My mind is moving much too fast,
To ****** a slippery slumber.
So I'll ache and wait,
And watch my brain wither,
As loneliness quenches its hunger.

This is the year of the search party
The year we stop looking for the answers
The year our inner commotion
Winds down to a clockwork steady

The year where everything is okay
Because it is
Because you are not your lame job
And you are not your last semester
And you are not your bills piling up

You are the moment your lungs erupt
A steady stream of your own breath
Taste it like biting cold
Or cigarettes
Feel it like a mudslide on your own skin

Let it go

Let it go like the millions of choices you can make today
Let every choice you have ever made fall away
So that you may take a moment to be satisfied right now

Assume you had no other options
And because you had no other options
Where you are is where you were meant to be

This is the year made easy
The year the search party found the answers
And hand delivered you note

The year you are a nuclear reactor
Every time you stand still
Feel the hum of your breath
As it fills up your chest
And you get so hot
The snow bending your branches melts away

The year you do not still yourself because of your anchors
You still yourself to watch them fall away

This is the year you make peace with the past

Be in the moment
Make this the year of forgiveness
And the year of less stress
The year you shake hands with your vices
The year of really good ***

The year the search party stopped
And you walked away
Dropped all your gear
Because what you found was a mirror
And it felt like you saw yourself for the first time
Because you did

Because there are no answers
Because every choice you have ever made brought you here
And right here is where you were meant to be

I’m not sure there are words for this
It is like suddenly finding out your heart is hard and hollow
Like a shell
And the heaviness in your chest goes without explanation

It is like these arms are revolving doors
For bodies that will not stay

It is like phantom limbing lips that aren’t yours
And maybe you kiss your own shoulder to remember the feeling

It is telling a chat-room ******* you love her
And almost meaning it
But you could never tell anyone else about the relationship
She says she loves you back
To everybody

There is the silence
In the spaces between sleep
When your thoughts take you places that are not calm

There is the mirror at the gym that you sometimes look into for too long

There is you without the words to be honest so you come on too strong

On the non-tattooed side of my chest
Are childhood surveys
Check if you like me
Check if you don’t
Please leave a 500 character minimum explaining
Your reaction to your most recent encounter
Thank you and remember
I only aim to please

There is this fancy worded poetry
With bits of her body tucked in between lines
So that when I speak them I might get to taste her

It is the broken record of your confidence
And no one has moved the needle

Sometimes you separate yourself from it
But you can’t even name it
It isn’t lonely
It is speechless
It just sits and feels
So you try to feed it
But it doesn’t eat

Sometimes you come close
But the words sit awkward in your mouth
Fall out like blocks

But they have no weight
So they don’t hit hard enough

All I know is that when I look at her
I feel the exact opposite

But there are no words for that either

I’ve got plenty of ghosts I promised her. I leave them wherever I go.

At the house on 711 Ellen St there is the ghost of a dog named Hessa and a dog named Mac. They don’t play together, but they pant heavy, waiting my return.

There is the ghost of a cat named Charles. He chases a raccoon out of a busted window that my mother fell through.

There is the ghost of my mother pacing the living room, contemplating suicide.

When ghosts die, they become useful fire, burning as long as necessary, and then blowing out forever.

There is the Ghost of Louie, helping me fix my car. There are the ghosts of our tall cans crushed to the curb. There is the ghost of their fullness. Little drops that are left sit in the rim of the mouth.

Every moment makes a ghost. Every time you move something from stillness, there is a ghost for it.

When I come to see you, I will leave behind the ghost of laughter, the ghost of my warmth growing colder. Miss it if you want to.

There is the ghost or your taste in my mouth. Certain foods bring it back to life. I let the Bud Light sit on my tongue. I almost tasted it. Something is missing.

There is the ghost of your smell. It tricks me into craning my neck, eyes searching for you. There is the ghost of your smile which haunts me when the ghost of your smell tricks me into thinking you’re there.

There is the ghost of my cool breath dying on your neck, then dying again. The fire it becomes extinguishes quickly.

Behind your couch there is the ghost of a cricket. He has stolen a harmonica and plays only the high notes. Tell his family that he misses them.

There are the ghosts of apples that I skinned when I learned to make pies in high-school. I have made many apple pie ghosts since then. I will bring one to you. It will be a slow ghost. The steam rising from the middle is its spirit returning home.

Home is your chest. Breathe the ghost of my pie, the ghost of my cologne, the ghost of my eyes wet with poetry I have just read.

There is the ghost of poetry as it mixes with my breath and exits my chest. Let it die and die again. Let it haunt your heart, your belly, the back of your neck like a gentle hand.

I make graveyards. I make ghosts. I leave them behind wherever I go. I miss some of them. There is the ghost of my irregular heartbeat, when I feel the ghosts that I miss pass by. I breath slowly trying to feel them, but too soon they are gone.

Ghosts don’t stay long. I can stay long. Make ghosts in the meantime.

When I come to see you, I will leave you with ghosts.

if you must have the
last word the
word should be "sorry"


simple poems are fun
yet they can
say more than one thinks


enjoying nature
time to pray
like a Romantic


bicycling is part
of my life
need I search for more


there is a time in
people's lives
that they would erase


the tree is  now down
but Christmas
lives in memory

Tiresome
barriers
separate.

Man labels
to escape
a moment.

Tangible
barriers
manifest

keeping us
from learning
the moment.

It was so god ****** cold, outside and in. The attic anyway.
My friends and I ascended two flights of stairs, in this burning winter air.
We came around the side of that house and my pocket buzzed the vibrations of a call. I reached right-handed for that call. Into my jeans, sliding over my bloodied knuckle from the day which we had already passed. It was your name lit up so holy on my screen, my eyes took seconds to tell my circuitry. I wanted seconds more from this name for me. Just to look and hold the vibrations knowing who was at the other end. And then I answered it.
The shaking voice of a boy turned man. And I heard your voice on the phone and then from above on the balcony past the wooden gate. And you told me directions, over the phone and I still heard you speaking 15 feet above. You kept speaking. And my comrades stoop solid on my left and right flanks, I am their reason for being here. And we went up and inside. Into the coldest attic i've ever had. Causing them to go for more blankets for themselves, they were so cold. I was cold. I shook a little and I tried to control it. At one point you shook too, I felt it from you. One friend by my side on this leather and the other took to the floor. He adapted to this new room, and these people so quickly. He sat and he operated with his surgical hands on his craft, his sport, well one of them. Loading drugs for all these kids to put into their lungs, and laugh it all up. Your friends did the same. One beside you and the other on the floor. Leaving you and I in the middle of this chain of bodies. I barely knew how to act, you showed the same thing. The drugs lacked warmth, you overpowered the dosage without lifting a finger. Mad isn't it.
I used my lungs for once, you seemed to open up sealed valves. The passages set free, for oxygen in me, no more stagnant words or only lifelessness to give so please, you may reach for what you need.
You've brought back the life and the light. All the while our friends surround us, and no one knows of what has just happened, but you don't either. You didn't try. And then you did.

Should I roll back into nothing. A ghost into a house with many beds, and a large window with a large sill you once said you would make your writing nook. And read and drink hot cups of tea and coffee. I can still see you there, in my future. A wet, gray and fogged morning out there. And you're across the room at the window. I feel like maybe I shouldn't create this dream and hope. That one day, you'll pull down my driveway. Find me working on something outside, and sweating. Or riding. Or i see you through my front window in the cold with my fire burning. I feel like maybe I shouldn't create this a dream and a hope.  But you know what? **** holding back.
I'll believe onward in you even though you might not ever pull down my driveway, one day.
I deserve nothing for my emotional abuse that was placed upon you by my doing. I get why you may never come down the drive.
I still want to hold onto that thought. Because that might keep me alive through these years, even though i don't really feel like livin' anymore. I'll be there. Off of that high way, i will be there if the dark doesn't take me away. If the need to pass on doesn't become to much. I would drop to my knees if you pulled down that drive some day. You would hear the gravel in my voice and see the struggle on my brow. I may roll back into that house, or a second deployment in the desert, or death. Death is easy, no last good fight left in giving up on myself. Even though it would hardly matter anyway. You would come down my drive. And i would drop, and i would cry. Because i do cry, because i've been crying, because i'm crying now.
That place out there, where I will reside, where i may hide. You're always welcome to venture out. Sometime. The future is always uncertain. Come and hug me, come and scream in my face, come and make me bleed, come and **** me lovingly, come and destroy me in every way you know possible. I'll be on my knees,
i'll be on my knees.

Not about love or life.
Not about sun and snow.
Not about hate or politics.
What more ought we know.

Not philosophy, psychology or history.
Nor horror, adventure or mystery.
Whether on sea or land,
it will not stand
in the vast oak court of reality.