better watch out or the monsters will get you.

you ever walk into a strange room you're not familiar with, or maybe an old house that's been abandoned for years on some dark country road way out in the middle of nowhere...and swear there's a monster or axe murderer or psychotic rapist waiting behind a door or in the shadows to jump out and get you...i hate that feeling. especially when they do.

biting on nails.

i had the best of intentions.

but the bomb that i strapped to my chest,

destroyed all that i lived for.

i'm struggling to fill in the pieces.

learning that my life before, was all for me.

i don't care about me anymore.

i've learned that the things that i touched, 

burned to ashes.

the way that i thought was so right

was simply absent.

fiction, i tried to avoid.

but wound up penning a story that couldn't end.

it would never end.

28 years of slightly missing is hard to swallow.

i'm just glad that through your tears,

you still let me follow.

it's so hard to watch the things you let yourself love fall to your own hand.

it's so hard to realize you can never turn yourself into your own man.

shape the things to come.

give me back so much that i have lost.

heal the wounds i blamed on everything.

teach me how to take myself from me. 

you're better without me.

i failed the dream and i am sorry.

here's to the new.

the wanderer #2

he traced his steps back to the depths of the trees.  pausing to catch his breath, in his fervent search he had hardly realized the thin mountain air wasn't quenching his lungs.  the landscape was deceiving him now.  it had been so many years ago that he was last up on this mountain.  the small creek was now a brittle backbone, hardly visible through summer's of overgrowth.  he knew where he was though and where he was going.  if he closed his eyes, his surroundings suddenly transformed to a much younger picture and he could feel he was getting close.  suddenly, as if running into a close friend in a foreign country, he spotted the monument on the wooded floor.  pawing and the mound of tumbled over stones, he flung the earth, scratching just below it's surface.  this was all he had had to bury.   an article of her clothing.  not much to remember her by, but having it back in his hands now, he felt he could almost bring her back.  "don't run anymore, don't think anymore, just be here."  stealing himself from time, he brushed off the sweatshirt and put in his pack. he had a lot of walking to do before dusk.

natural gio.

gio paulinatti was a fisherman.

he loved the scene beneath the weeping willow tree

where the bass would jump and the sun would set with fire at dusk.

he dreamed of lovers taking it in and weddings in the grass.

gio paulinatti was a simple man.

he drove slow on the back roads, never missing a hidden inlet

or a forested hutch hiding in the greens.

he welcomed the sounds of the wind and the birds riding it's back.

gio paulinatti went to heaven.

he heard buddah and ghandi trading punchlines.

the ironic roar of laughter about all their misguided days.

he smelled the cigar smoke as he heard a voice ask him what he thought.

he replied he didn't like it.

it was too white. too quiet. this can't be heaven.

there's no weeping willow or jumping bass.

there's no smiling children or coffee in the field.

there's no gentleman passing by on his motorcycle ride.

he said he wanted to go back.

in a plume of smoke, he heard more laughter at the unheard of request.

the voice told him he'd give him more time but not to screw it up.

gio paulinatti is my friend.

i took him driving today and we sat beneath the willow and hunted for hidden glens.

he smiled at children playing and mingled with the fish.

he waved at the man on his motor bike and gave me a toothy grin.

the wanderer #1

he lit a cigarette and took the first slow drag down with thoughtful calculation.  sitting in the back of the over-sized van with peeling green paint, he played his words to her over and over a hundred times in his head. "give me your hand. everything will be fine, but you have to stop fighting." he knew he would never forget those days while he was still breathing, but for some reason it had all played out against them both. she never stopped fighting and he was never brave enough to stop it for her. crushing out the last glowing light of his smoke, he knew that was a long time ago. life was now simply about survival. dreams and desires were faded ghosts, too tired to even haunt his blackened heart. he peeled the ashen gray sweatshirt over his head and for a second, thought he had smelled her on it. closing his eyes to the night, he quickly realized he had forgotten that scent years ago. 

come what may.

glasses vibrate and frequencies, inaudible, rack my brain.

my joints quake and buckle under the pressure of sway.

the concrete summons strength from genetics, trying to hold off the inevitable collapse.

but it won't come.

there will be no collapse.

i have overcome fear and loss.

i have faced the ghosts and burned buildings to ignite the sky.

they ask me, is there peace in that?

i respond and say again, yes, the peace is there.

peace in the frailty of life.

tracks and tiers traversed, squalls and seasons survived.

not knowing is knowing enough for me.

there is grace in the midst of absence, i've seen it.

i've found it.

i know it.

there will be no collapse.