I have always known when to stand in a room 

memorizing it, 

knowing I have seen it for the last time, knowing this memorization is either a blessing 

Or more likely a curse 

Fluorescent light, flickering 

Blue-ish paint, peeling 

Radiator humming in a way that feels like old summers 

The requiem of this room 

And so she tells me that I’m selfish, 

That I I haven’t given enough 

And I know 

This means that I am not enough 

And no amount of questions or lists or donations now will fix this void that comes from me 

Being not enough 

Disappointment is hard when you know you are the source of it

No amount of tears will change this 

and no amount of truths

No magic number of mornings, as I stand gazing out the window at my world while my coffee pot does its daily duties next to  me 

Mornings when anything seems possible, but tiring, at the same time 

Mornings when I have something I can count on 

That the sun will always rise beyond that same window 

Even after I’m gone 

and no longer rise from this bed 

It will always be my mother I remember 

Standing there 

Though through time and circumstance I’ve taken her place 

At home. 

So many years my Mecca 

Where you go to regain 

Yourself 

And some lost hope 

Some of it 

The last time I will see this room is a Saturday morning 

Otherwise beautiful 

Comfort care from a radiator 

And toothpaste 

And evidence of the life 

Lived here 

A life I am no longer invited to 

This exit is a hard one 

I will miss this place and I will miss these months I had with the hope I had 

Now sickeningly displaced, in cold coffee and procrastination and swollen eyelids at the family picnic

Every now and then remember to breathe. 

Close your eyes and let the crowd carry you along
the haze of heat disorients you,
but you welcome the new feeling
so new it defies description, 
as words to describe it have withered from your vocabulary these last years. 

Excitement, apprehension, a billowing breeze of freedom perhaps. 
I find myself out of habit in recognizing how I feel, let alone attempting to transpose it to paper once again 
after such a long absence from myself 
and this world 
and caring to remember this day. 

It is standing tip-toe on top of a bridge.
Over the clear diamond facade
a pristine ocean, 
opening up your arms wide
The whipping wind creates waves equal in your hair, brings tears to your eyes, and captures your breath. 

You can’t wait to fall.
Not to end it all but to begin what’s next, 
because you know that there is more. 
You know that what lies ahead is better. 
Better than this.

You welcome this and all feelings as they’ve been missed for this long time. 
You wonder where they’ve gone, the feelings unremembered, or some purposefully forgotten
For surely they had to have existed, and are therefore somewhere... 
Some dimension must still hold them, 
perhaps they are not the only things missing. 

I need to find who I was for all that time so that I can continue...

But for now.
For now the horizon is beautiful, 
and driving home through the next sunrise won’t make me cry
for there is freedom just beyond. 

That is what this feeling is...

Whether or not you ever find it, whether or not it is clear to you right away, or you spend years in the back of your mind searching for it, there is always a point, an instance, most often a split second when everything starts to go wrong. A distinct turning point, however inconspicuous, however subtle. It is always there, somewhere, perhaps lurking in the shadows, amid the indecision for a long, long time, or perhaps jumping out of nowhere all at once. It could be as simple as a closing of a door, a shake of the head, a decision to go left instead of right. All the catalyst to a life of wrong. There may be many, many instances throughout the years, creating a spider-webbing map of interlocking mistakes that eventually form a prison around you. And should you allow yourself to think about it long enough and account for too many of these turns, then- it is then that you may come to fear making any kind of decision at all. And it is then that you start to die. It is then that no matter which way you turn, which direction you go, which key- they are all wrong, all the wrong way, and how do you escape from that? You are doomed to a life of dead-ends and confusion and an overshadowing fear…

Emptiness pours back in

Mortality flares from every mirror 

Glares 

Reflections of

A constant reminder 

Of all that’s lost 

And all that will never 

be

     again. 

After this 

Dreams come in 

A rapid succession 

Rain, such a comfort!

Anyone’s tears but your own

Hell, everyone’s 

Everyone’s Hell. 

Digression. Dissolution. Decay. 

Feelings of drought

As the emptiness is drained, 

and the tides don’t return, 

and the sun is clouded for 40 days 

behind the driving home sunrise out 

of reach but never out 

Of mind 

And us, 

            Our 

Fleeting smiles lost in ashes 

Disguises as unending as unwavering 

The only thing immortal 

Here 

Marceline taught me 

She painted in gold 

What I needed to see

Painted by number, the number of regrets 

And how they all connected 

How together, 

they made a beautiful story 

Marceline carved with her paintbrush 

The time, as I had never seen it 

Past mistakes, though not erased 

Blended right in 

To this masterpiece 

Made by Marceline 

She showed me my heart 

With all it’s broken pieces, never healed

Just glued together, at best

Looking closely I find

That light gets through that way 

The breaks and the scars

These are instruments to the beyond 

To the lighted freedom I have searched for all along 

Broken, no. 

Unblind. Unbound. Unshackled. 

Set free from what was 

And better yet 

From how 

IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE

This. 

This is how it was supposed to be 

And now 

Is always right where you are

Always where you end, 

and always where you need to be

Marceline. She is now. 

And in a hundred nows, she’ll be forever

Looking back, she always was 

Pain, looming on the horizon 

Shimmers, shatters, shifts 

What was once chiseling apathy 

Now radiates a Nazareth star, 

Revolving in I told you so fashion

So that now 

When you hold your breath 

It only means a greater exhale

Had it really once meant something different?

Hold on to happiness like minutes

The rat race will run out

But here, will remain

Horizons surround, orbiting about an exhale 

Held for far, far, far 

Too long 

Sunrise exits left, off stage

Replaced quietly by Marceline 

The regret in your rear view mirror

Mortality looms large

She tells me this is good, it’s good to be mortal

For that means you are here

You are now

Forever doesn’t matter anymore. 

My life was a storm the night you were born.

My mind was a tangle of madness and loss, and I never expected you to appear

To appear to me that day a brand new life to replace that which the earth had taken, was it to be any other way

You couldn’t wait for me and I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t ready to hold that tiny tiny human i had made

Born in the storm, surviving the roughest ocean my days had seen

I wasn’t ready to love you

You caught me by surprise, in many ways, and you have never stopped

My little boy blue

I feared you had inherited my sadness

You wept for 30 days and 30 nights, and now I know, that you knew then

More than we

Had we only heeded your warning…

But I remember the first time you smiled.

 And I never will forget how I cried

The happiness I had forgotten existed, you brought that back to me.

I don’t know if I will ever be able to give that back to you

Time has a way of running out sometimes

It’s too late for many things

But you came to us at the perfect moment amidst a night of ashes rose the strongest little boy I know

My little boy blue

Born with a storm in your eyes, a reflection of mistakes I’ve made

you held the calmness that comes before it

As if you knew

As if you knew how much the world needed this soul

Of yours

My little tiny baby that would change the world

That pulled me out of a storm

if only for a moment reminded me of beauty, and second chances

Dreams come in a series that feel like 100 deaths

A masquerade of varying torments

Hard to interpret and harder to ignore

Awakening to someone not quite you, anymore

She screams and screams

And says nothing

It seemed for a moment a long summer
When I realized it must be our only summer
It was the shortest in memory
Praying to a god I didn’t believe in
To keep what I never had
My life was everywhere and nowhere
Summed up in a real Rubbermaid container from 1992
In my mother’s basement
I mourn missing half poems and forgotten words
Feelings on the brink of extinction

I stand on the edge of ruin

and try to imagine the afterlife

my life

after

this.

My mother was beautiful 

Fucked up and forever lost in her own life

With a smile that stopped you 

And told you she’d figured out the world

She just didn’t know what to do with it

But laugh 

I knew one day she’d stop laughing 

That the weight would inevitably be too much 

And that beautiful lie of a smile 

I’ve always known would haunt me forever. 

She’d joke she did it all for the story

I knew 

She wasn’t joking 

And I think her biggest fear was running out 

Of stories, of time, of smiles, of versions, and of quotes 

For I also knew

She thought only of what she’d be then 

Ordinary

It terrified her.