I try to sleep, I honestly try my best,
life would call me a mess.
But when the night comes and goes
As though the wind blows her away
I cant help but tear myself to pieces.
You might not understand the sleeplessness
But im sure you all know suffering.
The happy thoughts stuck on buffering
Spinning a wheel of sorry im not functioning.
Not today nor any other,
A constant "why do I bother"
Trying to recover from the last 52 hour
Binge watching of "something to do"
Just To keep myself from knocking a ***** or two
Loose from my scattered brain;
Splattered against the television
For hours on end because delusion
Is a better conclusion than depression.
Stuck in a fantasy that I can be super human
Rather than facing the contusion head on.
Putting a bandaid on the hole in my soul
Hoping that heroism is a contagious scroll
Through the cartoon section of the tv guide.
I hide in bed waiting for my bride,
My perfect life to fall into place
But all I face is static friction
Because the perfect life is fiction.
And ill lie awake till the day I die
Watching the world as my life goes by.
Suffering, like the rest.

ludicrous and lime she's bought my wine
then usher on the farm or circus daemon
was house carrying a whim to heart
where climes are thought that fighting down the hatch  
where rumors are frothy in those diamonds caught
wish only tout cookie once thunder crash has melted speed
but any counters that claim violence is deniable here
and viable to an Osborne scene but wading in traffic
as a country lane shade its spree and what lies in air was a roadside
fair in bloom on Sunday afternoons in Tamaqua boon pillared spoon

And once his friends
could walk to work with them
in neighborhoods to and fro there,

they came more moderate from near and far
as Gulielma wasn't there anymore and through their own
when week-ends could meander upstream with them both or alone
they would keep these dreams alive here,

a triumph in Penn Manor now Collegeville nigh
where she stay in times that heat up in spite of theirs
and might of luck be there till sunset still host wares of Philadelphia round today.

Railroad tracks along the Keystone Line
Gleamed with a copper luster under light
From the Dog Star and the solstice moon.

Those slivers of metal became more valuable
After they were squished by the weight of train cargo
And blessed by the red light of the railroad crossing.

The coins we minted weren’t trinkets
We could spend at the general store.
They didn’t belong to the government.
We created a currency for our neighborhood.

We stockpiled them in mason jars,
Traded them for boyhood commodities,
And made necklaces for our girlfriends.

I can’t say when the others cashed out.
Maybe it was the day they started earning
Bigger coin in the mines and the mills.

I walk the tracks at night, searching for the
Cents we lost beneath the splintered ties.

There is a rusty coffee can in my garage
Filled with distorted faces and Lincoln memorials.
I recognize those weathered shapes
Better than my friends’ faces

She wears my military
Issue jacket into the cold.

We stalk the empty platform.
Our breath trails behind us,
Like the smoke of a locomotive.

She wants to travel in shadows
Beneath a veil of frost.

I want to give her the diamond
My former fiancé left me.

But I would feel like a conductor
Returning a ticket stub, proclaiming
I am a passenger without my own momentum.

We trudge through the snow
And board the late train to Harrisburg.
I incinerate the love left in my heart.

One day I will wake up and
She will tell me it’s spring.

In memoriam Asher and Franklin

Farmers flocked to Blossburg's mines
    willing their abandoned plows
    to perpetual dust and rain.

Burrowing into the Tioga hills
    with Keagle picks and sledges,
    they filled their trams with rough cut coal.

Black diamonds - carved for waiting boilers
    of New England mills and trains
    and Pennsylvania's winter stoves.

Brothers, Frank and Asher swung their picks
    in tunnels deep beneath the hills
    and brushed away the clouds of soot.

Their coughs at first seemed harmless
    enough as from nagging colds or flus -
    but deepened as their lungs turned black.

Pain and choking drove them to their beds
    where no medic's art could aid them.
    Then the coroner came to seal their eyes.

A stonecutter's chisel marks their brevity
    on an marble graveyard obelisk
    that pays no homage to their sacrifice.

September, 2007

♧How does someone
with a heavy heart
have such a
lighthearted laugh?
I get tongue tied around you.
I trip over my laces.
We pretend
we don't notice
the road rash.
We pretend
it's just from my palms
meeting the pavement
too many times.
♧You are trains and buses,
always ready to leave.
We used to go on road trips
and I'd stare at you
staring out the window.
Staring at the sky.
Staring at the trees.
Staring at the hills.
I could never meet your eye.
You overlooked every attempt.
Every grand gesture.
♧I don't drive too far now.
I learned distance
isn't just in miles.
You're not just busy,
You've gone missing.
I'm scared I might
see you're green eyes
staring back at me
If I look out the window.
I'm scared they won't
recognize me anymore.

Forget them food stamps Jim-Bob
We nabbed ourselves a deer!