i tried to write you a letter
     once
but was unsure of the address for the heavens where you shine
     not "Heaven"
          per say
but the stars that gained your carbon as you selflessly gave it away

          turns out celestial bodies aren't listed in the yellowpages

i tried sending you smoke signals
     twice
but the message was so **** long
  and it read more like a song
    and you never much liked my lyrics anyway

i moved on to morse code
     spent night after night lying on my back with a flashlight
dripping ceasless patterns of dots and dashes into that murky blue puddle of midnight sky
     as if maybe you'd reply
with a simple "hush"
and a shyly sigh

          it finally dawned on me that you probably couldn't decode it
          that your parents probably never made you learn
               i cursed them for not teaching you how best to reach me

now
     i'm getting older
and colder
and alot less wide-eyed and hopeful

now
     i just hope you can hear me speak

the click in the back of my throat that comes with trying not to cry
the sincerity in my 'love you's
  and my 'miss you's
    and in my uncensored ungaurded love that i ash onto your headstone from the end of my pregnant joints

now
     i just hope you can taste the beers i bring to share with you
as i'm rambling along the rails of my de-railing train of thought
and ripping through that sixer i brought
          you and your cheap taste in beer

i hide the bottle caps in those little metal vases that your mom keeps filled with florist foam
     and different colored silk lillies
          they always look so nice

now
     i just hope you can read me
better than you ever could before

i hope you've decoded the lines in my palms
and the ***** of my feet
and the cracks in my nicotine teeth
     as i'm smiling wildly at the earth that keeps your ashes safe
          close to her breaking heart

i hope you can read the quotation atop your grave
     i'd have never imagined that the one permanent thing i could ever give you
          was the last line
          of the last text
          that i'd ever send your way

i meant it back then
but now
      it means so much more

"sleep sweetly, philly, you will never be forgotten"

The city's a blur
ceasless
as the rotation of night
into speeding flight...
a parallax.

This town's deranged
greasy
like the hands of perverts
afterhours.


I don't understand
that you're still here,
Mystere'
while nothing happens
in this billboard valley
with its mannequin loves
and ****** students;

nothing comes of this
dustbowl
with Christmas blinking in the center
and promises on the cusp
of learning / curves
say Huh?

I know, you say
there's a fabulous place
beneathe
the buzzing web of profits
its busy electric streets
business of passing feet

a wonderful niche
besides
the lions and tigers and Cher
(Oh My!)
secrets only you would know
of its afterglow
because you call it

home.

Lead me to a thin place
Where I can feel complete
Where Earth and Heaven meet
To form an endless lace

Bring me to the  crossroads
Up in the mountain pass
Down where streams of glass
Move along in ceasless flow

Let me make my bed
In the shade of musty pines
Stretching on in ragged lines
Where form and function wed

Lead me on a wild hunt
Into the thicket thick
Into town where people stick
Their heads out in affront

"Have you all gone mad
Running freely through the black
Out before the dawn of crack
While we're in our night gowns clad?

Do you know the hour
That we're pulled into this game
Before that great ball of flames
Into the sky can tower?"

"It's the time between times
Where forces sweet and fay
Move about in endless play
Back into the hills we climb"

I can hear the gasping of a dying child
covered in dusty rubble,
even though there is a howl occupying my ears.
The flaming metal of their incendiary bombs
throws up clouds of smoke
that mingle with the dust, and obscure
the worst of the horrors.
Give thanks that you are spared of those horrors,
be glad you are unaware of the children
who cannot imagine a future
where they can be guaranteed of anything,
except the whistle of the bombs,
as they descend on the innocent,
the jagged shriek of the rifle fire as it rips
another child apart,
and the clatter of the ceasless treads
of the lumbering bulldozers,
that level whole communities.

Nothing that we are
can be allowed any peace.
We only wish to be,
to them our being is an outrage.

Dreams escape the wide-eyed
Changing from seeds to trees
Bees make the honey
And the seasons dye the leaves
Passing through the doorway
Catching on a cobweb
Guess I missed the rain
As a lay disenchanted
Like the wind that caressed my cheek
On a ledge looking down
Wondering just how high up
I was
From the wayward ground
Like a hologram-bodied shapeshifter
Only contained through rhetoric
Reappearing as a prayer in
Some medieval limerick
Thoughts splitting
The crime of spoken words
With no soul
(Judgements)
Opinions about things you don't know
You weren't at my graduation
And you won't see me marry
You picked escape over me and
For that I'm sorry
Dissappearing visions
Awake from some dream
Trying to remember the sensation of
Falling
Blistered peace in a home that's
Burning down
Dancing in the flames
Twirling like a sad clown
Like the conversation on ice
And stirred thrice for charm
Chasing after fairytale's you
Once held in your arms
It's been hard without you
You were my best friend
Looking back then looking
Forward
Hoping to see you sometime again
The cosmos freckled asteroid
Sparks
Across the walls in spray-painted
Words
Gleaming like opal shards on the
Necklaces of wandering bards
Ceasless is the silence
Bruised like a peach
Sharing my song freely to
See how far I can reach
Addicted to redemption
Quiet after the storm
When life hands you lemons
You make lemon flavored ***.

That inexplicable hum
At the ceasless sight
My bones creaking
That all we be
Quite alright,
they dare to live in divine
apart from vernacular stare
they sit apart from the crowd
Comfortable in believing
the impossible which is not
always there,
they feel it in their bones
these vessels of their souls
I want to be like everything like them
Even if my bones creak
louder than they should
yet that is quite good,

My bones didn't even move

It was more than a lifetime ago,
I was just 17 back then
across the distant faded years.
Amost 50 years to be exact.

The jungle is forgiving
no matter how the war had torn it
and poisoned it,
with agent Orange
fertilized it
with the blood of so many young men.
It recovered as resilient
as a spring in the hardware store
resuming its original shape
as though nothing had ever been there.

I am an old man now
far from the blush of my youth spent here
but I need to be here before my time is passed.
I could feel it calling me in the nightbirds song.
In the summer rainstorms.
And mostly when the thunder cracked the air.

I find the clearing where it happened
And close my eyes almost in prayer.

And I know I canfeel them
here again with me,
all of them.

We are all so young,so handsome
so full of life and possibilities.
We are passing round  a doobie
I take a long deep drag of the ****
my head calms down.
I see my girl my mother and sister.
But they are a lifetime removed.

A feeling for my buddies overtakes me
perhaps it was the marijuana
maybe it's just plain love,
Yes, I think it was love.

I shout, I love you man
to my best buddy Joe.
He shouts back
not as much as I love you man,

Soldiers get closer than wives
and girlfriends
we touch where it counts
where all the chips fall.
Where blood spills
And promises are kept.
It's real love
not that  ****** holywood crap.

I keep my eyes closed
I feel Joe close by me.
I know now
why I made this journey .
Why I was here
pulling the scabs of old wounds
letting them bleed again.

I see the tracer lights
of the gunfire in the clearing.
I see Joe fall mortally  wounded.
guys were dying all around me.
They were not calling for god
they cried like children
Their last cry for their mother..

I hold Joe in my my arms
He is dying.
His blood soaks my shirt.
Tears fall from my young eye's.
It's a vision
that is etched into my soul.
his last words are
I love you man.

I open my eyes
It now again the noise
has stopped in my head.
The clearing is. ghostly silent
except for the ceasless
chirping of the jungle.

My mouth whispers softly.
Capturing all that was left of me.
Not as much as I love you man.