Pigeon & the Missus
I know we'll watch the world forget;
feel every memory of what was ever good
eventually fade
—time passing as they,
and we,
slowly wither.
But however small that makes me feel . . .
to hold still, hands clasped,
and do it together—
with someone to exist in the quiet next to;
someone to navigate this dark white life alongside
—I can't help wanting.
Greens and Whites
White stripes upon green, green stripes upon white
—I'll never be truly certain.
I can be only of the button on the end of each sleeve;
the fit thinning around the wrists.
This far on, I've none more evidence
than the absence of that which was stolen.
And the empty pit;
the cavity from which it was taken.
But however dim even that may grow,
and however quickly the moment arrives at which
my eyewitnesses' recollections have fizzled to questions
—long past then, I'll still have those whites and greens.
19 Years
Calendars turn and daylight saves.
Youth grows up and old.
Each a new reminder that nothing lasts forever.
Yet somehow, an unchanging truth remains;
a two-way street with no end
—that between ones who find each other
at the moment life decides to listen.
And though it grows old too,
as they both have and will,
it never wavers and it never leaves.
For my 19 years,
for her 19, and beyond—
I knew immediately that I'll love her always.
Alparon & Clute
I watched him mow from the stands across the road;
one side to the next, trimming closer each time.
And hours later, it was beautiful again
—mulched and clean, even and soft.
I watched the queen ride by
and heard her name being called as she did.
Hands waved and music played.
Kisses were blown and cameras flashed.
The sun shone pretty brightly on a few while it fell.
And I think about it sometimes.
. . .
I tried to be okay while we walked.
I spoke when, and laughed at what,
I'm pretty sure I should've.
But all I could think about was not wasting the steps.
I've wondered if it hurt my case to have reappeared like I did
—if maybe I should've just let what was
be that,
and then disappeared into her memory.
. . .
Either way, somewhere else now,
strangers' hands sit on strangers' hips
while it shines on them too.
And as it does,
more curses like these are being born
and taking up quarters in the hauntable minds
they'll soon call home.
So now, I think about them too sometimes.
Bases
Back then I had so much to say.
It'd always been her
and that was the only thing I'd ever wanted the chance
to let her undrstand.
So I'd rehearsed everything;
made really sure to use only the best words I knew,
and practiced them all
until the timing of each pause sat perfectly within the mix
—never rushed nor hurried to the next.
But as she stood there in front with her back to my face
while hers shot short glances towards the far-off and falling sun,
my nerve went missing
and my imagination collapsed
—fugitives in the face of the moment I recognized as the one;
the chance I'd always thought I'd needed;
that for which I'd always asked.
And though separated by near-nothing as I watched,
having been pulled in tightly by the years
seasoned with subplots and miscellaneous minor characters
now as gone as each snow became,
I knew that however close I may one day get . . .
it'd never be the closest.
So I just stood there,
letting a film of sand and salt
snuff out the sight of the feet upon which I did so,
while that of her knelt down close to the waters ahead
branded a scar into me more pronounced
than anything she might've said ever could have.
Saying Yes and Staying
As her volume rose, she stepped out on the right,
and with a slam, started up her drive
without ever looking back at me.
I tried to recover, shouting something
I thought she'd want to hear.
But when she turned and said the only thing I didn't,
I told myself it wasn't worth it, reversed,
and started the other way.
. . .
Further away with each spin,
I began comparing during-her to before-her,
and then raced my own tracks back to her street.
. . .
But approaching the door,
I looked up just in time
to see the only light in town still shining,
that through her bedroom window,
quietly go out.
So I just stood there,
in the dark,
left only to imagine her above,
slipping inside to close her eyes on me.
Exit Wounds
All she ever thinks about is love.
And her.
And how she needs it.
And how she can get it.
But maybe she should think about that instead.
Because someday, somebody will do it to her too.
Because that's all any of this is
—a game of collecting scars.
So eventually,
she'll get one to call her own.
And when she does,
she'll understand what it's been like.
And then feel bad about it.
And even become sorry after that
for having been a source of it herself.
But when that happens,
and she starts thinking about him,
she should know that wherever he is,
he isn't thinking about her.
Autopilots
An endless, one-sitting drive
with eyes forward and crashing with concern
over where we're not yet.
Taking shifts, making time;
scrambling from the unspoken failure
in not doing everything more than well.
And pressing on in this way—
taking wherever something is given,
and there being,
wherever something is to give,
someone waiting there for the taking
—none the while seeing that
few memories will remain
of any of the finish lines themselves.
Broken. Restored. Broken.
Taking moments to breathe as the air gets thin
—keeping just far enough above the surface;
arms tired, but pushing; feet beneath,
but without ground upon which to touch rescue.
Because without the bites,
the highs can't be
for the lows won't hurt,
and we'll never find the safety that we do
in the knowledge that oblivions like this
never have an end to begin with.
Using Melodies
I watched a movie from the couch in my apartment.
And in it, I heard the most beautiful song I'd ever listened to.
So I used the internet to learn the name of whose voice I'd heard.
And after I knew it, I watched her sing it again,
from the beginning, in a video that I found on a website.
But before she could finish, I'd already fallen—
taken by the sciences interjecting into my life,
an idea, via a box of pixels.
And it was a nice distraction in that moment.
But in the end, nothing more.
For as I sat and watched her face shift to the shapes of its spirit—hearing the embodiment of everything
I've ever aspired to know
or have
be born of it
—the stream ended, and my eyes fixed
yet again
upon the overcast image of the only one I've ever known
to come as close as she had to capturing it.
Spelt-Out Number
It's hard to say why,
but easy to see that,
we,
though better than the best,
couldn't find comfort in that our own was,
at worst,
still better than the rest.
So when the best of the past
is the worst of the present,
I'll wish well and wave goodbye to those days
and the dreams of theirs which never came true.
It Can’t. It Won’t. It Did.
I thought it couldn't,
so I never worried about it.
And even after I'd learned that it could,
I still never worried—
believing it just wouldn't.
But then it did.
So now I don't know what to believe
—other than
that anything can,
that anything could,
and that the only defense may be to believe wholly in that
with hope that one day
I'll have grown to be pleased by it.
Actual Life
I'd always believed that going back and being there again
would help fill the gaps.
That if I could stand in the same place and see it for myself,
as it is,
then I'd understand where it began
and might feel each of them begin to shrink.
Be it the grass that had crept between our toes,
the temperature of the waters sat upon it,
the scent of the coals, or the creak of the latch
—I'd wanted them to help me forget.
But then I was there.
I stood in the spot and felt for myself
the dried and bowing boards beneath my fingers and feet
—placed my eyes upon the site of the times
and felt their weights' failure in forcing an inelastic past to budge.
And with it, felt the success
of having reinserted myself into the setting
of one of the many moving pictures in my mind
serving only to push its filming further away
while drawing its effects that much closer.
Meeting People in Dreams
I wonder how many nights she'll be there
that I won't remember.
I've heard those that know more about it than I do
say that it could be every night.
So I'll wake up every morning from now
never knowing how close I really got.
Perhaps she'll never be there.
Perhaps we'll never meet again.
I can't even be sure of that which I wish truer.
But in the end, it'll never really matter
as long as here and there and then
remain what they are.
Lonely Corners
I'll ask the same questions then that I do now.
And will likely settle for spending the life in between
running from whatever the answers may be, for fear
of them never amounting to everything I've always wanted.
As if kept warm by the belief that I'll find more
in never learning that she'd been in the cards for me at all
than I will in running such risks as to ask it
and to maybe be shattered by it.
Because at least this way,
the chance can remain that some day,
when the memories show me her face,
her place and mine might be the same.
SodaPopRocks
I lay awake and listen to the hail against the walls some nights.
I think she did that too.
If I listen for too long, I can't help but think about it.
I'll bet she couldn't help it either.
But don't cry.
Don't be sad.
The end of the day is still so long from now.
And even then is just the beginning.
Spending Forever
Perfection, or some kind of it.
Fun, funny—joy'd. Care.
Unconditioned, made more of—
what you were. Then what you weren't.
Needing too, for herself—
on offer, both from and for.
Partnered. Companioned magnetizer.
But a grown ghost also.
Born of leaving early,
a corpse—thin, pretty.
Loved. Missed. Memorializer.
Remembering then . . .
sounds of stares,
the pains of them broken—
Blent now with time's memory too
and shut eyes,
I wonder what it's like
and hope it's nice there.
Between Here and Then
It's when the sun falls that the sky shines brightest now.
The world calls them stars, but I tell myself it's you—
kissing holes in the dome between us
and leaving behind windows through which I can see you waiting.
And while the rains try their best,
delivering drops of you back to me with every spell,
they also bring a new chance to remember the truth
—that one day the sky will let me in too.
And on it,
we'll call ourselves together again—
even if only in my dreams.