The Longer You Stay

The longer you stay

The more I know

That you cannot

Keep being a part of me

Or of my life, or who I am

The more I know that I can breath without you

That I don’t need you to be the excuse

For my fears and my pains, for my lyrics or patterns

The longer you stay

The more I know

That you are not all that’s left of me

That I am a person underneath all of you

That there is more to me than the product

Of your constant gaze

The longer you stay

The more I know

That you have no right, no claim to me

That you are here only by omission

Of the words I need to say

The longer you stay

The more I know

That we never belonged here

In the first place.

Alone on the Pier

Not long ago, you were sitting

On the pier, alone

Drink in hand, eyes downcast

In my mind, I did write

A story for you

Gave you a name, and a place

A reason to be sitting

On the pier, alone

You were sad, perhaps

Only drunk or maybe

Simply on your lunch break

Being average, day to day

And had I been another person

I might have said some feeble words

Or offered up a feeble hand

And maybe, in another place

Or time, there are two of us

Who sit together

Sometimes

On piers

Often drunk or

Maybe being sad

Living shared tears or maybe

Being average on our lunch break

From the restaurant where we both work

And on the weekends, we go walking

Holding hands or telling stories

But in this place, this time

We do not meet

I see you, and I snap a photo

In my mind, perhaps

Of the place we were both sitting

On the pier, ten feet apart

Being sad there, or forlorn

Just feet apart, but not together

Never together

Different stories running

Different lengths preventing

Different loves or friendships

Fame or anguish, loss or promise

How funny it is to know

That both of us will die before

We ever see the other’s face

Once more, if just in this place

In this time

For I suspect that in another

We go walking on the weekends

Holding hands or sharing stories

Becoming a Pianist

Born in December, Lila was warm as a soft wind and safe as a house built without foundation. She loved love, and hated money. She gave promise where needed and withheld little truth. She was perfect and handsome, at least through most eyes, and she knew this.

His birthday forgotten, Charles was angry and reckless. He loved passion and freedom, he hated diversion. He gave nothing when asked and bared his soul, clean when not prompted. He bore a crooked nose and shining teeth, and at least through most eyes, he was indifferent. He came to learn this.

They did not fall in love. Not, indeed love, but instead shared a pain and a mind and a future. They would instead learn to live on opposite sides of one pillar of strength, a forgettable friend named Thomas. Thomas, blind without glasses and a teller of stories, knew both of the lovers (who were not in love) for the strangest of reasons for the longest of times.

Shortly after they were born and licensed to run, Charles and Thomas were placed in the same play-pen so that their mothers could smoke and speak harshly of their husbands. In high school, they skipped class together so that they could smoke and speak harshly of the girlfriends they felt they could not have, and at the worst of times, their mothers. When Charles’s mother died, Thomas went to the funeral and sang “Ave Maria”, slightly flat but still praised. He held Charles’s hand as he lay bleeding when he crashed his car into a stop sign on the corner of a side road in a fit of grief and rode in the ambulance with him to the hospital. He took his shifts at the coffee shop when Charles was too hung-over to pry himself from his bed/depression. He answered to the ex-girlfriends who were mad when Charles couldn’t call and he bailed him out of jail when he ran his car into the fencing there on Highway 109. He was the witness at their wedding.

Thomas met Lila at the symphony. She was dating the pianist and he was searching for “himself” and thought he might find that through music. They sat side by side, she in 405 and he in 406, and didn’t speak till intermission. Their eyes met from time to time and she blushed once or twice, because she was a bit drunk and had had a fight with the pianist. Before the night was over she had slipped him her number on the back of a program. He went home thinking only of her eyes and the way she drummed her fingers on her leg as though she were the pianist instead of his muse. She went home with the pianist, who told her he was going to Vienna to find “himself”, and she though of 406 and told him that she didn’t mind. Thomas called Lila, thinking only of her eyes and hands, and she told him she would meet him for a coffee off of Michael Street at two. At 1:45 that afternoon, Charles crashed his car into the fencing there on Highway 109. Thomas went with him to the hospital, Lila waited there alone. Thomas met up with her later and they decided to hold one another, and acted accordingly but were never entwined.

Lila showed up late at their apartment, drunk and bitter because the pianist was getting married and releasing an LP. Thomas was out, with his mother, who was drunk and bitter all the time because his father had married her twenty-four years earlier and never given her the time of day. Charles was there, and it was not love, but mutual need or pain at first sight. Thomas came home and found them there together, and Lila said, “You don’t mind, do you Tom?” He said he didn’t because it was cleaner, because he had only known her eyes and her hands.

They were married two weeks later. Thomas was the best man, and the witness. He signed a lovely sheet of paper and he made a lovely speech. He sang, “Ave Maria”, this time quite well but never praised. He tied “Just Married” to the back of the car and he watched them ride away. He thought of what would happen if Charles crashed into something on the freeway or if Lila wasn’t beautiful and he though of his mother, drunk and bitter, with his father or without. He sat down in a lawn chair and pictured their futures, pictured him there through the divorce, there for Lila when she needed, there for Charles all of the time. He wept. He thought of becoming a pianist.

You Must Expect Nothing From Me

Because what I want, and what you want

Are two lines which could never, would never correlate

Regardless of the fact of how you want the best

For me, at least through your eyes

Has never been anything to make the hairs

On my arms raise, send chills through my spine

And make me want to

Get up, each morning, keep living, keep running

And has never been that for you, either

So true, be satisfied with wanting nothing

Nothing, of course, but what you can expect from me

Be satisfied with feeling nothing

Except grief and anger, fear and strife

But I cannot, will not, should not

And have never been

Much like you, at all

You must expect nothing from me

I will disappoint you fiercely

Re-adjust

Let’s re-adjust you, shall we?

Blot the freckles, stain the hands

Remember how we do remember

Try harder than you can

Let’s re-affirm you, shall we?

All the reasons to be glad

All the reasons, other’s reasons

All the joys you watched them have

Let’s just simplify it, won’t we?

Blame your skin or burning hair

We’ll leave the contradictions out of this

For we can’t tell they’re there

I’ll simply pacify you, won’t I?

Give you beauty to hide shame

I’ll set painted patents in the sun

Give you someone else to blame

I’ll listen closely, promise

You must know, I understand

I’ve been close there, twice before

Blot the freckles, stain the hands

Sometimes I just feel a bit fucking empty.

It takes a lot of work.                                                      

It’d probably be easier to be happy.                                                       

The things that I like best about myself

Are those that I share with few, if anyone

They are the things I keep close in my own hands

Simple dreams I’d never speak aloud

Perhaps I like to think it is a privilege

To be unknown, to be the force in the distance

With either much to give, or nothing

Depending on what you’re looking for

The things that I like best about myself

Are not the things you see, or the ones I talk about

Are not the borders that confirm a stereotype

Are not the factors which define me, which cause most

Eyes to overlook

They are not precious, are not perfect

Are not yours, are not desired

But they are mine

Perhaps I’m glad

But hell, how lonely

To be a surprise

To be defined not by yourself

But easy eyes and unspoken words

The things that I like most about myself

Might not be real, but hold fast

Through most opinion

Nothing

I leave you with nothing

I keep life tightly bound

Firm, bent under my grasp

For I feel like anything I have

To offer, be it my heart or my words

Could never, would never

Be something to be sought

So I don’t offer

So you don’t remember

So I leave you

With nothing

So Little

I want so little

Just a chance to breath

Maybe, from lungs that

You did not create for me

Just a chance to run at the wind

Maybe, without legs, prone to fracture

Prone to shrivel

Just a chance to chase me, or her

The girl in the mirror

Who hates me

Who I love or could

Just a chance

To know someone else

Or at least myself

The way I have known you

I want so little

You ask so much

All the time

If I could be who you wanted

All the time

God knows, I would

Or, might I try

If we could stop digging

Little holes out of our

Hearts and filling them

With simple pleasures

Idle moments

To fill in the lines

I leave, for I can’t be

Who I wanted

Who you needed

All the time