Stay Awake

Until the sun has
slunk away behind the world
like a sullen child
and all of those in the know
have sunk their deepened faces
into some soft surface
or another.

Stay awake until the
screens have all gone
white and voiceless
and cursing those
still open eyed
and breathing in this
bitter night.

Stay awake
until your eyes burn red
and the room draws in tight
around the four corners of the bed
and all is lost
forever and is gone.

But still
stay awake.

Moving too fast across the Moon’s face

Drums pound.
The world is dark
save for the moon
and the clouds
moving too fast
across its face

Hours pass and years
mistakes are written
and erased, written and erased
and rewritten again.
Life fritters away
to nothing but
a dozen or so
cheap party tricks
without punch line or
any discernible moral value
and what it all comes down to
in the end
is how many times you’ve
held your breath
and prayed for
a single moment to last
for all the rest
of the moments
you have left.

Isn’t that living?

A Stranger Stranger

Howdy there, my stranger.
Please don’t come into my hole.
It is dark and it is lonesome
and it don’t feel like no home.

The kids are fast asleep
with their eyes all tied up tight.
So don’t keep your hand a-knockin’
or you’ll wake them with a fright.

I know the night is darker
than the blackest black you know
but I’m feeling rather foolish
and I don’t have far to go.

So hold it there, my stranger,
‘fore you knock against my door.
Just stay a stranger, stranger
or you won’t knock any more.

Mark.

I have a creeping guilt.

So lucid and empty,
I roll my eyes and snort
and scowl effervescent.
Pain deep pitted in my stomach.

I haven’t been there when he’s
needed me
I’ve left him alone
as his eyes grow a deeper and deeper red.

I’ve been blind to sorrow
and love
but not to distaste.

No, not to distaste.

Those Nights

When your fingers and toes curl 
and you screw your eyes up tight
to get to sleep faster.
Hit by wave and wave of
anxiety and fear
in your chest and
in your back

That utter loneliness when you
throw yourself around your house
and eventually
about 4 in the morning
you fall asleep from pure exhaustion.
Too scared to keep going.

You know,
one of those nights.
I know those nights.

wild grief

Your wild grief scares me.

It flows from you like
so many liquids
and pours hard and fast.
I intrude on it,
like stepping in milk that isn’t mine and
treading it into your carpet.
Back and forth i trudge.

Like a great beast
in the final throws of death.
That great gold spear that
pierces your lungs and
up it comes.
All that bile and froth that was hidden.
You are no longer who you were.

And I, unable to reach out with my hands
and take your shoulders and calm you
with all that mass of hair
so tangled and forlorn,
slink away to nurse my own.

It is quiet and faint and
will always dwell
deep in my heart.

When words have no effect.

This is a view of you in your dark green glasses
from the little photographic plate
inside my head.
Your tight freckles
humming along,
and your short hair
that I stupidly felt the need to explain.

You’re a painter and a poet
and better than me
and I don’t blame you.
I deserve this empty house
I’m sure.

But the more I look at this little globe
and the long, dark, slick expanse
of the wet courtyard in front of me
the more I feel my distance from you.
I’ve never missed someone’s hands more.

If it weren’t raining so hard
in the small green overgrown garden out my window
I’d go outside
and hang my heart out on a rose bush to dry,
because if you looked you’d see
that it’s raining pretty heavily
in here too.

Like a busted mirror. I’m having trouble seeing myself.

This is so much more difficult to do
than I thought it would be.
But then again,
I never thought, did I?
I just ‘did’.

All these blotted tail-lights,
all these red, watering eyes,
each one a person (dead and) gone.

Sometimes you’re dead to me
and other times you are so alive I have to clench
my eyes
my fists
my self
for fear I’d loose it all. Blurt it out.

This is something that needs thought,
but I’m in no condition to.

You’re nothing that will easily lie down.

It was a lonely night.

the other night
I cried myself to sleep.

I felt pretty miserable 
real lonely.

not your normal lonely.
the sort when it hurts
because you’re not around.

unexplainable pain and need and want.
ouch ouch ouch.

it’s the sort of pain where
you can’t do anything without them
and you have no idea if they’re thinking of you
but
you don’t think they are.

that’s why i make sure to say to you
‘remember,
someone is thinking of you’

I say that to reassure
so that you know
I’m thinking of you
and that’ll maybe make the night seem ever so slightly less dark,
this cage ever so slightly larger
and my love ever so slightly stronger.

And I am thinking of you
in one way or another
because I feel that if someone’s thinking of you
if even in the tiniest, littlest part
if even if it’s just next to nothing
it makes you feel better

like I matter a little to someone.
like I matter a little to you.

Taught. We were never taught.

i make me awkward


in an awkward way


when you stretch the muscles of your face as much as you can


movements don’t satisfy anymore