Slow Grand

It’s gotten hard, facing old memories
Discerning fading dreams from what was left deserted.
We’re older now, trading worn sympathies
For our stabs at history that couldn’t pierce the surface.
A lonely crowd, goodbye to everyone we know
And to the certainty that abandoned you and me.
You hold the ground,
Time sowed,
Mind blown,
And spinning to no end.

So here we are, pacing separate paths
Of notes and photographs that will never focus.
We draw it out, tracing our intents
Callouts and compliments that we’d never notice.
We take a bow, thank back everyone we know
For the courtesy that was shown to you and me.
I turn around,
Eyes closed,
I know,
That this is how it ends.

***

Break these tattered lines
Anchored in due time
Lift your sails up high
Crest and wave goodbye
I’ll be by your side
Make what’s yours in mine
I promise that it’s alright,
It’s alright,
It’s alright…

Oh, don’t you know now,
(Break these tattered lines)
Know that a slow grand’s easy, boy?
(Anchored in due time)
It’s what you know now,
(Lift your sails up high)
Yeah, it’s the air you’re breathing boy.
(Crest and wave goodbye)
And when I go now,
(I’ll be by your side)
I hope you know that I am right here all along.
(I won’t let you fall)

So take a breath,
But don’t hold it.
You’d close your eyes
But you’re too scared of in your head.
I think I’ll try, but will we really know it
In the end?

The Hill

These words always find a way to you
The way this morning brushes between the threads of your thin curtains
The way the city groans as it rolls out of bed
The way I find my rest stiff-pressed atop your sheets

A guest to the normalcy
With a name tag that reads anything but.
I was a friendly ghost in an open cage,
Living out of these years turning a blank page

A loose pen clenched between my teeth
Had let two cabs excuse the blues of the city
That poured in its night as I pored over its light
And counted the embers as the fog rolled in

These words always find a way to you
Pressed firmly between the hardcovers of time,
Stained in equal parts mint tea and wine,
Left somewhere in this room that’s neither yours nor mine.
Singing in harmony, forgetting our parts
Sitting in series, and running apart.

Consume

Each and every uncovered, speckled swatch
That splayed across my glassy eyes
In a coat of fresh Krylon,
Dripping in mischief as I delinquently pored
Over the rivers running by your fragile smile:
Sincere, delicate, and ignorantly misread.
In silent overstep of your insisted context,
This withered well was filled with stale light
Shared by what tethered love is momentum in time.

)|

Coincidence.
Fate for the faithless, faced with the fear of committing to luck
Or whatever it was that struck my heels.
It stood me still while you flooded my eyes with your emerald light
And soused my lungs in a curious tide.
I blindly hoped and breathlessly pondered
If these warships slowed enough as they passed in the harbor,
If this morse stalled our course enough to anchor on each other;
So much for declaring independence.
I was an over-spoken fiction with self-prescribed bookmarks,
Holding onto whatever truth could be pressed between the hardcovers of time.
But you were a textbook tangent poorly assumed asymptotic,
Gently brushing against otherwise parallel lines.

Opposing Locomotives

So, how exactly did you find yourself
Spread so thin and folded along the center
Divided somewhere in between your god and his country,
Your faith put on display.

Gesturing toward the tradition,
We were gravel cars running lines through the night,
Unfaltering in our momentum,
Screeching on rails as gravity commanded our direction.

I may never come to know the weight you carried under your breath,
A definition of love that barreled blind in your own light.
But as my own, we still carried as a chorus,
Rattling down what we had buried in the ground
And hooked into my waist as I belted from the pews.

My congratulations and condolences,
We cannot stop running in fear of falling,
But we're gasping and grasping for the radio
Calling out despite the static
To have faith despite the vacancy.

March First, with Hands, and Heart

Hey, hi, hello.

Not tonight, but later, 

As I'm sure you know.

I wondered how the couch got so small
And how your harmonies sunk into my side
Even when you didn't need to know the words.
They were given to you and you smiled through it,
And that was enough.
To compare and contrast
Projections and mirrors,
You casted us under the light of recent events,
And with your razor sharp pen,
Etched a harsh outline, said,
"We are not them."

It was true, we were exposed, I was embarrassed
As I washed off excess ink
To draw out this exception with an omission:
You'd shown a light so that I shone more.
On an arduous path to reconciliation,
With sweat in our palms as they worked in each other,
We worked with each other until the wolves got sick,
Put down the pen, and picked up a brick.
There were now years back as far as we could see,
Revised plot holes with dated bridges in our explicit history.

Another seven, it seems,
From shattered glass, spilt coffee, and ground spices.
Confessions selfishly stuck,
While all was selflessly forgiven
In what was intertwined and pressed against soft boundaries
Somewhere between the alcohol and the fog,
Spoken so closely as to touch
Gently, discretely, intentionally, in confidence.

And that was it.
Mutually assured,
Waiting for a return address.

Handwritten

It was a Monday,
The salted, cracked roads blurred into a cotton dry sky.
We waited for snow,
And worked until the storm's gaunt fingers
Slowly dragged against the horizon.
We then meandered to our cars
Where each breath stayed with us,
Suspended in air as lethargic as ice.

At the time,
You were the last words on a page half-full,
Turned over on the stitches buried into the seam
That made the line on which I blindly walked.
But yours found their way across the states;
Their paths were blood red, but in black was my name,
More familiar than I could remember.

You were the brisk winter air that slid past the door,
I was my keys in the box and the cold marble floor,
No longer grounded,
But flying over our homes.
Ours to each other,
Nothing more than a node
Obsoleted by return addresses.

Soused in hope, yes, this was enough,
But I would give it all to you.
So I respectfully damn all of this wonder,
In favor of the truth.

La La Land

On her pretense,
We shared a green bottle of white wine
As we drowned our innocence in misplaced courage.
And the dull orange glow of your streetlights
Danced on your lips as you took it all in.
Now handed to me, still warm from your clutch,
It wasn't much, but it was love.

Love that I drove for you into the ground,
Just to see what he could dig up.
But time will erode as the one that I navigated,
And from what was woven

You fabricated a truth,
Pained,
Like the growth we had,
All grown too,
Familiar with.

As did the night fray,
And you pulled apart stitches;
Your wounds wouldn't heal,
So you just let them breathe.

And although these walls expand,
There are four corners to this house,
Nothing more, nothing less,
Rooted deep in soft sand,
Held together in silence,
Held as long as the time that had passed
Since we last felt like giants.

It seems to take a lifetime to stop the fall
When we tangle in our strings,
And tighten knots from moving on.
Though no promise can be buoyed
In a sea of tugging uncertainty,
We look forward

At a benevolent city,
Dwarfed by the light of angels,
Above which I made my climb.
Looking for the line that differentiated
These from those of our ghosts:
The light from your window,
Serendipitous and apropos.

Together we hold it in
As we try to hold onto each other
With small gestures that index our conflicts and plans
Of making it back to where it all began.

A Whale Is Just A Big Fish

Tea tipped into bourbon and spilled into the early morning
Screaming with everyone,
Singing to no one.
I stacked these cups high
In hopes of reaching your bedroom
Where you counted purple sheep...
Yeah, I wouldn't hold my breath.

This was it, and it was happening fast
Losing the fire, but keeping the ash
Wrapped as tightly as your own
In paper that burn and froze on your front porch.
Yeah, I wouldn't hold my breath.

We all dream for the same sleep
But spend all day fraying until no ends can meet,
And this was mine.
Your old wooden steps crumpled like crushed cans
Between the paired cushions of your occupied couches,
All the while you rested to escape your present
As your pasts passed by, and we looked dead ahead.

And so I stole this moment,
Because the consolation was already my own.
Defeated, you unpotted his name
As real to me as what was taped to your doorframe;
Defeated, I took it down and in
It slowed and stopped in my veins.
We all dream for the same sleep,
I salt the porch and look for my own.

Early Decision

A flash...

You saw the signs before it began,
And neglected the fragility of man;
You couldn't make a lower case
With so many checks, yet so imbalanced,
Pressed up against your nose--heads down.
Down, down, down...
So heavy with your ownership,
This plane is grounded.

Into your room, the echoes resounded
"Welcome back"
Pressed against the wall
With all your latent shame
Backwards, you walk into the fog
Until your trust fall
Was that of your pride, swallowed
Down, down, down...
So bittered in your openness
Your lips pucker,
Then your tongue shies away.

Into your throat, it mellowed and rounded
And beat back,
Exhausted against your paper cage
With all your latent shame
Backwards, your glasses start to fog
Until your trust fall
Was that of your hope, buried
Down, down, down...
So hidden in the smallest light.
Hers.
This plane is grounded.

You don't want to stop writing,
But this plane is fucking grounded in

...

Down,

Down,

Down,

As if you knew it was coming.

...

A flash.

Checking In

I hugged you in a dream last night.
You picked me up and pressed me against your lungs.
I could feel you breathing.
Maybe because I was holding my own,
Trying not to get sick as the world spun around me,
Or maybe it was because your mouth shot off with laughter,
So sincere that I could hear it...

I could hear it!

I could hear it.

Even as the echo chamber sustained your name,
It still dampened with time firmly stained onto my pillow.

Is this loss a perspective?

Maybe you've found something that escapes us all.
I exhale.

I miss you, friend.
Your silence was a subtle hint,
But now it's deafening.
And drowns out all but what scratches
The surface of your marble doorstep frozen solid.
Did you find something out there?
Because no one is coming in.

I just wanted to know, if that's okay...

Maybe you're with me
Or I'm right by you,
All I know is we're not here.
Taking sides with a herd of sheep
Or a pack of wolves
We're all the same,
Standing in the doorway,
Disappearing in unrecognized discretion.
No one even noticed you leaving...

I hugged you in a dream last night.
You picked me up and pressed me against your lungs.
But I could feel you breathing,
Only because it was my own.

Fire Fader

Writing in cursive, I'm stringing up these curses;
If this had been the first time, we might have revised,
But it was a dark car parked over slick oil
Shimmering ghosts though the headlights and cold.
I'm wondering how the hell we ended up on Melrose
With you balling up the fear in your sterling hands,
And letting it drop at 1:30am.

Fineshrine Hands

And so I gestured towards the soft contours of your crumbling wall,
Into which you fell like the dust settled under your unmade bed.
It cradled your shoulders and warmed the small of your back,
Ruffled your hair in the carelessness that you had grown into,
Grown too hot to hold like your loose cannon pointed towards the shore.
Who needs solid ground when the world is spinning out of control?
Collectively chaotic--the stars, the sea, our mortal souls,
We exploded like the cosmos, you supernova to my blackhole,
A fleeting effervescence these pearl white sheets could never hold in.
And as its lovely shatter battered the walls that rattled out a response,
It was this fertile churchyard soil in which your permanence ensconced.
Hail Mary, saving face, this sea burial was shipwrecked,
And beached a heavy heart into the depths of what was repressed.

Mesa

Your gravity bomb teetered on the soft edge of my bed,
Shitty beer stuck to sifting thoughts
Bought forward on the pretense of penance.
These beating arteries of arbitrary depth
Brought on an honorary death to the clotting silence;
Whether from the shock or the clock, it was bound to go off.
Liquid crystals made a six, blood flowed swiftly to my tongue,
So I made my own luck, and struck the alarm so it sung:
From New York to Boston, Chicago and home
I dipped into the shadow and immersed in the drone.

Luna Supine

Countless couches,
I swirl my drink,
And painted in these black eyes
Dreams of countless divisions.
It spins before it pulls apart, but until then,
Holds together in a string of unabashed pearls,
Undressing a soft shower of light raps,
And making room for monsters.
This familiar roar of concrete bands
Lays out as smooth as splines splayed,
Creating cold splintering halos
Hanging low over this brooding flame.
A frame rattles against a battled statistic
For a complement and none to settle,
But one to shake these autumn leaves free
Of a clingy rock cradled in fire,
Eclipsed by the fading flicker of a winded city.
How quickly my lungs collapse
Under the weight of a tinny truth relapsing,
Close enough to the soaring steel to taste:
My heart will sink in solidarity
Just to close in on the space between us.

Come Down

Threes split with intentions laid out for a few.
Assist, I run towards a lighthouse with frosted glass.
Misunderstandings of what to strive for
Dive hollow seeds to keep the morale up as the heat beat down.
Fire, ice, fire, ice, sugar, yeast, and water.
Let the river speak beside demands laid out explicitly.
Both quietly winding from no definite basis,
Covered in silt and becoming of open curiosity,
Slips between skin and leather
Summer makes its final remarks.

Fours split with intentions laid out for a few.
Assist, a horseless carriage runs past a backlit clock.
Too twins looking into mirrors is just bent glass
That divides light by the Common denominator,
And quarters make change where it is due.
Could the water ever feel this cold?
Final remarks carved ink into amber pages;
Come down together: the ring, the cross,
and the thought of knowing what is better
To quell having known no other.

SYC

And as the sun crept through the back door,
Nipping at our bare feet,
A distant thunder came soon thereafter,
To which you were his echo
And a storm that left down uneven steps
In a hurried patter that washed, but did not absolve.

I grasped my arms and gasped for breath,
Cashed my karma and danced with death.
I counted the seconds that would be hours
That shouldn't have been ours, but seemed to be.
One...Two...Three...

Gentle raps met across a gentleman's door,
There was grain in our glasses and grain on the floor,
And nostalgic indulgence hung thick as thieves
Where your pale light spread across a distorted sky,
And a deep blue fixation mixed into sweet hazelnut dye,
Round after round after round.

The blocks were spinning and the gears were grinding,
Rubber was greased wherever patience had no timing.
Precipitous - what slipped between us and a dark road
That drove us into a skid and out of control,
Down the rabbit hole, past everyone we know,
Until we were pressed against a jagged edge
That would fray the night into foil trays and frosted windows.
Unfamiliar keys put the wings on this fictitious score,
And we reconvened in disbelief, up three stories, nothing more.

When Juno came by, we were all unprepared
A second stage repeated? No, I wouldn't dare...
But if you open the door, I'll let the flood gates open
So let it all out now and take it in unspoken.

DC

Writing to pass the time
To let every mimed moment pass by,
Silently mine,
Writing on quarters to make change,
But this would never change anything.
Let me hold you like I stole you
With each glance to the left.
I spoke up but these words fall flat
On some subtle smalltalk about timing
Or how haphazard rhyming could turn my assets into cash
And burn a fire that could control you.
A tinny reflection of red and black light
Was a sea of sequins and close acquaintances,
Unbeknownst to me.
Refreshing and unsettling,
You are the living ghost of what I might have gotten right,
If I could fill the void between parallel lines
Stretched out too far.
And so much of a breath could unrest this house of cards,
But I would pull one every day
If it wasn't a race to get too drunk or be too broke.
The best bluff that I could sell you is the one I haven't spoken.
Gently pressed up against the wall,
I get lost in your rhythm and the whiskey on my teeth
For a whole lot of nothing, off-key humming, grounded feet.
This second pass of reality is a gravity I've had to fear
Now I'm not quite sure how it ever disappears.

Divergence

Silent night. Mouth cotton dry.
A tinge of rust makes up this blood red sky,
Gunpowder suspended from the bets we'd made on parallel lines.
Here I was, standing on stilts, but pressed against flint and carbon.
Every spark was a tick that dissolved in smoky eyes.
Even explosions at eye level could not keep me level headed.
So sullen streaks hung soft lights in the summer sky
Of things that had started, but never ended quite right.

Silent night. Hands to your sides.
You take a step to the right, and let the moment pass by.
Lips left unpressed like a story never told
To say ghosts never die, they just only grow old.
Seven months, it seems, this yellow bird sang alone,
But merely inches from reality, you floated the idea to me:
What if it were okay to be weak?
Just cut out the blank spaces and let the ink breathe...

Silent night. Lost in your eyes.
Acquiescence that blessed the amber sky
Was a door that I held for a promise I could not
Was a breath on my hand and a warmth I'd forgotten.
So when I opened my eyes, these heights lost their luster
There were no more surprises - the cold bed left uncovered,
But still I beaded with sweat that stung like gasoline--
A short fuse and old sparks can only mean one thing.

Silent night. Swing low in time.
How we fall apart when we just want to collide.

To Waste In Michigan, 2003

Some nascent clarity had once pulled me under this same dull light.
It seems darker now, but it was stronger,
Resilient as it drew away from this jagged horizon
That has since torn to frays my once endless western sky.
What stands before me is unattainable, yet sustained by lethargy,
The slow burning of a reflective effigy
That ceaselessly shatters with the sound of a thousand claps.
--I always miss the first act, acting in intentions of action,
But stagnant in the actuality of what has always happened.
The fear of death is in the shadow of indecision;
There can be no perfection if aimless fate has no precision.
So let the stars lie flat in a memory revisited,
Let the sun abandon symmetry with its petals all twisted,
Let the tide lose its temper as it foams at the crest,
To the weary and bested: Put this theory to rest.

When Juno Came By...

When it rains, it pours
And I'm making correlations to the precipitation,
Comparing present negatives with the proof of that day.
While your forgotten rosy fingers bubbled to steam,
You froze in frosty haze into deep phases of dream,
As if a mirror image of clarity arose
So that we couldn't see ourselves.
Words dripped in my ear as warm whispers
But ran numbingly deep, destined to be
Merely a stain in the carpet, washed away as quickly as it came.
And such was your streak and my reputation,
The bitter taste of scent as I descended onto thorns,
And the reflex of fate made its claim to open doors.
I was foolishly close to circles that instinctively return,
And a fortnight of misguided friction made a light enough to burn.
Cordiality was lost in the dark and abruptly abandoned,
And my ego dissolved from the salt of heavy hands,
Like the way a dead star left unguarded keeps on shining
Through the nauseating beauty of precipitous timing.

Expecting Sparks

This is learning the touch of your own malleable skin,
Pressing against your chest and feeling it sink in
As your head rests against a warm, cavernous pillow,
Made curious by your hand that cooly slid underneath.
How your heart beat heavy over me,
Filtered and diluted by tangled sheets
That kept me warm, but hardly breathing.

I set your bones with my own bones,
Twice lapped and wrapped tightly
Against the time I had wanted you to trust.
But it was cast to crutches,
And you walked out alone, at least.
And as the chips were peeled from this stubborn shell,
It cried as it cut to the center
Of each of our confessed contradictions
From pulling out a better person,
But not without consequence of pushing them away.

So now you finally stood,
But pressed against these glass walls.
I begged you not to be my delayed mirror
And chased at you with an eraser and sharpened pencil,
Demanded you not be my alternate ending,
Or any for that matter.
Yet with it, you drew circles upon circles,
Damned circles,
Until points were circles,
And circles were walls,
Of which you bounced off like rubber,
And took back every step I tried to place in yours.

So now we finally stood,
Lost in smoke and mirrors
From the screeching of leaky brakes
Careening over canyon bridges and ambivalent peaks,
Running from my fear of projections,
And the sound of a conclusion that would inevitably fade.

So now I finally sat,
Put one over the bar set far too late,
And waited for you to reciprocate.
But we had been pushing and pulling,
Back and forth to a greater degree
When I had hoped to make it out of twenty-three...
So when we expected sparks and instead got a fire,
The light burned out – destabilized and got tired.

This is the last time.
A Möbius strip made out of a letter,
Engraved in the uncertainty of Always & Forever.

1:06

It's the worst battles you come to fight on your own.
The ones that matter.
Here I wage on this losing bet,
Waiting for the seconds to start playing again,
But I couldn't even get the title track.

An Iron Whisper

A silent smile cast late into the evening
As expected as the tide but compelling just as much.
You were welcomed with dull moonlight,
And warm white caps gently crashed on sifting sand.
Clear intentions mixed with dirty water to make reflections
But plot holes from empty bottles were everything but a message
Except for the blind grazes that guided this bottled ship along the shore,
Loud as an action and soft as a whisper
That rattled on fragile and fracturing glass.

Call it out for what it is:
I light my own fires on a sequin sea
While a nickel on tails closed parentheses.
From the touch of fabric to my lush fabrications
From the thunderous knocks to tautologous explanations,
With each sew that stabbed a stitch in my side
Was spun a peripheral thought to which I would not abide.
A dizzy lighthouse casts light now on each jagged point
To study the angles of complementary joints
Of how we had fit together on this wooden frame,
And disappeared into the fog of war.

What retreated as the flood moved forward
Was suddenly sunk in that same dull light
As a curious hand gestured towards the dark night.
You pulled it down slowly against long setting skies
Until each movement was submerged in whole,
A map to read with no compass rose,
A landlocked blues and a hollowed out hull.

You found mercy on the seafloor
And I would never see more,
Until your luminescence made your presence defined
As your climb to the surface coerced an enemy of time.
The vessel shuddered and moaned as the pressure pressed on
So I concede with held tongue/[end performance]/say my thanks...
And bow to the ocean and her faltering restraint.

Between Six and Eleven (Nickel on Tails)

This was the first time...
Thirty minutes on the dot,
The last of an ellipsis that spanned a single twirl
So delightfully careless and blurred in the darkness.
You walked me through every step,
Carefully dancing between fallen leaves
Keeping every blow above the knees,
And all that is fair game. Simple.
A little speckle, a little grain,
What was forgotten and remembered all the same
Was now pressed tightly against my cheekbone.
And with its release, it would fade to black,
And gravity would make its reconciliations,
But just for a moment, it was the moment:
An imprint on my hand that stuck like the winter
And the no good strength to make it considered.

Keep The Fire Burning, Forgetting It’s There

You told us it was basic
Concealed in obvious identities,
The monotonic melodies that
Called back those faces.
You faced me. You thanked me.

Light and mischievous like the quick
Touch of your chin and back.
It wasn’t much, in fact, it was too…
Much has put us in a set path too…
Fast for the past to catch up with,
Days late, but never turning back.

There once was a stage
That would never be repeated.
Siblings stayed family and formally greeted
Neither past, nor present, but in seconds flat.
I held you this fort,
Burned to hell and back.

A practice that I’ve detested—
A nip of playful aggression to
A light press against my neck,
Fingers clinging and curled
For a heart that I’ve protected,
Remind me that time’s a dance
Never waits, never sways
As I dip you into sunlight
A forward payment on investment

Tiles

The ringleader spoke loudly, but walked without shoes,
Over glasses and tiles and red-white-and-blues
Every sentence illformed, but every meaning the same
We were delightfully volatile, but descriptively mundane.
It was something unsustainable and deviantly unattainable
When held up against our quickly diverging truths,
It was the soft pressing of urgency and random courage
Warm and emerging through the blind compass of youth.
It was something you never need to do, but did, and coined.
It was a subtle incision to get to the point:
This evening's disjointed,
And the color leaves this fabric in peace
"It's starting to get late now, and I think I should leave."

Sometimes

And as the words met with shoulders and fingers to touch,
A meaningless movement was moving too much
With none to gain, and turned to Lightness
Until the soft burn of politeness took pins to a cushion,
And conceded to see what would bleed through the paper.
Stained with her name was what in silence never tore,
But simply fell apart and had started just the same.
So tell me again, just tell me again
How it stuck to her skin, but would never append
Like the last note drawn out on a long slanted mirror.
I had cast my reflections to a radiating sea seeming clearer
And the condensate was diluted, but still potent and purer:
Sometimes we shout at walls hoping these echoes would stay,
But sometimes a concert in the rain is just a concert in the rain.

Letting off the Steep Steps (35 and Pedro)

You'll find one in every state:
The gentle rustle as you graze over each one,
Calmly unsettling.
Like the caricature undone
Traced as the lines that run between
Your hand and your family name--
Now both rest in an empty frame.
A bed unmade for interrupted dreams
To stay warm under the sheets
Asking for five more minutes, please...
For the broken waves of stuttered speech...
Three feet in a yard laid between...
Too close to call who won.
Blurred names came clean as I got closer to the screen,
An exhale against the grate as I let go of something great
Evaporated but stuck in the humid air.
So we rode in silence.
And every wasted word was capitalized
As if you'd make a statement,
And maybe I'd find what this state meant for me.

Preamble to the Unable

Orange embers remain,

Present past to this day.

If I could only remember

A single word that you said--

Sunshine.

You were that one time, if I may...

When seas divided by each wave

For a boy more man than I would dare to say

That sparked a flame beneath

The tears and the frays.

Bare truth. Sacred youth.

The static between the fabric

And my calculated game.

While I damned every whispered name,

This cliff was a lip bit that

Teased the hair with which you played.

And I wondered...

If you would draw blood

Or draw close for a kiss,

If you were the green that faded to mist,

Or the salt that my oceans most certainly missed.

And in the absence of everything

Except all that is free,

You were an end I could meet

You were the friend I would need.

The Feeling of Being Saved

Red wine stained your teeth
So often never seen at this time of night,
As every thought rested atop your heard
And buried into your chest.
Cold rain pressed against the window pane
And slid down tired to meet the teary earth
That you fixed your gaze upon.
Mallets were heartbeats that tapped
Shy chords in your shackled throat,
Never a word so softly spoken
Never a home so slowly broken.
And when it pressed on, she took off
Showing a world left in between us
And each other's lives to pull apart.

Snowblind

You were a wish fulfilled that I still tried to redeem.
My heart was pressed against the glass,
Arrested by flashing lights and frozen ground
As you laid your landscape atop feathered ice
And I mapped our stories on a childish gamble.
Piercing eyes made muscles relax around what had been grasped,
And how I spoke too softly when I should have left quietly
To let sunlight scatter across inviting desert oceans.
Verbal contact became the underlining of gentle rays
That made sullen snowflakes jewel beneath a dying sun.
But amongst your fervent colors adorned in modesty
It melted all too quickly into studies of case,
Into uncapturable beauty and effervescent grace,
How sweet the sound,
How sweet the sound.

Letting Go A Bird In Hand

It took 6,000 lies for a tinny truth,
Then covered in silk and understood.
And my lips bent a crease in those words you wrote
That similar sleep in the sentences you spoke,
Faint reflections on clear waterfalls
Dissolved into crystals buried deep in time
Older than the Holocene,
And every stage that did precede,
Older than the trinity
That put divinity into the oldest waters,
Once murky from untold time;
Its remnants now fermented into blood red wine,
Like the last drop down a red clay ravine
Whose glassy bed had been tested and broken,
Seven years it seems.
In any luck - a silent dream, versed and free.
Endless.
Hidden in eternity,
For every stream gets lost at sea,
Willingly.

What We Were Here For

It takes two to five minutes to make my presence known.
It takes a floor of five cynics to make us all feel old
When a lighted touch illuminated the walkways,
And I was high on your scent drawn so far from home.
A cigarette dragged until the orange embers glowed
Boots pressed against the angels that were left in dirty snow.
We were two birds in the same cage.
I was watered-down whiskey and watered-down wit,
Giving my praises, but not giving a shit.
Because it takes twenty five minutes to make the walk home
But only five minutes to hide what I had shown.
You can halve our final hours and wish you hadn't grown,
Or you can have these final hours, because they are your own.

A Year's Pass

A year's pass and the colors sink into the carpet,

What has absolutely floored me adorns the burnt display of a broken past
A magic act of smoke and ash.
If I could only
Ask that you could have known me
Take the wheel that would have drove me towards anything that wasn't colder
Than what this endless night has shown.
Now I'm on your shoulder, surrendered to how you've grown.
I will never know,
And to do so would mean certain death.
So I caress the edge like broken glass
And bleed the past in frozen breath.

Day 120: Black Shiners

Reheated and as stale as the day before
That pre-summer heat was closing the distance between
Your breaths and the floor
My best and what I swore I would never be
After everything that I had been.
Now everything stuck to my skin
As I surrendered any gesture
That could be fed off of, to you.
What wanted to be true solidified in thin air
As satisfying as the haze that enveloped the cityscape.
I couldn't breathe; I loosened the cape and retired the man I made.
A noose around the nape swallowing the venom of a snake.

Day 116: Quesafajitadillas

Wake up for another normal breakfast
My favorite kind of normal
That I pretend you always hate in jest
And prebend these rubber plates imressed
Against your hot face of a concrete boardwalk
Chasing the sun onto the front porches
Of Owners of Porsches and those more fortunate
Toes creeping close to what had gone
To where the water treated beneath the sand
The shorline fit between my hands
To get a better grip on this sandslip perspective
To burn the papers of the advance directive
While teachers in an apartment being students of tonight
Put two parts of a circle into three parts of a sky.

Day 105: 5F-214N

Listening through your part of what I could not title
When everything was best replaced with your name,
The beaded rain pressed up against the windshield;
I am coming to see you as more of a stranger,
Sleepless panels and cheap alcohol grain.
Spent behind a lockless door,
This is the home I shared with you,
Secrets set into the navy blue,
A stressless strain, out came the truth.
How quickly snuffed, or spoken youth...

Day 104: Jeff vs. Orpheus

An old wooden chair with red velvet upholstery
Whose dust shone like stars freshly fallen
Its creaks were not picked up by vibrating magnets
But the seat was still hot from descent.
Years of followers that encircled a tight belt of silence
Quiet space left for a recluse.
How he finally climbed down
From the words we could not hear
That we weren't quiet yet ready to feel.
As concrete as tin memories left buried in a box,
Its love that burned your heart
And smoked you out like a fox.

Day 103: Rinse Obsession

Fear is a waterfall made of
Gravity and water tension,
Lethargy and our best intentions
That slipped on the bank
And cracked its soft skull
On your firm impression.
I love you like a bag of bones
I've hung up in my darkest room,
I love you like a marionette
I've strung up for my secret shows.
I breathe your air with no regret
Because I haven't let your soft hand slip,
Your aromatic decomposition
Is my disposition to get a grip.

Day 100: Spoke Too Soon

Air pushed through a plastic tube,

Hot and weak like fresh smoke.

It spoke to spores that had seen a war

But were now getting caught in the draft;

Shell shock: the alarms rocked as it all left again,

All it lacked, like money sacks, exploded like the pen.

All of the sworn promises that you left on the line

Were none you can make nor were they ever mine,

They broke a perfect surface, a once newly-born moon,

Whose craters hold the echoes of words we spoke too soon.

Day 56: Love and Porn in Culver City

Cold, but when pressed against the wall

Or pulled apart

It warms only to a sting.

The loneliest sing, a monologue

Of short gasps of sequential shock.

Traffic pushed the sun over the CNN tower,

Food was left to go in the pockets of my cheeks,

Zooming through a ghost town with a bloodless brother

Silence without sirens, and chasing the doctor.

Day 54: Fixity

We were on your front lawn

Where red dust stuck on blue paint

That flew through an open window,

Once broken by the babbles of a brook.

This brick porch is a creek bed,

Was once the cat dander and mosquitoes

That found their place on my skin,

Now buried deep in time.

And if I didn't have the first title,

I would've burned out the whole spectrum

Because this is everything:

The golden flame, the silver ring

The bronze medal that three could bring.

Day 53: Counting the Joker

Here is one more ephemeral blow,

Raps upon a door locked from the inside.

It peels the glue from my skin;

I hope it helps me see my true side

Picked at, hiding under a scab.

My bones are a garland of pearls

Fragile as such, they are draped in

Sinews and teenage promises.

Here is one more arrowless bow

That struck at your hearts

For what you did not know.

Day 40: Stage Table Dinner

Parked in front of a memory

Words spoken through a light box

To the headlights in the review.

The door pushes through the cold

Clamoring to get in, as a chatter's letting out

Walk to the door in the same mossy steps

The same glass breath from standing too close to the door

He never knew there would be more

Who ever said there couldn't be more

Strangers taking place of the most welcomed past

That warm, but do not burn in the presence of fire.

And as God's will's desire, I preach

And to these teachers I teach what they taught

A homebaked good packaged and store bought

Inspiration for a generation I forgot let simmer in the kettle

Of the well-wishers, the poisoners, and the pots.

Day 39: Who Protects The Sleeping Whom

"7:30 wakeup call in sick again," sings the alarm bell

The heater rings, made home the most pleasant hell.

So I took my coffee green with kin bounded legally

And familial ghosts of my savior passed through the tinted glass.

It was a holy fever or my mind left scrambled in a busy parking lot,

For the time spent on the hood of a black car

While all the other ones passed.

I saw no pine, but there was a zephyr in the sky,

Mixed green cut down under blue, this is me and truth.

I found my kin had found some kids

Finding a childhood I once did,

Two guitars and a xylophone

That started with a "z"...

Them and me, yes this is we

Now this is you, now go to sleep

Truth had left, now it's just me.

Remember floral waiting seats

Remember radiology

I had left, but now it's me

Them and me, now this is we.

Day 38: Under the Knife

A day spent in bed, but never home

When a doorbell rings and the floorboards sing

Under the weight of a new man.

He reflects in the glass

Rearended on an onramp to get the port

Sitting in a bed all day,

Listening to nurses talk like a sewing circle

Slipped into the machine

All of the screens, metal gleaming

Talking normal and then sleeping

Wake up before they finished

Alive awake alert enthusiastic

Blondie in the holding room

Take me to discharge

The old wheeling out the young

Backwards, but I am done.

Not a new heart, but a way to it.

Day 31: T2, C1

Chemo and nothing.

So hungry.

Day 29: Family Adhesive

How long I've stared at empty sea and stars

I'm getting friends back through Skype

Reading of my risks a different heartbeat every tab

No food for today, the beginning of the fast

Calming the family, being soft-voiced reason

We're all working together

Three adults in the room. One child.

Tired eyes of a sleepless hypocrite.

Talking to the world about the future

Tapping keys until the sun is charmed out.

Day 28: Where Airplanes Go

I stepped into a cold car speaking yesterdays

That fogged the skyline through a dirty windshield.

With a suitcase in the back and a book bag in my lap

To keep me warm, future plans chattered out of steel bones:

Future dads that clamor out of sealed homes

With windowpanes that play dead

Until the lingering night fingers on to the west

Where I go now. Where they had gone.

What I had left, and how they moved on.

Where airplanes go and sink by the sea,

Why winds prevail without a sense of meaning.

Day 25: Talkative Bunch

The closest to normal I have felt in a very long time

I know there are more to come

But I am okay with this one

Let me return that email

Let me preserve those details

I've missed it for so long

You for the longest,

All to go so soon.

The winter, the cold lights, the crisp moon.

Day 24: Ebb and Flow

An ounce of liquor spilled on the black keys.

It soaked through sick veins

But you spent all day in bed,

And we watched our remaining life

Through a oneway mirror.

Will you remember me in oh one two?

Will you think that I was thinking of you?

Day 23: Sad City Bouquet

To sleep through the morning

And wake up again.

Gray becomes a softer black

Maybe I loved this city all along,

So I gave my thanks in a porcelain bowl

For what I took and what was dead on arrival.

She left all the sweetness preserved in her

As I finished my breakfast at the counter

Like a well established diner,

A hole in the wall by a hole in the ground.

Day Six: Banks and Bets

Appointments with needles and staying still

I prepare my life to change

Putting the children to bed

In a luxurious bathtub of ice

In a room as dark as night.

I can feel my cancer growing,

I just need more than knowing that I'll be alright.

Mopey.

A mother cries and a daughter follows suit.

I cannot be robbed of my youth.

Day Four: Places On Earth

Kelly and Cola.

Hanging out by the fire

Freezing in the cold,

Drinking cream soda to save my blood.

Designated driver for a loved friend

Designated crier in the passenger seat

Who couldn't believe this could happen to me.

Walked you to sleep as the black sky turned deep

Lackluster moments that I still wanted to keep.

Day Two: Breaking In

Before the morning sun could find my half-shut eyes,

Skin stained sheets from the purpose of existence

That stuck with me like viruses.

For meaning you must dig deeper:

This is your significance,

This is your future,

The needle pushing forward

For something more than just skin deep.

What shakes my bones and finds what's in the core,

If it's the second stage, no repeat and nothing more.

Day One: The Unknown Becomes Known

And even a city of angels couldn't protect me

As I sat on a denim-stained pleather couch

In a third floor apartment I called high water.

A smart phone caller ID played dumb

While a shaky thumb cut the noose around my neck

And dropped me into that icy water that felt so real.

I have never felt so alive, but there I was being reminded

That by 11:50am, I was dying.

So these hopes better keep me lifted while I am trying

Not to drown in all these cells that surely keep dividing.

CardAgain

So here I am waiting

Mirror ghosts at my throat

Maybe it's just getting worse

When signed in blood on paper

I will tell you I was first.

It's a sad kind of funny

Like tickling a child so he won't cry

I want to see my own one day

I'd rather that, let me get by.

Lymph Nodes

Let's stay alive,
I don't want it to be hard to say, "forever."

Birds Fly South, Then West

I didn't want to sleep it off

Leave it untouched like a wax museum

Salty shovels have dug the weekend's grave

Your path away.

Hung Up and Over

I'm just a drunk kid,
Lying in the memories of last night and this morning

Endless West

The wind sweeps the clouds back out to sea

Day spent weeping saltless years,

They were done for the night

Towers wrote letters in the blankets they tore into long streaks

All of which ended never tapered,

So smooth like a bedridden last line.

How your eyes tried to hold

The sun up over the horizon.

Just tell me your were sleepy

A balloon once lifted left to sink

Quiet words were never spoken,

Mine never answered, none to think.

The Notes On Which We End

To see you again

For the last time.

Springfield 709

Digging my own grave

With my head over my shoulder

And paranoia behind my back.

Streetlights shine like stars through broken trees

Missing their leaves like a baby yet teething.

Remind me again if this feels like breathing.

Mutual Friends

So blind to my own mirror,

Letting the fearless become the fearers.

Wearing Skulls

Sitting outside of a concrete home,

The wolf was around.

Leftover rain when the trees made a sound.

Burning the Midnight Hour

I am an envious wreck,

Look at the passenger mirror

That shattered before I could check,

Friends taken fresh parts of my reflection

Without a ring to call myself.

Calm down and lie that you're good enough

Songs watered down when they were new enough.

The irony, twisted gate led up to the old house,

Smaller than what we remembered from when we were younger.

A tempered moon sat behind a temperate tempest night,

Drunken concrete granted footsteps a way out of tempting flight.

Last Call

I am walking on this water,

Right on sea level.

Boat shoes sunk in the water
And eyes sunk into insobriety.
Even ounces and two twenties on the table.
I just wanted a clean slate
For all the miscreants who would create
The future of this state.

Meet Me In Quincy Market

On a wooden bench that supported us like a blessing,

We were tying tenacious knots with our fingers

Vows that pressed the snooze for just one more minute

Of silence; as I watched your irises, out of time,

Clean up the color that had spilled into your eyes;

We had made a mess under the summer sun.

It was the second green we were sharing together,

But we were gridlocked - a tick on a timeline,

Where two points on a map became

Twice two lips pressed against a single word...

You were the last one on,

I sat and watched you take off.

Close-r

The open door was a spectrum of emotion

She left as softly as a dream hands you back to your bed.

Stacking Pennies

Tinny truth on a wood table

Echoes

Spill-proof mattresses, TP and tears.

I Fell In Love With A City

Waiting for service,

Always waiting.

PM for AM

I woke up in ubiquitous shade,

Every color cooled off with a blanket of gray.

I started saying your name like I was colorblind

And breathed from my mouth

So that everything that came in

Would come out just the same.

Heavy air brought in the rain,

My chest caved in with mossy stains

But I never saw the soft white light...

Those red eyes said we'd have to wait for a while.

Get Out The Jack, Love

Hope is home,

I hope I'll be home.

Blink in the Rain

Windshield smearers in torrential downpour

Honestly afraid for our lives

Half-naked writing lude things in the condensation

IHOP, encores, and tips.

Ambient lightning from every direction

A watery hell rolled over

With a skyline of papparzzi and their terrifying lights

We tell each other we will remember this night.

Clairity

Your shadowing perspective was a familiar mountain.

I could see for miles and miles

So much value put together in the form of

The delicate words shaken from your carbon rough,

A mine shaft dug out of a retrospect year,

Like breathing in diamonds, so crystalline clear.

Young's Four

Prison bars held my cradling comfort,

With more history than we'll ever see

You asked me like a cheater,

"What number are you on?"

I answered to the teacher,

Asked her to tell me I was wrong.

Our Own Motto

Business women clamor over vacant space,

Venture capitalists staring straight into your eyes.

The bells ring of hollower glass,

Toasting to what would not be remembered,

Discovered land you jotted down with an eraser.

You are an explorer who is exploding

Going off, or getting off and going off...

But you remind me of something comely;

Please know that you have wronged me.

Exactly

Smoothing the surfaces,

I am sanding with silk

The most delicate predicate-noun,

Unregrettably now.

It is the coldest summer day,

A surprising familiarity down the spine

Like a word older than the dictionary,

Suddenly redefined.

I can barely keep my eyes open,

Fixated on the live stream,

Now warm water running, hearts racing like dogs.

It filters the blood like honesty without pretending

When our clear bets are as real as it gets.

But we're still waking to see if it really happened,

What salty truth dampened the two-ply tissue.

I had been excused for the torch I carried.

The resolution felt breezy and most definitely right,

It buried worried flames and cooled off with the night,

The smoke gave out signals undeniably bright;

I don't have to keep looking, everything is alright.

The Adventures of Swag and Calzone

Throw up your words shoved up

From your proud, proud chest.

Homeland Security

The shame of weakness,

Knowing you weren't invincible

A helmet won't prevent a skinned knee.

Education

Ink bull diminishing iterations on a sheet of paper

Bilingual Sleep Talking

A speaking finger returned a thicker collar

"I've always liked you, since the beginning"

Set Yourself Up

The institution is a monster,

I've seen it tear people apart.

Steel strangles my speaking finger

While they both watch with bated breath.

The Sharp Edges of a Question

Do you ever think about entering my body

Like a cancer or something plotting against you
Let me save or let me sink
How we speak but never think.

Stars In and Out of Focus

Morning struck through the window

As silent as my first breath,

Slowly burning of last night's fire.

Only embers from blown glass were left,

With the disposing clink left hollow

From what was sucked out,

A genie that told me to write in the present,

Giftwrapped in what was undressed in fake diamonds.

Coxswain Shots and the Midnight Progression

You're off to work, but I think I'll stay in bed.

Montauk

It calmed me to finally see
The salt you breathed while you were underneath.

Scab

The way the sirens echo off of the flush buildings.
We are rats in a maze,
A flightless bird that will glide and then lie.
Who are you fooling when your apple has a rotten core?
And the trash on the sidewalks are like scabs to a sore.

A Minute of Rain

Your barriers are retractable tape

And audio recordings, press 1 for English.

Fundamental misunderstandings,

Invisible like the chipping nail polish.

The Met is not Montauk,

We'll go our separate ways.

Attraction Without Films

Attraction without films

Becomes awkward honest, worn-out true.

A thousand breaths before a point

Puncture words like sharpened joints.

Irresistable

Ice water 3hr sleep

Fireworks from the Inside

The heart breaking down

Sounds, but no lights

Looking through a dirty window

It's clear that no one is here.

I am carving hollow vessels out of wood,

To tread on ice water.

Statistical Outlier

"Except I would be with you
and thats right."

Waiting for the Green Light

Not waiting, but looking

We find it, it's working.

60 Days

Genuine happiness revoked.

Sixty days counted down and lost in an instant.

The minute you're closer is the second I'm distant.

In Less Than A Week

And they left you before they even asked

Alone again

You know again

The River Is An Ocean

I am running in the rain

Finite State Machine

From pitched ideas, underhand.

It's not code if they all understand.

Old People Thursday

Drinking all the beverages

Smooching all the ladies

Money under the Mattress

With only a dime in my pocket,

I wasn't much about counting on change.

Last night in my bed, a ghost

The tangents of this parallel life

Matched by unparalleled strife.

I pressed my heart against a soft bed

To cushion the start of the verses it bled

For the jackpots and crackpots

That sound tinny to my ears,

And the phrases I coined

To break these phases of fear.

4867 Sunset: Holding

Now that old car rolls down a dirt road.

It is unfamiliar and unknown

It is a windshield point toward the front of a storm.

Now the sounds just slur and cannot differentiate.

Now the sun setting where it's safe.

What waits for me is this road that I have no choice but take,

And a gift bag of belongings for if ever make it.

That Lump In Your Throat

An old car stops at the end of the line,

Blindsided by the force of inescapable time: Chance,

The difference between a glance and a blow.

The difference between what I think and what I know is now time.

I'll have the time of my life, if I can only keep mine.

Please.

10.8

Some things happen without warning,

The way it all falls apart

In figures and in literals,

But when it came it fissured visceral.

10.8 rattled my world and brought it down to build its own.

It would shake in every muscle

And break in every bone,

Only to show how far I'd go just to tell you how I've grown.

Thinktanks In A Mindless War

And as we sit on this padded couch

I find myself in a padded room

To bounce ideas off of.

Crazy ideas that I throw and catch like childhood play.

Look at me practice my no-good games...

Her minute chases his hour as mismatched hands from midnight until noon

There isn't much padding left on my calendar,

So if I must fall, I'm sure it will be soon.

Smoke Them Out from Under the Bridge

So I figured I'd just jump here,

I'm down the my last two in my pocket

And I'm not banking on them...

Instead I took a step back and asked,

How does it feel?

It felt as real as the concrete

Biting at my heels

To drain me like a cactus in the sun.

There were still goosebumps

Pushing prickly hairs

Perpendicular to my parched skin,

And sweat feverishly pushing out

Something I've selfishly kept in.

The Distance

Backdropped by infinity,

Out here we made ourselves divinity.

This world has settled to a controlled burn

And now we write our names in light,

The eternal flame that etches each page of our memories,

But also singes each the same.

Time has pulled this universe apart,

Until there is now nothing in between

A hand reaching into the darkness

Pulled by the gravity of brightest star I've ever seen.

Revisit

Floorboard creaks were footprints in wet sand,

Eroded but still familiar

These awkward steps are so dissimilar.

One foot drags another through the past

That digs a moat for the castle built into the clouds.

Your head is still in the clouds.

Lightning strikes and it all turns to glass;

Now I can see this had always been your plan.

You said, "Come down, love.

There is a place where we can say it all began."

And it all started with your hand.

The most timeless connection

Since the oceans met the land.

Zero

We watch steel fight against gravity.

I watch skin fight against vanity;

Let your sweater slide from your shoulders,

Let the heat escape like the words that fade

Under the roar of the flight man made,

When sweat ran down his sun-soaked face

And he found this woman's grace on earth too much,

Until there was nowhere else to go, but up.

History's Repeating

Dear sophomore,

Hunger makes the hunter more aggressive.

History makes the mystery more impressive,

So I make these words more digressive

As you make this gene expressive,

Circling like the skirt

That now lines your youth's collective.

Safe like the home of which your heart's protective.

I am sincere as the fear that now nips at my heels,

Than manic twitch that hits the switch to what hurts from what heals.

Flying at Sea Level

You're boarding onto a sinking ship,

The sea is tugging at your socks.

Between gasps and grasps, your heart is calm;

Thanks for investing in your loss.

I'll hold you to it with longing's locks,

The lung's necessity for the ocean's lust

Hope's optimism towards the deepest trust.

And I'll trek this vessel across your turbulent words,

And we'll sink like hell's anchors

Until we can fly like the birds.

Among Adults with Children

A square foot blanket sits on my lap,

Barely enough to keep me warm

While I'm trying to keep my cool,

Shivering like a small dog afraid of the world,

The real world,

Who barks at everything

And doesn't chew before it swallows.

People just as subjects,

I am the object of affection

Feeding the starvees of attention with my own.

I would say my verses are a curse

From many years have practiced diction,

But my topics are entropic,

Just blowing hot air over fiction.

Splintered Wood

Start this right. When no one expects it,

Just let it collide.

I spend half the day wondering where you came from

And the other half chasing my tail.

Come down with me, roll your pants above your ankles

Dangle your feet from the pier like fisherman's bait.

Let them float on the water like the miracles you have shown me

Let your ghost find my bedroom like you had always known me.

West Coast West Ghost

As a sun presses its yolk on the pacific pan,

The silhouetted hills roll into the haze

From tar melting and cars belting their age.

The convection oven bars glow back in radiance

And a star is shattered into a thousand candles.

I hold my ear against the cement and breath in

I hold my breath to attest the descent and leave in

Every little detail that a dreamer can handle.

A pulse that carries poison to every capillary

A heavy beat from steps of the burden that I carry.

Signs

Eastbound concrete from god-knows-where,

A tangle of freeways, a tangle of golden hair

From birth in a city intended for angels

Where I saw the devil in a cardigan,

I saw airplanes land and depart again,

I saw my hand smear blood like a lefthand pen.

But the sun now whispers on the nape of my neck

And the radio fills silence where any is left,

We're breathing now, all the city and smog

That makes your golden hair grow a little bit bolder

And shakes this old world that I've left on my shoulders.

Come Here (Banned)

This is grade school debauchery,

I took my dirty laundry to your place.

The dryer sounded like a jet engine

As my mind counted paper boxes,

A playset with trays set in the upright position

And the cabin crew seated for taking off

Layers of insecurities

Much more than a fear of heights.

My ribs imploded under the weight of your eyes.

First period alarm clocks, spin dry complete,

No cruising altitude in a stiff window seat,

Just a new smell of clothes, no longer my own

Folded pages now smaller, but in depth they had grown.

Wearing Out My Sleeve

I still didn't know any better

After months of retracing ghost lines,

Black wires that went through blacked out towns

To deliver a blacked out tone pressed against my ear,

The same that hadn't changed in at least a year;

It hung from my heavy shoulder,

Keeping me warm every day I grew bolder.

Now I write this letter with poster markers

In hopes that your light is getting brighter,

Because my hopes are getting darker.

The Arc of Light

Here we go, gears start low,

We're just warming up the engine.

My hands were still clammy from excitement,

Extradited to the home I left in flight

When I ran so fast I couldn't touch the ground.

Your words now hit me at the speed of sound

And I see your hand against mine at the speed of light,

Scarred around the brown of my eyes

As your familiarity arced warmth around my summer night.

MeCa

It was the morning after the war,

After fighting the night with our lighters

I laid my aching head atop of a smoke-filled jacket.

Though the injuries sustained were minimal,

We were all criminals; it was time to get away.

From Maine to California in the same day,

There was no one to catch us but then sun.

And from my window seat it looked like heaven,
They were taking me home on a 737.

If the World Doesn't End Tomorrow

Sometimes it feels like
The world accelerates like the dashed white ghosts
That we lose in our blind spots.
I just wanted to see this through,
A funeral procession at the eve of June
The sky painted black and never too soon.
Let this whisper carry though the wind
Let it go to forgive and sin again,
We won't get much different
But we sure can pretend.

Final Descent

Loud packing tape unraveled from the spool

The room was hollowed out like a jack-o'-lantern,

Down to single candle in a tower fading out

As the night's salivating tongue

Shaved the warm light from the brick face.

Cardboard boxes slid across the dirty wood,

Shushing themselves in guilt as they were shunned

To the closest to keep for the next three weeks.

Kids scared themselves when their mirrors grew them up,

Their past now in careless stacks, saying every side is up.

Memorial

There were once bodies standing

Where they now sit.

The building echoes because

Those voices weren't the first ones

Those choices weren't the worst ones,

But you work through them for an answer.

I had the ball and told faith to go deep,

She said, "The backyard is free of clovers,

But it's okay because it's over."

The clock would not go slower,

Their granite voices came to sleep.

from 15 to 1

Sleepy trees on the battlefield,

Soldiers rest in their cots.

The drum line's roll is dreary

And the armories are only in theory

When you're fighting for the hypothetical.

I was arranging numbers in reverse-alphabetical;

It just didn't add up when I gathered all the sense.

I never learned how to count down too well,

Cut short like childhood scars

That made salty eyes open to an ocean's salty swell.

4s+2c+1s

I grabbed at the sheets,

I swelled and then sneezed a scattered plot

Distracted thoughts put to rest

As consciousness reached its limit,

A pilot rushing to sleep

As all the blood rushed down to his feet.

He drew a line and erased it again

He drew a line and erased it again,

Gray matter was a fact,

Sweaty palms, shavings, and a pencil tracing back

To where it all best fit in,

A parachute tucked in between the cushions,

A note in hand that I never handed in.

Deserve This!

I can't.

Teach these lips how to shape my demands

Release these fists from about my hands,

Knuckles white like ghosts of those once willing to fight.

Minor Piner

When I fell I did not make a sound

Bows cocked like a lost sneeze,

A poetic tragedy, snapped to my knees.

When life flashed it stuck to my irises

Like sticky resin paused in the frame,

Stripping me down like an aching tree

Burning my bark and coming to me.

I could see the cotton lipstick

That you had kissed into the sky,

You were sending smoky signals

That were just vapors in a sigh.

Don't Call It A Comeback

There are dogs out in the backyard

They've been barking at the gates,

Chain-linked like it all made sense

Selling lemonade and chipping at the dents.

So I struck you like a car in motion,

I plucked you like the flower on a weed

And buried you like family,

With sugar, salt, and picture trees

With admiration, fleur de lis.

Punching For Studs

Under weak legs, this concrete floor felt like a bounce house

In which a devilish child broke every jump and I sunk to my knees.

And from giggles to gargles, I found my seat on deflating leather

With the consistency of a dying sea

Tossing and turning in a tempest of honesty.

She was falling asleep during her final rights,

Sick at the thought that she was finally wrong,

A feeling of weakness that was never so strong.

That Huge Nostalgia Kick

The sun was on fire again, lit up everything around it.

We put it out with squinted salutes and fitted caps,

Salty beaches and shaded palm tree naps.

I clasped my hands over the crystal sand,

A prayer for spare change and a bottle opener.

Today we drink in honey, tonight we pour out piss

While California's burning in the sunset I will miss.

Last One

I fed off of your secrets like apples left in Eden

Whose ovaries carried bitter babies

That would be cradled in the ground.

Carbon copies of original sin dug under my skin

Through the hole left in my throat from birth.

I am not the one who told you first

That it doesn't take a surgeon to fall out of a tall tree,

These cuts are feeling breezy, yeah nothing cuts easy.

Making Decisions To Make

Goodnights are softer than everything else,

The pillow that rests under your head

Melting faster than the falling shelves.

Instead I count on falling books,

Reverse-engineering the sheep we have cloned

So that your sleep becomes restless

As your conscience tries to digest this.

I am a builder off of assumptions,

You are a reversal of introductions

That is very nice to know.

How are you? Hello.

Drink To...

As she fell I studied the conical geometry,

Its axial symmetry that could spin the world around

And everything would be the same.

You've got me dizzy from the consequences

Of diving too deep without covering your ears,

From mixing the water after not enough years.

Curseive

Originality took the form of faded pastels

And the sun stepped out of the room.

At ease, the air finally shuffled around

As the hotheaded stood up from the ground in dusty plumes.

They were brave enough to save the space for potential in retrospect

And to give the sun the night to realign his self-respect.

No Reply

We send our voices in every direction

And then wait impatiently for a grumble,

China made plastic dancing

On an American made table,

With some English words wrapped in light.

It feels like the entire world is involved.

But when that backlight stays unlit,

A faded clock makes it seem timeless,

You pray for change so empty handed

You sit in silence and can't stand it.

Sleepless Perspective, Peace-Seeking Detective

I must have fallen asleep on a mirror,

The sun is shining from all the wrong places...

I've got all the clues, but there are no traces.

All I know is that it's 5.a.m and they've done it again!

Robbed me of my sleep with my pen still in my hand.

The Rising Tide

The horizon was anxious in a rising tide,

The foreseeable future had met with present light.

They left in the dark like a secret being made

And each convenant given was another well received.

I couldn't feel what you were meaning

I couldn't see that you were speaking,

Your lips and my lungs were dead even,

I just breathed in every word that you were leaving.

No Thrice Magic

The sirens called you out in fear of heat,

Diaspora for the light your needs devoured,
To fall asleep alone,
Regretting every conscious hour.

You slipped each sip from under your sheets

And twisted them tightly in your fist,

Your bed was a ship that started to keel.

It was a genie in a bottle,

It was a drunk and polished steel.

You're Going Slow

One foot drags past another,

I pull myself through water

That won't give back my reflection.

I never had an indication

To the turbulent nature of change,

But dropping coins into a fountain

Never made the bottom any clearer,

It never gave me a new name.

But when the penny hits the bottom

With its intrinsic value facing up,

We'll call each other lucky

And then we'll pick it right back up.

Play To Your Strengths

His muscles flexed like a failed rock climber,

Tense ropes that strained in unison.

It was a camaraderie he was conditioned to love

That spit out acid when they'd had enough.

He was thankful, sure, but never learned too well;

He had dropped the world, but he never fell.

Another Bed

As the lights stripped and unbuttoned darkness,

My throat tried up in the honest heat

As lies were pumped into the atmosphere,

The way they searched like bloodhounds

And covered every exposed inch of her body

Wanting to come true,

But were leashed under a window of sleep,

Looking over a warm lake and its stagnant view.

Nothing New

Bring sweet death to the choir!

If you've got ammo, then fire!

Fluid Dreaming

Run away like a runny nose,

It's all run down and too cold.

They said it runs in the family

But I ran the numbers,

Insufficient funds.

I thought I ran the town,

But running wasn't enough.

You left the water running

To catch up to me in my sleep,

But they've kept me fluid dreaming

And running out of what I need.

Apologpa

Some take a swing to feel the wind (that you missed),

Others to jump off at their highest point,

And I call them all crazy.

I can't even straighten the creases in my shirt,

Let alone the pride in my chest

That fluctuates as if with the impact of each breath of air,

Invisible like the justice as an average of luck and blunder.

"Your honor, you're so quick to judge!"

I apologized, but they said "Take a number."

Mixy

As the plastic spins in symmetry,

I attempt to bring you near to me

With words as reused as the alphabet.

A, B, C, D, I took the E and got an F,

I'll leave out the things I meant to forget:

How many lines went in,

How does a sentence. End

A new one, begin with old grapes and gripe

For a lack of better words, this will be trite.

Landlocked by the Water

I slip under my sheets while I'm dripping in sleep,
350-count threads that crash over me
There are voices I hear before and after I fall asleep,
The lulling procession from dry land to sea.
You're a kaleidscope on a lighthouse exploding
In a maniac's choir and every note is eroding,
You put all your stars in a dream that is growing

Out of control, shooting out of your reach.

Electron Decay

Spiraling forth on these rings of delay
I keep losing count of 365 days.
There is no anniversary
There is no where we used to be,
Moving forward, thinking backward,
And all your static ropes go slack.
Feeling as fluid as the time spent
On this forever bending track.

Lying In An Open Field

All bets are off when the cards fall
And you find yourself knocked out,
Lying in the bed of a '52 pickup.
Some things were never meant to be
In order, en route, delivered.
You were floating 3 feet above the ground,
But it felt like you were 6 feet under...
Looks like someone's got cold feet,
And those words can't find a way past your teeth.

In the Green Monster

I was in the heart of a city in its evacuated state,
Muscles all clenched as it stood stone cold in the night.
It was absent of the ambient warmth
That would save in the dirt and in the cheap plastic seats
From the roars and stamping feet it drank like blood.
This was a night out on the town
This was the quickly charging sound,
A lighting storm I had welcomed indoors,
Satiating and high above the floor.

Reignite

Your probabilistic procession was a cameo in indirect light
Mismatched pins we rebent and stuck me down quite alright,
And in all of your fractions of red wine and white noise,
I saw through black eyes and reduced to a boy.

Sequilizer

Your prose clipped as they pushed in the red
It shut you up nice, with a nail on the head
You were dead silent.
Then all of those questions would not stick
And with that, the lock remained unpicked.

Proballistics

You may be able to guess, this is the boiling point.
Your veins are like coils in your buckling joints
And your spring-loaded heart full of lead
Is pumping sweaty bullets out of your forehead.
Is it because you think you have a shot?
It's always dark inside the barrel,
So let me see just what you've got.

Your Laws

Hurl me towards your honesty
Project your heart on top of me.
The weight of history is heavy,
It makes it harder to push for change.
It's a balloon that will burst with a sudden pop,
You're briefly displaced, but then it all stops.

Under Revolving Stars

A muscle spasm grabbed my side
In a camaraderie I thought had long expired.
As sweet as milk, it hadn't curdled
And I found myself in the thick of renewal,
Peeling off nervous labels as a task my hands could do,
Opening those precious eyes for a more refreshing view.
I could see you in the outline of fatigue
And the cigarette burns from what's out of my league.
If you're asking for empty promises
I'd kindly ask you to just leave it,
But these contractions are an action
For which a counterpart is needed.

4 After 4

I've been drinking from the strangest fountains
You've been making sure this will actually happen
As I try to reach for memories like loose rocks,
Pulling out the bubbly card.
But this is poker and it's not hard to fake,
So thank you so much for your honesty,
You've honestly got the best of me.

Triangle Sentences

I lost what I was going to say after
In the wind on the breath I had written it on.
Your favorite song went 5-1
That you tapped between your finger and thumb
As you shaped the letter closest to what you meant to sing.
Lo-lo-lo-lo-look at me as I freeze in your tracks,
It started going cold, but somehow brought us back.
I am a sailor's son and you are a landlocked daughter,
You're not going to sink when you're safely in the harbor.

...and then there was one!

The spinning earth smeared cool pastels
On the blank canvas of a new day.
It wasn't the way we were meant to see it,
Like how your parents wrapped your gifts
And Santa left the cookies and milk
When mommy was on a diet.
Now cotton spilled onto the page
Cleaning up its own mess
While the rest burned under the work light.
No, no, this was the quiet shift into grace,
Pulling the blinds to put sleep in its place.

The Best of a Normal Day

I never believe the words on the edge of a disk,
There is too much truth and with it, too much risk.
Look for me in old pages, hardcopied and bound
I'm as real as it gets when you're level with the ground,
I'm the long pause when your heart forgets how to dance,
I am my own name as big as giants afraid of ants.
He told me once of a secret he never had kept
For when you realize that you are forgetting your steps:
Our lives are in bags of chemicals and water
Trying not to leak and equate with the others.

Plate Tectonics, To Break the Spine

So give me those papercuts,
I lost the words the day before
But the ink sunk into the creases,
Once defined in imperfections
Forever summed in broken pieces.

The Hidden Perspective

Looking at the world through glass and water,
The light was misrepresented, but I called it an answer.
She whispered you her beliefs like rusted iron
And pressed up against your thick skin.
I never read cards, but I felt your intentions,
Sunk in a shipyard, resting on your ambitions.

Digital Candlelight

Enough pictures could make a movie in the sound of silence,
Some comforting nostalgia before you emerged in your defiance.
He said, "Here are the rules, we'll be expecting your compliance."
But you prayed for each day the flaming judgment versus science.
A drop match struck a blinding spark called inspiration,
Its current was refreshing
Like a sinner clenching the profane,
It grounded every vein, and ignited your heartbeat's irrigation.

Cover Ups and Letters

Caught mid-swing, I struck out of the loop.
The dots in my eyes and the curls in the cue
Told me we had been here way too long.
There was only one sway to the song,
Which made it easier for the trees
With their fresh new leaves
And a wedding band in the form of a tire swing.
Your summer lay exposed on the calendar,
She was comfortable once
And wonderful enough,
But nobody would undress to challenge her.

Sharp Victory

My voices was afraid of the angelic heights
When you wanted to play the whiter keys.
I said you'd have to believe in a quieter me,
But my own shaking disbelief would vibrato just right.
In the highest frequencies of visible light,
You could let your muscles not hold you so tightly.
"Goodnight," you would tell your benevolent sky
Knowing those sheets would steady your flight.

If this city doesn't love me

I searched for the spare key under a sun-bleached welcome mat,
Papercut from that which emerged from a slim envelope
That was slipped from under my front door.
I blame it on the consequence of thermal expansion
That made those heated words so big, but just as heavy.
The statement was your pillow from the bed in your closet
So you just might see your night concluding to net losses.

Approximate Midnight Bomb

I could taste the fever under my tongue
That burned each sentence to death,
You walked over them precisely,
I lacked an inner ear understanding.
When the glass slipper shattered,
The heels had dug in deeper,
You were despondent with the pressure
On a deep wound or a trigger.

Senses Soft

I faded in about a quarter past nine
When tension strung the curtains back,
The redless black of the opening act.
Your retracted statement was a gate left open,
Wrought iron charred from indecision's ghost.
Someone shot out the back of your throat
And you cracked back in with that indirect quote.

It's Sowing Season!

Turn back to a slack rope,
See the oars dragging in the water,
The crewman leaned against the wall,
Mopheads standing in their buckets...
You haven't shaved in weeks.
Drift off a little more,
Roll the sails up like sleeves,
Go back to your dreams
Until it's time to believe.

Mutual Gatsby

I just wish I could repeat it like a favorite song.
I slept last night listening to nothing but sights
Like it was going put me somewhere I couldn't be,
It's just what made me feel most comfortable falling asleep.

...for the Classifieds

From one job to the next
I manage to keep myself impressed,
Every week there is a different number on the check.
Climb a ladder towards the sun,
If it gets too hot, then jump!
Don't hold your breath.
What you have is never all that you've got,
I am the optimistic tourist
I am just looking for a spot.

R&A (BYK)

Take notes:
We are digital ghosts on separate coasts
And we talk to each other in prime numbers:
If you take a remainder and divide it through,
It won't get you any closer to the whole truth.

Devil In A Confirmation Dress

I judged you like it was the second time,
You trusted me like it was rightfully mine.
Yellow bird, yellow bird,
Why do you sing when you are never heard?
Your torn feathers were fixed with sea salt and glue,
Your bruises turned blue, and have made you look old.
My insides have been twisted even before you had visited,
And I'm sorry sometimes I just can't get it straight
To make it all go down easy, as if...
Those tear ducts weren't shut from the sleep in your eyes
From when you had to grow, and put your childhood to rest.
Wake up from your slumber, youth's not ready to die.
The cage has been opened, there's new air in your breast.

Missing Hands

Under house arrest we are chained to conscious birth,
The primal intent that makes us shoot first,
And answer questions later.
We ponder the still life still briefly alive
As the freshest memory we could keep
Before its taste dried up like stale wine,
Tabled like every idea that spills into my lap
And pulls me to the lip of my patient seat.
What if the edge were high enough
So that I would be safe to jump?
Would you be below or above?
Would you think that it were enough?

From The Ivy Vines

The most uncertain war is the one we don't fight.
We send our lives in scores and letters,
Extracurriculars and jobs at night.
Hope comes packaged in clear tape
Tucked into an indistinguishable cardboard box,
But chance travels with no postage
In cargo planes and 5-axle diesel trucks.
The warlords are aged keymasters
With futures made behind rusty gates,
Who make our youth strip a dimension
With the intentions to write their fates.
They are blindfolded and called judges
Driving on an icy New England road,
They'll slide off the Cape of this college town state
If they know they won't catch a cold.

Candle Clock Bravery

Do you remember the words I slipped under the dinner table?
It was our communion that stained an old union sacrilegiously.
You were so unfamiliar with the taste of red wine,
But quickly acquired the its distinct consequence.
He had eyes for a feast, but a heart of bread, soup and iced water
Who once lived in a city on a hill, but now he stood on a mound,
He asked you to see the ruin and to hear the quieter sound.
But requests don't ferment like the rumors on a tangled vine
That now cradled fabled lovers too hospitable to time.
You have years since quit the book, but now you give me your devotion,
You see that fear deludes so well our rationale over emotions.

Quick and Heavy Swing

Your heels rolled on the marble like when you were a kid
Against the feeling of hard facts at face value
That baited your every breath.
This is how you see the way you see
When you find yourself suddenly staring at the ceiling,
Wondering who knew someone so headstrong
Could break their neck stumbling up on it.
And if this fall is groundbreaking,
I am a seismograph with no sense of direction,
But I'm okay with your shaky words and imperfections.
I am a polygraph with no sense of time,
But I'm okay with your lies, if you're alright with mine.

BuPo

A week's worth of experiments
Harbored the greatest compound of my existence,
You broke it down to the barest elements
And it built you up with the greatest elegance.
The chemist pretended that the chain never ended
But pretenses blemished it with kink that I lent.
However unstable, the carbon copy was in pen,
Vulnerable to each mistake, not to break, only to bend.

Loose Change Poet

I got closer to my baiter,
And I marched through the turnstiles
Towards the arteries buried under the city's skin.
Within we could either be blood cells or bugs,
But the nightlife was anemic
And the street lights weren't enough to see it.
I got closer to my slaver,
And I pushed past the yellow line
Towards the chain gears and tires
Pressed against the city's skin.
There were track marks for the sewage
But the storm drains made no difference,
I got closer to my savior,
But disallowed her my deliverance.

Now There Are Edges To Slip Off Of

They purposefully left us behind
So we could pass the time like pages in the wind,
Like some summer reminiscent.
The sea breeze sings incessantly,
Even the sun has incandescent needs.
With every window down
I could tell that we were free,
I felt the concrete screaming back at me.
This was my home,
The big city drone,
The suburbia seeds,
My growth and my peace.

Raspberry Sand

I still remember how my fingers did travel
However far south on a brightly colored map
And your veins pushed like rush hour
Weary blood cells, shirt and tie.
She made a firm fist with the tides in her hand
And her wet hair stained like raspberry sand.
Now I've been rained in on a prison with wheels,
Calmly quiet and cold in the crystal and steel.

VisitoR

We make weapons of judgment with cones and with rods,
And satirical fodder that we drum off in snares.
We laugh and we love that we're alone and we're odd,
We don't know what they think, but we know we don't care.
I am the cynic that laughs at himself
I am the center you laugh at as well,
You are so simply the color of all light
You are what I am that keeps us alright.

Let's Be Friends

Fair skin in a dress devil black...
You were always for high contrast.
In the night, regrets are easier to hide
In the night, secrets are too far to come by,
But still, here I am speaking up to say hi.
Rationale was the cancer to your memory cells,
Hope's rocket combusted shortly after it propelled.
You are a white sports sedan,
Hydroplaning like an angel,
Diving off at angle,
Surviving, pearly eyed, and doing well.

a posthumous picture.

I am aspherical insobriety,
Dizzy from every perfect edge
Growing up,
Growing up
I've invested in
Stress fractures
And failure tests
For every hollow coin I spent.
The union is a shallow fallacy,
Common silence is common sense.

Conscious Lag

The darkness was divided into three separate sides:
Predawn, postdusk, and the ellipses of night.
Between the transitions, there was complete incoherence,
During which, the boy ran each thought through his mind,
He had his intentions well disguised in his bag
With a star in his pocket from the day's conscious lag,
But what was severe he had shrugged off as mild,
Now Father's caught up with his conscienceless child.

M.G. C.E.T.

Turn the engine easy over,
It runs smooth along every edge
With yellow lights that cast over
The only way you've ever known home
That you could never take alone.
Stale air keeps the moment lingering
Like a blind man fingering every detail
Like a chemist better left speechless,
Their collision is heard as a hush.
Keeping it simple is keeping it safe
As the bumper implodes under instinct,
The inertial attraction that we've created,
A drought season's seeds that permeated.

Pure Moonlight

This is the closest I'll get to silent peace,
We cleared the east thousands of feet
Below a sea of loose atoms
To live life like loose flyers.
Always getting in trouble,
Always in bed after 2am,
Waking up to the feeling of hard ground
Against the heavy wheels of this plane.
Everywhere I look is a different destination
Any flight I book turns every timezone to the same.

Scott's Day

I could feel her fading before my eyes,
Dissolving in a bath of tears
While her tethered fears precipitated.
Her indigo shadows bled into needed sleep,
Her muscles contracted all the strength
She couldn't keep...
When it rains indoors
It stains and pours,
It holds up each finger,
Keeping score.

All Night

There was a man with a plan who couldn't swim,
So he built a bridge instead between two days,
It was planned on blue paper called the night sky
That would connect a sun reborn in the same place.
He worked with steady eyes focused on his blurring pride,
The intoxication from what he knows against what he thinks
For that stronger taste that sinks to the bottom of every drink.
He melted his own wax model when he had reach its moral extent
And dripped a drunken gradient, radiance burning at both ends.

Reference Frame

Tell my why you wake up worried about the air pressure
Like your decorated ears would pop
And your years of listening would leak,
Like today is the day the sky would drop
And you'd watch all your angels leave.
The world is a cage. And you, its sweet parakeet,
Just swing me like the bending tree
Free me like the falling leaves,
Just breathe me like the god you please.
Just need me like its lock and key.

Maps of Matter

The blindest map is our imminent collision,
The romantically-lit celestial ballroom
Which started as the condensed chalk
That was nature's prescription for separation anxiety.
It became the life of the deaf explorer
Who opened a door for each irrelevant knock claiming,
"We are the shepherd, we are the herd,
We are slaves and we are gods,
We are unspoken, we are unheard,
We are dust against all odds."

Moving Forward

You know, I've never been too good at school,
But I could spell out your articulated intentions
And I could read your bread-breaking lips' inventions.
So we make jokes about rearranging the alphabet,
Being sure to avoid the horrid cliché of vowels,
And I sometimes ask why
Your hands can turn as white as wine
And your cheeks as red as your polished name.
Remind me of your worry from waning the whims of age
Divide me into chapters so you can take me page by page.

Save Cameron

And all the scales in your head started tipping
Towards the lovely nothing you've held inside.
This heart throbs like a backwards joyride
That shatters the glass holding you from a clear path.
Your common theme is my near past,
In all its resizing deception.
It will miss you at the reception
But have pictures like it was there,
The color of his eyes
The texture of her hair,
You were a stone casket in a wooden coffin,
Holding plastic silverware.
The scale you left on the bathroom tile
Weighed your make-up meals molded of clay,
It took you and pushed you off the ground,
The springs revolted at your stay.

One-Armed Politics

Grade school attics hold static semantics,
Airy buffers that let our wet clothes breathe,
But the secret senate had said forget it
And dissolved in seamless sleep.
The re-summoned stuck like gum under a spell,
Words only chewed in a state of stagnation,
And all this talk about more often than not
Is just four quarters of a full rotation.

Claustrophobic Side View

My ears are still ringing from the words you said,
Or was it artist brushed up in my head?
Here is my water and here is my bread,
Stomach of butterflies, heart full of lead.

Make Your Definition In Anticipation

I could give you every word he has uttered
Like the loose change that makes these pockets heavy
That is frantically pushed into a meter solid red,
And you could collect it for something meaningful
Or scrap it for the cheap metal.
But the intrinsic value comes from the trials of the mouth,
The deformations of tongue and the wind bellowed out,
Gift wrapped old calendars, and planners post diem,
Watches running backwards to a meaning roundabout.
I present to you my past, every action carried out,
All time was never lost, just misplaced in what is now.