oh what a charming sight.

you've always struck me as someone charming.

eloquent words and your gestures with hands.

i've got plans to tell the whole world

through guitar strings and microphone stands.

you see, i've had this crazy idea

that you and I would grow old in time

this idea's drifted through my head

it's all i've thought of for quite some time

i sit and dream in this lazy taxi

creeping it's way through crowded streets

and there's a ticket in my front coat pocket

to take me east  so we don't have to see...

and you'll be trapped inside this box here

i've taped the windows and nailed the doors

and you'll be trapped for another full year

searching for loose boards in the floors.

"you've gotta let this go now"

a phrase i've heard too many times

cause i've become so damn attached now

i've committed my imperfect crime

and now the wind is screaming

telling me to be divine

to "let this all go, briskly

and then you can have that piece of mind."

but i can see your breath now

drifting away into the darkened sky

littered with carbon, pain, and oxide

twisting up, and resembling mine

our voices clench each other

in a struggle for their rightful place

to reach each others earlobes 

they battle fearless in this empty space.

and i can tell you're freezing.

your nose will always sell you out

you start to say you're fine though,

i know you're drowning and you can't get out.

being blind.

it's back to the trite days that i'm too used to. it's back to the 6 am wake up calls after never ever getting enough sleep. it's back to back to back mind numbing sessions that we all call classes. it's time to return to the hallways, fluorescents, and dead teenagers. it happens too often that i taste a snippet of the succulent outside world but am then told that it's only one sample per customer, sir. it's too common that my wings grow back but are then made to resemble bloody stumps. it's back to the nightmare that's lasted far too long. too soon will my fingertips remember the feel of cold shiny metal, warm freshly copied paper, and the indents on desks that i've made in response to the chronic boredom fed to me 5 days a week for the past 6 or 7 months. hooray. it's back to seeing their faces around every corner. it's back to smiling when i'm everything but happy. don't you recall how you avoided stares in the halls? how i avoid your stares?

can't you remember all the boos you've read? all the pages you've turned and all of the ink made to look like little letters leaping from leaflets? haven't you ever wondered why the world you live in is nothing like the one in all of those books? you've noticed. you've more than noticed, you've strived to stay away from those fairy tales because you know that they can never happen.

i can see that wild hair whipping around your head, thanks to the december air. your fingers attempting to grab hold of it and pull it out of your beautiful blue eyes. i can see that sad face of yours staring at mine from the doorway of your home. your bare toes tap on the aged wooden floor and snap because you are as nervous as i am. i can hear my voice quiver and crack while it escapes from my throat and tells you to not be sorry and not to be afraid. (even while i am both of those.) i can see the dashboard of your car because i stared at it rather than you when we fought. i can still see everything.

a congregation

there was a strange quiet that had surfaced after a moment or two. the slow creeping pitter patter of footsteps emerged from behind locked doors, as fingers wrapped around chipped wooden frames. eyes met each other from across the street as they made their stares down the stairs and over the gutters. they made contact shortly after they had memorized the littered street... or rather, what was left of it. debris had fallen atop the vehicles that lined the asphalt one way and then the other. the metal was so commonplace on any other day. any other day but today... today it seemed so distracting and out of place. so strange to see metal beneath brick and drywall and all of that pink and yellow ventilation. all the people cautiously stole footing toward the cluttered street and the murmuring began. "what was it?", they asked. "was it another terrorist attack?", floated around from head to head. everyone pondered these questions as their attention was taken upward in anticipation to the sky. that beautiful sky... it was dyed a deep deep purple with astronomical streaks of sanguine. they blew up the big picture and were found for what seemed like every inch of the sky. the gaze toward the heavens was given by every onlooker that crowded the already crowded street. it was possibly some sad attempt to stop what was obviously inevitable. a faint whistle groped its way through the atmosphere and felt its way around to the people's ears like a blind man feeling his way down an empty corridor. there was only one way to head, it was truly inescapable. 

the high pitched falling floated around their heads and slowly pounded ear drums as if being beaten slowly... lovingly... rhythmically... as ghastly as a funeral procession. 

serenity draped over the eyes of the worried human beings like a warm blanket and extinguished their fears as they realized what they saw. and that was all that they needed.

a stroll to the pharmacy.

i could escape here... couldn't i? i could take some of the things that i own and put them in drawers. wouldn't that make them my drawers? la la la la. it's possible.
truly, i'm not sure what i'm capable of these days. i know i can break a heart, i can tell a lie, and i know that i can screw up big time; although... most anyone could do that if they wanted to.

i can take a stroll around the corner to the pharmacy. i can shove my hands in my pockets pretending that they're cold. but what is it really? am i hiding them because my skin is a picture book of who i used to be?
are these burns a constant reminder of what not to do?

my skin holds secrets in every little crack. every pore expels a piece of my past. the day that my "grandfather" was thrown out to sea. the memory of meeting him a month beforehand for the first time. the feeling of me not being sorry that he was dead. the pit in my stomah watching everyone else cry as i tried to force something to sneak past my iris. i didn't even know the old bastard. the cancer slowly ate him away, but i had nothing and no one to mourn for. not even these hands. not even the cache crawling out of my skin and finding it's way onto the new york streets. not the secrets and memories and love notes that wander around the sewers intimidating alligators.

we dressed in black.
we were more than casual.
his face was reflected on the black urn but the fluorescent bulbs.
no one there knew his real name.

let's get going.

jimmy, you might as well be dead.
he deflated a long, long time ago with that red balloon.

happy birthday jimmy. stop running.