Visit me when my body is wrinkled and cracked.
When my voice can no longer carry a tune,
my fingers can no longer pluck these strings,
and my mind fumbles with my words.

Would you stand by my bedside
and play this game of nostalgia with me?
We can recall the nights spent
outside of that hall, burning our pipes
and drawing our lives out of the smoke.

Will you realize
that no one belongs here more than you?

He knows where he is at.
His while t-shirt clings to his sweat soaked skin
and he waits for another chance to waste his breath
on the walking skeletons.

He walks outside with a hole in his umbrella
to wash away the salt from his arms
but to protect his face from the water
to make sure the walking skeletons know he was crying earlier.

When the sky falls,
he will catch the pieces in his mouth
like he did during winter.
He will recite his opinions on why he should die
in front of the walking skeletons,
while he slowly loses his skin himself.

We are a forest; we are as dense as trees. But when one of us is cut down and plummets, none of us hear it. It's sad that our branches don't intertwine and our leaves don't share the same green and fall off our twigs when Autumn appears around the corner with its scythe, welcoming the coming of Dead Winter.

We are only a tire swing away from each other.

Our bark isn't climbed by the same children. We don't have the same tattoos, formed by the knives of lovers holding hands, in our wood. It would be better for us to burn down in a quiet Summer Holocaust.

The only way to join each other is to return to the dirt that gave birth to us.

I'm gonna wear
my weathered cardigans
and be swallowed by the pack
of Seattle commutes
with my vinyl records in one hand,
a guitar in the other,
and a backpack full of
J. Kerouac and C. Bukowski
and R. Adams and L. Cohen.

I gonna live
off of the San Francisco Bay saltwater
and the bummed cigarettes outside
of bars that play nicotine music
to my ears.

I'm gonna sleep
on the ground in front of cookie-cutter houses
with their fence posts painted white.
I'll feel my psyche strum its last chord
and soon I'll be gone
without a sound.

I'm gonna die
in a new town where nobody knows my name.
I'll be a Chicago artist
full of New York poetry,
a Great Britain romantic
full of Alameda Victorian architecture,
or a Nebraska idiot
full of Midwest ambition.

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.

Cracked and dry,
they perform my
craft.
Long after midnight.
Past the morning bird
which sings
"welcome, New Day".

Welcome, New Day
I've waited till dawn
to see that radiant
blink
of light.
Orange light
effortlessly fights
its way through
glass
to greet my eyes
with a passionate
exclamation.

Cracked and dry,
they absorb the orange.
Transfigured into smooth,
bone-wrappings.
My joints guide my
relief.

Past noon.
Afternoon.
Evening moon.

Midnight.
Long after midnight.
My eyes will
never
shut
or I would miss
the star of morning
and the bird's melodic
"welcome, New Day".

We were so close to seeing the sunrise!
Well, not really.
It was 3 o' clock
and my eyelids felt like cinder blocks.

But it felt close.

It could have been a picture perfect moment.
Well, not really.
Pictures are never perfect,
and besides,
my thumb would have been in the shot.

We make a mess of beautiful things.
We scatter them across our floor like snow.
We lay in beds of pictural dreams
that nobody else but us know.

Moments upon moments of color ring
around our heads as we grow and grow
with grace upon grace held in our hands
like God himself is fighting for our side.

It's funny, I awoke from this dream with such open eyes
and to my surprise it were your eyes that cried.
If anything, it was I who deserved those tears.
We make a mess of beautiful things...

we still rise to the same sun
we still sleep under the same moon
we still read the same words
we still hum the same tunes
we still feel the same joy
we still feel the same blues
we still play the same songs
we still know this to be true:

we still forget to let go
but we still manage to say i love you.

I didn't mean to **** myself.
It was just one of those
spurofthemoments.

I colored outside
of the lines. I
took the falsehood
seriously and believed
I was invincible.

The camera never lies,
and I believed every
photo it said.
What a fallacy, would't
you agree?

When rain falls
it arrives like
an army charging down a hillside,
beating their fist against their shields.
Or it arrives like
tears from a father's eyes
as he opens his arms and says
"Welcome home, son."

When rain falls
it is greeted by
open umbrellas and rubber boots.
Or it is greeted by
children with eyes closed
and faces toward the skies
as drops fall on their tongues.

When rain falls
it is caught by
rooftops, gutters, and windshields.
Or it is caught by
the eyelashes of two lovers
saying hello again
after ages of goodbyes.

When rain falls
it lands on
tree leaves
who carry it to their roots.
Or it lands on
cracks in the sidewalk
and encourages new life to burst forth.

When rain falls
it sounds like
the rushing rivers
and the tides breaking on the shorelines.
Or it sounds like a prayer gently whispered
to ears patiently listening.

When rain falls
its promises are protected
by the guard of a rainbow.

When rain falls
its promises are protected
by the guard of a rainbow.

My blood flows through your veins.
Blood that once pumped through my heart.

The needle is impaled in your skeletal arm.

With reluctance I'm at your bedside.
My knuckles are white
clenching your hand.

You speak -
There's nothing left in me,
and there's nothing you can do.

While the others are asleep I call to you.
But there's nothing you can do.

The wind is shaking the trees and blowing through the hair
of people walking to their destinations
like the world is going to end if they don't make it
in time.

I cautiously say this because
I am one of them, running from place
to place -
anxiety storms around me like the gust.

I imagine those who don't make it in time,
frozen cold by the closing of a door.
Or brokenhearted by a hand in someone else's.
What happens after that?
What happens if these people don't make it in time?

God knows time won't wait.

Zeus is ****** tonight.

Maybe he was having conflict with Hera. Maybe Apollo or Athena or Artemis accidentally attempted to rain art or astuteness or animals down upon Earth, respectively.

Maybe he drank too much wine.

Whatever the reason is, it's quite a light show.

There are no stars, only the
chemiluminescence
on my shirt and my shorts
that were poured upon me by
intoxicated partiers who thought it would be entertaining
to shower the combination of peroxide and phenyl oxalate ester
upon the party guests.

A map of the universe
is splattered across my hands.

It's as if Zeus
threw away the sky,
in an inebriated gesture,
and it landed around me.

Cronus should have swallowed the father of gods and of men whole.