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.

Maybe it's the twisting,
the shrinking on the vine
or the hollow feelings
I've buried deep inside.
Or the late night emergencies
and the bleeding that
can't be stopped or tied.
Or maybe it's tomorrow
and the secrets it'll
find to scheme and hide.
Maybe it's the failures
following everything
we've ever tried.
Maybe the answers
aren't coming no matter
how much time we bide.
Maybe tonight is all the
chance we'll ever have
to stem the rising tide.
I don't have answers
to the long questions
of this ride
but I'm working toward
solutions to the promises
and the lies they've lied
even if it seems I'm aimless
or in penalty or standing
on the other side.

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?

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.

The people we know are not
those people, not really.
They are constructs of our
imagination, living in our heads
and they are more or less
accurate based on how open
we manage to be with each other.
Our memories are not recordings
they are simulacrum of things
that happened acted out
in pantomime by the homunculus
we all make of friends and loved ones.
And the tragic thing is that
when we go, when we finish
and make memories no more
they go with us, our shadow people.
Every dead person takes everyone
they ever met with them, every time.
No one is an island.
No life is just one is one life.
A light doesn't go out
a blackout occurs.
A drop doesn't fall
the flood comes.
What a terrible tragedy that
singular death is because it
contains a multitude of deaths
and the only comfort I can give
is that when you go, and we all must,
the make believe ghost of you lives on
in the memory mummer's play
inside the heads of everyone
that you have ever met.
Small comfort.
Perhaps.

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.

We're all dying,
some just a little
faster than others
and we all wanna know
we mattered to our
sisters and our brothers
because we're short
on time and long
on meaning
with tarnished souls
and empty hearts and
minds that need cleaning.
We talk about legacy
while we struggle
from day to day
but we leave aside our
value when we refuse
to stand and play
these forever games
of trying to find the
hard and honest truth
before it's far too late
before we've gotten just
a little too long in the tooth
And still it isn't over
not by a long shot
and certainly not yet
because they'll never let
it finish before we
pay our outstanding debt.
I do not know if I'll
be here tomorrow to
guide you on the way
because tomorrow is
a foreign land and all
we ever have is today.