it’s really nothing

and no one in particular,

just lately I’ve been

agitated, frowning on the inside

and trying not to go where

I know I can’t return

what’s crazy about

Hollywood is

that when you get there

it’s all so normal—

it’s dreadful.

It struck me as odd

walking through

the neighborhood quiet

how Christmas lights

after Christmas

go back to being

just lights, and how

meaningless

a New Year’s resolution is

except to the one who’s boxing away

last years tangled dreams

in an effort to make room for another

string of lights.

when there’s no one left to listen

but the silence of your heart

it’s there you learn the lessons

for later to impart—

It helps to know

you didn’t erase me,

and that these

pictures

of us goofing

were never meant

in vain—

cigarettes on a balcony

when the world was young,

when we were younger

and our love had yet to spoil.

midnight’s hand tells me to love

while morning says to walk alone

my mind’s a scattered bookshelf

and all my authors out of place

there are so many boxes of me

each marked with a failing pen

and all these faces that I read

it’s strange, but somehow I know

that each stranger understands

so when the sun comes out

I know I’m lucky

having a car that starts and

friendships to ignore—

the irony is I think of them so much,

though they’d never know because

my heart’s a Vegas Strip

where something or someone

is always getting in the way,

so when the purple neon calls

and midnight’s hand loosens its grip

I walk breezy until dawn,

in love with love but only

if poison is preferred.

only in the deepest corner of the night

do i see what i’ve become

delicate as a flower that

has dried under the sun

sympathy has left me with a

trembling empty hand

that child i’ve forsaken for this

clamshell of a man

it’s only in the deepest corner

curled up in the night

that i see this distant window flicker

soft with golden light

i know it’s not my time to go but

it’s getting hard to see

beyond the deepest corner where

the night has taken me

what will you do then lie down?

accept this void of fate?

or reach for what’s been flickering

beyond that golden flame