Love is a large incision in the chest

a pounding heart exposed by the scalpel

He sat by patiently

as one by one the hairs

on your chinny chin chin turned gray.

In the quiet game,

you win by not making a sound

Learning your step dad’s path

was no longer climbing stairs,

only falling down them

But blue / can mean sadness

And every day / there is enough of that /

to go around / I have built no immunity /

to that shade of blue

But the hour-glass rapidly winds along

Father time casts shadows too

What do you do

When the old man is you?

It is the knife you’ll hide

hoping they won’t find it,

I’m forty-eight years old when I learn

my high school bully has died

I’ve spent many a night with John Turturro

Well, to be fair, he was using 

a different name at the time

A moment of bliss

A dream I wanted to last

Fuck the alarm clock

My heart’s arsonist arrives,

gasoline on her lips

The thrill of opening night, 

less than thrilling this time

Loneliness is a persistent muse

who creeps unexpectedly, unwanted,

awkwardly into my thoughts,

on her terms, in her time

Their walls of sadness surround them, engulf them

An isolation of suffering that threatens to suffocate them

They wanted me to stay inside their box,

to color inside their lines

I didn't yet know hope could just explode,

without a warning sign

You sit neglected,
like the last kid to be picked at recess

My heart, despite the warnings,

carelessly leaping

Look at us dancing with gleeful abandon

as the tape of your childhood plays