It's a little like drowning
or being set on fire.
It's cold comfort
warmed by desire.
There are peaks
set so very impossibly high
and valleys deep and low
but both got a view of the sky.

I fell in love with
a beautiful dark Irish rose
and I burnt alive
because of the freckles on her nose.
For more than two decades
I've been captivated by her.
Watch as she makes an
honest man from a ******* liar.

I've never had the words
not honest and not true
to tell you the depth
of my feelings for you.
Come fly with me. love.
Let's blow on the breeze
let fingers touch blue sky
and toes scrape bare trees.

Soar with me toward forever
if you've got the time to spare.
Let me write ten thousand words
unable to explain how much I care.
There's fire around me
and water where there was air.
You're a part of me now
in my skin, my lungs, my hair.

I stand on the forecourt
another job bound to drag
late into the night
in some other state
very far from home.
I'm staring across the street
waiting for other people
so I can get back to work
and I see the houses.
Like rows of uneven teeth,
different colors. Satellite dish
on that one.
Little differences.
I am suddenly consumed by
the enormity of all the
unfolding lives.
How I stand among them
but don't belong.
How my own life is miles
away and missed.
How we are all vital
but we are all strangers.
You read my words now
see these thoughts.
In this moment of wonder
which I here record
you have known me.
I wish I could know you
but I stand here
a stranger.
I intrude on your lives
and we'll never meet
and that's odd to me.
We're all out here, alone,
leading Stranger's lives.

He looked back at where he'd been...

The Baltimore night sweats
like cans of cold beer
and smells of warm ****
and inside the thick air
is electricity and it's moving
from you and into me.
It was a thousand years ago
in a math class a thousand miles
from where I was born.
And it hurt so ******* much
when I felt that first push
against the walls I'd put up
to protect me from everyone
and everything.
When finally, after years of
work and millions of soft
warm smiles, the walls broke
I thought it would **** me.
Part of falling, my love,
is landing.
I have dragged myself through
three states and out of hell.
I have labored under burning
sun and freezing snow.
I have tried to reach impossibly
distant shores.
I have looked inside and found less
when I knew you needed more.
I fell when I was still a boy
and dusted myself off as a man
and knew that for the rest of
my worthless ******* life
I belonged to you.
And knowing that was true I made
attempts to improve.
I stand outside myself and watch
as he tries.
I see him struggle to make
the right choices.
He moves through a foreign life
trying his best to be better.

He's walked an uncertain number
of miles in these seventeen years.
Wondering when it would be over.
He stopped, the candle burning low
in his heart, and sighed.
He looked back at where he'd been...

...and it didn't seem as though
he'd come very far.

I was born many years
and hundreds of miles
from here.
On any given day all
I really want is just
to disappear.
I don't know the truth
but have told thousands
of clever lies.
I'm one half a practicing
prisoner and one half a
series of goodbyes.
All my little life it's been
what've you done
for me lately?
I'm soured on bitterness
and hoping to appear
at least stately.
I don't know where things
are going. I don't know
how it'll end.
I'm trying very hard
not to lose it. Not to snap
but to bend.
I don't know how to
talk to you in scrawling
lines of text.
I'm worried about
the future and everything
that comes next.

Following the twisting,
bobbing fairy lights
deeper into the dark
Pennsylvania forest,
surrounded by the musky
scent dirt has at night
and the pervasive odor
of pine sap, his foot
finds in the darkness
a curled, coiled tree root
and he stumbles,
seems for the smallest
of moments to recover,
and plunges toward the
moss covered earth of
the midnight Keystone
State woodland.

He remembers hay bales
stacked in double
out by the tree he'd
hung the rope swing from.
A target placed and
a quiver of bolts
and a lesson about
violence, firstly
about the kind that
we do and finally
the kind done to him.
There is a small
tool shed that stands
a witness to the
moment when he
did his best not to
cry or to call out.

Snow would fall in feet
and schools would look
for terrifying accumulation
before they closed for the day.
He spent the two hour delay
sleeping, he hoped.
But hope is for the wealthy
and suffering is for the
poor and his thrift store
wardrobe told him how
the world worked.
He leapt from his warm
bed and started in on
the chores that barroom
visitations left undone.

He rode his bike down
to the poorly built
and badly lit little bar
his step father frequently
spent time in on nice
summer or cold winter days.
He nodded to the old man
who ran the place as he
Began walking the old man
back toward the house.
He'd come back for the bike
later on, assuming no one
took it before then.

There was a dirt road
and a gravel driveway.
The radio was static or
country music and the
days lasted forever
or at least they seemed to.
The lot next to his house
was huge and barren
and bordered by dense
northeastern forest.
If you walk in far enough
the world grows dim
and everything else,
all of it, is unseen.
It can't touch you,
nothing can.
He wondered if anyone
had ever decided to
just not come out.

My whole life I've been
waiting for the music to swell.
I've been wincing at raised hands
and obidient of Pavlov's bell.
I've been thinking about the end
and what that might mean.
I've run with sudden violent shudders
I've never run clean.
I want peace and solitude
like a snowy mountain cap.
I've been lost. It's been
a nightmare without a map.
I'd secret away lits bits and bobs.
Some string, a subway token.
We used poverty as excuse, but we
weren't just broke we were broken.

I like the stinging numbness
of eating radish slices.
I like the quiet oblivion
of heavy rain.
I like to imagine that
this will all lead to crisis.
I'd rather leave behind the past.
I'd rather not focus on pain.

I often dream about dying.
Walking the room at
my own funeral and
wondering why no one is crying.

I locked away my heart
at a tender age
because it hurt to feel
and for reasons left off the page.
I put it in a cold, high place
locked it and told it to run.
Told to always hide.
But you journeyed there,
chased it down and picked the lock
releasing all the horrible
truthsome **** inside.

You could be better.
You should be more.
Instead you're this.
This miserable ******* chore.
I woke up this morning
and wrote the note.
I finally knew the ending.
It's tucked in my coat.
Why you ask did I not just
put it in the mail?
How could I have discarded
it, should I fail?
This is how it is
how it should be.
A little secret, reader,
between you and me.
You're free, of course.
Free as birds.
Not that it matters,
they are only words.

My best friend said
I like my endings to be sad.
Maybe he's right. I don't know.
But those are
the only endings I've ever had.

Your hand on the side
of my face, gentle but firm,
as long as you need
no need to squirm.
Your eyes steady and alive
burning from your core.
your voice whispering
that I deserved more.

Whether it'll be heaven
or it'll be hell
I'm not sure or at least
I cannot tell.
I'm feeling amazing
I'm going out on top.
In the distance the music
begins to swell.
To celebrate my short drop
and very sudden stop.
Swing life away.
Free as bees. Free as birds.
Of course, we both know,
these have been only words.

I heard a ghost story once.
It left my mouth tasting sour
my mind turned dark
my mood bleak and dour.
I was spitting for weeks
but the taste didn't come out.
I'd been screaming for hours
but only managed to shout.
Everything seemed bigger once
in dreams or in our youth.
Maybe that was just me
maybe that is the truth.


There was once a house
where a murderer lived, high on the hill,
that we were afraid to walk by
because we'd heard he was there, still.
The curtain would move
you told me smiling wide,
I couldn't prove it but
I suspected you'd lied.

You mocked and you jeered
called me a coward.
Dared me to approach
and my stomach soured.
I stood out on the street
for a long time with shaking knees
before coming to my senses
and retreating into the bordering trees.
I could hear your laughter
even as you called my name
but I didn't turn around.
I couldn't face my shame.

One autumn I plucked up my nerve
and visited that haunted old place.
I walked through the front door
a chill in the air and sun on my face.
It was clear that no one lived there
and had not for a great while.
There was graffiti and trash everywhere,
holes in the hard wood, cracks in the tile.
I looked out a broken window
at the street down below.
I swear I could see me
as I was so many years ago.

I heard a ghost story once
in which I was the ghost.
No hooks for hands
no sounding heavenly host.
Just a man standing in an
empty house all alone,
looking back on the years
and thinking, my how you've grown.
Everything seemed bigger once
in dreams or in our youth.
Maybe that was just me
maybe none of this is the truth.

We are echoes of the
long departed.
Built on the hopes
of our mothers
and from the bones
of our fathers.
If we're careful we'll
never leave a mark.
The tapestry of ancestry
will reflect us present
and unharmful.
The legacy protected
and complete.
But what if inside us
a rebel happens to live?
A troublemaker playing
devil may care with
the precious family name?
If we're brave, perhaps a little bold
we just might leave a stain.
Just might be remembered.
Just might turn out great.
And should we not,
should we fail,
in that we'll have to hope
there will be some grace.

Questions about tomorrow:
What happens when
one day everything is over
and all is at an end
and the next day we
all still have to go to work?
What do we do then?
Will it only really end
when finally money
doesn't spend?
Or will they find another
way to make us slaves?
Will we ever walk into
Plato's light or are we doomed
to stay in Plato's cave?
For what purpose
do we carry this load?
Is this building to something?
Or will it all just explode?

Fears about now:
The planet is in death throes.
We're killing it and
the clock to fix the problem
has wound down.
Journalistic integrity
can't survive the
new News cycle
but it has made it easier
for politicians to
take advantage, to lie
and to somehow become
childish shades of what
they once were.
Violence has become
one solution,
reticence another
and while I agree some
people say ****** things
freedom of speech
is never expanded
when it is taken away.
Kids shouldn't be afraid
of dying in schools.
Every generation leaves
business unfinished.
Every generation marches
us closer to the end.

One day no one will be left to remember any of us. The stars will blink out and entropy will advance. Intellectually, this isn't difficult to know, but practically it's barely worth considering. Tomorrow is still coming and we will need enough sleep to make it to the other side. We can worry about the rest at another time.


My mother dreamed me
the president of the USA,
my father was whip smart
always knew what to say.
My grandfather came here
for the promise of tomorrow.
His mother bought passage
beg, steal and borrow.
I look at my son
and am broken hearted.
We are just echoes
of the long departed.

He was all bible verse
and the broken, fraying
edges of song
gone slightly discordant
after having waited for
so ******* long.
He wondered at love
like you or I worry at
a scab on our arm,
with constant picking
and scratching
and sudden serious alarm.
He claimed he shined
like Summertime but knew
he felt more like Fall.
He was often scared
and frequently lonely
but so are we all.

She loved him from
a distance with a small
measure of shame
but would still have
melted into giggles
if he felt the same.
She waited for someone
to tell him,
to let her secret slip,
she waited for others
always because
she was terrified to trip.
At night she'd sit
outside her apartment
and stare at the moon
and pray that something
would happen and that
it would happen soon.

They lived lives
side by side and
from faraway
in quiet solitude
and creeping isolation
day by endless day.
Never touching
moving toward the
patient, waiting grave
they could reach out
and touch one another
if they'd been brave.
There is no making up
for lost time or
missed chances.
Nobody else will
ever hit the floor if
at first no one dances.

Snow covers Autum's
earth like a blanket on
a freshly made bed.
The sound goes out
of the world as you
walk through the winter.
The white sky meets
the white ground
in the far distance
and if not for the shadows
we might be standing
on blank canvas
waiting for some lesser
god to pencil in our
live's purpose.
Hoping it doesn't get
stale.
I can hear only my
footsteps in the cushioned
quiet of the air
and I've never felt
more alone.
When asked what grief
is all I can think of
is that crunching sound.
How dark a bright
white world can seem.
How life and bloom are
only ever inches away.
Maybe over this snow drift
perhaps the next?
These are the winter bones
of loneliness on which
spring is built.
It ain't over yet,
it may never end.
Before every spring
a winter
under every winter
a fall.

I remember, still, how
you smiled with blood
between your teeth
and the tangle of thrown
hands and kicked feet
in our search for Eliot's
elusive muttering retreats.
Neon bulbs and street lamps
lit up our nights and colored
these aching moments of our lives
and I recall we'd huddle
like insects under their lights
with lit cigarettes and lewd jokes
and the looming spectre of fights.
Children playing at being men
with so many tomorrows
still left ahead.
We knew each other
like story stucture.
Should the fire burn one
in would step his brother.
Alone but for each other
bonded with no shared
blood or father or mother.
Two of a kind
against a world
of full houses.
'Course that was then.
Before kids and spouses.
You're a country away
these days,
sharing facebook updates
about your son's latest
words and moods.
We send Christmas cards,
pictures of our families,
always a room should
the other ever visit,
say hi to the kid
to the wife.
Talk soon.
Good morning
oh? Sorry
Goodnight.
A million, billion years ago,
we tell our sons when
they ask about our
friend on the other
continent, before you,
during a period of strife,
Daddy trusted that guy
with his life.
They smile and we do, too.
Well, I do anyway.
I don't actually know
about you.

I'm locked in a death match
with the cynic in me
over whether or not to hope.
It's not been going well
but one of the two of us
will still have to go.
Perhaps if happenstance
was lately just
a little more kind.
Perhaps if light in darkness
was just a little bit
easier to find.
And, y'know, yes.
For sure, there is
more I could try.
But the truth is so
much smaller than
even any one lie.
At night, from the
other room I can
still hear you cry.
Though miles and ages
seperate me and you
from him and those dark times.
It has been a rough road
and barefoot we've
walked every inch.
We've been beggers and
heroes and labor and chore.
The songs of Darwin's finch
and the wheel turning
Twain's riverboat toward shore.
We've been the music of the spheres
impressive in sound but nothing more.
It'd be easier to hope
if it were easier to live.
That's the rub, I guess...
I'll have to give.
I've been thirty-five years
in search of answers
and I just don't know.
It's me verse my inner cynic
in a death match about hope.
But, still one of us must go.

I know it's still an ugly uphill
at thirty-five
from the **** soaked
floorboards of a punk rock dive.
I know you quit
but two packs a day
still leaves a scratch
in your voice that don't go away.
And look, hands up,
I know what you're thinking
but the gut don't vanish
when you stop drinking.
Turns out the weight
was Marley's chains
and we'd carry it every day.
Bruised bones and daily pains.
Our long told and retold
haunting, if threadbare, refrains.
Soak in the empty memories of
hard nights and bar fights
burned out stars and candle light.
Weathered skin and the
hungry, open and waiting pit.
There is a high cost to livin'
even the way we did it.
Times up, sales final.
Pipper's callin' and
the wind howls through.
Make your wishes, friends.
The price is comin' due.

I woke up to find myself
a million meters down a hole
I dug myself, lights out
fight bitten and looking
into darkness for a savior.
Thousands of travelled miles
ago a monster stood in my skin
and maybe I deserve this
slow burn punishment. I mean,
blame it on the rage or...

... There are hollow ringing notes
crashing off the walls and the back
of the inside of my head.
Playing cymbals behind my eye
Symphonies for my inner demon.
Young men wrung out and hollowed
used up and swallowed. Thrown away
like fastfood wrappers on the floors
of cars we would drive late into nights
thinking of beds we don't dream in...

...At some point you age out,
you ghetto geniuses,
and find a hostile world
not quite the fish bowl you
spent your life looking through.
And you write hundreds of thousands
of lines in the pursuit of high art
and praise and accolade
and" let's face it" fame
and never write one word that's true...

...you are always that little monster.
No matter where you go
how big you grow
or the quality of what you do,
No one will ever be proud of you.

I blink into darkness and hope
for help or better for rescue.
I find myself, some days,
looking at cherub faced photos
of myself from infanthood
It's been hard practically since
day one. I'll always wonder
if life had been different would
I have built the monster
in the skin in which I stood?

She had not known fear
until she could no longer
see the shore.
Drifting in alien waters
she felt pangs,
like butterfly wings,
against the inside of
her ribcage.
The fluttering, building hollow
that hope makes in it's
death throes.
When you enter the ocean
she heard her grandfather say
you enter the food chain.
The lazy, lapping drift
which brought her ever
farther into the empty sea
would have been soothing
in very different conditions.
Her eyes raked the clouds
searching out the signs
of bird flight.
She was suddenly at the
dawn of seafaring with
early man and his silent gods.
Looking for hope in
the blue void above.
She wondered idlely
whatever became of the
lifeboats from sunken ships
when the coast guard or
someone else pulls the
survivors free of them.
Would she, if she kept floating on
encounter them on the high seas
like a salvation graveyard?
She tried to think
of ways to stay out of the sun
but images of headstones
flocked like an armada
stalking the sea forever
growing but staying
impossibly empty always
pressed down on her.
She too was adrift.
Maybe she'd been headed
that way all her life.
Hard to say.

We are not your prayers answered
we are the sudden stillness before
the sick realization that the
woods around you have become
darker and so very unfamiliar.
We are a generation
treated as disposable
but asked for endless solution.

We are not the prize waiting
for you at journey's end.
We are the parting of ways
that follows like a raw nerve.
We are the departing
backs of comrades
that no longer have
purpose left to serve.

We are not an audience
of hushed worshippers
at your feet.
We are the shimmering
air that summertime
rises from the street.
We are the scared triggerfingers
on people who have finally
had enough.
We are the liminal
space between now
and an empty room of guf.

We are visions of
impending apocolypse.
We are faraway destinations
of many short little trips.
We are a little bit of
yesterday tomorrow.
We are emptied of laughter
and wasted on sorrow.

Life is big and wonderful
and so very sad.
On one side it begins
and on the other it ends
The middle part is
where love, songs and adventure
are kept.
You'll find yourself shrink
further inside
every time your heart breaks.
That's fine. It's okay to be scared.
But try, even though it's hard,
to be brave. Because
the world is huge and
heart breaking
and above all, worth it.
It will not always
pay to be nice
but you must always
be kind.
In time you'll learn
the difference
and many more besides.
Don't force yourself
to smile.
Happiness will come and go
and you may miss it
when it's not around
but you can't trick
yourself happy.
It is okay to laugh
a little too loud,
if it's honest.
Comfort people in pain
even if no one comforts you.
And help people,
when and where you can.
What goes around does not
come around but goodness
shouldn't be about rewards.
Don't look for completion
in others. Only you can do that.
Other people don't complete you
they just love you.
When you look for love,
be earnest.
When you find someone
who loves you, be fair.
Return their love, if you can.
If you can't then don't lie.
Better to tell the truth
about love than to
lie about like.
Life is long and painful
but short and wonderful.
Getting from one end to
the other takes a lot of
careful navigation.
Most people are decent,
but they're not treated that way.
Keep that in mind when
dealing with others.
You're gonna make mistakes
and you'll have to carry that weight.
We all do.
Share the load with those
you love.
I love you.
You are not a burden.

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."

Once we trod the surface
like behemoth gods,
we moved through the world
like great ships under coal power
caring nothing for what
was in our way
or left in our wake.
And we could've been more
careful
I think we can admit
but ******* it's difficult
to slow down during
the doing of it.
When dawn came we were changed.
Softer round the middle
thinner in the knees
grayer at temples, perhaps.
Oh how gums and hairlines recede!
Payment for our lifetimes of greed.
And sure I've regrets,
what of it?
Sure I've been brought low,
who hasn't?
But ******* your eyes and see
how I stand whole and complete.
The years have caused me to bend
but nothing has broken me.

We are a multitude
of bad decisions.
A myriad of choices
which require revisions.
We are a cornicopia of coulda-beens
all wanting what could be.
If offered the genie's dilema
we'd change it all, wouldn't we?

We are hugging a spininng
ball of dirt and water
wrapped around a burning core
on a space ship with no rudder
and we close our eyes
and cross our fingers
and know, absolutely, we're on track
but the doubt still lingers.

When the universe exploded into being
the debris were set on their courses.
Like beads of rain water on glass
like rows of race horses.
And with the right math we could predict
where everything will land.
What then do we think of free will?
Is it just accidental cosmic sleight of hand?

I don't got answers, haven't picked a side.
Would that cancel choice?
Diminish those that have died?
Does it rob the world of song? Of voice?
My parents had a theory or they lied
I don't know. I leave it for you to decide.

I held you captive
in a chance photograph.
Tucked into a small
notebook filled with
page after page of tired
unfinished verse
I travelled with you.
Moved from end table
to locker to glove box
I carried your cage with me.
When I got lonesome
or things seemed too
difficult for one person
to bare, in those moments
I would take the photograph
from the little notebook
and I would absorb you.
The curve of your smile
the shape of your nose.
I swear it looked just like you,
except the eyes were wrong.
Usually there is a light there
that makes everything around
them brighter and better
and more important
but from the cage,
as a prisoner of time
trapped in just that one
singular moment,
it wasn't you anymore.
I couldn't push through
and live in the moment
with you.
I was hundreds of miles
from home
and horribly alone.
I had your photograph
and though I treasure
it still, there is no going back.
I had learned that
when it comes to prisons
where the bars really are
can be misleading.

I live in fear
I've said a little too much
or that once counted out
my deeds won't've been enough.
I feel tight awaiting release
coiled like a spring or rubber band.
Cocked like a shaking gun waiting
for input from an unsteady hand.
Now I know that I know what I am
but I worry that's the catch.
While everyone else unwound
I just continued to twist and stretch.
I don't know on what criteria
a human life is accounted
I measure and I weigh
but the summit is not mounted.
I wish that I believed
"Love will save us all!"
but I can't and I don't
and my spring is turning to fall.
Still, I am surrounded by love
and would do well to remember:
That this could be the criteria
on which human life is measured.

My whole life we've been
a generation about to collapse.
An abanboned cigarette burned
down to a cylinder of ash.
We get up each day
full of new aches and old hurtings
and we make our commutes
to chain ourselves up to our hauntings.
We find ourselves caught in forever.
Our fingers break, our nailbeds bleed
as we scratch at eternity. Stuck fast as flies
our bodies shake out sorrow and need.
We're preached body positivity
and self ******* care
by billionaires with no intent
to ever ******* share.
We look at heavily curated streams
of the lives of friends, who boast
their picture perfect weekends
and wonder what we could ever post.
Between work and sleep
we manage something like twenty-three.
That's hours a week we don't owe.
For less than a day you can find us free.
People scream at us to fix it
while giving no proffered solution.
The blue strong arm of the system
kills in the streets with no retribution.
We find no solution
from asking or starting fires.
We're just cast away
as criminals or as liars.
I'm not Superman, I don't have the answer
though I really wish I did.
But we aren't Kandor
safe behing glass or lid.
And the wind will find the cylinder
and scatter it to ash.
And just like my whole ******* life
we'll still be seconds from collapse.

I look for myself in fiction.
In music and in sport, too.
I look for flashes
of my green eyed reflection
in the words that friends choose.
I look for all the parts and pieces
of myself I claim to resent but
that I'm terrified to lose.
And when I find them
in the art you've left behind
I leave me in some small way
and in exchange
I keep it in my mind.
I feel myself disentangle
and fall unto the floor.
Left behind to worship at
the altar of the me
in your art I was looking for.
When I create I see myself
trapped inbetween the lines
and I hate him and wish him gone.
I don't want it to seem like mine.
That duality is ******
or maybe suicide
it drives me crazy
either way you decide.
I just want purity
in the things I do or make
I want people to see themselves
when they go looking
and leave parts and pieces I can take.

There are these things...

Things I don't know how to say.
There are things I can't articulate.
Things I never learned to speak.
Perhaps, lost along the way.
I've hated myself for so long
it's difficult to know if I can change.
I feel different some days but
don't know if it means I've
stopped or if I'm happier
but still hate myself the same.
That hate grew inward and festered.
It attached itself to my identity
and became who I am. Innate.
I want to get better. I do want to change.
I need to see improvement.
To somehow rise above my fate.
It's just that...
When certain feelings are too big
or are too much like pain
I bury them somewhere inside
and pretend they never came.
You watch me with those big eyes
and repeat the things I say
and I know I gotta fix it.
I know it's not a ******* game.
(Language!)
For you I make the effort
I try to find the crooked path
back to good, and healthy and sane.
I love you, little bean
more than I hate myself.
I love you more than it's
possible for me to say.
Kiddo, I hope you know.

It's just that...

There are these things...

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.

The past exists in my memory
as a prolonged scream.
Unfinished nonsense bellowed
at the uncaring sky
or roared down the maw
of the savage beast I'm
still terrified I'll become
before finally being published.
I can hear the rough draft
in my hard and swollen throat.
We were so ******* Once upon a time,
y'know, once upon a time.
You and me, babe
my god, we were yesterday.
In the mornings I wake up,
sore and aging away from limber,
and I miss who we were
and I worry about who
I'm still becoming
and the only
benefit of age
I've so far discovered
is the knowledge that
I always will.
We don't ever get back
the people, and places
that we've lost.
They're gone,
but so is 17
and so are we
and so are they
and ******* it all, so am I.
If you're not careful
you'll fall into a nostalgia trap
and you'll stay until
you discover that the only
way out is to remember that
we're never really happy
not even then.
We carry a little sad around
always.
I know, I know:
That's hard to get
nostalgic about.
What can I say?
We are so yesterday.

Gods once walked among us.
They loomed overhead
and we felt comfort
and had no fear in their presence.
They made us feel small
and also powerful.
They taught us jokes
and how to snap or whistle.
They showed us love
in it's most gentle, gracious form.
They fill us with wisdom
coded as stories from their youth.
And they left us far, far too soon.

They burned you in
a pine box, but removed
your rings.
We got a bag of ash
to fill the ******* wound
left in the world.
Stiff upper lip.
Locking the doors behind
we all found ourselves
in different rooms.
We didn't just lock out
the world, we locked out
each other.
We learned to grieve
and we learned to die
And learned to do them alone.
The gods are dying
but we still worried
that people might think us
weak.

I agonized over the words.
Arranging them in different ways
structuring a cyclical ending
to tie back into the begining.
I wanted so badly to make
you proud of me, one last time,
using the only tool that
had never failed me.
Using my words.
The dead are not shamed
but they are also not proud
and furthermore
I don't even remember
what words I said.

I remember you.
I remember all of you.
And I still remember
what is was like before
I carried all the years
and the sad around with me.
I remember when songs
didn't make me remember
just because they're somber.
I used to be whole and complete
but time has turned me
away from the loving face
of those long dead gods.

Rain was crashing against
the shoreline in angry sheets
and you were yelling something
at me through the cacophony.
I didn't know what you said
but I knew you weren't smiling.

Half of my lifetime earlier
I was in the basement
orchestra practice room.
She was there, weeping about
harsh criticism.
I thought she played beautifully.
Everything about her was
beautiful.
She kissed me, then
but I turned around and ran.
I didn't know what else to do.

When highschool ended
I sat her on a bench outside
of the eatery we both worked.
I told her that we were
done now. That it was the
wise way to go.
Distance, I told her,
has always proven too much
for me to overcome.
She said she loved me.
I said I was sorry.
I didn't know what else to do.

Her successors didn't have
better luck.
They would love me
and I would run away.
A heart meant to break.
I thought, if you really care
for them you'll leave.
I thought, you're not capable
of reciprocation.
You're not capable of love.

I had never been in love
but I had not been kind enough
to have always been alone.
I used to wish I had.
I don't pretend to understand love
but I know this much:
It is like a tragedy and a miracle,
you can't manufacture it
it just happens to you.

You shouted into the oncoming
maelstrom words I didn't know.
Couldn't hear.
Your eyes were strong
you're the strongest person
I've ever known.
I shouted back,
"I love you."
Lightning crashed in the distance
and that oh-so-serious face
finally turned into a smile
and in so doing
it broke my heart.

"Second star to the right."
You said.
"Straight on 'til morning."
I finished.
We were Peter Pan
Capt. Kirk.
We were teenagers
graduated from provisional licenses
and invincible and racing the dawn.
On the horizon was the future
and all the possibilities that entailed.
You and me,
my little brother.
The second star of our
stupid little story.

In Kansas you joked,
"I don't think we're in the Bronx anymore."
And even though it had
been years since we'd
left those streets behind
we laughed like criminals.
We weren't whole anymore
but we weren't totally broken
yet, either.

"I don't think I've ever been in love."
I confessed below an
open night sky filled with stars.
You punched me in the arm
and smiled the same smile
I had known all your life,
"Party ain't over yet, man."

I woke up yesterday
and I was thirty-something
but I remembered
the wanderlust of
yesteryear and I remembered
how much we'd been through
and I thought I'd give you
a call. Let you know
as long as we have one another,
Brother, we're Peter Pan
Capt. Kirk
And even if we're not
in The Bronx anymore,
The party ain't over.
Not for us.
You're still my second star.

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."

We got in the car and
looked out at the road ahead.
"Pick a direction." I said.
I'd been desperately poor
and so hungry I couldn't
bare to eat.
I'd been on buildings
so tall I thought I might
touch the sky
and valleys so low
one worried the levy
wouldn't hold
but I was 17 just that once.

I recall throwing back
my head and screaming,
full throated, into an
empty night sky.
I once called the rain
in a mall parking lot
just outside of Baltimore.
I got so sick I thought
I'd die on an NYC subway.
I traveled with you
across this country
for just shy of 3 months.
I was 17 just that once.

I was three years in exile
in Dover, Delaware.
I felt cold Chicago rain
and New England sea breeze.
I've labored in Floridian humidy
and dressed against the
chill fog rolling in off
San Francisco bay.
I shoveled snow in Alaska
and got chased by fire ants
into an above ground pool
in Austin, Texas.
But I was only 17 that once.

We got into my beatup
old car, loaded with
the Spartan bag of clothes
we'd learned to have ready
to go over a lifetime of
sudden and drastic moves.
We'd stop for beef jerky
and drinks.
We'd stop to see the sights
we wanted to see.
We'd stop to get off the road
and stretch our legs.
"Pick a direction." I said.
I was only 17 that once.

I will try to measure my life
in codes for digital downloads
and in the many hundreds
of hours I've spent alone.
I don't know how else to do it.
I don't know how else to make it fit.
We never know it's finished
until it finally is.

One day we don't wake up
and we live in fear until it's over.
Because we don't know the
measure of us.
When my life is over and examined
what underlaying themes
will I find present?
And how do I prevent it?

And what of unfinished business
and loose story threads?
Do they get picked up and continued
in some later person's tale
or are they frayed too much for mending?
Am I too concerned with the ending?

Can I map a life to
Campbell's hero's journey?
Is the living as predictable
as a story circle?
It's certainly not as entertaining.
Do we reach apothosis
without a threshold being crossed?
Are we remembered fondly
or are we eventually lost?

I don't know the answers
but I sure wish I did.
We are thirty years from collapse
and riding a very fine line.
I need to learn not to fear
the fast approaching ending
because we're running long on story
but very short on time.

I remember the air
shimmering above hot roads
and sidewalks.
It rippled like water
and invited mirage.
We'd meet up in the
alleyway under my
fire escape and set off,
on bikes and skates and boards
and even on foot.
We'd be gone from the block
but usually still in the neighborhood.
Sometimes at lunch,
when everyone came back
to eat, I'd go up to the
corner store and one of
the uncles would buy me
a coke if I swept up or
moved some boxes.
I'd roll up comic books and
stuff them in my back pockets
because I had seen
Ric's older cousin do it
and I thought it was
the coolest thing.
At night we'd sneak into
the public pool to go for swims.
Some of the us would smoke
and talk about gossipy nothing
and some of us would try
to convince the girls to
give us secret kisses under
the water.
We were happy to be out
of the heat.
One weekend we biked,
my brother and I,
onto the island so we
could go to the good
theather, the air conditioner
worked and the movies
were played as double features.
We killed an entire
afternoon watching films
from the 80s play
back to back.
I sat, one evening, on the
lip of the roof of Ami's building.
She was staring at me
from across the roof
daring me to call her attention.
"Whatchu got, big guy?"
I leaned back and threw
out my arms, making slow
lazy circles and smiling
broadly at her and at everyone.
For a second, though it was
brief, the smile vanished.
I could feel the pull of
gravity in my belly and groin.
I felt suddenly weightless.
I was so sure...
but my feet kicked out and
the weight shifted
and I was fine.
She was making her way
over to me and I don't
remember what happened
next or what we said.
I remember the feeling.
I remember the fear.
I had nothing to compare
it to. It was huge and
intense and profound.
It was like...
It was like falling in love.
When it rained,
like sheets with wind whipping
between the buildings
as though through canyon walls,
we'd stay in and futz
with Great Grandma's
old black and white set.
One of us would hold the antenna,
the rest indicating how high
or far away.
We'd take turns,
switching out during commercials.
Waiting out the rain.
It's gone now, of course.
The city has a gestational period
like cicadas.
The city I know,
the city I moved away from
is gone.
Yesterday's New York.
I've learned since
to fall in love, elsewhere.

I went to church as a boy.
Learned my saints
and my psalms.
Memorized "and with you."s
and The Hail Mary
(Full of grace, you see.)
Drank the wine
ate the Eucharist.
Spectacles, testicles,
wallet and watch.
I sat at each station
and read my reading.
Said my prayer.
At some point I wondered
if god was even there.

I went to school in my youth.
Carved swearwords in desks
and learned an insane amount of math.
I sat through pep rallies
and detentions.
I read poems and novels
and text books and notes.
Passed to each other in class
(Check yes or no.)
I didn't know the diiference
between *** and love.
I often wondered at the
line of trees I could see
from the window.
What kept me there?
Who held the power?

In my childhood I fought a monster.
He looked like a man
and smelled of a bar.
He seemed a giant
as he loomed over me
(I'm six inches taller now.)
I remember his thick fingers
meaty from blue collar work
pressed against my eyelids.
I remember my head through
the hallway wall.
I still have that uneasy
feeling before bed.
I sometimes wonder
if one of those times
I never got up at all.

Years and miles
time and tide ago
my world was very
different and I wasn't
in control.
Tonight her gentle
breathing fills our room
and the sweet laughter
of our son fills our house
and I 've never been more happy
and I've never been more proud.
(He can count to 30 out loud!)
And I pray to an absent god
that an unknown power
taught me better.
I hope I got back up.
I do sometimes, when it's late
or I've allowed my thoughts
too much free reign, wonder
if maybe one day
my sweet little boy
will have to fight
a monster, too.

The longer a blade is held
to the grindstone
the less remains.
Sure it gets sharper
but quickly it also
gets thrown away.
We are not axes, my friends.
We are not tools.
Not meant to be used
and discarded
and played like fiddles
like fools.
Don't compliment me
on my grind
It's meaningless.
It isn't even mine.
The system in place
requires the hours,
extreme in their need,
in order that I may
look on a family
that I can then feed.
When you take a blade
to grindstone it is
because the edge is poor.
When you let it rest
from that friction you'll
find it can do more.
Sharpen when needed
allow time for rest.
Give the people a minute
let them catch their breath.
We are not broken
but the system we labor under is.
We don't need to be sharpened
we just need time to live.

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.

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.

The sky is on fire,
it's early July
it's late at night.
My 14 hour shift
ended but I'm
an hour outside Baltimore.
I'm missing out on you.
I know it.
I'm shackled to the
systems of a fading empire
and you'll be grown
and I'll join my dead.
My dead never met you.

I get to thinking about the end.
How it'll be everything.
The little annoying ****
but also the good stuff.
It'll be left mournerless
when it all joins me
and my dead.

The people who loved me.
The people on the losing
side of my struggle
of my timeline.
They never knew me as a father,
some didn't know me as a man.

You belong to the generation
with the bleakest future so far.
I wanted to give you the world,
my littlest man,
unfortunately I am.
I don't have the words.

I'm thinking about the end.
Not the ending.
They're semantically different, sure.
Still...
They are not the same.
I am missing people.
All the time.
My living and my dead.

It's early July,
I'm tired. I feel old.
I feel like a bag of rocks
that used to be a wall.
When I was young,
so many dead ago,
I waited all year long
for the summer.
It was our time,
Goonies one and all.
Summer is different now.

I'm thinking about the end.
TV is over. I feel orphaned.
I used to watch Power Rangers
on a black and white set.
With tuning knobs.
At some point TV became movies
and movies became TV
and they both started to die.

I'm driving down 895
and I see the colorful explosions.
I can hear the pop pop
over the road noise.
The smoke falls and
the streets of Baltimore
are filled with descended haze.
I follow the fireworks home.

As he falls
from orbit
he feels the friction,
the heat,
engulf him.
Moving at more than
175,000 miles per hour
he precieves time slow.
He wonders if
there will be
Anything left of him
to crash into the
welcoming dirt
of his home.
He can smell ozone
and a small rational
part of him worries.
He is surprised to find
out that he is still
capable of worry.
Moments ago he was
surrounded by the
seared meat smell
of the cold vacuum.
He is a fading light
in the sky over an entire
world of experiences
he has had and will
never have again.
He will be nothing
or debris depending
on angle and speed
and his own weight.
Moments ago he was
weightless.

He awakens in dirt and sand
and rises, flinching, to suffer.
His days are spent in toil
and his future is destined
to be just as grim and unforgiving
as the landscapes of his moods.
As ****** and callused
as the workman's knuckles
of his hands.

He spends most of his time absent,
his boy growing while he labors.
He wishes it was different
but knows his place.
Some men build pyramids
others just push the stones.
There are worse things to be
than a man pushing the stones,
he wants to believe.

He trys to remember that most
of the time he's happy.
He thinks he is.
Hopes.
It seems like mostly he's frustrated
but really he's just sad.
Tired and sad. Not hopeless,
not exactly,
but aware that there is no hope here.

Lightning crosses like sword blades
on the distant horizon
and he feels empty
when he sees it happen
because all of sudden it
matters that he was alone.
His life has been filled with moments,
experiences that he's always treasured
but now he sees them for true.
They, like his life,
happened to only him.

At night he curls on his stomach
and falls fast and dreamless asleep,
he is always tired.
And although he knows it won't
solve anything
(why would it?)
he finds a small measure of comfort
in the fact that
if we're all fading
into nothing, anyway
at least it's all happening
under the same indifferent stars.

Spit my name out.
It isn't at home in your mouth.
Step away from the failure
of every ******* day
and embrace a future
of doing things a new way.

Kept in small rooms
the twin furies stretch.
Then push against boundries
until little is left.
They blink into the darkness
and wonder what's next.

And the fires, guys!
They've still not gone out!
The whole thing's still burning!
The smoke stings too much to shout.

We're so close to the end, now.
I've never felt worse.
I'm scared and I'm tired
and there is always more work.

No one's coming to save us.
It's up to us, hope as we might.
The world's on fire
and we still haven't a light.

You can rake yourself
over fire and over stone
but they'll still punish you
should you stay home.

And you can bleed out
when they ask for blood
but you'll not find justice
you'll not earn love.

You can trade every second
of every day for an inch of floor
but when you ask what's enough
the answer will always be, "More."

Listen: They don't really care
and you won't change their mind.
Everyone knows it's a living
but it still feels like a bind.

You can spit out teeth standing
there's no place left to sit
they'll not give up a chair
because they don't give a ****.

Lessons come on like glass cuts.
Sudden welling blood
pooling in your palm,
understanding crystallizing
roughly analogous.
And so are we.
Analogues for bigger things.
Our absences filled with
the crippling enormity
of grief.
******* wounds in the world.
And somehow we're expected
not to recover but to be
suddenly good as new.
Glass cuts jagged through skin
like understanding
but you're gone like
forever
and I'm having a hard time
grasping that.
We are analogues for absence
we're just standing in the
place where missing us
and losing us
and forgetting us
is supposed to go.
We are cenotaphs
adorning our own
empty graves.
Roughly analogous.
Like understanding
and the violent, jagged
cuts that the glass made.
The blood pools in my palm
and try as I might
I don't forget you.

It comes on in waves
crashing against and pulling at you.
It draws you out of everyday
and surrounds you
in blues so dark they become black.
For a moment beams
of warm light lit the cool water
around you.
Lines appeared, with promises
they couldn't keep.
Now you find yourself pulled
and caught in the undertow.
Floating naked and dazed
no way of knowing up or down.
So you pick a direction and move,
hoping it'll bring you clear
hoping it will bring you home.
Perhaps you will,
there is always a chance.
Fifty fifty.
Live
or
drown.

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 found a letter you wrote
when you were thirteen
and it doesn't bleed right
it barely reads right.
In youth there was fear
and lightning and violence
and sure maybe you weren't
complete but you were whole.
An island on which only you
could stand.
You could look into the distance
but you couldn't see forever
and maybe it scared you
but it didn't really matter.
You didn't deserve forever, anyway.
I read the letter and didn't
see you anymore.
Time and tide have long since
had their effect.
The island has gone
the violence
the silence
the fear
they've gone, too.
I look out into the distance
and I can see forever
but this letter,
these scared pages,
they aren't me
and by that, I mean you.

I ache and mewl and burn to life
under a sky the color of the sea.
Slow and sluggish I push through
the world.
From street to street
Lettered, numbered and named
and I'm ten years old again.
We ride our bikes all the way
to Coney and laugh first, then conspire.
We talk about the small things
that occupy lifetimes at a mere decade.
The world is on fire
red and blue pills and choices.
The sky is burnt from the smoke
a dull orange color.
I am seventeen.
We are strong in this new city.
Bold and young and alive.
We smoke until the filters feel
hot against our lips and joke
and we talk about the girls.
If only they knew the secrets.
If only.
And with speed we tear through
another city, another lifetime.
The sky purpling like a new bruise.
I'm 26 and downhill,
though we don't know it yet.
The street lights hold us in place.
We plan our plans across digital
airwaves and we smile small smiles
as we talk about the women.
What is too personal? What is too much?
Love is an unbroken chain of
icecream stains.
The time just soars now.
I'm a father. A husband. I'm not really me anymore, but then you aren't either.
It's been how long since we spoke?
The sky seems either blue or gray.
We're happy but we don't talk.
I send you a picture of my little man
and get a thumbs up in return.

And I remember bike rides and comic books.
I recall laughter and a world vivid beyond explanation.
I...
I remember when...

I dream of walls of fire and ice.
I watch them clash and arrive awake drowning on acid in my throat.
I long for apotheosis
but just get ready for the fight.
We line up in neat rows
to take hit after hit
and smile gap-toothed grins
as we spit the blood on
the pavement at their feet.
Rubbing our gumlines
to feel for new absence we
move with practiced discipline
to the back of the line.
Maybe, just maybe,
if we sell more time we can
get struck once more today.
We cower and we wail
and every ******* morning
we're back in line for more.
We talk the talk about
using our sick and vacation days
and we aknowlede that he'll only
be this little once
and we sob and we break
and we queue so that we
can bleed.
During our freetime,
the great modern myth,
there are yards to mow
things to fix.
Here a new socket, spackle there
and so much shopping to do.
Errands before we can
finally get back in line
to fight.

On the horizon on some distant day
there will be death.
There will be sleep.
If we can find the time
to lay down.
If we can just survive long enough
to hear the bell.
To get to heaven, we're told
you gotta go through hell.

Twenty miles outside nowhere
we finally broke down.
The engine had been knocking
but oh so **** faithful.
The last hundred or so miles
had been the worst.
The suspension was all but gone
and sharp turns were met
with fear and anger.
When the trip started we
were so **** happy.
The engine purred like
rolling laughter and our smiles
ticked off miles as we headed somewhere.
But we've totally broken down
and finding ourselves with
no power and still miles from nowhere
we finally begin to talk about it.