You've moved inside of me
like a fire moves through
a dry and desolate forest
until the things I always knew
as landmarks no longer
look at all like or
even make any sense to me.
You've folded into my
past like ingredients
into raw dough
and I see you in my
memories during nights
I was sure you weren't
there and I doubt
my eyes and my senses
and worry that my mind
now tells lies as well.
There is an incursion,
an invasive species inside
me now where only
I used to be
there is now you
and the places inside
that have become your
colony.

There are days when
the fire stops and the
skies are blue
but the number is
small and the expectations
of good so very few.
The Bible does use the
word happy, ignore what
they say, unless
you have the money
to make them go away.
Don't settle for good enough
because it'll never be
because more courses
through our culture
and our blood.
And love under starlight
when you can because
love is difficult to find
and starlight won't be
free for long
nor likely will the night.
Find hope in the little
places where it still
grows because
the flood is forever
and we've seen the
last of the dove.
And dance, not before
God, but on the Earth
for your own sake
because the music still plays
and it isn't over yet
but we know how long
it'll take.

My blood is on fire
in dark night as the
drag burns fresh scars
across autumn skin.
You called me from
a thousand miles away
and spoke soft flowers
of need into a half dead
heart as easy as you
breathed perfume into
musty rooms filled previously
with gloom and anxious fear.
I have never loved more
than I have loved you
but the night here is long
and the moon absent from
the starless sky and while
I live for your approval
I cannot douse these flames
even as they brittle my
bones and melted my
useless heart and scorched the
backs of my eyes where you
have long lived.
I can't promise wealth
or status or even tomorrow.
I can't hunt down the moon
to fill the empty sky I've
given you or sing you
one single star.
But...
Call for me still, love.
I will respond as long
as I am able.

You've got vision
and you've got need
and there is power
in following where
you lead.
But I'm dead tired
and broken hearted
and the light outside
has fallen
too low to see.
And I've got meaning
and I've know tough
and I've got all
the memories of
all the things
that I've seen.
Maybe tomorrow we'll
be well
enough to walk from this
burning hell
into fields and pastures
of brilliant green.
One day, I hope and pray,
you'll be beside me
when I lay
down forever for
more than sleep.
Until then we'll be strong
and we'll manage,
together, to get along
because since the start
you've always been
all I need.
And so take heart
and take love
and every ounce
of the blood
that we'll bleed.
Walk with me
hand in hand
all along and across
this land.
Together, my love,
you and me.

We weren't heaven
but we weren't hell, either
and maybe we're clichés
but there's nothing wrong
with plain average mediocrity.
We were ships in the night
all vision but no sight
and maybe we could've
tried harder to slide together
like puzzle pieces but we
just never fit quite right.
And they don't write songs
about what we had,
not even little humming
summer time pop hits,
but we still had it and we,
you and me,
might've been day one doomed
but we get to decide what
we meant to each other
and what we didn't and
we won't agree on what that is
but we never really agreed
on anything else, even when
we seemed to.
What's one more day
removed from never going
to happen?
Sure, we were a pit stop
a diversion on the road
to the places we were going
to finally end up, and
the memories are fuzzy
and the worth dubious
but here's that poem
you always wanted, finally.
I apologize it took me so long,
but hey, you were once
used to that, anyway.

Thirty years ago was yesterday,
it's amazing how fast it all goes
considering how long everything
has always seemed to take.
Hours ago, I was a boy
learning life lessons from
twenty-five year olds
without a clue about
what they were doing
and struggling in the
everyday poverty we all
pretend isn't as ordinary
as it is. As it always has been.
My parents, not yet
forty years old when
I graduated high school,
didn't keep their vows
but many parents didn't.
The whole homes I saw
were odd to me, alien
in their completeness
and intimidating in their
warmly expressed affection.
I always knew, in my bones
and in my blood, that
I would be better, even
incomplete I would look
whole from a distance
if I could just guide the
narrative and live the
white lies about hope
and promise I would
someday see a tomorrow
that made yesterday look
small in it's distance
from today.
It was seven lifetimes
living this lifetime
and it still happened in
the blink of an eye
and everyone tells you that
it will happen that way
and you believe you understand
but I didn't.
I sure thought I did,
a million years back
when it was still
five seconds ago.

I don't know how to quench
I only know how to burn.
When the house burns down
I do not know how to pull
you to safety, love, but
I know how to lift the burning
beam you are trapped under
and take your place among
the flames.
I don't want to shoulder
your every burden I want
to gently press my lips
to your wounds and ****
the poison from your blood.
I want to feel the anguish
and the grief and the lifetime
of pain and anxiety course
through my beating heart
until the hurt you cannot
shed lives in the tips of
my fingers and toes where
I can wiggle them with
both effort and abandon
while you finally breathe
the easy breaths of the well.
I don't want to catch your sick
I want to take it.
I want to rut in sweaty sheets
until you haven't got the fever
that now burns inside me.
I don't want to exorcise your
various demons because I've
long lived with my own and
know exactly the place on
my back where I've room
left to carry.
I don't want to live with
the healing conversations
because they are difficult,
because honesty and openness
require me to move foward
but suffering is second hand.
I have long known how to
walk on a limp but have
never learned to hand out
a crutch.
I'd apologize but I don't
know how to begin
empathy is anathema but
assuming blame is rote.
The house is on fire, love,
and only one of us can still
get out. Allow me to settle
in where you are pinned
as you slide from under.
I'm not here to guide you
safely to the fresh air.
I hope you will feel better
if you can watch me char
to worthless cinder and ash.
I hope this will help but I
don't even know how to ask.