Caroline loves the ocean.  
Her soul sails on a Carolina breeze.
But her music's in the mountains,
and her heart's back home
where it needs to be.

I'm stuck here
in a Carolina wind,
wading in the ocean
with my heart in Tennessee,
and my mind on Caroline.

Carolina's got everything
a man could want.
Everything he needs.
It's got the mountains and the ocean.
It has a Carolina breeze.

He has everything but Caroline;
everything but Tennessee.

r ~ 6/22/14

in the dark

i sometimes feel

the cold sharp edge
of night's dagger

memories are bled

forgotten pain
is good to remember

the sound of cheney's voice
speaking of war
with his new bad heart.

r ~ 6/22/14

I'm better now.
It only hurts when
I manage to
Breathe.

I'll help you pack.
Carry to your Volvo.
When you leave,
I'll either wave back or

Throw this stone
When I know you're
Out of
Reach.

You thank me for taking
Things so well.

Remember, only one of us
Stopped loving
The other.
The other

Is still the same. Only pale with
Pain and shortness of breath.

After denial, confusion and
Anger, all that's left is
Character.
Will you scream at the sword
As it turns, or laugh
Carelessly bleeding out?

I'll handle things how I always
Have. Carve my features on
This stone, so my softness won't
Soften you.

I'm more than
Just a straight face,
You know.

do you ever wonder
about the difference between
looking at something
and the hallucination created
when looking past it?
if you look at your hand
it's all you can see
but if you look past your hand
there are now two of them
sometimes it's hard for me
to remember which is real
it gets me thinking
about how my father
used to wake me up
in the morning by rubbing
his stubble across my face
i spent my 11th birthday
under the assumption
that he might come back
if i drank his aftershave
like maybe if i could turn blue
if i could be his favorite color
on our bathroom floor
he would forget why he left
the paramedics were all sobing
as they pumped memories
out of my stomach
i coughed up the day the post-it note with your new address on it
burned a hole in our refrigerator
coughed up the day
the divorce papers came
and my mother
took a baseball bat to the mailbox
i've been choking on the splinters
for 17 years
it's been 17 years
since the last dinner plate
exploded on our dining room wall
17 years since my mother
started accidentally setting your place at the dinner table
17 years since italian night
at the restaurant on the corner
where the juke box
spat tired music
and like so many other things
it stopped working when you left
i guess it's no coincidence
since the juke box went quiet
that the cds in my car
only skip on "i miss you"
i've been hemorrhaging memories
for so long
and now that i'm looking back
i can no longer tell
the mirage from the truth
sometimes i swear
you showed up to my graduation
and last time
i was at your apartment
i can't remember
if the imprints of my hands
are in clay hanging on your wall
or if they were left in the mud
the day god had the audacity
to let it rain
or maybe it's like the time
i saw someone crying on a bridge
now that i think about it
i can't remember if it was me

Burns in the heart
Need to recover from it
You left me a scar
That reminds you all the time
Pain never bothered me
But Separation had full effect
It feels like rocket launchers
Hitting my heart
Breaking it into several pieces
Everyday my task is to
Collect my pieces and
Attach them and
Giving a faking smile
That no one can ever know
My pain
I am an actor
Who is cheating me
To adapt for loneliness

I wanted to write a poem about flowers, so that's what I did.
It was short, expressed how I feel, and cut like glass.
I showed my father "Flowers" and he thought it was mediocre.
And I said, "No, "Mediocre" is the poem where I talk about dying,
and I'm trying to stay alive, so I wrote about flowers."

Flowers strangling soil plots with their roots, with their existence.
And to hurt something you love with your existence is a terrible feeling.