ocean

why did you have to run so far away from me
for so long
why couldn't you just take the time
to call home
I gave you space
I didn't think you'd forget so
easily
and I still dream of walking
by the ocean
salt on our skin
you next to me
time simply ran out
on you
on me 
on us
you haunt my dreams
you steal my breath
you wasted us my love

how can that sky
be split in two
still fall on me
but not on you
in my favorite picture
there you are by the ocean
I wish that it could carry me
to you
that option is no longer open
left with double questions
too much left unspoken
in the lonely night cell
of tainted light
I wonder
why did you have to go
so far away from me

interlude

did all our romance take a leave
or just fall through 
all the cracks in the floor
and what happened to light
did Autumn pull it away
as winter interrupted
declaring her darkness
needed bodies to hold
did love break or just die
because if it did
i need to know
i shouldn't look
for a pulse here anymore

sleepwalkers

we danced for the moon
the bed didn't know
we were naked

we won't tell anyone
our visions
or versions of sadness
they would be 
dramatic and sound 
too sad
and that blue violin's
already broken

forget about the keys
we left in the windows
and metal beds that fell
because no one loved
in them

too busy at the word machine
the piano was calling
saying that California 
has eyes of loneliness

but we are not lost
just sleepwalkers
in a daydream of a 
daydreamer

seems
nothing can wake us

bartender blues

poetry always in his pocket
getting washed in denim
turning blue
love, the language his pen
relates to
bares his soul writing about
loneliness at bars and pretty
girls that can't love
emotional blackmail and bitter
scars
sits in his underwear 
on his backporch smoking
half medicated cigarettes
staining his hands
writing his bartender blues
finding clarity, sanity
beneath shimmering stardust
can't sleep, heart's too full
of stories alive with passion
and pain
with his front row seat to
a million walk away's 
I'm still looking for a flicker
a small light in his eyes
to know if he can see me

unlovables

all the things we claim that will never be ours
places we go leaving more of us than we find
walking through the world with broken hearts
bruised souls
declaring  we're fine
we start to believe that too
happiness feels strange
sleep a waste
drama dictates from blue screens
and drowns the reason we are decaying
beneath the layers of fake pretty color

we broke the timeline
we didn't follow the rules
we were too fast
too unloved
too forgotten to matter
just didn't fit in with
identical predictable mannequins 
that move with wooden hearts
no one crushed us with love
we were opaque 
no one touched us 
we are unlovables

chasers

2 pm in your kitchen looks like a polaroid
you with your ripped t- shirt 
and irish coffee in hand

your prescription for killing time
is reading poetic conversations
from an unknown teenage poet's hands
beneath your peeling wallpaper

evening adjourns and we'll crash 
on your vintage velvet couch
and steep our conversations in our 
agreed upon drink, whiskey
we'll chase the day into darkness
and sip until the moon is a slice 
of orange drowsy in our eyes