The neighbors are having a party.
Young women are seduced by young men
and the cycle of life has evolved into this
degradation of humanity in the 21st century.
I have taken a large part myself.
Now, however, I sit a room away
with this keyboard, a case of beer
and this pack of cigarettes,
bullying this keyboard as I
punch words out of thin air.

I would take my party over theirs any day.

The women often leave quietly
and without a fuss.
They have a right to
come and go at their leisure.
There are times, however,
that they leave and
they are loud.
They are louder than
a man can imagine,
or possibly stand,
and they throw their
shoes or their bottles
or their broken hearts
with reckless abandon
towards you.

Those of the last sort
are what hurt
the most, it seems
—although the other objects
do damage, quite the same—
I only smile, smile
with a terrible sadness,
What else is there to do?

The door slams and
the curses echo off
of the thin, plaster
walls of this emptied
apartment, and I am
left to pick up the shards
of glass, broken picture frames,
and pieces of the love
they carelessly
left behind,
smiling, always smiling.
What else is there to do?

You were drawn to me
because I was a writer.
You didn't understand
that I write well
simply because I lie well.
Such is the art of storytelling.
I'm honestly sorry you had
to realize that
The hard way.

I sat there, on the balcony in the middle of winter,
worried about where you were, if you were ok.
I was worried about where I was, if I was ok.
I had no answers. You were gone
and I was in Hell
All of this has become a brutal mutilation of love.
I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t sleep, anymore.
It was all tightened in my chest like a vice,
like a hand around the throat.
A brutal mutilation of love.
The poorest *******, you and I.
Entangled in a feeling we couldn't feel anymore.

I sat there, on the balcony,
worried about the sky falling down,
about the finality and futility of everything.
You were gone and I was in Hell.
I looked up, it was snowing.
I laughed at the irony and agony of it all.

It is OK to hurt over things lost,
or things time has changed and
separated from what it was
you once knew.
In fact, it is productive to do so.
It is wrong– detrimental, even,
to believe one must run from
hurt such as this.
Memory and mistake often come
one wrapped within the other,
thus to grow and learn
one must take them both in hand
and embrace them as old friends.

Throughout life, the list of memories
and the list of mistakes grow.
Acquaint yourself with them.
Look backwards and wave fondly
at each as you strive further and
further up the path
away from them.

Love is merely walking around
and feeling good about everything
and everywhere that you happen on.
The rest is façade and embellishment,
meant to blush the cheeks of young children.
If you’ve found one to sit with you
on the park benches, silent and smiling,
then there is love there. If you have found
it then there is love in the branches
and the grass and the sun and the
quiet looks you share as you
experience it all in your togetherness.

I sit on park benches late at night,
under streetlights,
seeing ghosts of that love,
passing about through the
branches and the trees and
between the legs of the young couple
striding past me,
walking their dog back home.

All the memories feel so detached.
The time slips by and the things
you did to pass it feel as unreal as the
dreams that burn against the inside
of your skull when you awake.
It’s another day.
It’s another passing afternoon.
The reasons for everything you do
and everything you did blur and
dissipate and the emotion of it all
fades to background noise.
The hope of the future has become
the consequences of the past and
the context of the present.
Where have you been all of this time?
Where have you been while you were living?
Memory is as real as a good movie, captured
in pictures, or written down like a book
That you remember but can’t quite
recall the theme.
Time is unforgiving in its perseverance,