all night living rooms

let's give them a ceremony
give them a name
where words can't touch
and hands won't ever claim
attend the burials, the unplugging
of ourselves from too many loveless kinds of love
abandon all we thought we were
and found out we were not
that recognition didn't come easy
bravery from nights spent alone
was sucking every living last breath from us

the greetings of new days are blessings
and we hold them like porcelain glass
we are dreamers living anthems
and we don't get in line with unfocused
viewpoints
we crave the theoretical imaginings
that won't make us invisible

tiring of broken mirrors
and family trees and rooms with history
too heavy, too ominous for our hearts
breathing in beautiful moments that grow wings
of a butterfly and fly away

and then

the line breaks
and we relive all the words
we cant retract
so we converse our nights away
smacking lips with starving ghosts
in all night living rooms
always waking up when we don't want to

asthma

can you hear my memories
oh, maybe I have sealed them
too tight within my skin
and the burden would be too much
the weight of that kind of sting
I won't mean to haunt you
and you shouldn't give that to me
I was born with a broken soul
and that's why I sang the blues
Don't step in my shadow
or try to touch what I decided
I would always keep
There was not enough of me
to love what left me incomplete
Blue fantasy and midnight hours
my night a mystery
I only wish I could blessed you
with the path I placed beneath your feet
I would say to live the hell out of life
the one I would have lived
if I remembered how to breathe


for mama who no longer breathes in this world, but my memories of her do

alone

count the breaths
the steps between the lost things
and what tomorrow brings

I walked away too fast
I broke
you didn't see
my heart was on the outside
losing you was swallowing me

the promise kept
the poets creed lies
littering now and rotting with
broken, golden forgotten things
beneath the oldest tree

I'm learning to walk again
like the man I never got to be
I need a moment to let you see
I wanted the best for you
it wasn't me

on my stage
I played the nights away
and you were sleeping in a safer
way
I was stumbling with a prayer
on my lips
I wish that I'd begged harder
to have a little bit
of everything I missed

all the things I put away
all the words I didn't say
the street, the house, the music box
the pen that loosed my thought to songs

so when you leave
smile through your melancholy
and as you drive by the river
count the blackbirds
on your way home
alone