Don’t call this an art project.
This is science, this is progress.
And don’t pretend these are heartfelt words, we are
Children dressed as surgeons but disturbed by the sight of our scars.
And now we carry scalpels to trace the scarring resting somewhere
On the line between my house, your heart and into your home.
Where you lay sleeping like a ceiling fan in winter, 
Gently turning as the wind reaches it’s fingers through the window
Just to hold you, like I held you.
Pressed like a rose between my fingers or like stones
I keep in pockets meant to weigh me underwater.

These scars will fade away but never disappear, my dear.
We’ll raise our fists like lightning to rods to god and
If he strikes us down, 
Then he strikes us down.
But first, let him hear us speak:
We are like the legacy of thunderstorms we watched and swore in doorways, 
“we will never be the same again.”

I can feel you healing and I hate it, 
(Like a harpist without hands you only bang the strings
You used to love to touch so much)
To hear the dissonance drain violently and then dissolve
Like all the songs I sang but never once could make you smile.
My god, I would kill to make you smile.
And reach out to my hands, soft and frail, 
To make good on the love that you swear still exists, and still thrives
Though we’ve buried our bodies in blood (and old lies, 
Like, “I’m fine” and “you look so much better than him”
But don’t trust the surgeon with your heart, 
She’s drunk and sips from poison cups, and
Don’t you trust the scientist, 
He says “life-is-like-a-wineglass” as he spills his drink
Like secrets
All across your dress and says:

“My dear, I must confess, I never thought you ever knew what love was like for real.

I never thought you needed me.”

Stained-glass and the choir sing out that strong and ceaseless chorus here.
So sweet the voices, sweep like leaves into the street.
On Eastern, a celebration carried on for God and hope and refuge
To keep each other, life; give shelter from the storm. And keep warm.
The congregation gathers outside in the parking lot, each service done
They keep the old hymn rolling on and on and
I see the scene in color each day driving out to Eastown,
That old abandoned church and have I gone the same sad way?

Have I gone the same sad way?

Through the sixties flourished and the seventies in flux.
The eighties fluctuate each year unclear of when the money would dry up.
And when the nineties violent crime and rising unemployment rates came by
That parking lot grew dim and thin of sinners and saints
Until the voices, unceasing, slowly faded to black
Until the weeds stormed the concrete from unattended cracks.
It had to know, had to feel that glory never coming back,
Like I could feel it when the passion left, the last of what I had,
It had to know like I knew.
And I can’t find it still.
Might not ever.

Ten years now standing vacant.
Ten years on empty, maybe more.
Once held the faith of hundreds,
Soon one more cell phone store.
For years they gathered here
Inside the building sound and true
To sing their praises to a god that gave them hope
To carry on, to carry through.
So, I’ve been thinking about that,
Sometimes go slow when I drive by,
How a home of stone and a house so holy
Grows so empty over time.
What gave those people purpose
Past death approaching constantly
Now left to crumble slowly,
Now left to wither with the weeds.
Now left to ice and vandals,
The advent candles long since gone,
The old foundation shifting hard,
The concrete overgrown, but
That stained-glass window sits untouched amongst the brickwork worn,
A symbol of the beauty only perfect at that moment we were born.
And just the other day I swear I saw a man there
Pulling weeds out of the concrete, sweeping up and patching cracks,
I saw him lift a rag to wash the years of filth from off those windows.
Made me wonder if there’s anyone like that for you and me and
Anybody else who broke and lost hope.

I’ve been watching a slow thaw come around.
I’ve been waiting in the cold and hazy blue.
I’ve been driving alone out to the edge of town.
I’ve been thinking too much of you.
Last snowfall left splinters and some winters never end; neither wane nor wear.
And sunshine is like lovers and some summers just pretend; only warm the air.
It’s that I’m tired of the feeling here. It’s too near to death, it’s too jobless year-round.
It’s not the weather in the city or the highway moan.
Not the streets or the buildings, neither wooden nor stone.
Every reason to leave this place behind, why I should be alone,
Are made of flesh and bone.

I’ve been thinking of exile.
I’ve been thinking hit the highway and head up North.
I’ve been thinking cross the bridge and don’t turn back.
The only warmth is a warmth alone.
He packed up, took 75 northbound to a brand new life and
Waved goodbye to the world in the rearview mirror. Saw it clearer in hindsight,
The shape of its skyline traced in a flame from the windows ablaze,
The people restless and the streetlights glowing like
Many beacons in the sea or like a lantern lit
For the ones still lost out in the dead of the night.
Like lightning striking darkness once, no thunder, no pain.

Have you ever watched a slow thaw come around?
Have you waited in the cold and hazy blue?
There’s an airport there out near the edge of town.
I’ve been thinking too much of you.
Settled in that still forest like another phantom or another shadow cast by choice.
A noiseless chorus blows through the leaves and trees and brings a peace at last
From a place where the song kept changing just when he was starting to get it.
When he was starting to trust there’d be a day he’d find a way to keep the rust at-bay,
There’d be a day he’d find a hum to help him muffle the past.
Like thunder underwater, he hears it fading and feels no pain at all.

To a Boring, Desperate City,
It’s been weeks since I’ve been around you. Has the fear begun to fade away like sunlight when it sinks into the lake? Are they now building up, or breaking down and boarding up the fronts? Has the whole town been foreclosed now? And what happened to those youthful dreams sunk deep in the river weak? Or got tangled up in weeds or else they’re stumbling drunk on Wealthy Street? Or making plans to leave? I need to leave. I can’t marry this place. I won’t bury the past. I just need a change of scenery. I will hold these old streets sweetly in my head like her. And I will praise their bravery always and again. Let tongues confess the plague of joblessness a temporary illness. Let us wave their flag from there to here then over and again and let us hope for better things though we may not ever get them.
We will rise again from ashes one day. Until then, just roll me away.
I need to leave but swear I will carry you in me until the end.

So, Tuebor, my home!

Your desperate friend,

After sundown, before sleeping, I am the worst of me. I am a mess of these
Old themes and the murmur of half-dreams whisper seductively and
Stage scenes.

It’s fear fiction, these visions, caught somewhere between delusion and prophesy.
What I haven’t done, what I’ve wanted to, and what I fear you have
Becomes reality here.

Bright lights in the young night keep to the beat.
A classic party scene, crowded and interesting.
No love, no life, no history.
Just touch, just chemistry, just
A roaring undercurrent simple and sensory.
Young bodies, warm skin, perfect symmetry and
It’s a moment, harmless. It’s energy.
It’s like medicine,
It’s self-discovery.

See, all the secrets I keep, why are they secrets?

It’s only temporary, that fleeting feeling of warmth,
Just a flash before the line gets blurry,
Between a longing for more than what the body wants now and
What the body wants now more than anything.
Was it integrity that kept my hands to myself or
Just the thought of getting too far ahead of you?
Was it that I got too tired of the consequence?
Or was I just scared?

I only know I never wanted to get left behind.

No pauses, not a second guess.
First a swaying then a stumble then a swagger.
They’re just movements towards feeling. It doesn’t matter
Neither hesitates to carry on a kind of energy,
Sweat and block out everything to
Find every aperture and compel the animal parts.
Fan flames, taste fruit, taste bitter fruit.
Just trying to learn how all the wires in the body work.
Just trying to feel it out, it’s like medicine.
Trap the healing in whatever bed they end up in.

I want to feel it out. I want to know how it works.
I want to know if it was worth it to worry,
About the ghosts I feared would haunt the memory,
About the damage that I’m sure the fear has done to me now.
I want to know what it is in me that won’t follow through
Those nights the instinct takes a hold of me and pushes too.
Maybe it’s only that I’ve never gotten over you.

Or am I still scared?

I see the church steps, a vision. Is there fiction in this one too?
It’s true, I’ve made a tale of it here, still, it’s a little unclear who’s been haunting who.
And time can be such a funny thing, always moving to the future
Glorifying the past and amplifying the pain in frames and glass.
So was our touch half as sacred as I’ve made it seem
Or just another fabrication of a half-dream?
Just those chemicals, the adolescent love.
Just us trying to grasp onto meaning,
Onto a purpose,
Onto a sense that
Something spiritual releases when the feeling hits.

And when the feeling hits.

And in that moment sparks and harps play out
A sweeping melody through fog and fantasy
And in that moment there’s an honesty instinctive and pure but
It departs like it came, rapid and bearing no more
Than fleeting ecstasy of natural harmony.
They fear the notes being played and try to sing along.
Don’t be ashamed, be free to the feeling. Don’t be ashamed, keep feeling.
But find it: a body that makes sense.

I’ve felt it.