These words just deposit
Like sand on the beach;
Remain on this tongue
As unspoken speech.

They stretch towards someone
Whose ears have gone deaf;
Unable to know
Their tones on my breath.

Their eyes will not see
All that has passed
Since the day that they ceased
And breathed out their last.

Their presence won't touch us
Like waves on the shore
Reaching for something
Not here anymore.

Knock me down
Without a touch,
You shook the liquor -
Curious.
My deft tongue sought
The courage there;
The confidence
That fled the air.
Gaze to smolder,
Grin to bite.
You paced the table,
Stole my sight.
Bitter clouds,
Buzzing lights
Lumpy cushions
Needful plights
Fleeting sweetness,
Gripping hands.
I sought the violence
He can't stand.
We grappled, battled,
Strove to take
The Novocaine
A stranger makes.
And once the numbness
Touched the brim,
My feet sought miles
Far from him.

To cleave the night
To flee the wrong
To stop the siren's
Rising song.

The story's written all the same
As many before with varied names:
They met, they loved, they grew apart
While one remembered, one forgot.

Love is chemical, love is fabrication-
But it lingers like the eternities we read;
The immortalized words of many a man before.

Look around. It’s everywhere.

And I want nothing of it.

She is a solemn wanderer,
A daughter of the road
The crunch of moving gravel
Is like balm upon her soul.

Each rambling, easy footstep,
Within each languid stride,
Keeps the poison thoughts
From taking root inside her mind.

Each footstep is a triumph
That pushes her along
Each gasping breath that fuels her
Is a lyric to her song.

At times she is a vagrant
When there is no place to go
When nothing feels familiar but
The stone that coats the road.

At times she is a traveler
That thirsts for foreign lands
Her mind drifts off to mountain sides,
Or golden sprawling sands.

And most times she’s a dreamer
Thinking of the day
She’ll let her restless, resolute legs
Take her far away.

In all, she is a wanderer,
A daughter of the road
Putting space between her thoughts
Upon the open road.

Above, above, the sky is a painting
A renaissance piece that calls out for sainting
The billows, the ripples the silver-lined rims
Are strokes of a genius; of mother earth's whims.

The cumulonimbus, the rippling ceiling
Rumbles and rolls with the cracks that are pealing
The flickering tridents, the wrath of the gods
Strike awe in the temporary, tainted and flawed

And I, insubstantial, un-lasting and fading
Stand beneath hanging eaves, hearing and waiting
Beside me, within me, a childish voice
Hums a soft tune beneath all the noise:

The sky, the sky, it's all coming down
The indigo shroud; it's falling around
In crystalline spheres and mother earth's mist-
The dust is erupting, the earth feels its kiss.

Today, I find it hard to swallow
That so few yearn towards tomorrow.
And yet, in truth I understand
The need to still the hour hand.

If I could barter time itself
And make the past today,
I'd hand away the future
For parts of yesterday.

If I could trade my happiness
And pluck it from tomorrow,
I'd binge on what you brought to me
To stave off all this sorrow

If I could turn my back away
From my own form of nature
I'd hold the hallowed night away
To have the Sun forever.

*Once the day is done, it's gone;
No touching yesterday.
And only I can salvage smiles
From the wreck I've made.

You're seated somewhere in
The realm of the unnamed
I've tried in jest to plunder you
With phrase; though you're unframed.


You are not a man I'll claim
With meter, phrase and line
The metaphors I'd set aside
You've not allowed to bind


In other ways I'll keep you
When the pen and page will not
My finger tips will bid you stay
When body's all I've brought.

Down, spiraling deep
All things coelse to the gully
Where exists one
Untouchable place
In the valley of this wretch.
Greedy hands seek
Nothing, though in jest
Perhaps I'd hoped they'd be it.
In truth, no one reaches down far
Where the unknown has no draw.

We are walking
Down the line
Our feet are pacing
Song and rhyme.
Side to side
My eyes do glance
The markers of
My circumstance.

Will your lips run
Leagues from me
Curse my name
Each time you breath?
Your spoken rope,
Strung up on high
Would halt my breathing
Blank my eyes.

Or will you trap
Behind your mouth
The sins I've wrought
Upon your house?
Keep them silent
Keep them safe
And clasp them as you
Walk away.

I've marked the moons
I've read the tides
I've watched the sun
Drag through the sky.
Three long winters,
Three short springs
Have quieted
The needful things.

And yet in others;
Skin and eyes
Familiar faces-
Far and wide
Bridge the distance
Span the gap
That time has rent to
Keep you back.

Quenched your thirst with nothingness
That final night we spoke,
Strangled by the Dragon's claws
Until your wristwatch broke.

It stained your lips, your fingertips
The membrane of your nose;
The queerest shade of mushroom blue
I'd ever then behold.

And were it not for breathlessness
That swallowed up the sound
I'd found the shade befitting of
The body on the ground.

As children, brave, you sailed away
More places than I'd go.
I followed each resounding path
And lived as your echo.

Motivation to taste the dregs
Of an oblivion
Was not a path I'd trace myself
Or follow where you'd been

I broke off, denied the blue
Before it stained me dead
I should have stayed a pace behind
To share the way I'd tread

You're Peter Pan at twenty-two
And nevermore a day
I watched the stars up in the sky
And saw you sail away.


Your wristwatch, though broken
Still clicks on in my head
The last place that you're breathing now
In dreams that grace your stead.




I never could quite come to tell you
I dreamt of drowning in one ocean
For the rest of my days.