sometimes skulls are thick
and sometimes hearts are vacant
and almost always words don't work.
we seem to accept the love
we think we deserve
but we should know better.
maybe it's sad that those are all memories now
but maybe it's not sad
because it must get better,
must it not?
i suppose the mistrust of the future
will make it difficult for one to forget the past
and if you wonder how much love i think you deserve,
well honey,
just count the snowflakes
and count the waves.

that's how you look to me

if the whiskey doesn't kill me
along with those memories of you
than what the fuck would?

the minutes went by on tiptoe with fingers to their lips.

november twenty-second, 1963.

"Oh Jack! What have they done, what have they done."
                                          
                                                                        - Mrs. Kennedy

there's twenty-four parts in a day that divide me from you

don't hide your face in your hands
like your eyes face trenches
there's gotta be a place for us to go
the skeletons of trees are signs
who's mind will mend mine
I guess I was just an antique
cause you sold me for dirt cheap
and I suppose they all know
that dime-a-dozen price of mine
so who would respect me
beyond being just a novelty
I light my smoke
inhale and exhale
and sure as shit i still feel paper frail.

accidental cigarette burns

did you know that it snows in space? just above certain planets at certain times the snow will appear and fall just for a bit and its actually quite a beautiful thought. i marched to school through the those big snowflakes that tumbled and swirled like they were afraid to settle and i wondered why i chose to wear these shoes which now look more like snowmen. when snow like this falls it changes the acoustic properties of the world around you so things sound different especially late at night but you have to stop and listen which you probably haven't done but now i hope you will. my cigarette heats the air and burns my lungs and i should wear another layer but it doesn't matter because it will still be damn cold where my fingers used to meet yours. i search the snow for your footprints like maybe they will resolve thoughts which i do not know how to say. on that subject i am coy and fidget in my gloves which have been chopped fingerless and thus won't reach their full potential, and maybe they wish to or maybe gloves and scarves and toques don't make wishes i don't know but i know i do. and i'm already aware that i will saunter right past the school as those familiar words and thoughts clatter around in my head because sitting in class on a day like today seems like a waste, i'd rather write and eat honey with a spoon and burn accidental cigarette holes in my sweaters. and i hope that tonight when i walk home very late you'll be next to me and we can stop and listen to that snow and we'll keep my bed warm together and we won't miss summer. did you know you can hear snow falling underwater, like millions of tiny pin drops? it's actually quite a beautiful thought.

is this stuff really poetry

"I'm actually really content now."
"What? Fuck off, but you still write poetry."
"That`s called a paradox."

people don't like the winter
but i crave it now
it's hated because it kills all that was perceived beautiful
(like you did)
but i just need
those ten feet deep storms
to blanket everything
as a reminder that it truly is over
and that when some time has passed
there will be buds on the trees
and green grass
and life anew.
my bed seems warmer this way
my dreams seem safer.

aphasia is the loss of ability to speak, or understand speech, my words slip and change as i go to say them. you know how on a page of black squares on white, it looks like there’s gray in the intersecting corners? or if you stare at traffic and light flashes off chrome and it’s all blue spots when you close your eyes? it’s all in the angle of light. i never told you i believe there is a space between your shoulders where your wings used to be, that when i have nightmares i think about that space until my eyes grow heavy. i’ve had such real dreams about you, waking up with the taste of metal in my mouth, hiding pennies worn thin under my fingernails and under my tongue. i never told you that i want to sleep next to you until the mattress grows lumpy and the pillow grows soft and the walls overlap above us, i never told you i want to curl up beside you so that even when you are gone your shape remains in the curve of my spine. did you know that they’ve talked of discontinuing pennies? the cost of making them in proportion to the value of the cent.. it happened long ago that mines were abandoned, filled with water, leeching minerals into the rivers, excavating a mountain for ore is expensive. soft copper cheap. have you seen a penny worn so thin from circulation that its features are indistinct? nothing left but a dirty copper disk. it’s all in the angle of light. i never told you that i have a piece of pencil that broke off in my palm when i was younger and i’m afraid of the day the graphite disappears, that i notice the cracks in the sidewalk and how they stay wet after everything else is dry, that i find beauty in the softness of a bullet hole in solid glass, the way it gets swallowed up. have you ever been anywhere that the sun drops straight behind the horizon or the isle of skye, where the sky mimics the color of the ocean so exactly that there is no horizon there? it’s all in the angle of light. there are days that i want to crash my bike, just to feel the gravel in my hands so i can get the words out right like how the blood hit the air and turned red, all that iron. and i have left splinters just below the skin because it gives my day purpose and i don’t know why scars don’t disappear even though every cell regenerates within seven years. i never told you that i wore the prints off my fingers trying to hold tight to you. - too fast to live

i still can't help but fill my time with those fucking thoughts of you
and i hate every second of it.

and they say we'll be kings and queens
you and me and all of us
so lay here and blend your skin with mine, darling
and we'll pretend that no ones starving
or fighting or dying
no armies that need boys like me
and the leaves and vines have grown thick
over those old statues
monuments of brave men
and romantic poets
will there be statues if us
buried under the overgrowth
for passersby to contemplate and wonder
about who we were
and who they are,
sitting on the grass or that rickety old bench
and just think,
nothing more.
and i didn't travel
or explore or search the world
wage a war or write a masterpiece
because no city or country
or deep blue ocean,
no novel or adventure
could bring me the beauty
that was you.

a girl named Etcetera

I may die, Etcetera,

bravely of course.

My father became hoarse 

talking about how it was a privilege

and if he only could.

Meanwhile my self, Etcetera,

lay quietly in the deep mud,

dreaming, Etcetera,

of your smile 

eyes, knees, 

and of your etcetera.

     -e.e cummings

you've got the blood on your hands, I know it's my own.

november 11th

a young german boy breaks down, while an officer tries to shush him, after allied machine gun fire rips over his head. I know they were the enemy but it is a pretty amazing photograph nonetheless.

canadian troops race across a street under heavy machine gun fire.

taken seconds after an american officer takes a sniper round to the upper torso.

canadian troops head over the top during the first world war, a famous photograph due to the fact the the odds of any of the boys in it surviving are slim to none.