Remember us in the face of God

No, I can't really speak because I don't know the words.

Language failed us in the face of God.

Your smile is the crescent moon hung

High in the midnight sky, I thank you.

Every time my eyes pour and every time

I am amazed. Hold my hand and

Let it out, take it in. Your drugs

Can never bring you reality.

Tossed as if caught on waves, you are

A rag doll without the first impression

Of what it is to be moved by angels,

But I know why I am here.

Fate is the silver thread running through

All of us in the most intricate web,

And here we are.

Here we are, attempting to save your life because

I am, we all are, little pieces of you.

Draining, you let it all go. In some

Room with dirty walls and chairs too

Small for our egos, you hide only what we

Won't cut out of you, it must be endlessly whispered

Once the tarot cards are laid in the lattice

On the table, clarity touches you with caring

And gentle hands of a father that is

Never a tyrant with a heavy fist.

But gently pushing you on.

Hiding is futile when you're seen right through,

Pinned open with love and our own openness,

We talk like a never-ending story

To make marble statues in your mind.

Remember our names and faces and

stares, because we do it not for

ourselves, but out of love and sheer will.

Remember who made this all possible,

That symbol hanging from your neck.

Boundless

They don't keep score

Because there are no points

In this place

Only the hope of better-off

Days with soccer balls

Made like they should be,

Clothes that fit and

Grass fields, unfenced, unbound

No broken glass

Or rubble piles high as

The sky, that's not our limit.

Past the goodbyes,

The seeded grass will grow

Like a meadow after

A fire. Rebirth, if we let it.

Let it root and the sky

Will crack

Above the dirt covered shacks,

Washing clean,

Washing them anew.

It feels just like the first time

I wrote down my first rhyme

As I'm tumbling into dark.

I'm searching to find

The future in the blind,

With it's walls and windows all white.

Don't leave me and leave with doubt.

Closed in, I need some out,

Scrambling to escape myself.

I've committed countless crimes,

Leaving chalk outlines

In the name of finding home.

Whispered and welcomed in kind,

Please don't hope in my mind;

You will stumble through the false floor

Suppressing my urge to shout,

I abandon my clout.

Everything looks better in m'head.

Hotel Rooms

The hotel rooms - anonymous homes

and the broken sticks just land in a heap.

I cannot pin the last corner up,

so the map lies in shadow.

I'm edging toward the end of the line

to look onto the two-dimensional

end. I so hope, forever, for that

home. And despite the weather,

the cold and the damp, I'm whispering

through membranes to bring a

world into focus. The daylight

is just another careless choice

to go along with my blinded

scrabbling and stumbling, with

one wish I'd be underground,

hidden from having to hide my face

behind pillars and books, from the

sun. I'm not sure there is anything

left to desire, but I'm hardly at the end.

No, not yet.

Today is the last day

Today is the last day

Another last day of another startled goodbye

Your hands reaching up for the clothes

On the line

I'm holding you up to reach it

Reach everything you deserve to have

But I've only had days, never

Enough for much at all, except

To link ourselves together, long enough

To love, and to break, and to never be the same

Thank you. Your rare, chosen smile, your always

Expressive eyes, little voice.

I quake to think of how I had to leave,

Never to be seen again, oh how I long

To keep you with me, teach you, love you.

I will never forget it. I burn

With the brand fashioned like your face.

And I will wear the scar with pride,

After the tears have dried and

You've (I've) cried more than you knew you could

I always knew today would be that day,

Found it somewhere in your penetrating

Stare. It's no easier to hear you laugh or cry,

And the stoicism eats away at you.

But you are something more than a child,

That soul is older than most,

And it's so there, an ultra-present reality

Screaming at you in its assured subtlety.

I am slowly falling, limb from limb

And you have no idea, no idea

How hard it is to walk away.

Permafrost

big eyes the size of stars

up close, the real truth, nothing.

so lost in deep thought,

the comprehensive. those

orbs floating in your head are

worlds with more life

than Earth. it's a greater accomplishment

than any book she's ever

written in ink from empty

bottles. the pupil fills the page,

running like bleeding mascara,

so black, so cold, no one to hold

in the cave burrowed in hard,

icy snow.

she used to get high off

the thrill and the blow, but

it's not filling like it should,

not even close.

the squeezed lemon is too bitter

to drink and not enough

to quench thirst. dropped on cut flesh

it's murder in the first degree. failed

marriage vows, promises raw in

intention, poison to the soul.

and where are we, lover? when the

sheets are stripped away, if my body

is torn, ripped, and buried in the packed

snow, will you love me? write of me?

kiss the air I left? am I worth solitude

until death? choose wisely.

Fields Filled with Rust

Fields filled with rust, turning from the shine of the sea to

The hopelessness of fallow dirt. I cannot drink this water.

Inciting the rebellion was the only way to ever change

The face of man, with his warship nose and bombs, teeth.

Farm houses form the skeleton ribs of a great whale,

Blackened, twisted, torched with prescription drugs

Turned to accelerant flame, but where are the people,

Where are my people? The lamb was lost because no one

Peeled his picture from the page, parasite children putting

Stickers on their faces, the dumb, damned absurd.

Rotting best times or worse, our cows our leaking poison

The stickers are still stuck on stone. Stalls no longer fill with

Sustenance. , no one to feed no one to care, bleak

Clean channels run on the faces of men smeared with dirt

They never felt this way before. Sometime the lost finally lost

Their way, falling, facing the red and white pinwheel tent roof,

No net. Simon Peter, Andrew where did father die?

Drowning in a net at the bottom of the sea.

What if I was there that day? Would I be –

Disappointment is a drug, the cities twitch in the light of the fires

There haven’t been people here for a long time.

When was the last time gasoline filled these tanks?

After years of wishing, someone found the courage

To put the books in the waste bin, without the thought

To look past the covers.

In the street, history was the first to be forgotten, then humanity

Went to the bars. Drinking up the vanishing gasoline.

Hauntingly, no bodies will ever be found because

People have forgotten where to look, or how to imagine.

No one is left to dig everything out, seventy-five stories of dirt

Seventy-five stories of stories that last their five minutes

And disappear.

Pompeii lost its way in the shadow of a mountain, cleansed of superstitions

Black bleak and also gray

The streets are the color of ash, so far from the mount.

With what’s left the dark ages are here again. Minds barren of dreams,

Dreams barren of tomorrows, today is forever the last day.

Molotovs floating like some brilliant chandelier for an instant,

Posing for the camera, emaciated little angers, hovering. Cherubs

With flames and wrath, who thought they would be God’s final judgment?

The churches are no more, what’s left only reminds people

Of the one letter they forgot. Books written with only it might come again,

One for every cross to bear, not so many anymore.

Valleys and canyons erode, how could man make much better? Even

The stone comes apart in paste. Phantoms float at night, they leave

A shore to float like paper boats filled with the last glow of summer.

It’s winter now, snow or ash, it’s all the same. There’s no more world beyond my sight. We got what we asked for. Isolation and solitude, should’ve been more specific.

The old dog used to limp across the yard, wondering if the next sleepy-eyed collapse

Would be the last.

“Sorry Max, it’s done.” Why did we choose this fate? Why not die in a sunnier place?

Maybe an island, or a ski slope. I forgot I’d forgotten what any of that looks like. Is it beautiful? I hope.

Maybe we will have a place to sleep tonight and wake up to the same day.

This is not the end

This is not a cry for help

This is not a rationalization

It’s an apology for being less

Than we could have been.