The ghosts of
mothers and fathers
move in us all
still.
Unfinished
as the first draft of act three.

Listen: we are the heirs
of memories.
We are the inheritors
of bones and dust.
Ours is now monochrome
end of broadcast days.

The blue of
her eye.
The spiral in his
hair.
The toothy wide
smile.
The thousand yard
stare.

Shockwaves and echoes all.
Static on old television sets.
Guitars with repurposed frets.
Poetry borrowed from cemetery pall.

The aftereffects of
the dead, are we.
Bright sunny you,
big gloomy me.

Echoes calling through
the mists of time
with different words
But the mistakes?
The mistakes are the same.

Not repeat or homage
but with certainty
pastiche.

We are the shadows of
tombstones,
in many and
varied ways.
Built like roads on
these thousands and thousands
of graves.

Historical nonfiction
on endless
repeat.
Each of us a clip show,
nostalgic but
still,
obsolete.

Me and Sisyphus have been
watching that ******* boulder
retreat down the *****
for a lifetime and there
has been no improvement yet.
A comma would change the
meaning in these decades
of regret but butterflies
don't beat wings at any distance
in the story we were born in.
Maybe you can tell?
I've bleeding bone where
fingers once wiggled but
the work is still incomplete,
****** up or half finished.
I used to watch raindrops
race on the car window
on long drives or bright storms
but I never could seem to
pick the winner.
We're alike in that way, love
even if you think I'm wrong
and why shouldn't you?
I've made a career outta
always being wrong.
I had thought this thing
was finally about over,
thought I'd get it up that hill
for good and for always,
but you know how it is
with me and ol' Sisyphus.
Somehow the story isn't over
and I find myself looking
at the ***** again.
always again.
I grit my teeth, darling,
wipe the sweat from my brow
place my hands on the friction
smooth surface of that obstinate
rounding old ******* rock
and push again and again and
always with all my might.
Stick around, love.
One of these days I may just
accidentally get something right.

When I sat in bare white walls
with unbought picture frames
and dusted ash from cigarettes
I was just usin' to count the days
I never fretted about the meaning.
I didn't care, then, about the end.
There is a cruel poetry in the
many and varied way things change.

I've never thought a greatness
or said something wasn't already said.
I've never been first up a mountain
or even spoke kindness to the dead.
I'm better at silence than talking
and I always leave everyone on read.
I'll be late when it matters
first into the breach, last into bed.

I'll love you until I'm finished
until the earth swallows these bones.
I'll miss you when I'm lost in darkness
with my heart failing and made of stones.
I'll feel you like whispers in my hope
light the dim blue light cast by phones.
I've lost all reason I'm all discordent
a melody of solitude absent of tones.

When I was harder and lost and alone
I didn't worry about the future.
Time was still on loan.
I don't got answers. Don't know from true.
I know things have now changed,
but it's too late to fix, loan's come due.

I know that you'll never
accidentally be happy,
not the real kind, not in
the way that will last.
I know that confronting
and moving on with purpose
toward a whole future is
how to deal with the past.
I know that forgiveness is
possible and healthy but
I don't know that spell
well enough to cast.

I'm doing my best,
I swear that I am.
I'm pushed down on
but, with knees bent,
I'm still able to stand.

It's a matter of time now
before the clocks chime
to midnight and I'm
still cold and unresolved.
I'm a locked room mystery
with all the clues present
and lined up and just
waiting to be solved.
It's getting hard to talk about
and harder still to fix and I don't
want help, exactly, but it's clear
someone needs to get involved.

I think we all wish for tomorrow
to be perfect and beautiful and bright
but it'll just be like today
all over again unless we set
our point of view just right.

You were brought low
by ******* pomp and circumstance,
fed a line of nonsense and
made to shutup and dance.
But I remember when.
When you held strong
as the levees.
Stood firm as trees
and thick as blood.
I remember you, love
and I remember you
at your best
before the flood.
I don't think I ever
told you
because I'd never tell
anyone,
but I used to
wanna be you
in spite
of what you done.
That was before
everything broke
and the rivers swelled
to run over and they
ran over bad.
That was before
we threw away
all that amazing
stuff we didn't know
that we had.
Now there's just
this place
all dim light
and broken trust.
After the flood
everyone else dwindled.
Disappeared and forgotten
until it was
just us.

I've got my father's name.
First, last and middle.
My Grandfather's eyes
set deep and haunted.
I can wiggle my ears
I've got double jointed
ring fingers and thumbs.
I've got Grandma's nose.
Like everyone else
I'm living on borrowed time
waiting for the far off day
when I finally get what's mine.

In my life time I've been
bad, lapsed and formerly Catholic.
I've stood on both coasts
and wondered at forever.
I've got a thousand legacies
I've failed to live up to.
The third to have my name.
I've wilted under a night time
sea of stars and lamented all
I had failed to become.

Before you were even
the size of a bean,
my beautiful baby boy,
my precious PeterBean,
I refused to burden you
with the legacy of my name.
When you were born
I held you and realized
I had never known love
or fear or wonder until
you came along and taught me.
My brother smiled
"He has your nose."
I laughed,
"I know."

I think maybe
you been on my mind, baby.
Stop.
Letters in the post
missing you the most
texts left on ghost
and every word outta your mouth is fire
and every step is climbing higher
and you and me, which one's a liar?
'Cause we're scant yards from the pyre
and it's overwrought and in under the wire
but my eyes droop and I tire.
Stop.
The last shelter you take in the storm
is the the only spot I'm safe and warm.
I kept buzzing but got lost in the swarm
blended in style, substance and form.
No.
Real now.
I miss you.
When I'm out here on the road tired and alone, I miss you.
You're on my mind.
Not always, but often.
And sure, we've been together a long time
but I don't want anyone else.
I'm miles away and covered in sweat and dust
and my knuckles bleed
and
my skin cracks
and my dream fades American
and I miss you.
I always do.
This much, only, is true.
Stop.

I am overkill given voice and form.
Rubble as shelter against a storm.
A band saw used to slice morning toast.
Never the center, always a coast.
I am extreme opinion.
Crowned king with absent dominion.

I am extreme measures taken
with little reward.
Hours of banging for only one sword.
Hand squeezing oranges
for a single glass of juice.
I am always on but of little use.

You are magic and truth.
Honest and sincere proof.
You're a hiding place from thunder.
Something built that none can sunder.
A true shelter from storm.
Wonder given voice and form.

In some distant place,
some barren field,
We will meet once more.
You will be pleased,
We will smile and laugh.
I won't be such a ******* chore.

We are waiting on lightning,
so I might make glass.
We are wandering in search of hope
but find I am unequal to the task.

I've spent a lifetime with
first draft mentality.
Growing without purpose
and leaning ******* personality.
There has been very little
long-term format or structure
just walls built too hasty to
hold back floods and only rupture.
I think with a second pass
there are things I could get right
I think with a little care
there are battles I wouldn't fight.
The arrogance of refusing
to rewrite my singular voice!
The foolishness to pretend
there wasn't always a choice.
I was so worried about being
paralyzed by worthless indecision
that I executed a lifetime of
kneejerks with no revision.

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.

**** it.
Let's stare into the abyss
you and me.
Lets turn our backs
on pop music optimism
ignore the little questions
and walk, hand in hand,
into the unknown dark.
Forget endings
let's only ever start.
Fight the unsung battles
without caring about the
tuneless song of our
impending defeat.
Let's move our feet with purpose,
let's not just sit and talk
let's take shaking breaths as
we stand together and walk.
I want to feel the static in my teeth
like I bit down on tin foil.
I want the ozone smell
after a lightning strike to
fill my nose with adventure.
I want to feel the rapid
heat of pressure loss
boil away in my blood.
I know the future is uncertain
I know the work and the bills
will long bleed us before
our hearts can pump enough
for us to catch up.
I know the erosion of our souls
has killed the childish laughter
inside us and nothing
is grand anymore, saving the fear
of those stone teeth punched
through graveyard soil
and the names which they
will one day hold.
I want you still.
**** it.
While, I still have the time
I have always been yours,
I only want you to be mine.

You fall backwards and
slide into the earth unbidden.
The contours shaped to a tee
around your every line and curve.
You fade and slip without remorse
or resistance to be found or given.
You may wonder why
I smile as you snarl and venom.
You've spent years throwing
dirt on my name
to match the petty and
filthy needs you crave.
Go ahead, dear.
I've spent this time
digging you a perfect grave.
You made poor calls
and I've made mistakes.
We've been together when
we ought to have hit the brakes.
You've considered me nothing
more than target or fodder
but this isn't a fight, love.
This is a ******* slaughter.

Pin back your hair
with flower and bone.
Decorate your house
with river skipped stone.
Breathe in deep
the musty smell of loam.
Seal all your letters
hang up your phone.
Leave your bank
discard your loan.
Redefine the outside world
as a part of your home.

We ran naked down to the fairy cicrles
and laughed like sweet summertime.
I know it seems a thousand years
and triple that number of miles
away and ago. I know. I know.
It can't happen tomorrow,
never would today but, old friend,
it could be one yesterday away.

I loved you like family
and held you like hope.
You smiled so darkly
and bound me in rope.
And tragedy followed us
wouldn't let us cope.
Happiness a breath outta reach
and way beyond scope.
We refused to talk about it
pausing only to mope.
A tired old story, perhaps,
filled with tired old trope.
I once asked for my freedom
you called me a dope.

This morning I plucked a daisy
like the ones you'd put in your braid
and remembered a life we were given.
Where we were forced to behave.
I won't ask you to recall it
I won't force you to be so brave.
I no longer have my fire, my spark.
I'm hollow now, my world bare and dark.
Happy, for sure but much less gallant.

Sing me a song
in six or so notes.
Float me away
in several old boats.
Bundle against the cold
in scarves or in coats.
It's coming day over day
regardless of votes.
We've become empty
as brand new totes.
Spectacle without substance
like parade floats.

When I was young
the tragedy made me a hero.
Today I've become
just a man.
It's all gotten better
but it's all out of my hands.
It's not what I expected
I've learned not to plan.

It's so strange how it changes scale.
See, my whole life I've been the star.
At the center of the tale,
head and chin over the bar.

The story is yours, now.
So casually it changed hands.
Started, with a sacred vow
two meaningful matching bands.

And you look a little like us
a little like them.
Borrowed expressions of fuss
on an unfinished gem.

My identity changed overnight
without the help of a phonebooth.
I'm become "Dad", my new birthright.
I was me until you altered my truth.

You amaze me, kid.
I watched you learn to smile.
Knocked me right off the lid
every loss just one more for the file.

And one day it'll be over and done.
One day you'll leave me. Get up and go.
When you're gone what do I become?
I'll be empty? Take of me for you to grow.

The boat gently rocks
in time with the gentle
lapping against the hull
of the waves in the
ocean of abandoned
things in which I find
myself adrift.
I've no oar or rudder
and the sun beats down
on my uncovered head
and I'm so thirsty I cannot
drink and so hungry that
the idea of food makes me
dry heave and the steady
purposeful movement of
the raft slows my mind
and makes my bones weary
and I wonder, often and
for exceedingly long stretches
of time, if you've noticed
that I've gone.
Does it matter at all that
my lips are cracked but no
longer contain blood to bleed
or even that my monotone reaponses
have stopped sounding from
the room adjacent to the one
you shout questions you've
long ago had the answers to?
Does it matter at all that
the ocean is vast and I'm
without sextant or stars
by which to find you or that
the chorus of pleasant sounding
compliments you've requested
my presence be has become
silence and void in place of me?
I'm waiting for rescue on this
sea that I've found myself in
and couching decades of pain
about your wishing I'd never
been born to my childhood face
in thin metaphor because
to tell the truth would destroy you
and only one of us has ever
had to suffer these waters
and why not just let it be me?
Navigating your sea has taught me
that suffering proves you care
and if I suffer enough you may
glance at my absence and
notice that I am not there.

The boy king shuddered
under another massive
weight, a crown made heavy
by the varied day to day
concerns of a kingdom
that was his to command
to preserve and to save.
If he seems curt, or haughty
or even rude,
please keep in mind
the pressure at his magnitude.

Looking back at the
boy king turns a man's
stomach in Gordian knots
loving him for what he is
knowing what he'll yet be
and hating all that he is still not.

No one's flying to the moon
or day tripping to Mars.
No one is wishing for a brighter
tomorrow from a field of stars.
We are still captives, tied to earth
for all the good it'll do us
waiting for a chance to blow this scene
before the world starts to rue us.

The boy king yawns and curls up
ready to hibernate away again.
Sleep in, best you can.
You will always be a boy
but the blood and fire
are callimg for a Man.

A cresent Halloween moon hangs
in the bruised-dark October sky
like a crooked smile or a victim
and we talk sweetest poison
about long ago, far away spring
like it has any meaning
because it's gone now and we're
all still here and there is
no fixing that or replacing
the wasted hours we've spent
longing for yesterdays.
No how-to tutorials or quick
video essays that'll point us
toward the thaw and the chill
inside our bones will serve
to remind us of the flaw
in our planned escape
like clotting blood or
traffic stops wait for us
in those dark, lost hours
we remember so ******* fondly.
Maybe we'll run this too
so far into the ground that
it'll plant like seed and be
fertilized by our *******
dead dreams until it grows
into something not too twisted
for us to recognize and sing
spiritual around
because hope springs eternal
if you've got the money
the rest of us just gotta learn
to enjoy all the leftover suffering.
Here, they say from wifi
and airwaves and bandwidth,
is some free advice,
This is not financial advice:
long is the night, the night is long
and even the bard didn't
know how to burn it into sunrise
but with your hand in mine,
and a little hope and a little time,
we might see an April sun
in this nighttime October sky.

I read the passages of giants
from the scattered debris of their wake
and I feel my soul splinter
and my shoulders quake.
I don't have these powers
the qualities that work to seperate
the detritus like me from
the very best, the great.
They have booming prose
with gravity and magnitude
and my own scrawling throes
is more often slim, crude
they belong in company on Olympus
while I merit only solitude.

I've divided the individual
failures of decades of hate
from the love shaped residual.
I can't see lost or departed hearts
among the horizon line
and the myriad false starts.
I am now about six months shy
of the burning need
to work harder or even to try.
Love what's left or don't bother
it's all only finite time
and I can't go on any farther.

Life is what life will be, I guess.
All inherent need and ache
for hours of pain and stress.
I'll grow and change until
one day I don't,
it's not about won't or will.
Things work out, they always do
one way or another it ends
with or without me or you.
I love you just like thunder
following the fury.
Drowning, love, going under.

It's only a moment to bare.
It's a whirlwind, a maelstrom
but it's only short term care.

I search for meaning in your
every broken promise and phrase.
I push the dirt from yesterday
into tomorrow's waiting grave.
I'm coming up on truly empty
with each stupid ******* breath I save.
I've wanted honest answers
for every honest answer that I gave.
There could be peace between us
if it wasn't hostile chaos that you crave.
I keep letting you kick me down
because I think that makes me brave.
I don't how to love you like I'm meant to.
I'm unsure why this is how you behave.
Grit your ******* teeth, you *******,
time to finally leave the cave.

I recall you turning,
from a few feet ahead,
that ******* smile
under your button nose
and knowing brown eyes
but you were spinning
and laughing, squealing,
really, great peels of
girlish delight before setting
your eyes on distant
climes and racing away
toward where the sun
seemed to meet the pavement
and the entire ******* world ended.
White sundresses and
static in the air around you.
Hair tied on either side of
your head, in thick braids
with those ties that have
big colorful plastic *****.
Sometimes you'd have beads
in your hair, flowers now
and then, too. And your eyes
the color of earth after a
hard rain, I thought you
were a fairy, back then.
Mythical, you seemed to me.
Magical in a way I now
only pretend to understand
but recognized with awe
in those ancient days.
I've been a lifetime looking
for moody British countryside
in American urban squalor.
I've seen fairy-circles drawn
in chalk on black ashpault,
trickling heat waves rising
like a ******* spell
from them on hot days
and I used to feel the voltage
of lightening running in my
veins when I still believed
in that sort of magic.
I saw you on a rooftop once,
the one with the valley of
bare roof like the chamber
at the heart of a temple.
You stood against the moon
and though shadow obscured
your knowing beautiful eyes
and that ******* smile
I know you smiled at me.
I know it.
I danced with you in dreams
for the last years of my
too short youth.
I still see white sundresses
in echoes in my dreams
but I no longer believe
in magic things.
I no longer dance,
not even in my dreams.

Find the path you took
to get here and walk inside
your own footprints.
Marvel at the difference in size,
were your feet ever that small?
Was the sun brighter?
Did cooling pies smell better?
Were doors held open more often?
And really, really were people more
polite and civilized in those
hazy distant times?
The shoes I wore as an infant,
as a toddler, all white and blue
sit high on a shelf, forgotten almost,
in the basement of this house
that I own with my wife.
My kid asked to see them
for whatever reason a six year old
has for wanting to examine a world
he is still puzzling out and I obliged.
They were not, in my hand
as I passed my youth to my son,
himself in his own yesteryear still,
as I remembered them.
The bottoms of the shoes were thin,
practically cloth, in fact.
He looked them over and
then handed them back
and all unchanged he smiled
and returned to his play games
and so did I, but I waited a beat first.
I let myself feel the weight
of those shoes, heavy in a specific
world changing way, and then,
like the boy who'd asked to see them,
I put them away and moved
on with my day.
Were things better when
these feet left those prints?
So small and insubstantial
in the soft dirt are they.
Eclipsed by the prints
I now leave today?
Or do we just hope/remember
it that way?

I want to write about the ocean
but only ever manage
verse after verse about fire.
I want to sing about hope
but always belt out choruses
filled with unfufilled desire.
I want to listen to the falling rain
but get so ******* distracted
by all the miserable daily pain,
And I don't know what'll fix it
I'm only ever a moment of falling
away from going totally insane.
I want you to know, I believe
even if it would appear I
only really know how to grieve,
I want you to miss me
and ask me seriously
when I go not to leave.
Because, I don't want to fight
it's like I can see just fine
but haven't got any sight.
Give me a spark, love, light up the night
and I'll drown it in an honest
desire to get just one ******* thing right.
.

I've spent decades holding
my tongue and pretending
that the pain is normal.
Just operating procedure
and it don't matter if
it hurts or not
and I'm too hard,
too tough, too street wizened
to feel it the way other
people do, anyway.
And all I have
to show for acomplishing
this massive deception
is an inability to express
my needs and a tendency to
put my health secondary
to everything else.
I've been bleeding for
twenty years but I
won't fall down.
I've rubbed these wounds
in the dirt and refused
to blink until the wet
went back into my eyes
and I've taken it out
in fits of violence against
car doors and broken
household items
but the pain won't
******* stop and I'm
all outta ideas and
advice.
And the fix ain't working
and I can't make it right.
But listen: I know the rules.
I know 'em by heart
I could recite them right now
but let's not start, yeah?
I've worked sick or hurt
through many a shift
and I've complained about
stupidity in my workplace
or long shifts I gotta work.
I've complained about
being asked to do work
while I do that same work,
but not about the problem.
No, never ever about
my deeper, darker needs
for fiscal security over my
desire to create and be free.
It some times hurts
to breathe, and my finger
no longer bends.
My knees crack and
there is a soreness in
my elbow that just stays.
I thought it
would go away
but I guess this is the new
normal.
It hurts to live
and I can't seem to
stop the bleeding,
but I'm still here, love.
I'm not leaving.

Let's make a list of all
the things I've failed to be.
We'll start with successful
and work back toward infinity.
If wasted potential could
be shaped like stone or clay
I'd be a pit fit as a source
that'd last until the very last day.
From the very bottom
I've scaled toward the middle
and along the way fallen
in stature and grace, just a little.
But still I'm on the front lines
fighting for the American dream
my hours consumed by employers
my words lost in the scream.
I got broken bones rattling through
me that never quiet properly set
I'll probably die of blood poisoning
or some other kinda self neglect.
I'm supposed to follow up on conditions
but can't afford to lose the day
I'm supposed to love myself better
but no one else ever did, anyway.
I'm not supposed to write these words
men shouldn't burden with complaints.
I'm just supposed to shut up
don't tug on these cumbersome restraints.
I know you want me to prize myself
more than I really try or do.
You guys want me to love myself
but I only ever learned how to love you.
I've taken all you see and love in me
and I've put them in this letter.
I'd mail it to myself today,
but maybe tomorrow is better.

I want to tell you everything,
but I want it direct and true.
No sing song nonsense like I always do.
I want to tell you simply about where I've been, about what I've done.
I wanna tell you about what I've seen.

I don't know where to start.
Where to begin.
I want to trim the fat from
this cut of meat and leave
it serviceable, tender
and lean.

This place in my head where the story lives
is cluttered and filthy.
Slightly out of use.
I want to scrub and polish the dirt
from these floors until you can see
the notes of starlight glittering
in the reflection of its sparkling clean.

I want to wring the purple
from my prose.
And every sweet lie from my throat.
I wanna wipe the slate and speak
and for once say just
exactly
what I mean.

The truth is blunt.
Any attempt to sharpen it
turns it into a lie.
I watch tv relentlessly and the secret
is I do it to hide.
'Cause when the movie ends I'm terrified
that I'll see my stepfather
in my reflection
on the darkening screen.

And listen, I swear,
that's not what I am
or what I want to be.
Ripped from my bed at three am
all held breath and violence
and varied screams
taught in his bitter
drunkard's mean.

My own father loved me in absentia.
MIA, but through no fault of his own,
a tale as old as two Christmases
with the slight twist that extreme poverty gives.
Happiness did not shout in
my lifetime.
It was nearly extinct and
like any dying animal
it would just wail and keen.

I want to overcome and improve.
I try so hard.
I've tried on all these shoes
and found myself miles away in my efforts.
But the monster he made lives
just below my practiced and
patient lean.

I want to be honest.
I want the power to say these truths.
Because even though I live afraid
my heart explodes with love
for you, my littlest man,
my tiny king.
I'd die to make you smile,
my sweetest Bean.

I will guide you like
a pencil across the smooth
face of blank paper
or brush on canvas
to define the shape of you
from abstract nothingness.
I will chip away at marble
slabs and whittle logs
of chopped wood until
I've revealed you.
I will bend words until
meaning is clear and the
simple prose of you
will speak honesty.
I compose on sheets
and instruments until
the sweet song of you can
be sung proud from chorus
to substantive verse.
I will labor, young one
to put only what is needed
of myself into the work
that is you so that you'll
be built a better man
than I ever was.
Until the art is complete
I'll labor tirelessly.
One day you'll be unveiled
and I hope you'll be ready
because you will have to
stand tall before a world
that will yet, I swear it,
learn to admire you.

When we were kids
you would chase me around
the block trying to kiss me
and giggle if you caught up.
I recall that you said
you liked my glasses
after I got my first pair.
You had missing teeth
and freckles on your nose
and a smile that looked like
flowers in bloom and somehow
I still remember your name.
I will remeber it the rest of
my life and I don't know why.
Maybe you still remember me?
I hope so, I really do
and I think if I hadn't
left that town...
Listen: Timing is everything.

I recall the look in your
eyes when you discovered
that we liked the same
Oasis song, I recall you
pulling me out of the store
we worked at during the
middle of our shared shift
to look at the brilliant colors
the pollution gave the setting sun
and saying you didn't think
any of our co-workers would
understand the beauty that
only you and I could see
and you looked at me with
your impossible blue eyes
and bit your lower lip
and I think I knew then
how you felt, but a few years
difference still mattered at
that age, and I was already
in love with someone else...
Timing, y'know? It's everything.

I loved you before you lived
and of course you never did.
We didn't even get a chance
to give you a name, didn't
need one yet.
Never would need to, in fact.
You were gone before
you were even here and
even though I never had so much
as one single interaction with you
I have never felt so sharp
a loss as I felt when I lost you.
It wasn't what was gone
that hurt so badly
it was the years and years
of what would never be.
Timing.
******* timing is everything.

There is a breath out there,
air, waiting for me to breathe
that will be the last one I do
and I'm running toward it
and I have been my whole life
and the people along the way
who I loved live in the air
I breathe in the interim
and the people I missed out on
or who missed out on me
live inside all that air that
I will never breathe.
I loved you madly in those
missed breaths, I hope you know,
but timing is everything.

I used to be so ******* brave.
Now filled to burst
with impotent rage.
Biting my tongue in traffic
shaking like a gun in a hand
curse words broken in my empty mouth.
In search of a lighthouse
we're crashing against the rocks.
Taking our difficult feelings
and cramming them into a buried box.
Desperately trying to be a better man
trying so ******* hard to be kind
asking for permissions and hearing,
"Go ahead. I don't mind."
We're still trying to find heaven
but only crashing to the ground.
A thousand elevators all lobby bound.
Waves, twisted metal, flames, wrecks and
impossibly deafening sound.
I was a he/him millennial
identifing primarily as mad
now to one little boy I'm just dad.
To all these brand new fears
I'm now a slave.
I'm ******* terrified, buddy. But I swear,
I used to be so ******* brave.

I've been nearly forty years
spent just picking at this sore
and if bleeding me is winning
I wish I'd been keeping better score.
I don't know how to stop
it hurts worse than it did before
And if I don't start walking out
I'll just be crawling back for more
I wish I had something to sing
an answer or solution or a cure
but all I got are worries mounting
beating anxiety over what's in store.
White coats and medication
can't seem to fix what I tore.
Deep woods remedies and meditation
not even workouts for your core
Mystics and religion give scripture
and then walk you out the door.
Should you want to find me,
though I can't imagine what for,
Follow the trail of blood I'm leaving
'cause I'm too weak now to roar.
Trying to see a light ahead to follow
but can't stop staring at the floor.
I thought love could save me
if I wasn't such a ******* chore.
Don't ask me, after my years of looking,
for answers, love. I'm still not sure.

I walked you home through
aging arguments and the still
burning fires of dying
digital revolutions.
In spite of missed
celluar connections and differing
philosophy on relationships.
At intersections you'd squeeze
my hand and hold so tight
that my finger tips numbed
until your grip relaxed on
on the other side of the
deserted wintertime crosswalk.
I have dreams about you,
catch weird echoes of your
scent in the strangest places
and times and it seems so
inconsistent with what we were
and who I was and how it
all finally ******* ended.
It wasn't a love story, you and me
even though we pretended
even though we wished for it to be.
You thought I worked
like a stallion, only
after you'd broken me
but you weren't prepared for
the damage that was already there
before you even put a foot
in the stirrup
and I wasn't up to the task
of comforting your constant
keening need for affection
for reassurance, for company.
My god you filled every silence
with discomfort and inane babble
And I could lie and say I tried
but we were both there.
We both know I didn't.
But when the streetlights came on
I'd put my jacket around your
shoulders and hold your hand
and for forty minutes we loved
each other like storybook leads.
We'd talk, I'd brush hair, so gently,
from your eyes and tell you that
I could see the beauty in you
and you'd stand on the tip of
your toes and bite your lip
and breathe me in.
For forty minutes, a couple nights
a week, we were in love
as I walked you home.

All I have are fraying nerves
and pleasant whispered lies.
I'm made of potential squandered
and unaknowledged regrets
swimming just below a calm surface
of ******* I just haven't said yet.
And I'll ask you, in pretend passing,
to consider my debts squared
and my intentions over my actions
but I'm not really to be trusted
you just didn't have anyone to warn you.

Break me like a promise
keep me like an oath
love me like a faith
and mourn me like a ghost.

I know the problem has always,
always, always been me
but I've blinded myself to growth
by wallowing long in misery.
I'll say I need a light to guide me
but I'll ignore the lighted path
because I don't want to be better
I just want to be excused from the math.

I know I'm hard to live with
and I never apologize
I know my fictions don't fix
what I always vandalize.
I know that knowing isn't
efforts made to correct.
I know you'll hope for things
that you'll just never get.

I know the road to take
to change into a better man
but I'll never step foot on it
even though we both know I can.
You can lay bricks to build a foundation
on which to finally build it all
but I lay bricks just as easy
to put up a great big wall.

Sometimes when I lay down my head
I'm sinking in oceans of neatly made bed.

I finally work out exactly what to say
and look to see you're a billion miles away.

Light dances delicate from pane to pane
in the apartment and between bouts of rain.

Heat spreads across my legs and chest
as I snuggle in and hope for the best.

And these are the whiled hours of our very own.
Not the hours bought and paid outside our home.
Flashes of smiles and visions of light
now and then interrupted by the odd fight.
And I'd trade it for nothing, we all always claim.
But we head in to work and trade it for money just the same.

I often wonder what life could really be,
If allowed to be just you and me.
When able we while away or moan and fuss.
It seem to be about currency and not just us.

distant burning signal fires,
complicated knots in lines
of tightly wound rope.
star sounds resonating
on frequencies our own ears
are not properly aligned
to receive or transmit.
blood stains on
fresh white linen that
won't come out and are
too difficult to hide.
that one lopsided too
toothy smile, all coy
and unassuming under
slightly uneven bangs,
that cast us away from
the shallow water like
a siren song.
the rusted out bottom
of a wheelbarrow that
you'd hoped to have
one more winter with,
and that odd earthy smell
blood gets when it's
settled beneath your
fingernails overnight.
language is a failure but
math hasn't the terminology
for vivid human memory
Life's like that, I think.

Somewhen I will know truth from lie.
I'll be forgotten. Somewhen I'll die.
We will burn the candle down to wick.
We'll smile as we know every single trick.

We are seed, tossed to birds.
We are empty hours and hollow words.
Without a purpose but filling a need.
Monitors left absent a scrawling digital feed.


Tomorrow the sun will burn
Our stomachs will move and churn
That angry old moon will rise.
And our lips will tell innocuous lies.

We'll scrape the bottom of every barrel
Our eyes always wise but also feral.

We will be small gods with small needs
Big on mood but lost for worthy deeds.

One day we will love without earthly fear,
With wild abandon and endless cheer.
We will release all that we've pent.
Now only embers. I am fires spent.

Sifting through all the
fractured metaphor
from the lost and lonely
boy I was before
I find the train,
no longer a silver snake
moving like desire
across rails on tree
dotted mountain ranges,
but abandoned and disused.
It is hulking, still.
As imposing as it ever was
but it is also suddenly
made of fragile rusted
parts that look so solid
from a distance but flake
to shale like dust at even
the gentlest of touches.
It is not smoking, though
there is clear evidence of fire,
but even the most persistent
embers burned out and down
and away a long, long time ago.
No, it does not smoke or burn
it merely festers.
Growing outward in decay
even while it shrinks
inward from structural damage.
It is no longer a machine
built for cool, honest purpose
it has become a wreck.
Still, if you find ways to
explore the innards of the wreck
you'll find bird's nests,
foxholes, **** from animals
big and small, bird song
and flowers and wild grass
growing up throughout the
twisted metal hull of the wreck.
The engineer's compartment
with it's no longer working
shifters and radios is
overcome by flowering vines
and the sweet, damp heaviness
the forest has under a canopy
of dark green leaves.
Moved from what it was
assumed was to be a life's work
and robbed of the purpose
behind every one of the many
design choices it does not
sit, not exactly, it seems to
lay into the countryside
as if it shrugged before
embracing the gentle *****
of a lover's chest.
It is desolate in this place,
The wreck,
but it is somehow still
very much alive.
I hope there is meaning
in the discovery,
but have grow tired
from reading between
every single
******* line
I'm not yet dead, my love,
but I've begun to wither
on the vine.

I am so tired of toiling
blind in the dark
and of the casual unkindness
of traffic or queues for
parking spots or telephone
operators or restaurant tables.
I am tired of endless power
cords crisscrossing my
lifetimes and tabletops.
Of phone battery life and GPS
coordination and livestreams.
Tired of digital leases
and tubes for late night
breathing machines.
I am tired of learning
that sometimes it is too late
to try new adventures
and tired of ten hour
shifts at a minimum breaking
my hands and my back
and I'm tired of dying
but only half as much as
I'm tired of living.
I'm tired of timed pills
and twice a day vitals.
I'm tired of eating and sleeping
and winning and losing
and pressure cooker choices
and cooking.
and I'm tired of fighting
so hard to survive and tired
of having a ****** up childhood
and tired of trauma and
rehabilitation and tired
so very tired
of the nonstop
need to stop and explain why.
Why it's hard and why birds
are real and the earth isn't flat.
Why I'm like this because we all
know why I'm like this
it's been talked to ******* death.
I'm tired of me.
I wanna crawl outta my skin
and dance the night in my bones.
I wanna leave the past and the
shackles and the now and
the pain and the future and the
uncertainty and lay about
as nothing nowhere for untime.
I'm tired of it.
**** me and my *******.
How're you?

Between you sits a shared order of fries,
silence, anger, regret and of course, lies.
She licks your wet blood from her claws,
and glibly recites a litany of your flaws.

I'm right here.
******* it!
I'm still right here!

And you holler at the open night sky
clutching at your wounded inner eye
and the question shoots from your core:
"How much is enough?"
The answer, as always: More and more and more.

I mean, what the **** is personal privacy anymore?
We're splattered across digital realms like slasher movie gore.
Trying to communicate complex thoughts as sharp as swords,
using no more than one hundred and forty ******* words.

You don't have the means, your heart now a ******* wound,
to put a dent in the argument against you she's crooned.
It's like sitting before the cosmic mind for a game of chess.
It's like defending yourself when you've only ever been a ******* mess.

I am mountains of doubt and rivers of fear.
I haven't gone anywhere. I'm still right here
I just need you to see me, my love. My dear.
I'm still right ******* here.

One warm night in 2004:
I'd chased our old friend
around until finally
he collapsed onto that
bench in the quad.
We sat on the low wall
and looked at him.
"You're a good friend."
You told me, " You're always
making sure everyone is okay."
You asked what he'd taken
I told you it was on my list
of questions to get answered.


A year before:
I heard a knock
at the front door.
I opened it to find
you with our old friend.
"Heard you missed your bus."
You'd said, "Campus seems empty
without you."

Months later I bent over
to light a cigarette off the
glowing orange of
your cigarette.
Twin brief embers lighting
the cramped backseat
of your car.
You smiled,
and looked at me with
lightning in your eyes.
"We're kinda kissing."
You told me.
You moved closer...

That night:
You lit a cigarette and handed
it to me to light my own.
Our old friend slept it
off on the bench.
"Who takes care of you?"
You asked.
I told you it was on
the list.
"I could take care of you."
You'd said.

Before:
We were parked by my house
you had set off the
automatic locks on my door
so I couldn't get out.
I raised an eyebrow at you.
The ionic power between
your eyes and my heart
felt like it'd tear me apart.
"You can kiss me, you know."
You paused, "I want you to."
I moved closer...

We didn't last. We were
on an escalator at a mall
when it became official,
only I don't think we knew that.
A friend made it official
not us. Our friends had
the best of intentions.
But...
I moved further away from you.
I wasn't ready.
You weren't sure.
There is an outdoor table
on campus where it ended.

That night:
Maybe the moment
didn't matter to you
but it was the moment
I decided.
We'd already broken up
but everyone thought...
We thought it too,
that we might
not be finished.
That our flame might
be rekindled and burn
forever.
I put out my cigarette and
I turned back to
our old friend and I said,
"We've tried that. Didn't work."

I think we waste lifetimes
decoding the lies of purpose
and maybe forget to fill
our mouths and stomachs
while the food is still out.
I think we leave empty
cupboards and memories
that we should fill up or
even just shout about.
I don't think it's revolutionary
to recognize these failings and faults
but maybe it's all the more tragic
that we all seem to know
but still just listen to the music
when we should join
together and waltz.

We are dust that woke up
haunted by the places
we've been and the things
we've seen and we often
mistake our trival electrical
misfires for fundamental truths
and lie to one another about
the meaning in the lyrics of
old songs and also inside our
own hesitantly spoken words.
We prize above the science
the feelings we have for others
and the things that they create.
We live in terror of
time running out
even though time running out
is essentially meaningless in
all but a very select number of
grand schemes...
Maybe there is something else
or some other way
or maybe we've always been right.
Who can say?
I wish I had the secrets to give you
to help you through the day
but I'm empty of prediction
and unsure of advice.
I know no science that will
point you proper and right
I know only that I love you
and maybe we'll only have tonight.

Under uncaring stars
fatigue drowns the worry.
They have no concern
as I finally cannot make
it one more ******* hour.
I fell asleep sitting up,
sick in an unfixable way,
and recalled that once
I touched magic
from a distance
and heard whale song
on still, moonlit waters
and watched storms
roll away from mountain
top retreats leaving both
wreckage and beauty
in their sudden wake.
I heard music in the
car clogged summer street
and felt a subway replicate
a city's heartbeat under my feet.
I watched forever light
dance with smoke in rain
drenched neon midnight gutters
the permanent and the temporary
mixed for a moment that
only I got to see.
And a cynical part of me
knows that I take it all
with me when it's done.
But the stars look down on
our impermanence with
cold dispassion as they burn
for thousands of years and
remind me that just because
it doesn't matter that it
happened doesn't change
the fact that it did and
I am as witness to it as
the stars.

You've spent a lifetime torturing
yourself over history
and too many repeated mistakes
ignoring platitudes because
you don't want to feel better
you just want to hurt.
Hurt then.
Hurt like hell.
Until the pain becomes
steel in your bones and
your back becomes straight
and your gaze inherits the
cold of the metal inside you.
Hurt until you're finally complete
until you're whole against the sky
like portraits of powerful
figures depicted from low angles
whose own history shares
the darker hues of the painting
that lives inside your own heart.
Hurt until you feel better
but you'll never feel better
not really, none of us do.
We can't bleed out regret
it isn't that kind of poison.
Hurt until you don't.
Then get up off the floor
dust the pain from your
too apologetic soul,
grit your teeth like you
always do and instead
of hurting on purpose
by picking at the scabs
still growing over those mistakes
finally let the wounds heal.
Go out there, hurt and limping
and unwell in so many ways
and just try to be better.

Let's build a man, whole cloth
but let's build him wrong.
Let's make him distant and cold
give him lyrics but no song.
Let's curse him with gifts
take his hands and give them art
but leave out his ambition
so he'll never know how to start.
We'll wire his brain backwards
so he'll have the capcity to deduce
but let's not include every *****
so his sanity is always loose.
And what if we give him
outrageous faith in the wrong places.
Have him be confident in failure
when he looks at disappointed faces.
And just for a lark, what if we
made him concious of these facts.
Gave him awareness of deficiencies
so he'll understand all that he lacks.

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.

I want to walk in step
by your side.
Breathe the same air
under the same stars.
I want to feel you course
like struck fire through my veins.
To lean back half lidded and bask
in the heroine embrace.
I want to think your thoughts
and know your pain.
I want to be the version
of myself that goes by your name.
I don't know how to
believe and I don't really want to.
I want to soar on rising
warm currents of air
until the bright light blinds
and comes to be too much to bare
and then crash into the green sea
until all that matters are
the memories you have left of me.

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.

We give the world nine months
to prepare for our arrival
and almost always no warning
to prepare for our departure
and we wreck up the place
in the time between.
Some party we got invited to,
we'll lament, but the music
sure was a comfort to dance to.
It's only ever a heartbeat
from just being over
any and all random second
and we're still arguing
about what love means.
If we could line up all of
our days, end to end, and count
all the seconds we'll ever get
it would then be a great deal
of time we wasted worrying
but the line would be longer
still just to have the chance.
And maybe there is no solution
to the problem of this deep
anxiety about the finish line
and maybe the world stays
broken in the wake of our
wasted lives and we just have
to learn to live and die with it.
And maybe the questions are
a waste of time but what else
do we have to do but to ask them?
Because that beating sound
your heart makes, the normal
drum inside you thudding
away your sinus rhythm
isn't just a comfort, it's a warning,
it is a ******* countdown
that could finish on any
random beat or counted second
and the place will be wrecked up
and the party will long be over,
the dancing died with the last
strangled cords of the music
and yet, one single heartbeat
from done and we don't still
don't know what love is.

Forty-seven minutes
from home and I look
at the lot by the side of
the road to see a couple
hugging each other
and it seemed real
and it seemed desperate
and it was odd because
there was this intimate
moment that they shared
with me and only I know
and I don't know if
that changes my understanding
of humanity or if I'll
even remember it in a few
hours time but I know
that it happened and
that to two strangers
it mattered and I'd like to
think that makes it
important but who knows?
Not me.
People pass overhead
in airplanes cutting paths
through the sky and
they look down on pillbox
homes from heights too
far to make out people
and they wonder about
the various day to day that
goes on under their feet
and who knows if
any of it matters?
Not me.
And in the pages of old
published works are the
thoughts of the dead
and maybe a turn a phrase
moves you or a theme
defines your life and
isn't it bizarre that the
author will never know
what they meant to you?
It's wild that no one
ever knows, not you
Not me.

The throne sits empty
and absolution is a lie.
We have to live with our
petty sins until we finally die.
Remebering always what we are
and everywhere we've been.
As hollow inside as as bird bones
with convictions brittle as cold tin.
It must be the old catholic in me
looking to find some small grace
but inside these bones there
doesn't seem to be a trace.
I was told we had inside our
hearts a shared spark of the divine.
I've spent a lifetime searching
but I don't feel it inside of mine.
I wish a solution could be found
for all the chaos I cause
but I don't know how to change it
and the attempts give me pause.
Maybe there is no forgivness
that'll fix all that we've broken.
Maybe what we carry with us
is defining and not simply token.
I hope when it's finally over
I'll feel something more than numb
I pray I'll be better or at least
I'll be more than what I've become.

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.