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.