"I've been chasing you around
When I go up, you're down
I'm tired of fooling around
Hope you're life is better now
I already said, "I do"
I liked myself with you
but you think it's worthless for whatever reasons
All of my friends
Hope they don't leave me too
How long will it take
for you
I have been here
and you've done what you want
Call if you want to
hide when you don't
I don't care
All of your dreams
Hope they don't leave you too
And when no one else sees
I see only you

How long will it take?"

- good old war

new morning

please note:
this piece was written in collaboration with a friend of mine, Zachary Lubarski, for a mutual friend of ours and for a lesson learned.

to Cassi...

so we can sleep...

yeah i caught you shaking trees again
she loved to watch me raking leaves, she sang
and with a song just like a chorus
resounding in my ears
"you are alone"

the tallest man, the largest hands

well i woke up one sunday morning
and made that drive out to your house
thirty miles, far and distant
to sit with your family and you at a church
teaching faiths i had no trace of left here
in a town where all of your friends knew my name
and no one else

i got to you and caught you shaking trees
just to bring down all the leaves
you said
"well i knew you loved the fall,
i thought i'd bring it to you sooner."
and no, i had never loved you more.
no i could not ever love you more
but she don't love me anymore

west, west, west
sings the beat in my chest
east, east, east
begs the sound of my sore feet
please darling, burn me into ashes
scatter me into the ocean
but please don't bury my body in the ground
unless it means you're safe and sound
then nothing else, to me, does matter

I wish you'd stop talking or thinking like that darling
I am more resounded, I'm afraid.
I want to forever be the tallest man in your eyes, baby

"Honey, where I come from we call that Psychosis."

When you look out over the Midwestern plains
Try to pretend the moon is irrelevent
or tell yourself and all of your loved ones
that the sun is setting in opposite directions
It's impossible to ignore

Spend the rest of your life praying for your enemies to parish
and sure, eventually you'll get your wish
But that doesn't make it miraculous

With all the sticks that we gathered
We hoped we'd build a home
You're just like everybody else here
Still sleeping pointlessly alone
Keep gathering sticks just to build a fire
and burn down everything you own

We delete; erase
We delete things with good intentions:
to pretend they never happened.
In the end of it, maybe I'll be wrong
but until then we will take what we can get.
With the race now lost,
we'll take what we can get.
When the race is over,
we will take what we can catch
and hold it in our grasp.
Don't you ever let her go. 

With all the sticks that we gathered,
we hoped we'd build a home.
With all the sticks that we gathered,
we hoped we'd build ourselves new homes,
or at the very least,
a tomb.

the bracelet

at some point we were strong
we could have been a net
to spend the nights catching fireflies with
and i got older by the weekends
i felt older every minute
and then at least i was stronger
back then
which admittedly, is much better than
never having happened at all

and you and i like the bracelet on my wrist
that you once tied, on the day that we first met
seven months gone. not wasted, but spent
the day that we first lied together
that day that we both sighed.
the day i made you cry
the day i wanted to die
albeit not far off from every other day.

these days,
anyway

seven months our past
seven months your senior
saturday's have never been the same
i love that month and now that day
you and i like the bracelet, frayed
feeling strained
do i have the guts to cut it off yet?
i am getting closer every day
and then i can finally put away
our story to be read another day

you know
time goes by fast like rain
or like the blistering snow
good luck trying to be someone
you're stuck, trying to slow life down
you're never gonna win keeping on like that
but you keep on, keeping things like this
no you're never gonna win
you aren't ever getting in

"nothing was closed at coney island"
she said if only to comfort me quietly
which i was okay with

I want to build a ship
Out of songs and license plates
and the state where you came from
and sink it an ocean
or an above-ground pool filled with tears

face:face ; hand:throat

her voice was like a gunshot
she sang like a militia charging into war
give me a building to burn down
give me a burned down building to furnish

board up the outside,
close off the inside

auction your weapons
and call it a year
auction your weapons
"kid you've got the fear"

this contact, without context
with friends, come contracts
cut all your losses
and cut off loose ends
cut all your sevens
cut all your tens
cut off the numbers
and calculations

board up the outside,
close off the inside
cut all your losses, cut off loose ends
if you're not listening you're better off dead

"face meets the face, and hand strains the throat
vocal chords sway like the waves on a boat"

hoarders

sweating the skin right off my skeleton
buried in the snow
outside of my show
you signal for a hit
off of my cigarette
you quit long before i met you
and started again after you left too

i can feel my palms start sweating
i can feel my heartbeat slowing

and i'm quite scared
your friends are burning all our bridges
falling asleep in the middle of nowhere
on a couch inside a basement
quiet television

she said
i wake her up
tossing and turning in my sleep
tangled in the sheets
we tangoed with our feet
i told her this before, i think

nobody can ever throw away their shit
spent the day at your cousin's house
hoarders buried in their clutter
we were buried underground together
our gravestone reads
"inseparable lovers"

i want to take you back to the beach

tears and smiles and the middle of nowhere (won't you please come home?)

you're the one, i know
i need you here
oh nothing will ever be quite the same
i need you here,
but oh, i don't want to
feed you my heart
(time is so quick with us)
and i keep coming back for more
you're the one, i know you are
feed you my heart
lay it down at your feet
and i can barely breathe
and i can't even speak

every gun made, every warship launched, every rocket fired; cold and not clothed

she made lemon squares every other week
and she found the Gregorian calendar inaccurate and humbly docile
we had nothing left to lose
much less anything to prove
only that our jackets look just like parachutes

i've become
someone's empty coffee mug
a broken dish that no one has the heart to throw away
because your mother used to drink from it on better days
now left in the back of a cabinet
never to be used again
gathering dust with the memories it holds

yesterday's balloons, tomorrow's parachutes

 you stretched your limbs out the moment you awoke
and drowning myself in my favorite morning smoke,i was on the balcony popping yesterday's balloons
i hoped you'd wake up soon

and in mourning's breakfast's fleeting feeding
you were quietly completing
sudoku puzzles and you were not blinking

and you're so lovely when you're really thinking

the coffee bubbled and filled the air like a toxic ventilation
when we closed our eyes we were on vacation
i am still quite scared when you say you need to talk to me
the toaster popped and your lungs bellowed smog like a factory

i think that our blankets could make perfect parachutes
if we decide to take that jump into the swelling street
and splatter ourselves on the concrete
and know we are not alone