened
there
was worse than
the worst thing imaginable.
I would forever be changed
by what happened
there.

She let evil enter
there
from across the globe when
mother Russia sent it in
the suitcase of a boy.


When I met you
I knew
my porch sleeping days
were over,
whether
here
or
there,
quite frankly anywhere.

Our first house
was 50 years old
yet we were only
the second owners.

Family must have mattered
there.

The ghost was different
there,

not frightening, not angry,
more nostalgic,
he used to sit out
there
on the porch
in my chair at night,
sit
there
looking sad,
like he missed the place.

He didn’t mind us being
there
and I never felt threatened
there.

On many occasions
he knew that I knew
he was
there,
but he wouldn’t engage.
I felt sorry for him,
sitting out
there
all alone.

For a short while
we lived in a house
north of town.
We lived
there
before we lived
here.

The ghosts
there
were more like what
you’d expect from ghosts.

First it was
the hogs in the attic
followed by
the children in the night,
it wasn’t unsafe
it just didn’t feel right
there.

Someone wasn’t happy
there,

so we left
there
and came
here
and built this house of love.

Now we live where
there
are no ghosts,
at least not in the house.

Instead
the history in my head
is what haunts me.

To move it out,
to delete it
would mean to be dead
or maybe lobotomized,
so no thank you
I think I’ll learn to live with
these
ghosts.

These
that aren’t
there,
or
here,

they still are.

My father is 85 and tells me
that they prey on your weakness
when you get older.
He cannot even speak of them
for fear of being institutionalized
or put away, or deemed insane,
but I believe him when he tells me
that they come to him at night,
and although he cannot see them
they sit on his bed and remind him
of all the mistakes he has made
in his lifetime.

I look at him
and I can see his pain.

My ghosts tell me its what
I have to look forward to.

Wrote this back in 2013... Wanted to bring it forward to today, August 22,  which would have been Layne Stayley's 50th Birthday.


It was simple at first
I did it on a dare

There's a certain easiness
to difficult dares
when senses are dulled
by alcohol and fame

show me how
that color tastes

It was like
biting into the sun
it burned my tongue
and nothing else
would ever taste the same
or be the same
it calmed the storm
of daddy leaving
it was as if my
new found Catholicism
was a purgatory from where
I could see the bright white
pearly gates of heaven
and feel the chill
of their snow clad bars

colder than
the coldest winter chill

one night in a dream
my father told me
to meet him at the gates
and from that point
I went every night
but he never came
instead he died
and when he died
my dreams died
with him.

bury me softly
in this tomb

I continued to go there
night after night
I desperately wanted
to believe the gates
would lead to heaven
because in hell there's heat
and this place was cold
so cold with no sound
and no light only darkness

I would sit in the cold
for hours, losing all sense
of time, obligations
responsibilities, shivering
and sweating at the foot of
the gates, obsessed with the
furry luster of frozen pearls
the sound of silence and
the subtle shifting of
the weather

holding rare
flowers in bloom

a week, a month
a year would pass
the snow began to slip
in clumps and tumble
to the ground again
and again and again
and then
all hell broke loose
the heat was hot
the gates were gone
and I began to run
but

every path
led me to nowhere

the blue cold went red hot
and then turned black
I tried to leave that place
13 times I left and
13 times returned
there was nowhere else to go
no place to call home
I burned within my sick head

I wanted to peel
the skin from my face

so hot
I was bleeding for you
soaked in sweat
my calloused heart
would not ask for help

serenity
was far away

my hands were bruised
from breaking rocks all day
far from the chill
I couldn't remember
anymore anyway
so desperate
for a glimpse of snow
it all came down
to this

I could not live apart
from that place
and I could not live
within it

so tonight

I will marry the two
the here and the now with
the there and the then

mix the snow with the fire
mix the snow add the fire
mix   snow  with    fire
mix   snow  add    fire

snowfire
      
snowfire
      
snowfire

momma
I am burning
momma I am cold
mother please save me
don't leave me alone
I see you but
you've come too late
can you hold me anyway?
whisper in my ear
I'm so sorry mother
I haven't bathed in 2 weeks
momma come hold me please

I'm down in a hole mother
feeling so low mother

I'm so cold mother
come save me
take me home
mother
I am dying

mommy
I am dead
sit with me
in silence
sit with me
I am dead

mommy I'm scared

black is all I feel
so this must be how it feels
to be free*

mother
I am dead

In Memory of Layne Stayley
born August 22, 1967 died April 5, 2002
Re-Dedicated today on what would have been his 50th Birthday..

Like a young schoolgirl she flirts with the orderlies,
skid resistant yellow stockings swinging beneath
her wheelchair. Yellow defines the wackiest of the bunch.

She scooches across the room,
strapped in like a child in a car seat,
her socks providing excellent traction
on the shiny grey linoleum.

To see her this way is a bit shocking,
she speaks in a child’s voice,
like a little girl at play,

its such a strange sensation,
it reminds me of the time in the seventh grade
when Mr. Coster told us about the ghosts
in Sunnybrook’s basement,
I find myself questioning reality,
looking for ways not to believe.

At first she wants to pray,
and while our heads are bowed
she talks directly to Jesus, “there you are!”
she says, “and what a pretty blue sash you have on!”,
I steal a peak at the door
to see if Christ is there.

Next she wants to sing, and away she goes
while the girls join in….

The doctors say she’ll never again be who she was,
the mini strokes have done away with her.
I quietly concur and tell myself its not so bad
to see her this happy.

But within a week they move her to long term care
and all hell breaks loose.

“I want to divorce your father!”, she snaps,
“I’m tired of his ****”.
But when he comes to visit she purrs like a kitten
about undying love and how she’ll only be happy
when she dies in his arms.

The reality of her dysfunction
has never been more evident.

My whole life is a byproduct of her chaos.

Her eyes begin to take on
the wild look of a crazed dog,
She slips me notes and whispers strange things,
like she’s being watched and needs to be careful
about speaking too loudly,

I desperately try to make sense
of what it is she’s saying
but I’m completely distracted by
the lady across the table
with the television remote control
in her mouth, clamping down firmly
as if it’s a candy bar.

Mother goes on and on about
a job offer she’s received,
an offer to teach a sewing class,
she’ll need some good quality shoes
if she’s to be on her feet all day,
and maybe a few new blouses,
and oh how she’s tired of pajamas.
Next she’s on to requests for crayons
and batteries, a new mattress, more light..

She mumbles now.
Stream of consciousness ****.
She’s crying more as well.
Heaving sobs rack her body
as she bounces up and down,
hands across her face in an
over-dramatic display of despair.

Its my last evening with her.
I’ll be leaving shortly.
She’s not in her chair by the window.
I find her in her room lying in the dark.
I sit on the edge of the bed and touch her forehead.

She opens her eyes but does not see me.
She is still and silent and I notice she is clutching
the blue plastic Jesus I gave her, two inches tall
with arms outstretched and the message “HOPE”
scripted on the base.

I begin to stroke her hair, long, gentle strokes
and she sighs, A long broken sigh like
one might give after a good cry.
I half expect her to put
her thumb in her mouth.

Instead she lies silent holding her Jesus
while I wonder if the blue is the same blue as
the sash of the robe he wore the week before
when she was happy.

It’s a heavy moment for me because I know
that I am giving her what she could never give,
that nurturing touch that says its gonna be ok,
the reassurance that though afraid, you don’t have
to be alone, and the full and complete knowledge
that you are loved.

I wish she would say that she wished
she would have been a better mother,
a loving mother, but she cannot because
she is on a rocket ship to outer space
and I know this,
and its ok.

Though she was incapable of
loving me as a small boy
she became able in later years
to light a spark in me for Jesus.

A spark that would grow into
a burning flame of comfort in troubling times,  
a flame that would do more for me
than any mother's touch,
at least that’s what I’d like to think.

A flame that would ultimately
teach me how to love
in spite of never being loved.

A flame that is empowering me
to stroke her hair and give comfort to
a mother who never loved me
the way I needed to be loved,

the way Jesus loves me,
with his arms wide open and his light blue sash,
standing over the letters H O P E…

I get up to go
and see that she is now sleeping.
I watch Jesus slip from her fingers
and fall to the floor,
watch him bounce a time or two then
disappear beneath the bed,
like when you drop a coin from your dresser,
and it ends up out of reach.

I leave her room wondering
if I’ll ever see her again.

I step out into the night and go home.

We sat there drinking baring are souls and cutting through ******* one drink at a time.

I never hung around other writers I wasn't  a people person to begin with.
Silence was its own company .
And a man who could hold court with it and remain sane was stronger than most in a crowded room.

We poured the drinks and spoke of everything aside from the page.
To generals seldom give away secrets to there success or in are case the lack there of it.

Are scars were are own and my friend knew enough that we simply held court and stared  at a woman bent over the jukebox.

Some lines are not written but are simply perfect enough as is.

We sat there till we closed the place down and vanished back to are own worlds .

We were wolves to the hunt all the same and are paths seldom crossed again.

Sometimes you howl into the night and somewhere from the depths the night howls back.

Sometimes its good to know another runs the same as me.

Why do we Hallmark our holidays and fabricate ceremonies?

We guilty non-obligators celebrate all things that can't be true,
forcing smiles in rooms full of elephants yet no one’s a candidate for sainthood.

I tell myself I’ll do better than they did, but doing better than they did
still leaves roles un-played and dreams unfulfilled.

I may understand life from the top to the bottom but I live in the dash between the hair of the dog and last call.

While people without broken bones wander around on crutches,
we who were broken as children walk on feet-less legs,
a trail of pain follows wherever we go.

Its inevitable for us to get stuck between bitterness and agony while all the while we fail to make sense of what it is we're living for.

I don’t want to be celebrated I’d rather be understood, so maybe then the searing heat of loneliness we never speak of might die a slow death.

I only wanted for you what was better than what I had
not knowing that without the bad there is never any good.

Every left hand turn leads to something right eventually
and when we exist for only ourselves the world is not round rather flat and we tend to fall off the edges into pandemonium and unhappiness.

Its not what we have it’s the pursuit that keeps us going but I need to not want in order to feel what I feel.

To sit still is more consuming than any long term project.

When I have it all I have nothing,

an uneasiness with the easiness of stress free living,

a simmering flame of doubt about all that's gone wrong in my life while things that happened 30 years ago feel as fresh as tomorrow.

I read an article today that said the drug ecstasy can take away depression but we all know lots of pills can do that.

The bottom line in all of this, I wish I had a reset button, a restart after false start, a wake up to reality call, I'd throw away the wigs I wear, powder coated cover ups,  and let my hair grow long,

get back to the basics,

maybe start with Bukowski,

celebrate the simple things in life.