There is so much orange
in these polluted sunsets
and they're beautiful but
the silver lining is breaking
and all of our silly smiles
are starting to look just
exactly like when we're faking
Where is our blue collar hero
callused hands soaked
in motor oil and turning wrenches.
Wasn't he supposed to dip
his toes in Americana
and save us from corporate concerns?
We while the time away in
Endless forever
composing sad love songs
tinged with sepia yesterday.
When will he get here?
I hope it will be before the words lose all meaning and the world burns.
I don't know what it'll take
to hurry it along
we're living on our knees
and breathing in every lie
but they're stalking like lions
in deepest night
waiting for the funeral
but they can't have it until
we just give up and die.
If we take this step
they warn and they warn
it'll mean our very sudden end.
If we insist they remove the scourge;
but still I feel my sneaker move
my toes weightless at the ledge.
And I smile, 'cause baby,
you'd better sing me a dirge.

Color me with Technicolor
like prisms casting light
meet me in the middle, love
'cause I don't think we'll last the night.
Find me in your multi-chambered
beating, hungry heart
because all this screaming,
lately, is tearing us apart.
Whisper sweet nothings
instead of just demanding ***
or start getting ready, honey
to pester whoever comes next.
I don't want to argue,
I don't care if I'm even right
just please come to the table
I just don't want to fight.
No one said it was gonna be easy
but how is it this hard?
I'm pacing up halls and stairwells
doing nightly rounds like a guard.
It was supposed to be transcendent
supposed to lift us off the ground
all we're doing is shouting
our better angels lost in all the sound.
We're still angry as the purpling
sky turns red with the rising sun
and we're promising to fix it
'cause it would hurt more to be done.
Color me in the nighttime hues
the dark blues after sunset
I kiss your finger tips and smile
we both know it ain't over yet.

I've been a lifetime trying
different combinations of words
looking for the series that
forms the litany needed
to cast the spell that'll make
me love myself.
Lost magics are these
somehow beyond my reach
or comprehension but are
all I would need to stop
living in the suffer
and the hurt;
all I need to look into
that ******* mirror
and care about it's
fat, stupid inhabitant.
If not a magic, maybe an art.
Perhaps I can learn it
with practice rather than
conjour it into being
like the skill that comes
from the repetition of sketching
the same line or shape
for hours and days.
I've drawn the character
I wish to be onto the earth
and in my place for
exactly one mortal age
but it still looks rough
and unfinished like the
frantic scratches and doodles
of a child before motor skills
can help to make sense
of their work.
Art, perhaps I've not the skill.
The right art can transform
wht couldn't it transform me?
Magic, perhaps I've not the luck.
The right words in the right order
could save me.
Ancient magics or arts
whichever it may be
that I am certain that
once I knew, before the
thick fingered punishments
and judgements.
Things I understood before
the casual unkindness
and ever present violence
learned me my value
and taught me to think like
a tool on my best days
a weapon on my worst
and a lump of useless ****
the rest of the time.
I do not know why
I continue on from day to day.
I do not know if it's
some form of love
that even I am able to
show to myself
or if it is rank cowardice
and I'm not sure if there's,
when you think about it,
even a real difference.
I may never know
what I don't know
and that, I'm sorry,
is one of only a handful
of things that I know.
Perhaps the right words
in the right order
will fix me.
The right sketched lines
in the right place
could make me forever.
Perhaps that's too
much the ask
of magic or art
but I've no other clue
where else to start.

Do you remember?
Do you recall?
The story starts
the same way,
don't they all?
Once,
There was a storm raging
against the outside
of the building we
were in that we could
hear through the wall.
We both reached for
the same object
at the same time
and there was something
in the casual intimacy
of that brief touch
that I've thought about
all my life.
I've been chasing lightening
through dark skies
and old mythology
and coming up hollow,
empty as a promise to behave
but I'm still hunting
it down as I while away
these humid dog days.
In the soft wet soil
with Nimoy tracking
In Search of...
but finding questions
answered, discarded or
pointless and losing
years in the rabbit holes
that I fall down.
What was the magic
of a moment just after
I knew what I know
but before I knew that
I had no clue what
I know, afterall.
And how do you explain
a longing for something
as ineffable as a fleeting
moment of comfort
wrapped in nervous
flirty laughter?
Once,
I found myself attempting
to recover and laid
out against a bare floor.
You floated over me in
dimples and sunlight
and soft, sweet kisses
or...am I remebering that right?
I'm sitting in the Summer
trying to relate to
Winter how I got
caught up in the Spring
trying to explain the Fall.
Still, fires burn
and waves crash.
Babies are born
and nothing will last.
But for a moment,
years and exactly
one lifetime ago,
I was okay with it all.
I found comfort
in the thunder
and shelter
in the squall.

There are great cities
coursing through my blood
and old mountain ranges
trapped in my DNA.
I am as much where I've been
as where I'm still going.
I am memories of the
excitement of screaming
life on steamy night time
city streets, routine tragedy
lit in neon lights and
the film noir sounds of
cabs and trains rushing by.
The cold street savy intelligence
that we all ignored to
play pickup on packed
streets, or swim in the
local members only or
smoke cigarettes and wonder
what life'll be for us as
we grow in anonymity.
I fell in love on a subway
platform and on building
tops and fire escapes
where buildings jut like
teeth reaching toward the
star absent moon filled sky.
I recall the pine scented
sidewalkless roads of deepest
Appalachia, the wind cut
rosy red cheeks of chipped
tooth kids scheduling their
meetings in advance.
Finding each other on school
yards and bus rides home.
Learning to love in crisp
mountain air and flannel
wrapped forms.
Building fires and seeing
in her eyes something
as wonderful as the hundreds
of thousands of stars in
the cosmic painting of the sky.
I settled in the brick row homes
of somewhere inbetween.
An alley behind the house
and a wall shared with a
neighbor in a place that
knows and throws
block parties
to recall my first love
and a yard and treeline
in the distance so as not to
deprive my boy of that
uniquely East Coast
forest and the magic of
a night sky full of color.
I long for yesterday
but have learned the hard
lesson of compromising
all that was once my
yesterday with what is now
My today in order that I
make a middle ground
for tomorrow

Pardon me while I
repeat myself
in angry verse about
the usual things:

Death and violence
neglect and silence
abuse and regret
lost love and nebulous yet.
I try to think of brighter things
like your eyes or
the sound when the little guy sings
but it all turns cold
and I can't do as I'm told
and soon these things fall apart
and so I give up before I start.
I try to write myself out
on an ocean of wasted ink
but lose lungfulls of air
and finally just sink.
I don't know why you love me
and I'm afraid to ask.
I'm incapable of teamwork
and never up for the task.
I'm always seven words into
my biting verbal sting
before I realize it was me
who said the wrong thing.
And I know it's hard when
I shut down, it feels like lies
and ******* my silence
but that's me trying to apologize.

When I was young
I tried to call the thunder
and marveled when it came
but the dry dirt still cracked
and peeled, just the same.

Time marches foward with
little regard for you or me,
and of course much has changed
but I wish I could still ******* believe.
Remember how sure
we used to be?
Running around with dreams
and the myth of meritocracy.
Years ago we were strong
as a lapping ocean wave
or the mile wide light and heat
of a forest fire blaze.
We were songs stuck
in each other's swollen head
we were so ******* alive
absent a mounting sense of dread.
And I'm lying if I say I didn't
think back and miss us then
but I've been scraped along a lifetime
of disappointment again and again.
There is hope still for you
to climb to success, I hope
but my dreams have gone,
I'm at the end of my rope.
It's a hard thing to have learned
and to know better.
It's a hard thing to listen to
her go and to just let her.