Wanted to, but I can't. Ski that deep. Turn that sharp on these thin blades.

It's just a picture of what it once was. Colors stolen. Captured.

Eyes stare upon the strokes as if the hand knew what it was doing.

Soft brushes. Sharp knives. Fading pigments.

The art lies in knowing how hopeless. The truth is every beer offers me the chance to, but I'm afraid to take it.

This hurts, but I know it. And that might. But how much. And for how long until.

Life.

Am I the only one that hears it cry?

Catch the snowflakes as they land upon your roof. No need to see the shapes they make.

Taking it apart piece by piece. Wire by wire. Roll the cabinet away from the wall. So many years gathered behind. See them again one last time before the cleanser begins to act.

Red. Black. Color coded demons with electric wings. The power button does nothing other than prove how dead it is.

Left. Right. A. B. Speaking in stereo, but listening in mono.

Analog is what we should be, but digital is all we have.

No picture now. Just the way the dust and shadows intersect. And images to anticipate.

Shimmy out the plug. Release the channels. Touch the flow of electricity still swollen within. As it numbs your fingers. Twists your skin.

Never time enough to learn. How quickly. Every lesson capsized before it reaches these beaches.

Leaning into the darkness of the shelves. Empty now. I hear the songs they once would strut. Graze the edges of the images that still linger at the bottom of its howling stomach.

The switch pops against my press and I know how untrue all of it is.

Too much furniture to move. Too many shelves cluttered with. We never change until it's forced upon us.

And even then.

I hear it, but I know it's not there.

I'd reattach the speakers, but they are too far away.

It's only music.

Just songs no one wants to hear.

Just this. One pennisula shy. Water all around. No swimming.

Just truth. Dilating pupils. I can see everything and nothing.

They have no taste left. Those memories so chewed. Dead meat caught between my teeth. Every drop of blood long gone from.

I want them to be raw again. The red pouring from my teeth as I bite down upon.

It won't be. Ever.

But there's nothing I can do. Short of turning time back. And if Einstein couldn't do it, what chance have I?

Just listen to the sound as epiphany foretells. Overtures from the past flap their wings And a hurricane is born in the elsewhere.

We're still new, but not new enough to go back in time.

We follow the path of those twisting strings. As they knot.

They make their ties, but we can always undo them.

I wonder what he'll be now. Since he has to change again. I wonder will I know him when he's different. Will I recognize him. Will he remember me.

I think about how the wine tastes to him as he drinks it. The shape and the weight of the glass he uses. How different it is from the bottle my beer flows from. But whatever container you put it in. In whatever form you swallow it. Alone is still alone.

He's football and escargot. I'm peanut butter and hockey.

And we don't even talk anymore.

But his is the only face I can truly remember. The shape of. In the light. The silhouette in the darkness. The feel of his hair. How it felt to wrap it around my finger like a bow on a package.

How his beard felt just like velvet.

Together or apart. We'll always be alone.

All the wise cracks I made at his expense. They taste like candy canes now. And I wonder are they to him sweet or sour. Or nothing he can recall.

There's goodbye sometimes. So firm. The anvil as you mistakenly saunter off the cliff. There's goodbye. And oftentimes it's for the best. Just fall. Get it over with.

But sometimes, it's just I don't know what to do with you. It lingers. You put out the candle, but the scent stays a while. Or longer still. Because you still remember their face. Their hair. Their scent. You remember everything.

You try to lay the burden upon the words, but they keep putting it back on you.

We leave. But we don't go too far.

We leave it. But it's not behind us. We just don't talk about it anymore.

You can't tell me honestly anything I haven't already heard, but I still want to hear. The things I always imagined you'd say. The promises I'd always hoped you'd make.

I wonder how it feels to be the wine you drink. How it tastes to you. I wonder how the glass feels in your hand. If you hold it tight or let it wiggle.

We'll always be alone. No matter how close we dare. I know this. But I'll never understand it.

We live. In our separate worlds. Picket fences. Painted black.

And everything changes except the distance between you and I.

it's coldest when
you drink it straight
from the bottle, and
don't pour it in a glass;

raw palms twist off
sharp caps, coaxing
the callouses from
under their skin;

every night it tastes
different, moods sway,
from mauve like the
evening, winter sky

to brash and scalding
like a bright, snowy day.

it's hard to see yourself,
even with the aid of a mirror;
the more that you look,
the blurry the image becomes;

yellow roses smile, and
white ones tease,
but only the red,
only the red ones -

make you asnwer the questions
you never thought you'd ask.

Was just listening to you write. With your thwarted glance. Everything numbered. Itemized.

Was just thinking. Too much again. As you've told me that I do. Spare tires loosing air again.

I don't know what you are now any better than I did then. Every color of yours I tried to match orphaned.

I don't know how it feels to drag my fingers through that coiled hair. Softer than it should be.

I used to try to discover where you are. But now all I can do is trace the outline. Imagine the borders. As though they are still there. As real as you once seemed.

In color. In drunkeness. As the hour would feign truth. As your underwear would stare so bright. Headlights against every intrusion.

I don't want to know what you've been. I'm not that sober.

Just want to know how close I am to being. What you are.

Will the memory know us when we're gone.

Hollow the trees. Build a nest.

They'll say you're wrong. And they might be right.

Need to know the question before.

They'll look just like footsteps, but they'll never sound that way. Just breathing. Waiting for a sound that never comes.

The first time you hear them laugh it'll sound just like you imagined it in your head. Abrupt and shy. Like the eyes of a teenager.

You'll let that sound stay with you. Just as the closet keeps its shadows. All those colors carefully tucked under. All yours.

They'll look at you. As cats do mice. With claws retracted.

The fear is genuine.

And you can look back. If you want to. With your shrinking eyes. And try to see.

You won't.

Love. And truth. And pain. They're all colorblind. And illiterate. You'll never understand the lessons you've written for yourself until you're forced to live them. Never notice the marks they left on your skin.

They'll always be. Poetry. Words without an anchor. Ships without a sail.

So many oceans between then and now. Her and them.

The maps I draw all lead to nowhere.

The brown stuff. The blood drying. It speckles the white like punctuation. The end of then. The beginning of this. The wound tires. The hole remains, but nothing falls from. Nothing enters.

Fake plant. In the bathroom. Single handle faucet. Pale china sink. Grips the water. Catches the dirt. Clean razor. Electric.

Daring chins. Naked throats. With blunt pens jabbing through.

Black ink.

White sheet.

Ceiling hums. Furtive and low. Walls shrug.

I can feel the stairs out there. As they go down and up effortlessly and endless. The tickle of backward in every step.

Panties and denim trousers mingling together into a monster of discarded skins.

The changes came after. Like most things do. Sucking on the gravity until. The knowness came in a cold briefcase. Contracts written. Signatures waiting. How can we be this simple. That the truth is what we extract from these situations. So committed to every mistake.

I think I took too long to grow up. Wasted too many years thinking reality would understand. Those people. Those questions I could never answer.

Like where was your heart when the blood shouldn't stop. Who were you then and how are you different since.

If at all.

I don't need convincing. I just need a problem to solve. The kind that hasn't an answer. That's what I love when there's nothing else. Tense the springs. Keep the pressure close. Let it scrape until sparks begin.

So many outlines to trace. None to fill in.

It was still early, but it had been dark all day. So it was like I never really woke up. Just slept through everything. One dream melting into the next. It was real. But not the real you can smell. Garlic sauteing. Extra saliva.

Not the real you can feel hours before you actually touch. Skin salivating.

It's always early if you stay up late enough. Night sneaks into morning with a quiet lisp. One more. And one more after that.

And there you are not changed at all, but everything else is.

It's always late if you sleep long enough. Trace the scale of the covers as they decide you. One more outline in a parade of so many.

Colors turn inside out as they try to remember who we were.

It was bright. Like it often is when you pull that curtain back. I thought it would look the same as it did then, but it was so much paler. Two corpses looking at each other with eyes unblinking and crumbling throats. Even if we knew what to say I don't think we'd be able.

It was hard to keep the gravity intact. The closer I get to remembering the lighter I feel. That the ground is letting go again. Like it used to. Slapshots to the face. Naked goaltender.

Real estate. That's what he said. And I pondered the notion. Trying to picture him selling anything other than himself. I love him. I always will. Every flaw. And sometimes he knows this more than others.

Because I remind him.

In those little ways.

At least one of us should know what it's like to have a friend.

Real estate. Because this is as real a state as it gets. Buy it. Sell it. But you don't need a license to own it.

This empty lot I confess.

You had me at hello. But goodbye was all you ever left me with.

Real estate.

You took a mortgage out on me, but you never paid it.

Time lurches backward and there I am again. Bargaining with your disinterest for a chance to know you. A laugh. A frown. Anything to show some substance. That inside that ghost still beats the heart of someone who remembers what it was to live.

You sold me so much bullshit. But you never sold me on myself.

I'm unattractive and I'm insecure. I'm weak in all the places a woman should be strong. And strong in all the places one shouldn't be.

I'm no one's love, but I've had some lovers. It's an interesting house of mirrors navigating those feelings.

Don't try to remember, but I always do. The wind out there blows and it rattles the glass in these windows. That's the trouble with windows. Doesn't matter if they're locked. Doesn't matter if they're closed.

You still see everything out there. And it can still look back.

Can't touch it, but you wish you could.

Then we get too close. Looking out from. And all we can see is ourselves.

Or want to.

Bullets wheezing in their chambers as the trigger strokes. The pressure irritating the sores on my finger.

A woman is just a girl who refuses to be broken.

but I let that happen so long ago.

It plays in the light that defines your cheeks. In the silence that couches your speech. The soft slither of necessity as upon its belly it glides. Indifferent to the virtues of feet.

We knew eachother once. In the way that all the lonely know each other.

Curtain the sun and pretend it's night again. Because the darkness is all there is to trust.

All I wanted was to live. It's all I ever tried to do. So much I can. Fix. And control. So much. But not this.

The treble in your heart as the bass insists. It makes me shudder. Vibrates under my skin. Like a tattoo needle without any ink. It pushes the image under my flesh, but no one can see it.

Vivid and tender is the place where. Painful is the outline.

Everything in ink. No changing.

I only feel alive when something's killing me.

Glass house full of stones.

See through them.

Zeroes and Ones. Perfectly arranged. In tandem. Virtual gears spin eachother and we are Given.

Solicit these weaknesses for sympathy. Bartering with the voids we share. Lost little book without a cover. How tender are your pages.

The torpor of numbess proliferates false affection.

Beautiful butterfly without its wings.

Poor worm in the soil. You'd open your eyes if you had some.

I am offline. I am down.

Zeroes and Ones betray.

Loose ligaments clinging to falling limbs. In the shadows they make as they bend you can see where they were once connected.

I've always served something.

And it's the nothing that I serve now.

You always knew this. But I've only just learned.

To discern the parable from the truth.

The words don't change. Only the punctuation.

Semicolon.

This is how you do it. I explained. Step one. Step two.

Noose. Blade. Blood.

It happens for someone else because of you. And your solace is you made it possible. There's money. Steady income, but it's only enough sometimes. When you're so tired that you're unable to process the fact that it could've been yours. Not that you wanted it, but that you gave it away. Half price. Maybe less. That you're too much of a coward to live in the world you've built. So they buy your bridges. Your castles. And you stay in your little house. With its spider ceilings. And wonder how the shadows fall that way. If they really do. Or if it's just your imagination.

So many legs.

Then you forget for a while. Because you facilitate it.

Go back to selling. And drinking. And romanticizing your loneliness. Your words. Your own Dorian Grey. Your words. Your portrait. Withering. Stowed carefully in a high room without stairs. Or windows.

Don't look. You can't see anyway. The paints as it wrinkles. The colors as they fade.

There was always this darkness. We just closed our eyes and pretended we chose it.

I never wanted to be, but sometimes I wonder if I should've tried. Because what am I now. Change in their pockets as they walk.

He said he didn't understand. And I thought to myself maybe you shouldn't.

We know what we need to. And anything more will only hurt.

We teach and sometimes they learn. But who will teach us.

Those so many words I still don't understand.

The envelopes were so thick. But still, two stamps were all they needed.

Elemental bulletins post in earnest. To dormant pages. Dark marquees lounge above as the films roll on inside those walls without a name. No one knows what they're missing. Or what they see.

Driving fast with open windows. The wind is music.

But I don't know why I am going. Since I've always been there.

Tabula Rasa.

The process is simple. First you use it. Then eventually it begins using you. A zipper. A gentle motion is all it takes to clench the teeth together or to open them. A zipper. Too near to skin.

I just wanted to be normal. Regular. But there's no medicine for this. Just ointments we rub into the rash. That promise relief, but only cause it to spread.

Proud canker on succulent lips. Flaunting the bacteria that resides in us all. Revel in its ferocious display. We can't always hide it. So become.

The sore.

We are poisonous and putrid. Moreso below the skin. Those ulcers are always there. Just sometimes they show. Us. The world.

Hidden wounds emerging. Long dormant volcanoes suddenly erupt. And it's not the defect. It's not the ache. It's the exposure we fear. Naked with the lights on in front of every stranger.

Let it show. Sometimes you can't hide it.

Juggling all these diseases that make up who we are. We're bound to drop one sometimes.

Feel it with your tongue. Teach your face that it's there. Don't try to hide it. Become.

The sore.

It was going to be a long drive. This was all I knew. West. Far west. To somewhere in jersey where drunk was the equivalent of a masters in psychology.

It was going to be a long drive. That's all I knew. So I took a xanax before he arrived to pick me up.

We didn't talk on the way. He turned the cd up full volume. I tapped my foot. Bopped my head. Stared at the trees lining Route 70 as they converged to a point on the horizon. No matter how far we drove that point just kept moving away from us.

Perspective. You can't trust it at all. It tells us everything eventually comes together, though it never really does.

By the time the xanax kicked in we were there. One of the there's anyway. And we drove some more. Going nowhere now. Just wandering and laughing. Like we'd always been there. And it hadn't been a long drive at all.

A little while later, we were drinking beers at a woodsy bar. He was talking to some drunk guys while I listened. There was the quiet drunk guy. I liked him. And there was the talkative one. With the old denim jacket on. He kept saying, over and over, I wouldn't take my wife to a place like this. Not here. Not this place. Wouldn't take my wife here.

He turned to me and said I guess I shouldn't have brought you here.

Bur I'm not your wife was my sardonic retort. I don't think he got it. Or if he did, he was stoic about it.

When we left the bar we stopped back at the woods we'd visited prior. The pine barrens. A labyrinth of skinny trees and dirty sand.

I stared at the tops of the pines as we fucked atop the dirty sand. As guilty as we were buzzed. It was then that it felt wrong for the first time.

On the drive home we held hands and I made a pillow for my head upon his shoulder. It was going to be a long drive.

The irony is I was nothing, but nice to him. I wanted to care. Ignoring every instinct that told me not to.

We used to say things will change. So let's try to be ourselves for as long as we can.

Stupid shit like that meant to stave off the onset of reality. But it had always been there. Waiting.

I guess you can't befriend someone unless you're willing to be what they want. And we always tend to want more than any person can hope to be. Especially after we've been so much together. We can take down the bridges, but we can't move the water.

It wasn't what I needed, but I thought I'd give it a try. I think we asked too much. Chipping at that boulder with our tiny axes. We want to be bigger. But sometimes we can't.

I tried to be, but I'm not.

You said I was, but I knew I wasn't.

The reason.

I tried to be.

We were always close enough. If that is any measure of.

She passed the mirror and saw herself and thought I'm not that real. To reflect. Take the colors in that glass and change them to show what I am.

It'd never been easier to live with herself. Never getting out of bed. Making everything happen from under those covers.

See, she said to herself, there can't be any reflection.

Under here. In this darkness.

So what did I see? She asked the night. Who was that person that looks so familiar. So much like I once did, but can't be me.

Just embers the memory said. Just the failing coals on an unkempt fire.

He peered through the music. As if it was a barrier between them. His expression arranging them carefully. Two piles. The sound and the silence.

And she wondered what he saw. Thinking to herself there was nothing at all to see. She looked back at him through the silence and saw herself in his grin. When a stray arm reached out and pulled her down.

And she saw herself for the first time since. As the moment's fist opened to reveal.

Not a reflection. Too real.

Alone again.

Such a stark tableau. Deal the piles. Omit the aces. Cardboard eyes looking up at the hands that arrange them. By sequence and suit. So strict are these definitions we create for our lives.

I turn the corner in my mania to encounter a hallway. With a door at its end. I peel the solitude from the eyes and look at the world again. People. So many people being human.

In their idling cars. As I take out the garbage. In their winter coats. As the wind emphasizes my lack thereof. Leaving the door open as I rush to dispose of the reufse. They swim in it. No sky above. No earth below. Just where they're going and with whom.

So many allegations. So little proof. That life is ours.

The half used tableau waits under my frown as I ponder where to move the next card. By suit. By increment. By some other construct. Of man or god.

Either way. This is a game of solitaire. The only way to win is to empty it.

Cold. In every blood cell. Their faces stare from between the pages. Mirror upon mirror reflecting itself.

The words read backward since.

My splinter. You make the wound swell. The entry point no longer in question. It's the exit that we chase.

My splinter. Caught under the thinnest layers of flesh. Spoiling this infection.

That now it must be cured. When so much I'd hoped to keep it.

Cold as the bed is when into it I crawl. Heavy blankets do nothing to offset the sheet's waterfall.

They splinter. Agitate the wound. One tiny shred of truth tugging against that soft flesh.

Sharp enough to penetrate, but not deep enough to bleed.

Splinters. Under the skin and above it. Everything breaks.

The more it does, the tighter we hold.

Draw it out if you can. Or if not. just leave it there.

Let it fester.

It's not life, but it's the next best thing.

I submit. To everything. Every puzzle I can't solve. Every substance that's more charming than reality. Every piece of someone else's flesh that temporarily filled this hole in me.

I admit. It was easy to give up. No strugggle there. That nothing was ever taken from me. I never possessed. Life. Hope. Happiness.

They're just words. Cruel notions dangled like plastic carrots infront of the hungry.

Submission is not a decision. It's a plea.

The parrot recites the words, but it doesn't understand what it speaks. The hours deal me thse cards, but I place no bets.

Without a life to fall back on all I can ever be is dead. My submissions are received, but not kept.

And I admit, nothing was lost. But I can see it. And I want it. Want to know how it feels to lose something. To have had it.

Into the woods again. With my empty basket.

Looking for the wolf.

Alphabet soup.

Names swim in my head. All the letters scrambling together. In cold broth. On broken spoons.

Dusting the past for fingerprints. Every touch is a crime. Everyone a victim. When we let them change us.

Alphabet soup.

Interchangeable words. Days. Years. Moments.

It's a puzzle not meant to be solved. Random. A collection of useless fragments constantly shifting in their bowl. Straining. Always straining toward the rim.

Deliberately. Fortune walks its three legged dog passed my window. Down my block. Until out of sight at last, it removes the collar.

But somehow, keeps the leash attached.

Alphabet soup. Making words from nonsense. Drowning in the need to.

It's as beautiful as any sunset. Or Armageddon. The end meteing out the means. The cuticles of emotion trimmed.

It's beautiful. Like fathers becoming human. As their children grow. Sails shifting to accommodate the changing wind.

No hour to deem these thoughts expired. It's beautiful. How easy it is to separate ourselves from our lives. Petals wrenched from the stem. Deep reds. And gold purples. Try to be. But the color is not enough.

Give me skin. Give me lips swollen with pale sacrifice. Every time I save myself I die. A poet found in the remnant of her light.

It's beautiful. Because ugly isn't real unless.

Charcoal fingers move with. Soft outlines explore. Justification's obscenities. So gracious are. The lions as we run. Thighs thick with the life they will drink from.

So tell me now. What have you drawn. What picture did you make?

Beautiful. It's what I want to be. And I am. I know. If I'm patient.

Striped ceiling. Light and dark. Headlights and blinds. The window decides. Whether the world out there will stay where it is or come in for a while and visit with me. White and black in careful arrays. Waiting matchsticks. To ignite lilting lanterns from long ago.

At least say goodbye. Like you mean it. That it's hard for you to do.

All caught up in the pucker of your arrogance you forget an audience is required.

Leave me standing there with the siren blaring in my heart and the inferno raging in my mind. That's all I ask.

Leave like you mean it. Leave me in an avalanche.

Don't leave quietly. It's not fair.

At least say goodbye. Even if you don't really mean it.

And I'll let you go. With a bell jar grin and pen that's full.

"I am. I am. I am." It beats so loud sometimes.

By now.

And Then.

Listening. To the sickness as it sings under my skin. I have the cure. Infront of me. So earnest and flourescent. It hums.

I think I prefer this song. That the silence would be too much. I think I prefer the sickness. At least, then, I know what is wrong with me.

Not like before. When there was no explanation.

Listening. Wherever it might go, but never hearing. Curing just enough to recover the power in the infection. Or whatever this is that I do. This halting salvation.

The little girl I can't forget. The woman I've never known.

We give them names, though they had different ones before. We give them new ones to make them ours.

Always picking up strays like a lonely child.

We lie to them when it's required. About why we named them. And how we chose. Because the truth is I did it all for myself.

We want to assign them a new identity. To make them ours. But a name changes nothing.

Always walking while all the cars drive by full of faces puzzling. They move fast, but I get to see where I am and where I'm going.

We give them their names and they give us ours. Exchanging hope through thin veils.

We give them names, but we can't make them keep them.

Set a table for one. One chair. One plate. I like it that way.

There will always be thoughts that go back to. Hungry hounds on a very long leash. Who I am now owed to. Small steps. One at a time.We get there eventually.

Save the ink for the page. Save the words for when I can consider acceptance an option. Only then. Or until my plate is clean.

No numbers on these pages. Just shuffle and see what lands ontop. No colors to those face anymore. Just traces done on onion skin. So blurry. No voices to attach. Just songs that still gather in the shadows of those mountains.

So dark.

To every moment these is a pause before that asks us to choose. But it never waits long enough.

And there we sit at our tables. With our broken plates.

blue-green pauses between
your words. like the whole
ocean has suddenly stopped moving,
and i am lost in a stillness
too profound.

never again to know the
graceful tumble of your voice.

nor to feel its soft lips
caress my ears.

it's only a memory of a
memory now; you took them
from me. those memories of
nothing that i needed
too much.

The orange streetlights. The pale purple sky. They almost make me wish pain could always be this gentle. If it were enough, but it never is.

The orange streetlights that wear suburbia on their hips. Every dark night painted over in the warm glow that denial persists.

The pale, purple sky. Eager with the next blizzard. To fill the grocery stores. To empty the houses. And the schools. To drive us back home again.

The crowded store now empty from. Their hoarding hands still on the cameras.

How much can we want. How much must be have. Until it's enough.

The snow falls. In tiny pieces of the world. One by one. Smothering their lives in what they can't control.

The orange streetlights that paint the black roads so much softer. The pale, purple sk that conjure some primitive trigger.

You think you're helpless now. Because. But you've always been.

Unbutton those obligations to which you subscribe and see how much is exposed.

Loosen that necktie you refer to as truth and see if you can breathe again.

I'd like to say I don't need it to hurt. But time after time that's what I do.

Maybe it's this hard or it might just be my delusion.

No matter what else we have, there's always the truth.

How it kisses like a cold sore. How it fucks like a john.

The trick is to get paid before you let it feel you.

Dutiful in my obession with absolutely nothing.

The pages resort to other methods. I feel lost again.

Nothing lasts. Maybe nothing should.

Melting snow. That the day before crippled cities only harmless water now.

We are just the biproducts of our insecurities.

Flirting with happiness like a stranger in a bar. As if she'd ever go back to our place no matter how drunk we got her.

Nineties Metallica. What an interesting phenomenon. Sometimes the songs grow with us. And we are secure. More often we grow and they remain stunted. Overcompensated artists consumed with an ancient formula that once made them stars. And we are stranded. In the silence that follows them since.

Trying to remember. How to make the words. The film instead of the camera. Developing as they do in utter darkness. Moments snatched away from the passage of time.

Poet. Alcoholic. What's the difference? Friend. Lover. Enemy? I need a better way to define all those ghosts that dance in my attic.

And the folding stairs that lead up to. Like a slow motion death sentence.

This film is black and white, but I need color. This lens is autofocus. Too accurate.

What I need are some blurry images. The kind that let you remember things, not how they were, but how you would've liked them to be.

Are we not photographs. If nothing else. Images burned into pliant pages. Shadows falling in such a way that we can still see those ghosts.

The ladder grabs my wrists. Asking me if I can tell whether it goes down or it goes up. There is its grip all I can say is that it depends upon who's there. What they expect of it.

The ladder runs parallel to each of us. There are no angles sharp enough. Only layers of decision. And the spaces between them where careless feet fall.

I'm not old enough. I'll never be. To lose them. Lock those doors. Drop the key. But it's not too hard to let them do the work for me.

Pull that hood up over your head. There's nothing to hear. And the wind is so atrocious.

Covered in and yet exposed. Don't you see me there under your fingernails. There's still dirt to clean from.

One more night won't prove, but it couldn't hurt.

Your open doorway so abrupt as the idea massaged my throat. I couldn't swallow, but I caught a taste.

Leaving in the darkness. Shaking off your wet paint. You're so pastel and you'll never know it.

I could leave a thousand times and still wouldn't know the color you'd painted.

If alone was a shade. Straddling that rainbow we call life. If why were a hue. Willing to color these outlines.

I lost. I know. It's all I've ever done. I lost. But I didn't lose to you.

That ladder tends to lie about what it needs from us.

And it doesn't give directions well.

You're a tenor at hear though you live in baritone.

Come know me,
as nothing will;
Console me with
empty hands.

Dialogue forgets
us too quickly,
Words taper off
into solitude.

The moments I lack
are yours, shifting
sand in the shadow
of breaking waves;

This poison doesn't
kill me near enough,
I miss, I still miss
how well you did.

The world is grey with millions of white shards that bicker with the wind. The world dances piece by piece down from heaven to earth and then back again. And I can see why it might do that.

Every tiny particle of itself running from the others. Floating on the whisper of what they once were. Falling now, because now there's nothing to hold.

It's just the weather.

The one true God.

Knocking on my door again. With a soft, white fist. Painting the windows grey with its hungry eyes. And everything I see through them.

It's just the weather.

Saving every one of my footprints. As I stumble through up to my knees in it.

Out there or inside myself.

It's still just the weather.

You can't predict it.

Two tone. Or maybe three. As glances are. When we look. Really look, but still cannot see. The word in their stare. The art in their touch. As sharply it fillets the most tender portions.

Four times. Maybe five. It might take forever, but I'll read every word I've written. Eventually.

Because no one else will. And they're mine besides. Mine to keep. If I should give a few away I've still plenty more to keep.

There is no hour the asks for a noun or verb. Sometimes adjectives. We rappel down the slopes of our genius not understanding the breadth of the chances we're give.

As they pass from hand to hand. Eye to cheek. Caught in tears that never fall.

We are what we expect them to be. And when disappointed we turn those shadows inside out looking for their weakness. But it's not there. It's in us. In every word we couldn't say. In every lie we swore was genuine.

I'm not trying to climb the mountain. I'm waiting for when it will climb me.

Where it all comes to a head in a flourish of grief. And you know not that you are alone. You've always known that. When you know irrefutably that you can't be anything else.

It was the hour and I was the minute. The clock chimed and no one heard. So I waited, but they didn't come.

Tomorrow had everything I could want, but it couldn't give it to me.

Sometimes you just need to hear the words. Because you never have and you may never unless.

They don't need to be true. Just there. Something to hold.

Something to keep the nails on your fingers from digging into your palms.

Sometimes all you want is to be lied to, because the truth has always been so selfish.

The things no black skirt can amend. The way the prettier you make yourself appear, the uglier you feel. All those orphans left stranded after you've culled the moments you're willing to remember.

It's always over, but it never is.

There are only so many times you can tell yourself it isn't over because it never began, before you wonder if it even can.

They're just words. Not even sincere, but sometimes that's the most you can expect.

Sometimes you just need to hear the words. And when you finally do, you wish you never had.

Soothing missives in the unicorn of our love.

The mirror pointed out new lines in my forehead and I thought, wow, I really am over thirty. I really do drink too much.

So like any human I did what we always do. I started putting moisturizer on my face. Treating the symptoms instead of the disease.

I thought of McDoofus. How quickly he'd been transformed from young to old. And Scoots. The puff under his eyes that had deceived me. Thinking he was aging when he was really only tired from drinking and fucking too much. Maybe McDoofus was just tired too. I know I am.

I swipe the cold beer bottle across my forehead. To shrink the swell I imagine is there. Especially when I try to write. And am reminded of that sweet cocktail people make when alcohol and saliva are passed between two mouths. All that drug in their kiss intensified.

But the bottle grows warm as I drain the liquid out of its thick skin. And those lines are still there. Burrowing deeper with every sip.

And now I know we grow old because we get tired. But where are we to rest?

Chasing sleep only leaves me exhausted.

Midnight wanes soft and dark. We retreating to our separate towers. Too tall.

No downstairs. Just up. And up.

Sound carried away. Every scream. Every whisper taken. Like animal skins peeled from.

The red still on the blade. The cry still in the air.

Limp bodies convulsing. As reality slowly apprehends.

Maybe I wanted to die. Sure. I did. And it shouldn't even be my responsibility. I didn't give myself life. Why should I have to remove it.

Maybe the hard way just seemed easier then. Slide down the mountain instead of trying to climb it.

Maybe I don't want to die. I just don't want to live. Wrestling every grin from between those menstrual thighs.

Isn't it enough to be born once. How many times must it happen before I can live.

Whatever your age. The thinnest skin is on the hands.

Everything you feel with them so intense.

There are not nearly enough cures for the disease that life is.

We'll never know. Never touch anything but the space between us.

Days falling like raindrops. None caught.

Cupped hands waiting for the sky to offer.

The promise is in the lie. If you can believe it.

Take it.

And be reborn vein by vein. This our blood sweetens. Everything else. This empty skin welcomes the prick of the needle as it delivers sanity again.

It was so easy to see, but I never could. Pale footprints on an empty stage. Pacing with dialogues that should've been ours.

I clutch the pain. Like a child's hand holds the string on a balloon. Holding it near to my chest as it vainly attempts to float away. It could fly. It could. If I only had the strength to let it.

I'm not what I have. But what I remember I used to. When time was lenient. And tomorrow so cavalier.

Washed in lives too true. It always hurts. But nothing more than knowing you've left them behind. Supposing that's what they wanted.

Primping demons in mirrors cracked. They ask, but won't wait for an answer. They tell you it's gone, though you know you never had. They turn every friend into a scarecrow.

Until you're afraid of everyone.

And then one night you drink so much. That you know.

Every shadow is yours.

Not anything you can change.

Gone is my last alibi.

And I contemplate what I'll blame next.

Tilted mountains. Slouching toward. Words that know. Or wait for me. To learn.

Towering matchsticks. Friction gone.

Void the hurt and there's nothing left.

The pillows churned against our skin. Pulling hairs from our heads. Grabbing the scents of our bodies' movemnets.

Like the beach. Like the sand. Invading every hidden place. Leaving only took it with me.

Wherever I go. There they are.

Those hunchbacked mountains slouching toward.

Blotting out the sun as it rises.

I know it's there.

If only I could climb. I know I would see it again.

But always. Instead. I bend down.

To pick up those pieces I have dropped.

I feel like I got really drunk last night. I didn't. But sometimes when you're used to drinking a substantial amount night in and night out if you drink a little less you wake up feeling worse than you would've had you just stuck with the routine. Just like any mental patient not taking their proper dose of medication.

Feels like my glasses are dirty, but they aren't. Vainly I wipe them again and again. Everything still looks the same. Hazy. Distant. The closest things look the farthest away. Or did they always look that way and it's only now that I'm noticing?

I wipe my glasses again with the aid of my red spongebob shirt. "The Many Faces of Spongebob Squarepants". Kinda deep for a cartoon t-shirt. There are nine in all depicted. But countless when you think about it. We're all cartoons sometimes. Wild with ungainly and manic expressions. Because the world can be surprising and vastly unreal.

Everything still looks the same.

Far.

Jon Oliva's singing to me. Yes, directly to me. That's what good music feels like. Music you truly love. If it never feels like that, you're listening to the wrong artists. He says it's all slipping away. And he's absolutely right.

I write because I drink too much and don't want to go to sleep. Exchanging awkward glances with common sense. Going where I do on the off chance that I'll want to be there. There's so little else.

It's a watch on a wrist. Trying to tick. Hurrying toward. It's the way you looked before I let you know how much it meant. Carefree and ready to be. What we wanted.

It's yesterday in its purest sense. The way the world shifts to accommodate listless hearts.

We were drugged. By need and by narcotics. We were so confounded by what we wanted.

There's no one to blame. But I still want.

A reason.

An excuse.

A way to prove all that isn't real now once was.

I shuffled through the files. The text documents and the images. Searchign for things I knew weren't there. Creating discs to remember that old life by. And deleting shadows from this one.

Paper is no longer a savior. My thoughts supplanted. They chase in the shadow of reality. A breath from oblivion.

No more spiral notebooks filled with tiny print. Just typefaces. Neither bold nor italic. Zeroes and ones all that is left of language.

If it's not real anymore how can I ever be again?

If the ink only imagines. And the words just pretend. Burning the images, but losing the discs.

Scribbling in invisible inks. Pages that come and go. Nothing is real. No one is touchable anymore.

I need to turn the page, but there isn't one.

I need to fill the skin, but all the bones are broken.

No more notebooks. Spiral bound. No more pens. Black with. Just pages that don't turn. And all those cahpters before. Filled with.

It questions, but I don't answer. I back out of that parking space without thinking about how I'll get into it again.

How cold is the bottle as you hold it to your forehead. Another iceberg melting quickly in your hands.

As close as it is I still can't see it. The anchor drifting below the surface. To keep this ship where it is.

I want to dream again, but I don't know how. I close my eyes and sleep, but all I do is wake up too late. As thought all my life has happned without me present.

And we are.

Just treasure maps of drunken pirates.

Counting footsteps. Diggeing for.

Dreams no lnonger ours.

Salty fingers. Swollen with the urge to touch something out of reach.

You're a robin. Painted chest always a target. You're a snowman. Empty scarf and hat. Coal eyes on the ground again. Because it's never cold enough.

There's a formula to this chaos. It pricks my thoughts and coaxes me to chart every ascension and subsequent drop. Find thoese clues and assemble some truth from them. If truth could ever be something other than a slave to our regrets.

There's a bed. As empty as it is. Warm. With every wrinkle still left where we made them. I can't sleep in it anymore. Can't even lay there. But I can pull back the blankets and absorb the scent of what happened there.

There's a page. Without words on it. It's what I read when alone betrays. To swallow the nothing and know that it has an end.

And its isn't mine.

So long are these hallways. So far I wander in them. Avoiding every door. There's nothing I seek in any of those rooms. It's the stairs I'm looking for.

Not to go up or down. But to know that I can.

I get a song stuck in my head and it just won't leave. Same with people.

Light a cigarette and it just keeps on burning. It doesn't die until you kill it.

Open a beer. Bound to drink it all. Cuz it's there. Why waste the opportunity to feel a little less yourself than usual. They never come enough.

We thumb through the folders in our memory. Every tab with a label written in ink. As if they could ever be named.

I don't want to be us anymore. We were so much better when we were just you and me.

Every intrusion had a purpose. Every frame a picture.

And the film was always ready to speculate. What photographs we might've taken.

It was just a moment. Stolen into memory. Like every one is.

I want it to be, but it can't be us.

So I waited.

For the variable to stabilize. As we kept those place holders in our hearts. Waiting for numbers to resolve.

So I waited. Because that is what it seemed to ask.

Take me slowly. Don't swallow. Savor the feel and the taste of it. Cold and hopeless crossing your lips. Hot and spicy as it trims your tongue. Smooth and putrid while it slaloms your esophagus. Tomorrow will thank us when we still have some left.

So I waited.

Intent on knowing every possible. As vague as life is, it was so clear then. Every number counting upward ad infinitum. Like a record at its finish. The needle echoing between the beginning and the end of the end.

The sound waiting to return to the music.

So I waited. Until the waiting had become.

Everything now weighing so much less than it once did.

It's dark, but I can see better since. Close your eyes and look. We're not young enough anymore to tell ourselves these lies. So if it's the truth that we must have. Then let it have us. That's its loss. Not mine.

Aren't we. Weren't we always. Just us. As little as that is. As much as it could've been.

Turnstyle hearts. Making change for. Selling tickets so expired. Counting stops.

And I don't know where we are. Or were. Colored chalk. It doesn't fit.

It leaves, but I don't know why. It wanted to. Why I let it. Or couldn't stop it from forgetting what I must remember.

Pictures. Photographs. Shadows stretched into colors. As if black and white is not enough. We burst out of those feeble detentions and demand what we think is ours.

If only.

It tastes like winter, but feels like spring. It's hard to die, but it's even harder to live.

I'd be all right. I really would. If I could just convince myself that is what I want to be.

I wouldn't mind that chalk if it would only behave. Listen when I tell it.

It's so ugly, but it's beautiful to me. Hurt me. That's what I want.

Hurt me.

Because I won't live again unless.

There's a clock tower in the strip mall where my favorite beer store is. It's always stuck on three, just like the song says. When I forget why I go there so much, it reminds me. When I want to pretend time has stopped I just look at it.

I don't think it's broken. Just waiting for something to happen. Like so many people are.

Every time I go there I look at it and whisper to myself, it's 3am, I must be lonely. Just like the songs says. And like the clock, that's where I remain.

Not broken. Just waiting. For something to happen. Another minute to pass. Somewhere else to go where the songs aren't so real.

I don't know whether time will ever kiss my skin again. Or if this is where I'll stay. But every time I go back that clock is still there. Telling me it's 3am. It's not, but it always is.

Not broken. Just trying to change again.

I laid on my back staring up at the idle ceiling fan. Barely blinking. The music was loud and obnoxious. Dissident. To match my mood. The room was dark except for the tv and it cast a dancing shadow monster on the white paint. A giant, five-legged spider hopping as the images on the screen changed.

I was listening to the music. Really listening to it. Letting it fill my head. Push out every other thought. Except the giant, five-legged spider. I couldn't take my eyes off it. Had to keep reminding myself to blink.

The music is the key. It can take me over. Possess me. Like nothing else can. A damp cloth to my mind's cluttered chalkboard.

A lot of people get that feeling from good sex. Or good love. I still think then. There's always room for thinking. Except during moments of orgasm. But they pass so quickly. And come too slow. And love, well, is just a euphemism for codependency. I did that for a while. It didn't suit me.

Nothing suits me. Not myself. Nor anyone else. Certainly not addiction. But still I want all of them. I don't want to let go. Because love might not be as grandiose as we like to believe, but it is quite real. A fiber in every atom of our being. There is no escaping the want. And no choosing what we will love. It always. Always chooses us.

The music opens one lock. But there are so many more five-legged spiders I can't bring myself to upon.