While you're swimming in my veins,
I just pray that my rivers meet the sea
when you're fed up with the songs I'm singing
just tell me softly- darling I think you ought to stick to poetry
when you're mad, your hands bleed
like a wounded soldier with no guns to hold;
you will fight for me every day I'm alive
When my silent scissor wrists refuse to cut your edges,
when your firefly mouth I tried to keep in a mason jar finds my spine,
I will never again count my own secrets
I will never again search for the answers with knowing the question
and when you look at me like a crumbling rockwall,
I will tell you not to climb. Do not climb these mountains,
you will not find God at the top
you will not find God in my temples,
or between them.
or anywhere near my sinner's cheeks.
because when they burn, they set fire.
because when you ignite, you're deadly.
because you called me one night adorned with whiskey,
your lips telling tales I used to dream about for bedtime stories.
tell me leaving was a mistake, drawn in blood
and I just want you back like the revolving door
through that airport where we met near the spring
and find me by the river, caressing my veins
because you are so full of water and I don't want to drown
in anything less than your body.
Let me in, like that stray cat
walk over my body like a ******* welcome mat.
You are always welcome, do not thank me
for saving your life because my hands shake when I think of you dying
and I can't write you down as fast as you're coming in so be still for a second
be still while the storm breaks, while you try to figure out if my body is the eye.
while you try to let me in.

So young we were
as time flew by.
My cousin, my friend
My companion in sin.

Your smile was contagious
and your laugh brought tears.
You stood out, wherever you went
but just for 18 years.

A taken life, not by God,
but a simple man.
More like murderer at what he did,
cop car, four wheeler,  rockwall slammed.

No justice dealt to a sorry *******
No justice dealt to a so called cop
If I was just another person
I'd put it to his temple...click..clack...pop..

Everyone loved you
because you enjoyed all you'd do
and you helped others' see it
Even after all you went through.

I was there, I saw it all
I saw the bruises the blood
the fear in your eyes
as the wrath came like a flood.

Yet, you loved life
and helped people smile.
Your personal life hell,
your social life style.

I hear that song and remember our talks,
I hear that song and it cuts me like a knife,
I hear Green Day "The time of your Life."
I start to cry as I remember your life.

I miss you cousin, always have, always will.
Do me a favor and find my kids
and take them to the top of a hill.
Just laugh like you did when we played in snow,
I'll open my ears and hope I hear it down here; below

Fading asleep
Three blurry forks in the road
three of everything
Until i blink.
I crawled up out my passenger side door like a submarine hatch
lifted the heavy weight with my back
Didn't think to roll down the window

I called the band to laugh at the irony
we just wrote a song on falling asleep
crashing our car, dreaming in autumn.
In the song, I dreamed of a girl I'll never have.
But when it happened
I was dreaming of the leftover sheppards pie at home.

Swerved into a rock wall,
Kick flipped my mercury on it's side.
I wore my seat belt
woke up drivers door to the ground.

An old man stopped to warm me.
my grandmothers ghost
in his passenger seat.
offered I sit in their car
out of the cold
Until the firemen arrived.

I saw my mother's blue SUV coming
And waved for the elderly couple to part.
tears in my mothers eyes,
she hugged me tight.
The police showed
To Check out the scene.
as I was alive,
They mostly watched me.
laughing hysterically
At how prophetic poetry can be
and how lucky I have been
And how my shoulder angels are my grandmother, and a gambler named risk.

When My partner arrived she expected me crumpled bleeding.
Smiling false safety through the phone
as I bled out
But I was fine.
she stormed towards me.
her friends stepping outside the car.
her girlfriend in the passenger seat
in the fetal position.
Throwing a tantrum, because she wouldn't get to sleep with my security blanket tonight.

she held me greiving.
I felt like this was an alternate universe.
where I survived
and this wasn't the real story.

The tow truck arrived as the cops collected my Lisence,
the medical professional
okay'd me to sleep tonight.

The firemen flipped my car onto the rockwall from being sideways.
The tow truck grinded my car across the wall into metally pulp.
They collected the bits and dropped it off on my driveway a mile down the road.
my partner drove her friends home
to return to my bed later.
check i was breathing throughout the night.

My car, crumpled. Missing an eye. Looked like a corpse.
like a reminder of what should have happened.
you could feel all sorts of spirits
when I opened the trunk.
contents compacted against the left side.
when i woke up, all i saw was laughter.
At the irony.
the shock.
how many more times
I would need to die
before I perform a magic trick.
if i turned my car into powder
turned my story to a falacy.
how long before their panic attacks become a suicide?
And I'll stop seeing three of everything.

I'm sitting on my front porch
Staring at the falling rain
Your voice sounds like an angel
As you're calling out my name
And you wonder, if there's something more
As we're walking through the door

But there's no spark, there's no love
I need an answer from above
'Cause I don't know what to do
But then you say, one more time
I need a chance to call you mine
But I don't love you too

I'm laying in my bedroom
It was late last Saturday night
I felt the warmth inside of me
I could finally see the light
Then I knew, just what I would do

I'm standing at the rockwall
The only place where I feel free
I dig around to find a pen
As I try to explain me
But I know you'll never understand

That there's no spark, there's no love
I need an answer from above
'Cause I don't know what to do
But then you say, one more time
I need a chance to call you mine
But I don't love you too

I'm sitting next to you
My heart is pounding in my chest
I hope you can understand
You're not the one that i like best
Now I know we'll never feel the same

'Cause there's no spark, there's no love
I need an answer from above
'Cause I don't know what to do
But then you say, one more time
I need a chance to call you mine
But I don't love you too
oh oh oh
I don't love you too

Brilliant and breathless, bending
language like a gardenia wreath
hanging from the rafters
of a sun-drenched mouth
that could only be mine.

Bullish and breathless, tangling
ellipses, clinging to a simile’s hem until it
trips and rips the thread of thought.
I don’t mean this as a manner of speech–
I speak without manners.

Billowed and breathless, humming
out of its skin and into mine.
Meaning is a feathery, fallible thing,
twisting, writhing, vanishing;
tough to trust, prone to rust,
words swirling and spun,
sea-tossed and salt-stuck
on a foreign tongue.

Beaming and breathless, flirting
with the edge of a rockwall,
a siren call,
more lullaby than warning shot,
more hymn than howl, a voice
that could only be mine.

Belated and breathless, underlining
the good lines, never shaking the bad,
plucking at the precipice, never leaping,
clamoring to be heard but never speaking.
A lot of words, but no poem.
A lot of pinch, but no push.
Graceless and glitching,
mine alone.