bridge between you and a void...

brother mike
i am not wanting the numbers to change tonight
i am not willing to go much further down the line without you

she said tearfully that she believes everyone is better off without you-happier and less shipwrecked
i know no one believes that..

she said you've yet to visit her in a dream
and i feel covetous that you have come to me a number of times in my sleep
we are happy, you are yourself and you're telling me things are ok where you are.

still, when i wake up i know you are not here the way so many people need you to be
and it makes me morose.

as the yearend forces us to move onward
i am hesitant to let go of your memory.
a new year seems too distant from when you were with us.
i am having a hard time letting go of it, you, and the grief that still holds tightly onto my heart.

as much as i want to move forward from the heartache and say goodbye to this year 2011
i need something familiar and close to where you are and where you were..

i trust myself and the good fortune that 2012 will bring
but easing into and out of our last moments together has been arduous at best.

i am forced, with incomplete resolution, to move from the last year of your life
into a new one without you
and it's toilsome brother..
so unyielding...

but when i hear your laughter in my mind
and think of the way you would have wanted it
i am light and i am eager to conquer the challenges
that the new year will afford me.
i am resolute
and beckoning the new tide that awaits to test my skill.

i look forward to carrying on in your memory and bringing your dear child closer to who you were.
i embrace the lessons and wisdom that i've yet to discover in your absence yet with you forever by my side.
i am ready and i am determined, brother.

and as this painful year expires and falls by the wayside
i am carrying you and it, heavy as it may be, within me
and we are moving together, brother
into and over the bridge between you and a void
and we will make our way as happy as we can be
to the unknown...

square spaces and circular promises...

it seems like a million distractions have kept me from here-
the world spinning, the memory fading
things called life.

i tried you-via your mother's work number- but you never got back to me
i've invested time in your reasoning and a thousand things that didn't occur to me
finally occurred to me.

the biggest thing i've come to recognize is that sometimes people hold our former selves hostage
people have a way of reminding us of who we were when we knew them or when they knew us.
and i am surmising, jimmy, that you, old friend and lover, do not want to be reminded of me who reminds me of you
and who you were...

but i have something to say about that
and it is this-
i hold on only to the good things about you and who you were and are to me-
sure, it's been probably a decade or more since we have held one another's words within earshot of the other, but your memory has been good to me.
your poetry,
your steadfast love

i hear you've gotten married
two months ago it seems.
you are making big things of yourself which i hardly doubted you would do.
in your mother's photos you are you- grown up and tall doing the very thing that reminds me of you
and only you.

you are dallying with your ring, that once was a ring we shared, turned now to your wedding ring..

i can understand and rationalize one of the million reasons you have yet to call me up
lingering resentments
idling feelings
disconcerting reminders of who you once were when you were young-

whatever your reason-
know that i'm still waiting
and am looking forward to getting to know who you are now...

conduit of fur..

lovely
she is.

unaware
and unavailable to me she is
long distance is the excuse

she is a recluse
when she falls into this
far away from me.

she's driving with part of me in the backseat of her life-
the thing that drew us together
she somehow gets to take far away.

but as i breathe in
i remind myself and her that our conduit of white fur is between us
as it always has been

and she sleeps better
and i sleep a little more aware
of the absence of the two.

sapho and i dream peacefully
each drunk in our own happiness
of what life used to be
before the rush of love
and the rush of puppy towards us..

there is no perfection better than the present
starry light.

like a broken record i testify my love
to awkward ears that can't
take me in.

i tell my wayward friend that i'm sensitive to the teasing
and she knows she can get me easy-
i'm a sucker for the tease
and she'll get the rise outta me like she wants.
after i unfetter on the floor
spilling my simple self all over for her to mop up
and laugh at.
she tells me she loves me
and likes to see me lose myself every once in a while.

though i'd rather like to keep myself more together in that sort of company
i forget the details of my better judgment as i pour over the ground that is only holding one of us up.

back to you my love,
may you soon come home to me
so that our four points of connection can meet once again..

hold on to yourself...

i have dreams of my dead brother
and though the dreams are there
the memory is sometimes swimming in me
and other times it is harsh

there is an obvious silhouette of him
and though no greeting is extended
he comes in my dreams to tell me a little more of the story
than i was willing to take in before.

often we are at odds
or perhaps we are one in the same
it makes no difference
because once i wake
i again recall that he is lost in me.

my mother and i talk of her hauntings
and how she cannot accept this
and i tell her to just be
with it
in solitude standing
just as he was
in his final moments-
but then again
he is her baby
and i will never understand that
or what it means to have a living in flesh part of you die.

i don't pretend
and i don't try to pacify the anger that she must feel.

we go back and fourth about the details which is a privilege of the living
and we restate the things we've been told and curse at the things we haven't

there was a sudden quake
then silence
and as we unbury ourselves from the rubble
we make slow sense of
the stagger, stumble and trip
of his life.
we learn slowly the walk he danced
gracelessly.

we learn of the tales miserably unfinished
and we try to polish the end-
make it fit the stories that we've been told
of the happy man
that didn't exist at the end of the day in that life.

i hold no grudge to those choices
or those friends
but i wonder
how lost he was
and how lost anyone was who believed the stories he told.

there will forever be a fire
in the solution
and the finding
of him
as he gave up his last breath in the largest of the 5 finger lakes...

how lost could he have been
when he lost himself?

the new proud...

though we have traveled few miles with each other i want you to know what i'm feeling towards you.

this could be my story with so many out there
but this
it is just about you
this is so particular
and so prominent for the likes of you.

a crush
a distant longing
filled with emotion and unanswered questions.

we have both been all over the map
and registered ourselves against the losses we've overcome
and fixed somehow.
and now i find myself thinking about you
and who you are in the next new challenge
and i wonder how far we have come in life even to be friends.

i never told you how much i processed our latest conversation-
i somehow moved from it and didn't recognize the impact.
but now as i look at things from a different light
i bow to this and to you and i realize the difference things have made.
i have taken the tears and looked to see that i'm all right
and i've grown
and i've lost sight of you
mostly because i realize you are unavailable to me
and what i would find in your wake.

i stand and i wake
to the reality that though you have brought a new realization to me
you cannot decifer more than you represent.

you are merely a messenger
and i can accept that.

i can see you for what you are and what you are not.
and though love is not a word between us

i can love you for what you have shown me...

fleeting..

long conversation
we covered things for the most part-
we talked about all the places that women's spirits can haunt us.

the past is never very far when you're living inside a memory that won't let go.
loyalty finds crevasses in the tiniest of spots.

sometimes the best side to take is neither
and in that place you may have to argue the most to be heard.

sitting here now i can smell her shampoo on my skin
a long embrace leaves evidence every time and in the moment i'm happy for the reminder.

sitting here now i'm not sure who i'm more loyal too
my ideals or my whimsical imagination
she says sometimes you don't want to turn around to see which part of you is looking back.

in your quest to discover which part of you will prevail in love- i have one piece of advice for you-
follow your instincts-
shut out the big, fat world and all of it's judgements
and find yourself in the innermost moment of silence.

take it apart and put it back together.
you seem comfortable in where you are from the outside-
i can't answer for you where the discomfort comes from
or from whom.
i can only tell you the growing pains that you are in the middle of are good for you.

i could lose myself in this muse of you
and go looking for myself in all of your stories
but what it comes down to is this-
everyone has the choice to become the person who they'd like to be
and i think in the end you will end up being just who you are..

the condition of being received...

everything about that book felt lived in
the way it smelled
the way the pages were folded and bent

even her notes
with dates
and names
and scores of the one's who've lost
and the # of times she fooled herself into thinking she won.

it's all there

even the scars
and mistaken people she's been along the way.

she never claimed that she had anyone fooled
she'll tell you she was the only one who didn't see the reality
staring un-tongue tied back at her.

what was the message she got in those bottles?
what was she looking to find
or lose?

just as i come up for air
she's there and she's listening as i make sense of brothers lost.
she lets me break it down and she keeps me afloat
not in the way you'd think
but in the literal way
and in some emotional way as well.

she's helping me lessen the complications that linger around the sibling ties
that keep me in this struggling state
she gets that i'm digging in the dirt to make sense of the things that don't offer up answers willingly
she's got lessons and stories to share
and i like her because her life has been lived in
every last part of her has been broken
and is coming to the light every day that she goes searching for answers.

in her there is wisdom in the words
that spill around her
and as we go back and forth with a nervous excitement
and complete willingness to
share the once unbearable parts of ourselves-
there is redemption
and reconciliation just the same.

sometimes all it takes is a stranger's gentle caress
to break the walls down that have stood proud though mistakenly non- protective.
just between you and me
there is nothing to hide
though we've let our fists and words do the talking.

with her i want to give it all away-
every last secret
that i thought would hold me safely in some concealed oblivion.
i want to let it all go
free.

and as i stand up to leave i realize i was never as heavy as the false pretense

i am lighter
and easier to get

i like that
and feel like our shared words are lived in
because that is exactly what they are.

the two of us
are exactly lived in...