she was wide-eyed and wild haired
danced on paint splattered floors
loved dusty old books
sang to untuned guitars until the neightbors complained
she was poetic
drank red wine and whiskey from coffee mugs
smoked camel no 9s
played an old shitty flute
she laughed
and she didnt give a fuck

she wonders,
swollen-eyed and straight-haired,
passionately
when she'll return

Flashes of street lights
Crash
Shattered glass
Beats heart beats heart beats
Blood flows
Underneath skin
Unseen

Black and blues
Punctured wounds
Rashes and scabs

I want to shed it all off
I want new skin

Pink and delicate
Soft and pure

Like an infant

First Picture (of a man that lives on)

A man of purest soul died
Left his body weeks before we found it
Alone in his apartment

I live with four people
But don't really
I live and they live
We don't live together

Chad and I lived together
in that small-ish orange North Beach apartment,
around the corner from the Hungry I
and across from the Beat Museum
The window to our living room faced Romolo alley and was broken
We propped it open with a wooden arrow that read "chill igloo 200ft" painted in purple
We'd sit and prop the window and smoke butts out it, looking up and down the alley
Hollering at passer-bys
smiling and laughing
We'd order Chinese, the delivery boy would pass it through that window
I've climbed through it countless times when I'd forget my keys

I moved out
The neighborhood got to me
the noise in the streets
The cat calls
The garbage truck at 4am
The street light always shining in...

I didn't want to leave him there
It was one of the hardest decisions I've ever made
Consuming all my thought
To leave or not
To leave my friend and our home
We made that rundown hole shine!
We lived together.
It was ours...

...and I thought, for years to come I'd be able to visit.
drop in whenever
knock on the window
hear papa bear snoring through the thin walls...
I still have keys.

There's caution tape there now,
and my friend is gone.
And there are things of mine still in that apartment
and my friend is gone
and they won't let me in
and my friend is gone
and I can't stop crying
and my friend is gone
and the windows still broken
and my friend is gone
and I miss him

We hid from the rain.
We propped open the window.
We lived together.

Something was breaking 
Changing
I move in and out
to avoid time
That album has a color
I can see it if I listen
The light in the room 
Unfurnished
boxes still
with things in them
Just the bed, you and I
in that light
and something was broken.

All that stuff
It goes out there
Into the eveything anyway
All those words kept between us
Slip through cracks
are overheard
And kissed goodnight
with loose lips. 

Sky turns pink
early evening
As the raw wind blows the curtains in my room.
old photographs of spring time
Fall off the shelf
And I grab hold
As birds from distant skies
Fly
Toward my window.

Untitled

The nights have been clear

and I’m sitting on my back porch

burning another cigarette

watching stars give off

just enough heat through the smoke.

And some great creator

is busying itself

with one chore or another

not caring much about

my fear of death,

my troubles with women,

or how much I have saved

for when my son goes to College.

And I’m not thinking much about

that creatures chores,

or it’s creations; or it’s dreams.

Because the stars are out, right now.

I got my woman right here,

and all the beauty is free.

Fuck You, Dylan Thomas.

And death shall have no dominion.

A poem stuck in my head for a month.

A fear that’s been wrapping itself

warmly around my bones.

The realization of my own mortality

making the veins in my neck

thump ... thump ... thump

pumping blood into my brain

like a fire-hose,

making me think about it,

making me visualize it,

keeping me up at night.

Death shall have no dominion

when I close my eyes

and I see yours,

singing me to sleep,

lulling me into darkness

where I find bliss, where

Death shall have no dominion.