It doesn't matter who loves you.
sometimes the past creates a
terror in your heart that cant be soothed.
no matter the man, the woman
no matter the comfort
especially the comfort
no matter the love they give
and because of the love they give.
There are parts of you so shattered
they cant be glued.
Shards of life so tiny
so sharp
they could shred the clouds
they could make the air bleed.

This couch gives me respite
from feigned intimacy, and fools gold tooth smiles
from tossing and turning all night
in high thread count sheets
the couch is kind
and I am tired.
lonely like a fledgling that fell
staring down the barrel of a whole life lived
just like today.
praying to the gods of night
for some incendiary thing to happen while I sleep.
Someone to change me or kill me.
Someone to hold me like a glass heart or shatter me beyond glue

I have never been afraid of getting old.
though most of my friends are.
I spend many of my nights thinking
of the days to come
when I am alone
unknown
misunderstood
surrounded by the young,
their arrogant kindness
their presumptive pitty.
I think those will be the days when I am
most in my power.
when I know best who I am
and have the glorious memories of
a life lived,
memories of friends, pets, and lovers,
smells, dawns, and cities.
until then, i will be lost within the
hordes of ticking, whirring, cogs
unaware of the gravity of our lives
the importance of our memories.
lumped in with the masses of thirty-somethings
terrified of being old, and alone.
but I have never been afraid of getting old.
I am afraid of spiders.

some mornings im not awake
until my fingers hit the keys
until the music of the morning
drowns out the
confusion in my head

until my feet are sure when

they touch the floor

that the floor will touch them back.

some mornings

I have to find my way back to this world

Through someone else's skin

I have to sit post-coital sipping coffee

Writing words without purpose

without glasses

without lights

In the brown dimmed light of someone else’s bedroom

With someone else’s pen

Then there are nights that become morning

Demons take over my bed

The couch becomes the only

Place I can get warm

While the plants watch over me

In 4am silence

And my fingers hit the keys

Until the dawn fades me into sleep

Warm, safe, soft sleep.

this is a winter of desperate acts of silence
a season of shutting up and taking shit
scrounging like mice for crumbs
and settling for what
is handed out.
always, there is a lion in me stalking
down the next disappointment
ready to wrap her
teeth around the jugular of a shitty paycheck
drain the blood from a lying lover, and leave the carcass
of winter in the brown grass for the hyenas to pick apart
...but i'm told spring will come soon

I think i should
take this warmth in my heart
and roll it into a ball,
keep it tucked away in the pocket of my bathrobe
so when i pace the house late at night alone
ice clinking in my glass
I can hold it,
rub it like a worry stone
like a souvenir
made out of hearts
and it wont get lost or dirty

 We are of a certain generation.

Absent fathers, and manic mothers

Cradled our tiny hearts

During our earliest breaths

but by our 8th, our 3rd, our 5th birthdays

one or both gone 

scattered by wind
or war
torn apart before our eyes
leaving us, adults
tiny immature adults

there is no fault at work here
this is the way of our kind
there is no gaining on it
overcoming our wanderlust
or infidelity
we will never be calm
never taste happiness for more than a few moments
and this isn't
an atrocity
it is life
and we will
live through this like our parents before us
we will have children
we will not have children
we will make money
we will burn all of it
we will worry and be free
and all at the same time
in the same place
as the sun spins circles around us

embrace your missed chances
love them like an absentee father
like a manic mother
like big brown eyes heavy and sad
asking for your approval
and breathe the breaths
of generations before you
as important and insignificant
as you are.
And remember
doom and sadness and
philosophy and love and time and hate
and understanding and abandonment and
fidelity and laws 
and responsibility and shirking responsibilities
were all made up
by someone...one boring
day when they needed to fill some void
that by nature is unfillable

and then, smile the smile
of a human who sees
their own undoing.

and repeat.