No Reservations

I think it's safe to say you took the long way.
But knowing you, you wouldn't have it any other way.
Now Florida's all your own
and you're reaping what you've sown,
despite the rough seasons that took you there.
Your demons don't have a thing on your smile
and you've learned to take an inch when you can take a country mile.
At day's end you know it's best.
As I write I picture you on the beach,
sitting in your shorts and taking in the breeze
before you go home to your girlfriend. 
For as much that's changed you're still the same,
so you might not care for the words but the sentiment will be heard,
and with that I better get on with it.
I wouldn't be who I am without who you are,
and if you never came around there's no way I get this far.
I couldn't make this up.
But maybe you already know,
'cause the last time through we both seemed to make sure how you'd go
before you made it out the door.
You shouldered your things and opened your arms.
I did the same knowing how long you might be gone.
So we sent each other off with that hug.
No reservations
between brothers worlds apart.

Another

I can tell you now that you're gone:
I miss your eyes and their song
and the way your lips would smile just as big
as your arms wrapped my arms and we took each other in
to that night on repeat through those weeks
that passed with neither of us knowing we'd never be the same.
And I wonder
if you think that too, or if it's just me,
because I know you've found others since
and I know the newest one's been around a while.
And I wonder
if he'll save the summer heat for the coming cold,
if it'll be enough for you or if you'll tell him to go.
And me, being long gone, I don't know why I care.
I'm not even at the edge of any of your affairs.
I'm not even holding on, you're just hanging in my heart.
And I can't resist digging up old bones even knowing what's in store.

Growing Pains?

Youthfulness, exuberance; gone by the way side.
A little more serious eyes, a little less half smiles.
Still snappy sharp movements like you're talking with your body.
But you traded in the naivety, for calmness practiced thoroughly.
Do you miss who you used to be, do you like who you are?
What's it like being in the light and how often do you feel you're in the dark?
Are there answers all the time, do you ever settle for nothing?
Do you take your time knowing it will come, do you leave to find something?
Tell me what it's like, I stay up too late trying.
Say it's not because I'm too shy and so I'm confident you're not lying.
You don't have much more but extra years, a lot more dawns to dusk.
I know you tried keeping busy then cause wasting time aint bad luck.
Is there another trick to falling asleep than pretending your eyes are pillows?
I gave that one away and likely in vain and now I can't catch the throws,
the twists and turns take too much and even the dreams come to shake.
When I wake up I'm in a panic like I'm dreaming but there's more at stake
cause it aint no dream and the simple easy slips out of my hands
and I end up sleeping through the day when I have the chance to change.
So is it getting used to being me or should I be looking elsewhere entirely?
Cause the night never tells me, never says a word,
and I'm out here getting cold by I fire I don't know how much longer I can keep from dying.

Apparently,

it's been a long time
since I felt like I was going anywhere.
There's a wrong kind of everything,
and this is steady in the same rocky chair.
It's been a long time
since I been off this beaten path.
I always know the roads,
so you do the math:
repetition added to love
and subtracted from each other,
carried over themselves, the product,
arms come up but eyes can't look,
and limbs are growing tired.
Some will collapse and some will get back
to where they started.
If I'm lucky,
mine will make it out as they were. 

Please Let Me Go

Do you feel the skin snake off your body?
Do you feel your spine shiver like the wind?
Do you see the words dribble out the pen
like the mistakes you knew were wrong,
but couldn't help but make?
Have you been to the mirror lately?
Have you seen the worry spot worn along your jaw?
What's with the whimper under your breath?
What else do you have in common with the dogs?
I know the heavy breathing hurts.
I know your eyes and heart want out your head and chest.
I know you can't bear the pressure in your bones,
that you keep on squeezing but you can't get a grip.
And I don't know what to tell you.
When it's up to me I sleep.
But it always never really works,
cause when my waking hours don't get what they need they take my dreams.
And answers aren't hard to come by,
because they don't exist.
The healthy thing to do
would be to leave entirely,
because sometimes there's maturity in seeing what's broken
and leaving it unfixed.
So let me go.
Let me go let
me go let me
go let me go
please just let me go.

Months Ago

The girl in front of me sent a text:
"Grrrr...wish u were here."
Must have been reading my mind,
sending it your way next.
I don't have pictures to hold or lament,
but I got images of smiles inside my head.
I gotta roll my eyes to the back to see them,
when I do it's no wonder I look dead.
Every time, I'm caught in a thousand yard stare.
"This time's the last," every time I swear.
Like how I felt you in my bones before we met,
I've felt it ever since you left
"Wish u here here,"
postmarked yesterday, couldn't be clearer.

Need To Get Closer

Some are already falling,
I couldn't tell if it was leaves
or birds filing across the street,
just like I couldn't tell
if you were flying low or crashing dead.
It got clearer the same way:
I got closer and only one thought stayed.
There was less a fight this time.

Oddly enough, I felt good this time last year. Better.
I was smart as I'd ever been.
The summer's heat meant winter's ice was thin.
And when it finally broke I was swimming
in all tomorrow's promise and today's shining.
But that's not the case now.

Though a time that's sure to pass,
I might have too much to get back.
You're not here and took all the feeling with you.
My family's going, gone; and there goes the other shoe.

Replacements aren't made so much as found.
And this time of year the earlier it is,
the earlier the sun goes down.
The night gets long like it gets dark.
I never did see well here,
so forgive me if I don't make it to my alarm.

Long Gone

This one's for you, Love,
as you listen to the songs
that got you through
the nights I sent you to.
I know it's not much,
but what's lost in translation
between long and long gone
are the remnants of this fading ink
before I could tell you it had dried
a lifetime time ago.
I always was sorry you saw it in my eyes.
For you or for me, I'm back and forth.
Cause with it there, you never saw it coming
and it left you on the floor,
getting to know the pattern of the wood
by the lines you wore out where you stood
stuck
forever there.
Death be unto whatever may be fair.
I made my own rules.
You coulda never won.
But you ain't a fool's fool.
Just one who thought he could love
this ragged heart from where it stopped
to where we'd start.
But it was dark
and the night ain't easy.
I know it was me who left
but I wonder sometimes if you ever miss me.
Just know I didn't mean it,
all the heartbreak you took on;
that I'da loved you if I coulda,
but instead I write songs
at unwelcome hours
with thoughts responding in kind,
trying with every unsent letter
to undo time.
But like the pain was yours,
the mistakes are mine.
We'll both find a way to be better for it,
though alone we stand divided.
We may never walk together again,
but I'm glad I found you for a while.

Slithers Out

I'm sleeping idly by my phone,
waiting for a call saying you're on your way home.
You never said you'd be gone this long,
just how you had to go, and you'd miss me, et cetera.
Whatever that means, it was by surprise.
And you might be out of arm's reach
but you've never left my mind's eye.
I don't sleep well
at night
anymore.
I close my eyes too hard,
my body's stiff as a board;
I end up with my back against the wall.
The most comfortable positions always make it easiest to fall
when I get like this.
So when you get back, please, see if I'm in tact.
And if I'm not, bring a box.
I'm not asking you to put me back
together,
but being in the same room again
would really be something else. 

January

My hero came without a cape,
with hands worn from what he'd make,
with what should've been in his chest
on his sleeve.
My hero came with the grandest smile,
with teeth safe from style,
with a chin up after all its trials
no matter what.
My hero came with eyes
that don't save room for lies,
that would look at your eyes
any time.
My hero came when my father should have,
getting up from being pigeonholed and grabbed at
because he didn't have the time for that.
No one should.
My hero took all the scars,
knowing they'd never match all the stars,
of which he tied a hope to each,
despite being so far.
My hero left the malice meant for his heart
knowing if he took it he would never start
pulling out the pain in the shapes of the shards
that went to rip him to pieces. 

The Ability to be Selfish

I won't forget
to put roses at your grave.
I'll make sure
the engraver remembers your name,
so even the strangers strolling by envy
how much you mean to me
on the way to their lesser treated stones.
They'll be just like the ones from your closet,
yellow and full and strong through their hour glass shape.
I'll find a vase for the stems to make a deposit,
and, so modest alive, you'll have never been so ornate.
But that's what you mean to me.
It's how you're decorated in my heart.
And how I remember you anymore,
aside from wishing you were here?
By remembering
life just isn't fair.
There was no one to see you when you were standing.
Not even your own face in the mirror
could see your body as life's decanter.
So now you see as you're in the ground
why I refuse to forget you were around.
And colder yet as winter comes,
I'll always remember where I am from. 

Back to Basics

I guess you could say the amount of pressure in my body
is pretty unique.
It's all inside but its work is there for you to see
if you're looking
close enough.
My neck is tense and can't quite crack.
I'm not so mobile but for front and back,
as those are the ways I wade on decisions
TOO BIG
to quite fit right inside my head.
So when I sit down to get back to basics,
I see that basics have been breaking
for some time.
The pieces are on the ground,
lost where they were found
without much at all to say besides
"can't move on and can't stay the same."
And my lips purse. And my shoulders sigh.
And my eyes get distant
as the clock keeps ticking
and I lose my mind
a day at a time.

An Exercise in Fluidity

I don't know who told you
to leave the cellar light on.
I didn't want to tell you
the mason jars were gone.
They were the simplest things,
but held the sweetest dreams.
I know what they meant to you,
cause I used to have something like them for me.
I knew when the light came through the door
you'd been back but you wouldn't be anymore.
Somehow you packed all the boxes,
and what you left you never had.
The contents made them so heavy,
but when the flaps opened they were empty
and I understood your burden placed as mine;
though not something I was born into but with
in the middle of my back and coursing through my spine.
What I saw in the jars that excised the sins,
for you was the glow in your smile that let you win:
the memories of the best boys you'd ever known,
but the secret ones they never quite held onto that you'd never let go.
And after coming out on the wrong side of that line,
and seein how it took more than only time,
I'll ache forever over your steps out the door
but will always know they were your bravest yet
and that you're not hurting like that anymore

Dancing with Elsie, 1

I don't know how many half thoughts I've got tonight.
It may or may not match the amount of lonely minutes
and likely surpasses the thought of being in it to win it.
I think I'm just looking for a return to normalcy.
This is not a repeat from 1920.
And normal is a relative term,
so, relatively speaking, I don't know I'm looking for that either.
What I'm definitely looking for is someone to talk to.
Regularly.
I miss that.
I think I'm looking for occupation
instead of preoccupation.
I think I'm looking for a time machine
to uninvent the internet.
I think I'm trying to stop wasting my time
because it's not enjoyable to do
when everyone else is doing it for me

Go

I'm wildly unsatisfied
indoors.
I could draw you a map like these walls
of my sigh.
But both worn out and outdated,
it can't buy a thing.
So my head's in my hand,
the paper can't stand my pen
'cause it's been here so many
many many times before.
And I'll go to bed.
I'll lay as best as I can.
My eyes will play shut.
But with all the sleep in the world,
I'll never forget
enough. 

The Futile Pursuit of Sleep at 2late:00

Belive me,
I want the songs to be about someone else
as much as you do.
I swear,
I don't even think the same of you anymore.
And no matter how many times I change the radio,
I don't get to decide
what's playing on the stations.
If you'da told me from the start
that you were made up of ink,
I'da never bought another pen
if it meant never having to try
wiping you off my hands
when I smeared the ink on the page.
And like anything else anyone's ever written,
you're separated from me
as soon as I put you down to the page.
But you're always some sort of mine.

Lately Too Long

All the fighting I've been doing,
accompanied by all the losing,
only makes it seem
like I have a proclivity for getting my ass kicked.
There's nothing poetic about it.
That would be like saying it's poetic
to pull for the heavy favorite.
And while I know a couple people who would,
or who want to be the favored and the loved,
they're more the kind to choke on their tongue
when it really counts.
So they don't really count.
This isn't the kind of game you can walk away from:
Lost love and loved ones
to dissipation into death or the wind,
where you hear their names as your heart reneges,
even if just for a minute,
on all the smiles those people brought.
But it is the kind of game
you'd tap to get out of.
I'd tap to get out.
I would.

Coming Home

It's hard to call it coming home
when I never really left for good.
More like coming back after a short time
like a car from the shop
after it wrapped a tree and was smashed
to pieces front and back,
where the owner fixed under the hood and took the rest as-is.
They didn't have the cash
to hammer out the body
back to something you want to see.
It's all like what I see in this mirror in front of me.
Scars from wood and metal, blind from windshield's smash.
Down a sense or two, I come in through the door
to find what I'm missing now
aint half of what's in store.
At night I sweat oil-like,
head on down to toe.
I hope I have half the heart this engine does
to keep on grinding miles out
or I'll slip into that unknown
where the deep dark night holds you so
tenderly
you never wanna leave.

Last Resort

Caffeine crash after a bottle of Coke
on a long car ride where the roads smoked
with fog dancing through the headlights
every now and then.
Stereo played a time and a half
a record I've come to carry on my back.
It helps me shoulder the weight
time and time again.
It was after the rain, the whole world seemed calm.
Imagine a heaven after a swan song
sung in just the right key for just long enough
to build a place for the next step so you could adjust
to small things, like owning up to only knowing nothing,
or not much beyond happiness as just a moment. 

Owning

Out in the parts of home they don't tell you exist
is where you realize if you stayed, how little you'd miss
the air that forms the pockets, makes the cysts
that pop and break when you fall in the place you left.
The key to the crux:
"Not too far, but far enough,"
There's more stop signs than road lights,
you feel better rolling your luck.
Here the steps aren't so tired,
the doors need less paint.
They could be more worn out
but they hold themselves like saints,
owning every ounce
while they hardly ever flout.
Doubts turn determined to figure it out.
They know you want to make it work,
and that you never knew how

Mary

I think the fear of old age is willing to wait
like a parked car.
I think it'll use the time to get the motions of the shakes
just right.
I think it'll take you down memory lane
all the time.
It'll be where you remember never having to think
about the first step off a curb
and where your eyes squint to better see what shrinks
as it passes,
while you feel it walking away.
I think you'll see the old street second guess
how it let itself go.
I think the new neighbors will passively come through as you concentrate
on how the old ones won't leave your eyes.
I think you'll lay in bed til almost afternoon, a paralyzed irate
over how you couldn't make yourself get up any sooner.

I think your grandson watches it all happen,
feeling that paralysis all the same.
I bet he imagines a baby girl with your smile,
who he'd call by your name,
trying to make up for not knowing how to respond to
watching you fade away
Mary where'd you get to?
Mary I won't forget where you've been

Long Weekend

It's another long weekend I've spent wading as if in an empty pool,
waiting for the water to come.
It's here, but I didn't quite see it this way, as rain.
I'll go home and watch The Wire,
or something less urbanely Romantic.
I'll put off asking, "Aren't you tired of coming here?"
to let myself get a quiet frantic.
And, man, I pick it up like it's going out of style
hoping if I hold onto it long enough
I will pass this trial,
with a jury of my peers
ranging from exceptional to accepting
to how they react in the face of their fears.
But, man, I'll tell you what,
that seems not to be how it goes.
The fear always comes to the front,
it doesn't matter if I froze
to try to shake it.

I'd like to tell you a happy ending,
I really would.
But that would mean I've put down my pen
to start doing what I should.
It's another idle, long weekend
where I have desire to spare.
And when it sits inside me
it doesn't matter what's fair.
I'll worry myself to sleep tonight.

Postmarked

It's a corner place in Collingswood,
I daydreamt us there.
Just a casual place to kill the time
til we went where we could stare
into the heart of everything around us.
We would have held hands,
and walked almost in stride.
We would've stayed til the sun left,
forcing us inside.

This was before we died.
This was before we got sick.

We wound up at St. Vincent's,
the hospital where my hero passed.
The staff said he could write all the right words,
But his heart never stood a chance.

I think the injections got to you.
Feltenstein and his needles, without a doubt.
They always filled your blood, always ran you cold.
They changed everything you knew anything about
for the worse.

And me, I caught worry.
It wrapped around my skin.
It squeezed til it got in,
til I was never heard from again.

Now we both lay in the yard,
different plots to be sure.
We went too gentle into the night,
our eyes tore apart our hearts.

I'll Take You Nowhere

There are tired subjects
in my stomach
and I'm gonna churn them out.
I'll try to keep my voice down,
I know how it gets
when you shout.
So first things first,
I'm feelin nothin
and from watchin you,
I know it gets worse.
Tell me, why'd you teach me,
of all things,
how to believe
it never gets better
than the place your heart restlessly settles?
It's against your will, I know,
to let things build up til you can throw
damage through them in the shapes
of your fists and tongue.
And your eyes, when did they die
and leave a shallow pool
of worn out iris saying,
"I never got to love you like I wanted,"
when did that happen?
I'd like to pretend
I'm drawing pictures of nothing important.
But this is everything that matters.

How Do You Settle?

Where would you settle, honey?
Do you find the streets too rough on your feet?
Do they get softer closer to the beach?
Do the broken shells sell you their stories
of how they washed out from the sea?
Do you find them in common with all your heart's pleas,
that despite all the trying it's always denied
and could never swim like the tears you couldn't hold in your eyes?
What about how steady the sand held your body,
with your arms on your knees as you sat hunched
while your stomach unknotted?
Did you feel all the days' poisons wash out?
What started to matter with the night coming down?
Was it how being together alone never felt any better,
or how it felt to finally get the air's salty sweet letters?
And how could you ever leave such a place,
or did you know it wasn't yours to keep,
but what you could keep were the letters locked in your heart
when you're back in the places where all the poisons get started?
Won't you tell me how you settle, honey?

Guess Who

It's been years
since I've walked in your footsteps.
I wonder if you've noticed at all
that I've passed you by
just like your times on the recliner
as I'm on my way to the garage
to do the little jobs I can't remember
ever seeing you have done.
Maybe I've learned to be so quiet
'cause you've never spoken how I could want,
'cause conversations based on jokes or yelling
aren't fit for a boy to grow.
That's probably why my words stumble
when I do try to speak,
because this man's face, and mouth,
overmatch this boy's tongue
when it tries to spit the words out.
What a filthy habit I can't kick.
I'm 22 and dying
to not have had my childhood stripped away
by the very things that strangled you,
that you passed to me when you met my mother's lips
with yours so many years ago.
Do you know? Do you have any clue
that what I carry uneven on my shoulders
is your hate, your escape, your lack of control
over the feelings you numb through your patented sigh,
that tonight it's all mine?
If tonight could be never I'd take it every time.
You take without knowing,
I break without showing,
but only for so long.
Too much to learn and do on my own.

How New Time Behaves When Old Time Lingers

Courage careened off the concrete,
like how the smile you save for pictures
drops in and then bails
'cause it doesn't want to be there either
and can't like the feel of it's skin in that air
in the place you've come to see through the people
to the cracks in the walls that don't care
how you finally see them
because courage doesn't have a place there anymore.
Once it's done bouncing off the walls,
it limps casually toward the front door
as if nothing's happened,
as if
it could
maybe
take more.
After all, time is just time
and what passes may come to bind,
but it will do what it does best:
move on and fade
like struggling winter breath.

Maybe, Maybe Not

We'd wait for it to make sense,
for it to click in our heads,
to never have met
or have met
sooner, or later.

We'll wonder about the timing, always;
the hurt, the pounding, the climbing
and falling
that put us
in our place.

You'll call, I'll answer.
We'll talk, you'll remember
why it ever
made sense in the first place.
But

we'll say goodnight, you'll go to bed.
I'll smile and breathe,
'cause the smile forgets
to remember
how when you wake up you'll be gone.

At most, a damp afterthought
we can't place
will be left,
where footprints fade
just like our hearts were trained.

One day, we'll wash out
like sea foam
on sand and
cease to exist, just like
we planned before we met.

Haunt

I embraced the pain in my legs from the weight on my shoulders
to shuffle down those steps.
"The door's this way," they promised,
I found it and left.
I heard the heart monitor's pace,
I remember the look on your face
and how I left it,
or how it left me.
Your parting words,
"I feel my feet getting colder,
I see you getting further,"
I'll never forget.
I reached the end of the steps,
my feet were begging me
to never take a stand
like that again,
Cause those kinds of memories I can't pretend.
So revel in that ground if you can,
cause I'll never forget.
I'll never forget.

Standard Operating Procedure

I left a note, something vague:
Taking off, Will call, Love Tim.
I put it down, I pulled away.
What a dream. (What a dream.)
I left, forgot, and never remembered
the borrowed summers, deceitful Septembers,
the disappointments after,
or the nights you were plastered.
Short term memories forgot nervous tics,
my heart leaped up, it volunteered for this.
I remembered most how the sun would set --
The day went down from dawn to dusk,
and from happenstance was the best of luck.
What a dream.