I asked him to play the riff he wrote, out of a spark of brilliance, on his guitar.
And as I close my eyes,
his finger pluck away at the strings
as softly as my grandmother passed in her sleep.
(I knew she would love this sound-
she was always a sucker for guitars)

I close my eyes and hum a melody.
He closes his eyes and strums.
And for a moment I am with her again,
clinging to the last bit of memory I have left of her.

I finally get to tell her goodbye.

We'll know how far we've gone
once the ocean stops and we see
Los Angeles
set on fire by streetlights
carlights
spotlights
from the passenger window.

We'll know how far we've gone
once we see the giant orange chasm,
the blistering white snowtop mountains
and the crystal azure rivers
from the passenger window.

We'll know how far we've gone
when we see the amber waves
of grain that I grew up singing about
whispering in the Nebraska wind
and see the capital building
busting out of the fields.

We'll know we're home
when the plane touches solid ground.

Had you entered my room
at a quarter till nine,
you have have found me painfully asleep,
with weeping and gnashing of teeth,
muffled by the pillow
my face was consumed within.

Nightmares
about dying from a broken heart
and living with a breaking one.
My father holding his collapsing chest,
and my Wish finally laid to rest.

The best of me seems to digress.
My jaw grinding,
grinding, grinding,
grinding unti the alarm sounds.
And as I lay minding the
terror-laden rest,
my heart starts beating out of my petrified chest.

I.

He carried the weight of his World on his back.
Backpacking from the house to the oven
to the house to the oven
to the house to the oven
to the broken house he called his own.
His World was a paranoid wife,
a broken son,
and a heartbroken daughter.
No one ever offered to carry his cross.

II.

She paces back and forth
in the confines of the kitchen
and finally breaks down,
slouching down against the cabinets.
The pills inch their way down her throat,
and her tears wash them down
to the very depths of her soul.

III.

His eyes are bloodshot and glazed
as he holds the blue glass that burns with
the smell of illegal freedom.
He exhales a sigh of smogrelief,
letting the real world disintegrate
and entering the Hallucination world,
where nothing can pierce his skin.

IV.

She stares at the face on the computer screen.
A young boy - blond hair and green eyes.
He stares at another girl in the photo,
her hair blond and her eyes green.
The computer screen starts to crack,
and she realizes that so is this youngheart love.
If only she knew how love really hurt.

Everyday there's a growing
that stretches through the cracks of the ground
while my feet conscientiously step on them,
because if you step on a crack,
you'll break everyone's back.

This growing has blue eyes,
sapphireblue eyes,
oceanwater blue.
The Tempter. The serpent that
crawls freakishly across my feet.

Shall I smash his head against my heel?
No, his eyes. These sapphireblue eyes
oceanwater blue. They're
intruguing.

And if this sin is something that will break everyone's back.
I'm going to step on each one
until every hospital bed is full.

I am writing this from the bottom of my heart
where all of the strings have snapped.
Quietly, a cascade of smolder shrouds my face,
finally putting my my mind to rest,
if only for a moment.

If there were any melody,
any melody at all,
that can get me by,
pour me a glass and let me be.

It's cold outside.
I think the tears are freezing to my cheeks.
My nervous hands struggle to write this.
But I need to ask one question:

Why does this life have to be so hard?

Once I saw your face pressed against the picture window,
I sprinted.
The soles of my shoes were deteriorating,
but bare-feet was always the way I imagined this

Our reunion.

Three pints and a pipe.
One brother talking to another.
Honestly, I thought I'd never see you again.

And now
I know that you will never be as far away as I imagined.