As much as I love each waking day
there’s a laying night to match
often empty and these days
clouded with not a star to see
would that I could trade in
all these laying nights for
all the waking nights that
had come before instead
I think we’d both be happier
or I think we’d both be
a little less sad,
at least
But your smile and laugh
were as sweet as my memory
had ever over-exaggerated
You were the bullet-point
at the beginning of the word
‘beauty’
You shined bright enough
for me to shade my eyes
but not so bright to blind me
And You were ready to say
what you had to say
when I did just the same
And I’m not sure
that I’ll ever be ready for you
I can’t stop thinking about your eyes
I only want to stare at them forever
or at least until I am trapped inside of them
then I will rest easily and eternally
I will know what the word ‘peace’ really means
but I am toiling now for certain
I am only pausing some of the time
and in each of these fleeting stolen moments
I can’t stop thinking about your eyes
To stand on the cusp of a waking dream
is a dream all itself
and yet I stand coughing up
a bittersweet backwash
as I lay here, thinking about love
and I am tempered fully
because the adage is true;
you can’t have everything
and Pat Carroll was right, too
about everything, just like I feared
he may be
There is a monster inside of you
and inside of me, too
and it is the same monster
because this monster is omnipresent
like a God, or like an Elder God
with wrapping tentacles
with venomous teeth
and it does not feed so much as consume
and it poisons us with dark dreams
with horrible sadnesses and imagined perils
it’s toxin will teach us to fear everything we’ve ever loved
there is no medicine to bring us back to health
and even reason and good faith can do little to assuage its infection
This monster will go eventually
but only after feasting to it’s content
after we are left white and meek and beaten
We will lay in our own sick
and wretch over our hopes and dreams
but if we remain resolute
and only let our disease get the best of us sometimes
we will be able to stand eventually
and the tightness will leave our chest
the aches will leave our beleaguered muscles
and we will walk again nearly as assured as before
Then we will be as we have always been
but for the monster that we know to be lurking
everywhere and anywhere at once
I jumped at a shadow
And woke myself
My muscles tense as mid-crunch,
Sweat soaking brow as well
Soon I calmed and settled
In the dark of my bedroom
When the lights are out
There are no shadows, I noted
Or everything is shadows.
Perhaps it is the same.
The Sun is warm
as it reveals the world
to those who would discover it
It casts shadows, too;
it creates mirages
when it burns too bright
It blisters skin,
it boils out moistures,
it saps all fight from a man
And I am thankful for its light
And I am fearful of its shadows
And I wonder, is this what dying feels like?
Would that I could find an answer
But only the dead have it
And the dead I know don’t say a word
Now I travel South
Towards a break in the clouds,
Sun, with any luck
And I need you to remember
that even after the coldest,
darkest, rainiest days,
sometimes the clouds break
just enough for the stars
to shine through,
and sometimes the night
warms up enough for you
to take your coat off,
after all
So I
Guess I’ll
Float through
Space
Every now and then it hits me
like a kick in the teeth
The stinging will pass, sure enough
but the ache and soreness eeks on
for hours afterward
then I’ll go a week, let’s say,
and everything will be just as good
as it could be, considering
but then the truth, like a startled mule
will stop suddenly in front of me
and out its hind leg will spring
Luckily my lip never seems to split
nor does anything seem to pop loose
But my jaw has been consistently stiffer,
these days,
and my gums are stinging real bad now,
that’s for sure
My fingers struggle to process input
from eyes that struggle to remember
how to interpret dots and marks
in such a way as to associate them
with a letter, and in some cases
a modifier that when read together
make up the pieces of what would
in the modern parlance be called
a ‘universal language’
it sounds awful as I stumble over
notes that don’t go together the way
that I think they should, but really
these intervals are new to me, or
at least they are as an exercise
in movement, but I have been assured
that even as the tones clash and
cluster, and even though my muscles
feel as dumb as they have ever felt,
I will be better off when these
sounds are under my fingers
I am not sure that I believe them
but I will stay in this woodshed
just the same
Missing you
was infinitely easier
when it was only
temporary
so I perch on hands and knees
blowing dust from stone slabs
painstakingly interpreting
the newly uncovered hieroglyphs
hoping they are not just
striated sidewalk cracks
‘let’s not do anything too drastic’
I say to myself most nights now
and instead of venturing forth
into the darkness with a gun
on my hip and cheap whiskey
in my gullet I swaddle myself
in the folds of a blanket that
radiates with memories so warm
they quickly overwhelm me
and as I lay with half-closed eyes
staring at the wall while
a sad old record hums through
the speakers of my stereo
I wonder if perhaps a spot of
hot hooch and some adventure
isn’t actually drastic enough
Every forty minutes or so
It happens
Liquid starts to swell
Behind the corners of my eyelids
And begins to push outward
Threatening to escape
In front of everyone
I have never been such an avid blinker
But the blinking only partially belays
The sad parts leaking out. Hell,
it doesn’t even really stop the water
And even though this only happens
Every forty minutes,
The water is always bubbling up
One day
I hope to be
half as tempered,
half as true
Until then
I will try to try
and dream
of distant planets
‘I want to spend the rest of my life with you’
I would say, never giving away how coy I was
Those words chosen carefully each time,
always avoiding the one that really matters,
for to invoke it would surely give away
my secret plans
Now I sit alone, and those words which were
chosen with such calculation ring dead and hollow
I worry that I was too late after all
and now this jewel will sit forever,
as it melts a hole in bottom of my dresser drawer
There is a ball in play
and a ticking timer
somewhere on the sideline
Every single one of us
is winded and panting,
our hands on our knees
We are not struggling
to stay upright, it’s
not quite as bad as that
but our joints ache and
our hearts are thumping
collectively;
every lung is wheezing
Each of us thinks to ourselves
‘I’m way out of my league.
There are younger men than me
‘And healthier, too. Perhaps
I should get off the pitch
and let those young men have a go’
Then the ball goes spinning this way
just outside of your immediacy
so you dash for it, kicking wildly
You do not score a goal on that play
or many other plays, really.
You stumble a lot and you’re tired
But the truth is, even in this
complete state of disarray
there is wholeness on that soccer pitch
The truth is, even as we struggle
to keep our bodies moving and our
hearts beating and our lungs full of air
Even as we miss each shot and
whiff each kick, we are playing,
and you can’t win if you don’t play
I would spend each night
dreamless, or at least
I did not know my dreams
or if I knew my dreams
they were dark dreams.
They were black ink
that washed across my world
Now I spend each night
dreaming, or at least
I know my dreams
They are wonderful dreams,
too; we are happy and
healthy and smiling
I think that I dream
the rest of the time now, too,
and before I must have been dead
The dead don’t dream so much,
I think, and this waking dream
so often makes me feel
like I’m dying
the sieve and the sand 
You must be logged in to post a comment.