Our lot was not to stay all night;
In kneeling praise by bathroom stalls.
Alcohol numbed your honesty's bite,
wrote her destiny on the divider walls.

And we weren't the kind to cheat, don't believe,
All the loose lips half-cross town,
Last call patrons who watch me leave,
And shut this ****** down...

Like Zane and Beckett, so convinced,
Their **** would last forever,
Bad enough to make you wince,
If they spend one more second together.

Or Jane and Kinney, young, driven, and full,
Of lust or something similar.
Don't be surprised, you've seen this fire,
The end? ...all too familiar.

And pretty Syd had all the gall,
and Pony Boy thought he knew the score...
but he's just a **** like so much Pyrex,
Stuffed inside his paper *****.

But Ashtray Woman with ***** Mouth,
And monster's blood on toilet tissue,
Is just another frightened girl,
With real and dangerous daddy issues.

Now, here, at the close (I'm still glad to say),
You deserve almost everything, that you've won,
Our karma arose ( and, in time, took the day ).
Now I ponder regrets in the hours before dawn,
It wasn't the when, or with whom we may lay,
or the time in the morning before I should be gone,
It's more about how we desired to stay...
When we gazed into stars lying flat on your lawn.
I once craved your poison but, now, in my way,
I'm actually glad
to see you gone.

Back at the shore, on my own this time,
I'm free now, yes, but alone.
I'm left with nothing,
No pain,
No rhyme,
On a beach less sand than stone.


The tide still licks the shore for crumbs,
But nothing hides beneath.
No voice calls out in dark, feigned scorn,
No stoic secretly cries for release.


The world outside worked magic for real,
It promised us strength in identity,
But now I'm just beginning to feel,
There's actually something wrong with me.


I can't go back until I know,
That your death has served some purpose.
What chance is there, to survive and grow,
When even ghosts can hurt us?


"Perhaps", I said, "it's all unspoken", aloud,
To myself, discovering,
How words can wound but silence drowned,
A heart that's still recovering.

Seventeen years old and troubled, I took walks in the woods to sort out my mind.  There were miles of it behind the old neighborhood.
I could meditate on thoughts and walk down paths, off paths, for miles if I wished.  My forest grew in semi-rural suburbia of my hometown, just a thirty minute drive east from Atlanta.
I'd like to think it grows there still...  

   One could walk a mile or two through untamed, mostly coniferous, forest but suddenly step out onto a clearing of uninterrupted rock, desolate and pocked like the surface of the moon.  A moonscape bounded by trees.  An anomalous break in the journey of green.  A massive plane of granite lies, apparently, beneath much of our state.  The woods in my area had this unique feature...  Patches where the granite was exposed to the surface.  Some were the size of a small city park.  Others were the size of multiple football fields.  Those accessible by bicycle were especially fun.  They would be explored thoroughly as I jostled and bounced my mountain-bike over the irregular surfaces.  Others lay deep in the woods.  I would walk as much as I could or just lie on the solidness of that ground and look at clouds.

   As pressures in my heart and mind increased, I would come to these woods angry and frustrated.  Pent-up emotions had few outlets.  Poetry was there, a kind of constant companion of the day,  but sometimes I just needed to run.
   Something felt primal and therapeutic about it.  One day, in a lot of frustration and anger, I made up this stupid game.   It was simple.
1: Run.  Immediately.  North.
2: Don't stop. Don't stop.  Don't stop.  Unless stopped involuntarily.

   I leapt off the trail and ran.  Though I felt despairing, the freedom was liberating.  Constantly, there were split-second decisions to make...  Over or under?  Left or right? More often than not, it just had to be "through" and, in my determination and stupid teen nihilism, I plowed through lots of tangles and thorns, scratching up my ankles in the process.  I didn't care and, stupidly, welcomed the blood until a stronger patch of thorns held fast to my ankle. My running speed slammed me to the ground.  I think I laughed, then, like a ******* crazy person.  I saw myself and felt foolish.  I laughed at the sad sight of this broody kid, breathless and bleeding on the forest floor, who actually had life pretty good.  My troubles aren't even worth recalling, they were that trivial, even in the moment.  I picked myself up as if I were happily helping a friend.  I was feeling pretty good and helped him walk, carefully, back south again.

One day I broke down, I took the job.

"I just wanted to destroy something beautiful..."                    
     "Yeah, beautiful and toxic. what were you thinking?"
"who are you?"         
   "I'm your ******* muse, *******"
"no, no, no. just, please... leave me alone?"       
    "nope"    
"****"          
   "do you love me?"
"how could-  i mean, what...."          
   "touch me"
" god.   ******...."

The reflecting pool lay long and flat, a massive mirror door...
I stepped up to it's concrete edge, and looked down to it's floor.
I saw pale tiles beneath the water, some pennies, a dime, a nail.
I dropped my thoughts beneath this sea, which quickly grew in scale.

One foot of water became, thus, ten... A hundred... thousand... more.
My view was that of one who's soaring many miles above some shore.
I was, at once, consumed with fear at how this made me feel,
That is to say, I convinced myself that this height was truly real.

That was when I dreamed I fell, but before I'd be no more,
I had much time to think awhile on what had come before.
I had much time to regret the past, and dread what was yet to be,
Saw images of fortune, ruin, the dust of you; the ashes of me.

Small joys helped to bridge the gaps where fear eroded hope,
The terror of  my empty room, the makeshift hanging rope.
My thoughts of death reminded me that the moment should be much more,
I opened my eyes to the rushing air, my throat felt raw and sore,
Looked down to see a blaze of leaves and the fast approaching forest floor.

Asleep, I fell, through sunlit leaves that seemed to fill the space,
Awake, I stood beside the pool when you had touched my face.
Something in your eyes was telling me you were concerned,
You somehow knew the man who left was not the man who returned.

We stood at the shore then, you and I, expressing futures yet to pass,
Fishing out mythologies and illusions that might last.
Our mouths were full of histories and secrets that we bared,
The reassuring comfort that illusions can be shared.

Look east and see the brightening sky, but not yet see the sun,
Look west and see the shrinking black,
The place where last night's stars have run.

Look up and see the limbs and leaves of the high forest canopy,
The ones above the gloom that's half obscuring you and me...
A bright gold glow suffuses them, but only way up high,
Where they already see the dawn, and the guiding star that fills their sky.

I'm reminded by these tall trees rising high into the air,
When shadow darkens my small world, but light is everywhere,
You do not need to see the sun to know that it is there.

So as I lifted up my face,
To where sunlight paints the highest tree,
In this expansive time and place,
I felt the same; beautiful and free.