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.