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.

What doesn't **** you
hobbles and breaks you.
Maybe gray skies invite
silver linings but rain
still falls too.
And **** cliché sentiment
this tired old meaningful fight
because tomorrow is
coming and daybreak
is not the invitation it's
meant to be tonight.
I paint myself in
purples and greens
and you stand on promises
but I still don't know
what that means.
Push the daisies through dirt
and share your various hurt
with the group.
Love isn't fire
and promise isn't hope.
Waiting for light in
the dark is the same
as hanging from rope
waiting for a savior
who never comes through.
Or waiting for me
to love you too.
And sure the ocean is open
and wishes are free
but fish don't have answers
and there is no completion from me.

I tell truth couched
in lines of metaphor
and marvel when you're
unable to decipher it.
I riddle my feelings
at you in digital media
under assumed names
and lament how you
can't see how I feel.
I pretend at such depth
but swim so close
to the surface I can
hear sing-song sounds
gurgling in my ears
and still feel the warmth
of sunshine on my neck.
I move with eyes
open in shallow water
but pinch my nose closed
against the current
to prevent it from
invading me with
the honesty that will
break me completely
in two.
I look at you through
this distorted mess
and apply new paint
to the same tired
******* wreck.
I sink when I try to float
even when I hold my breath
but I lie about it
about everything
if that isn't too much
to tell.
Did you believe me
when I said I was beside
you during those laps?
I was waiting in the shallows
crouched to seem in much
deeper than I am
and hoping that you
would pretend you couldn't
see through me for a while.
If I closed my eyes
and fell backward on the
surface of the lake
would you agree that
I'd floated or would
you tell the truth
for my sake?

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.

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.

We're all fresh bones
on a downward slide toward
sunken coastal homes
and time and tide pull
us toward empty tomorrows
and wave like wheat fields
and drunken stadiums.
When we miss the mark
we are not landing in
starry pools of promise
because people drained them
swearing to throw down
ladders that we could climb
but laughed and pointed as
we hung limp from the rungs
and whistled sorrow at
everyday pain that came
disguised as hellos but
smelled exactly like goodbye.
And I don't know the magic
or the art
I can't read the prose
or find the start
and Mexican radio used
to broadcast rebellion but
the airwaves are digital now
and the beating heart
of our once burning dreams
is stilled, becalmed as
the ocean with absent breeze
and painful as unfulfilled
needs or bended knees.
If I pull back my hair there
is so much white underneath
and if I search too long
I only find what everyone
else needs.
Pirate radio waves filled
with static speak for the dead
and for the spreading disease
but this isn't complaint, mind
just payment for the fees.
Fresh bones and broken dreams
fail to thrive in these
tired times and hollow
lines of coded insta feeds.
And tomorrow belongs
to the children we posioned
with endless noises
and glowing blue screens.
The ocean is closer
but it ought to just about
drown all the screams.

You were here for
such a small piece of time.
Met at twelve, gone by Twenty-five,
and I don't know how
to seek or find
all the love lost
when I was left behind
but look there you are
once again on my mind.
I remember in patchy
sunlit rhymes
the way you seemed
so hardy as you withered
on the vine.
And I loved you forever
as you loved from time to time.
I know I'd hate you if you'd
stuck around cause you
always toed that line
but I miss you all the same
you may be gone
but you were a friend of mine.