You are a waterfall
Cascade out of open Berkshire mountain faces,
Stone lips painted red by your words.
They say red is the color of love but I can't feel anything but
Empty
Indifferent
Inside when I see the blood in the corner of your mouth.
You don't care
Chase your narcotics with tequila,
Follow your *** smoke with an inhaler,
I watch you drift.
Do you remember 5 year old me
Hugging you round your knees and
The way you ran to grab me when I tumbled into the creek behind your house?
I do
Your hands are warm where they brush mine
When you ask me to refill your glass
I didn't know you drank ***** by the travel mug now.
4 ice cubes.
I lean in the bedroom doorway and watch the mice scurry beneath your couch
And I think about how those same warm, now-swollen hands
Built this place.
Forgive me.
I have intruded on your aging privacy,
Gray hairs in the 3-day stubble on your bloated chin
As you gasp quietly, eyes shut over decades of memories.
Your steroids have inflated your stomach more than the lungs they were
Supposed to heal and
You shuffle so slowly down the stairs I
Shift uncomfortably as I wait impatiently to get around you to the car
Fleeing the air of decay and the whiskey on your breath.
New England roads are good for thinking.
Surrounded by ageless forests I think of my aging family,
Of you, Grandfather,
Your hacking cough sounding like the Massachusetts thunder
Across the lake.
2 hour car ride to see the rest of the
Degrading homes once owned by
My father's father's family;
Your family.
I see a waterfall in the distant Berkshires.
We are part of 1 family,
But I can't feel the love I see in my father's eyes, red from tears at your impending funeral.

I've written my suicide note too many times
On the inside of my lips,
Wishing against hope for the rain that pours from iron clouds to
Rinse me away.
I read it, my tongue tracing it's own scars against the warm whisper
Of rose-pink crinkled lines in my mouth
Give up, it murmurs
You've done so much,
Give up
Sleep quietly in the deep waters that are already
Lapping over your eyelashes.
I tear my notes to shreds with the hard, sharp lines of new letters
Rewriting my past and present in the hopes of forcing some peace into my future,
So here is my note
A poem to soothe your inevitable tears.
My thoughts swirl like dark water ****** down a drain,
But thoughts are only wisps of cloud,
Not solid guarantees or promises,
Like the ones I break without you ever knowing.
I need a guarantee, a promise of oblivion, bringing myself to
Be washed down to drain with my thoughts.
I wanted to write a poem to tell you how I
Would die,
To share with anyone the last moments of flickering electricity
In a brain worn out with life
Even though I've hardly lived.
I wanted to write this poem to tell you how much I would leave behind,
How much I would miss the feeling of spring rain on my eyelashes
And hot tea in my throat in October
And your hand on my shoulder when I cried.
I wanted to write you this poem,
But I can't find the words to describe
What a souls looks like
When I open the cage of my lips,
Baring my collections of old, written over notes for the last time.
I wanted to write you this poem,
But I haven't found the words yet
To tell you what death feels like.

stab push lift pour

stab push lift pour

a ghost of memories past

a small boy no older than 12

he had curly black hair just like mine

he had brown eyes just like mine

he looked just like me

but thats because he had a last name ... just like mine

this was no tragic accident

but a carefully crafted punishment of a young boys mind

and the piece by piece fragmentation of his soul

every hurtful word, every disgusted look, every should turned

slowly braided itself together to form a string of ideas

every moment of hurt, every memory of pain, every day of neglect

slowly looped itself around him and knotted everything together

as if it was a gift of a ticking time bomb, wrapped in images you wish to forget, topped off with a bow of stripped and flattened emotions , signed with a card that simply says ... **** yourself

they say no one is responsible for his death, and the kids who teased him said " I was just joking"

well here's the punch line, i wonder which one of you ran through his mind when he finally kicked the chair out from underneath him

he stepped up on that chair with his final words that should be as historical as "four scores and severn years ago" or as revolutionary as "I HAVE A DREAM"

and hearing his last cries would be like hearing a nuclear warning siren... a scream of an inevitable end

and walking in and seeing his body hanging there like a forgotten halloween decoration was as sickening and heart breaking as seeing a ******* painted in a synagogue

i still keep his noose and i keep it mounted on the front door like a wreath , as if to say

HANG YOUR PRIDE AND OFFER A HELPING HAND BECUASE IT COULD BE THE LIFE LINE SOMEONE NEEDS

please , from a father left incomplete because they are burying a part of me

stab push lift pour

stab push lift pour

Grandfather,
I'm sorry.
I know we don't talk much anymore..
Barely once a year.
You're old,
Your skin the weathered brown of a man
Who has lived in among the trees and your own roots,
Hard work and New England weather shaping the crags of your muscles and
The hills of your mind.
Grandfather,
I don't know you
You've gotten too distant,
Nothing more than a collection of colorful memories drifting lazily in
A summer lake.
Your face is familiar, but it is too large,
Bloated, with 3 days worth of stubble on your double chin.
Grandfather,
It's not your fault, I know
You've had a hard life
Your body has just finally failed you
And you pretend to not notice that you are too old to not notice your aging
You creep so slowly with your walker,
Looking wistfully over the water,
Seeing shades of yourself sailing on the breezy waves.
I hear whispered conversations of doctors offices and
Estates and wills and old family rivalries,
Too much for you to hold in your mind anymore.
Grandfather,
You don't ask for anything.
Maybe you don't know what you need.
Grandfather,
This is my gift to you.
This moment of privacy and silence
When you lean on the counter to steady your hand as
You take your innumerable medications
Your breath catching quickly in your ruined lungs and your eyes squeezing shut over 7 decades of memories.
I don't let you see that I notice your
Blank look or gentle snores at the table,
Or see how much you struggle to get down the stairs with a leg swollen to twice the normal size.
Maybe you don't see what you need
Or don't care
But maybe I can help
In my own, selfish teenage way
I can assume what you need,
What words might make you reconsider your stubborn
Indifference to your dying health.
Grandfather,
I love you.

The world is flat, a calendar picture,
Picture-perfect,
Afraid of being crumpled by the hand of a God and
Used to shoot trash can-basketball baskets
In a small, lonely bedroom where the only one keeping score is the
Parakeet statue perched on the broken clock, staring.
It's always 2 o'clock.  
2 o'clock on a Thursday afternoon in early November when
The whole world looks like it wants to curl up and cry  
So I curl up and cry for it,
13.6 billion years of tears dripping from green eyes
And a green heart meant for growing flowers and love songs,
Not crow calls and dreams that die in infancy
I float.
Salt water tears lapping around inside my ears
Maybe it will cover up the sound of screaming inside my bones
And the pretty girl swimming in my heart-lake
Laughing and stirring up the cold undertow of my thoughts and when I look at the sky
I see the cloud shadows against the blue,
Blue just a little too dark, little too deep,
Too deep, too dark,
The water beneath me too deep, too dark
I'm drowning and I haven't even left my bed
I wonder if that counts as talent.
Is this what it feels like to go mad?
2 o'clock my hands aren't attached to my body anymore,
They can't be part of me when they dance
Across desk tops looking for scissors and rummage through bathroom drawers to find razors.
That's not my blood in the sink,
It can't be because all my blood is locked up
Inside the red haze behind my anger,
Caught in sharp words like fish in a net,
Not my words but yet they fall from my mouth.
My room contains my screams
As they drip silently from teeth made crooked by too many lies.
The parakeet stares.
It's 2 o'clock but I don't know if it's a new day yet because the sky always looks dark
Outside my windows
So I shut my eyes and don't open the curtains.  
The world is collapsing,
The hands of God pulling down the picture,
Time's up, new calendar page,
I'm left behind,
Lost in the trash can pile of old words
And whispered thoughts.
The sky is too blue,
The water too deep,
I'm drowning.
It's 2 o'clock.