un-edited

Before me, the city
Behind me, the hills of lights
Where most of it took place

Beside me, a plastic well of spring water
And an empty parking lot

Beneath me
A different home
On the same globe
Less friends, more lessons learned
More space, less room
More moments, less time
Less reason to want more.

You mentioned starting a scrap book
This month,
But Ive scrapped too much
And someone scrapped having me around
But if it makes for a pretty picture
Or movie idea, I'll tell you my story
And since you're a great surgical editor
& Unpublished healer

maybe you can re-write my mending.

don't know, can't decide

The stillness of the aftermath
Always astounds me.
How you can hear the air
And smell the moment between breath
I have 18 cupcakes freshly baked
Un-iced
And I can walk away tonight
And wonder if the cats under the cars down the road
Would even turn their heads as I pass.

Maybe I should have done for you what I did for him
Leave when a mood descends and he needs a moment
To breathe
One I'll have to force because he wants me gone
But wants me near

But cant decide.

Maybe I need to make more emotional decisions for those
Who

don’t know what they feel

When I can see it sitting there
Full bodied in the centre of the room
Tilting its eyes at me
Un-entitled.

searchlights

I could walk up to the 50th floor of the downtown
Skyscrapers I'm overlooking, and you’d never know
You’d not see the rain pooling this side of the I5
Or the ashamed cascades cutting my cheeks with the lyrics
Of our hurt playing over.

I could eat meat, for the first time in over thirteen years
And you’d have no clue, nor care
And I could jump from this concrete wall
Too far down to the parking lot below
And you’d be somewhere else
Doing other things but worrying
Other things but bothering to leave an ounce
Of energy and attention for my overinflated
Ego.

I wonder which club is playing tonight
Or whether the searchlights in this LA sky
Are trying to find the reason why this week
Had to play out as it did

why i gained a lot of options,
and lost you.

apnea

You’re in a sleep study clinic tonight
Testing for apnea
You know, those times when you woke you because you
Said you couldn’t breathe
symbolic id say?
My lungs are tighter with the smoke
From our fires
They’ve connected wires to you
And you said its lights out by 11
And you’re wearing the turquoise velor shirt
I brought from England, as company
When I wasn’t there.
I said I still love you, and always will
Even though you kicked me out
Screamed at me because of your pain
Hurt yourself drinking
Neglected us because you needed you
I guess id have done the same if I were you.
And the heart does what it does
Feels what it wants
I try and hold back the ebb
But end up letting it flow.
Its too much pressure to pretend
And risk regretting one day not telling you
That through it all, through the times when you put the light out
Through the moments when you did such a good job at pretending I was meaningless
The many nights you wanted to push and the days you’d be sure to pull
That I cried so much, and it hurt bad
And I wanted to prove to you I could do without anything about you
The mere mention of you, the photo of you, any memory of you
Your old street, the color of your burgundy beat up car
That I thought I saw tonight, but how could it be
Through it all
I love you.
My heart could live without you as I am learning to do
But that doesn’t mean that it wouldn’t miss you
It does, I do
But I don’t know a way yet for us to come together
Without spears or worse
Cold shields that stand so tall
They block the light out
California sun is so big, so proud
They must be vast, our defenses
For such brightness to shroud.

deathwish

please die

if you love me.
go, so I can’t ever see or reach you again.
please hang up your life
so there’s no hope
no chance
no possibility
of rekindling old embers
on dead wood.

please be a disconnected telephone

a forgotten email address password.
please die.
please make it easy to breath
by not existing for me to wonder
to wait, and hope and pace
and yearn, and imagine,
and guess. and expect

and anticipate


please leave there no option
no chance, no hidden clause of our
two chemicals meeting.

..just please don't
erase our reaction.

untied knots

I spelunked into your pit
in the dark
and you winced, hurting you said
from the brightness of my gaze
intrigued by the candle burning bright
and in awe of the electric flashlight
I aimed straight at your chest

you could feel the beam piercing you
you said
you’d lived there many years, undisturbed
by choice; instead
you wanted nothing more than to be left in peace
away from prying eyes and crying lies
- and I grabbed my rope
offered my hand
and climbed back out

and made sure I left, by universal accident
the flashlight
at the foot of your bed
sharing at you
shining on you, by design?
in the hopes you’d wake before the battery snuffed
and follow the ladder up I’d left
dangling there

did the batteries die
or did I not tie the rope
tight enough?