Shuffle up and get down low,
the calender says it's a different day
and a different year,
but it only ever feels like it
during the day.

Sitting here tonight, I'm typing
into a different phone,
drinking at a different bar,
but somehow it's essentially the
same night that I've been living
for ten years...maybe more.

The same words, the same feeling
of a knife in the heart, the same
Irish jigs playing through busted speakers, and what I think I'll find somewhere in the haze still eluding.

All flowing back into a night so often repeated in so many places...Virginia, Washington, Arizona, Florida, even the night in Nogales I never mention.

It all comes back to girls with razors in their purses, the boys who put them there, and the unseen hand that has pushed them all.

THIRTY-TWO Greeks are dipping their feet in a creek.
Sloshing their bare feet in a cool flow of clear water.
All one midsummer day ten hours the Greeks
        stand in leather shoes shoveling gravel.
Now they hold their toes and ankles
        to the drift of running water.
Then they go to the bunk cars
        and eat mulligan and prune sauce,
Smoke one or two pipefuls, look at the stars,
        tell ****** stories
About men and women they have known,
        countries they have seen,
Railroads they have built-
        and then the deep sleep of children.

How many nights might have been different,
so many empty words bled onto pages needlessly?

You lied to me, both of you.
You two hated each other after you loved,
Mother and Father, and each
in your own way crippled me.

You two taught me to believe in a world that doesn't,
and never will exist, a twisted version of reality;
you pushed the world you wished,
instead of the one I know you lived.

Woman upon a pedestal,
and man with pride above her want,
both simple and wishful trash
that has caused me untold pain.

I am alone now because of the
decisions I have made, my own
beliefs dictating what I thought
was right, good, and just.

I can't drink anything without guilt,
I can't let a woman that's not as drunk
as me kiss me without feeling like a predator,
I can't **** without feeling like I have
violated her free will.

I can't touch someone without
wondering what they may want from me
in return for their affection.

What I can do however, is rebel.

I can say no.
I can make a choice to cast aside these shackles,
as I should have and tried to do
long ago.

I will give all I can,
and I will not be afraid to receive.

Nostalgia is a bitter-sweet pill,
I taste it as the wind tickles
My bare shoulders, just like
His breath used to,
I drink it when I remember
The dizzy euphoria of devouring
His wine-kissed lips,
Oh what I wouldn't give
To have him tiptoe back into
My existence and grab me by my waist,
Erase the bitterness and replace it
With the sweetness of himself.
Oh what I wouldn't give
To have him fill in the blanks
He's left in my poetry,
Replenish the drought, the paucity
Of his most sacred gift to me,
Words
If he'd return,
My words would too.

I didn't intend to wind up here tonight, typing a sick excuse for a poem into my phone from a dive.

But that crazy South African really put the hook in me, apealing to my vanity and persona, as if an alcoholic ex-soldier could own such.

In the background of my thoughts go pieces of other poems, pieces of memories, tired revelations cried out into the darkness.

So sick of people asking me why I'm sad, and them forgetting what my answer is five minutes later, when that new girl or new guy walks by.

I have more to say, but I know that no matter what I spit onto page will make no difference in the long run.

So bartender, I need another shot.

It ends here, now.
This compromised soul,
this tired acceptance of a dead hope;
too much time wasted in longing
for something that brings forgetfulness.

Somehow, I love you.
And everything you still stand for.

I don't know how many disguised lines
were puked up by me in dark alleys,
or scribbled in a ***** notebook
alongside tradecraft and parameters.

So many years and I'm still bound by something,
some smiling morality whispering
seductively of what might have been,
if only I had thrown loyalty and that
outdated wraith called honour aside.

I understand that I'll never see you again,
will never have the chance to rectify
the wrong I did to your heart and soul
in the name of something that doesn't exist.

Never did I understand why Everett tried
so hard to put you on display; but looking back
now I get why you wanted Krum so bad,
and why you tried to trust me.

Regardless of what may have passed,
I still want to thank you.

Thank you for giving me a place to sleep,
and a friend when I had no one.

Sweet, kind and thoughtful.
Those are the words you used to describe me that day,
the day I almost told you too much,
the day I almost broke my own rules again.
I may be those things, but you can tell,
somehow, sense somewhere,
that it's a barely maintained show
I put on for you, and all the rest.

You know, and I know, that I don't belong
in your bed, or in your heart.
Ask the ones who've come before what it's like
to wake up in the middle of the night
and find me sleeping on the floor,
or to have me claw my way out of a heart.

Brought down by hands and hearts and eyes,
hands to break, hearts to bind, and eyes to lie.

You know, and I know, that I don't belong
in your hands, or even on your street.
With my body in your hands I still
won't unfold from my ol' time contortion,
waiting for the dream to end and the bomb to drop.
And you'll spend nights wondering at four in the morning,
while I'm wandering down your empty road with my soul on fire.

I'd love you with all I am, in my fashion,
the way that keeps half of me always away from you.
There are doors that I'll never open for you,
secrets you'll never tear out of my throat,
rooms in my heart walled up and left for those
long after to come and break into.

It's alright though, since you're movin along,
and I'll be movin on too soon, but I guess it's good,
good that we met each other since you've exorcised
one of my ghosts, and I hope that maybe I've helped
in giving you a little bit of hope for all that's left out there.