It was all we knew or wanted to know,

Bouncing on beds,

Singing along, to hardly known songs,

Whatever lyrics jump in our heads.

We loved with our all our guts

Not the skin on top

Our laughter shared was love declared,

And our promise not to stop.

When simplicity of soul and

Innocent intentions

Spawns love, it’s made of

Stuff beyond adult conventions-

Breathless and helpless,

Ageless and selfless.

All night home

and the sorrow sat in my chest.

It didn’t force my feet to run;

I found in sadness some rest,

And you were there.

You were sad,

and you never should be.

There was some distance

Woven into our sudden proximity,

But it didn’t make us.

All these miles

are wasted hours of waiting,

to be other than I am,

to overcome the berating

that gave me flight.

The storm in me

keeps me off the coast,

and it isn’t the winds of memory

that keep me engrossed,

or pull me back

But the shoreline view-

All the smiles, the embraces,

the new wrinkles forming

around familiar old faces

I am missing every day.

I set my jaw, my resolve,

No more poetry

Nonsense.

I sent a clot downstream,

To dam the torrent of words

Raging.

But the headaches come one by one,

Linguistic lobes fed by throbbing vessels

All the words composed,

All waiting…

All left undone.

These are the days of ease,

The days of the Sugar Maple

And the Butternut trees,

The Walnut and the Hickory.

My young saplings grow as these,

Little roots, little branches, little bark,

Until they’ve grown, and put off leaves,

And leave me breathless in the breeze.

Should I never get to see,

Another limb stretch to the sky,

These days are hidden treasuries,

Of maples and of memories.

I spoke a mantra

Wrote it down,

I thought I had expelled you.

The hiccups paused,

I believed were done,

Until another gasp inhaled you.

How can this be

For any good?

I must find and burn your altar.

How have ancient

Dreams withstood

These years they do not alter.

Why won’t they falter

Like I do?

All these dreams

They still persist

Even after my crude exorcism.

It’s so unseemly

They exist

Somewhere in reflex or optimism,

Behind my reams,

My pen, my wrist,

My highest tenacity or masochism.

Working it out again,

These kinks, these sins,

These ancient flaws.

These lulls in growth

Frustrate hope, I loathe

Aimless introspection.

Some new sunrise

Break new, break now, surprise

My darkened thoughts

With light for the day

Sight, the right way

To face the morning

Because I’ve forgotten it,

yet again…

I had a dream.

I was you. You were me.

In the mirror of ourselves

I saw my particular cruelty.

I am ebb. You are flow.

Two motions of the sea

Both interacting, avoiding,

Responding to different gravities.

I saw myself in your eyes;

Your heart beat in my chest cavity.

You were faithful when I was not,

Stable when I despaired the misery,

When I wallowed in the mire of myself

You tried to shake me, make me see.

After all these years, these miles,

These little love notes, all our dreams,

I still see what I could not be for you.

I shoulder that blame entirely.

Maybe the greatest gift I never gave

Saying goodbye gracefully,

Acknowledge, relinquish, perhaps forget-

Let time slowly consume what morsels I carry.

Follow the propulsion of our brief collision,

Embrace the distance, the imposed anonymity.

A goodbye to you is murder to me,

Smothering the last hope of who I could be.

Did I run away, or stay until I could forge

Someone better, someone valued more appropriately;

To stand side by side, not at odds.

One you could love fully, without pity,

Remorse, or frustration- not with lips,

Appetites, or eyes closed tightly,

But thought, heart, faith- My mistake

Has always been in my desires, shamefully,

And I have my mistakes, my expired hopes,

My dreams of us, and always childhood memories.

I have the knowledge I was cruel to remember,

Cruel to hold on, but kind enough to leave-

Leaving you to simpler loves, simpler times,

A simpler existence than any I could weave.

Simplicity brings deeper joys, uncluttered moments,

Unexamined, uninterrupted peace.

I was always the mess, always the liar,

Until the night I spoke truthfully.

Then a runaway, an ingrate,

A coward in the face of victory;

Victory incomplete. I find solace

In my unilateral obsessing.

Had you cared, had you stayed awake

One long night thinking of me,

How could I speak a word to you?

How could I bear to speak affectionately?

I’ve lived these long hours in your shadow,

Lived beneath you all these years between.

You, an anchored vessel of honor, and I

Adrift in the humiliation of tragedy.

You, a gem in your long lineage.

I, a vagabond with a past, but no history.

You, the prided son who stays.

I, the beggar orphan who flees.

With empty hands to offer you

Stains to mar your beauty-

It was right to leave, right you love

Never me.