it's not my fault, i tried to call.

our lives together, alone

"our lives together, alone"

we are blurs in between moments of neon light.

our drinks sweat alcohol out onto our hands &
we pat each others' shoulders. one of us seduces women
as our mouths swallow more pills in an attempt to find some
semblance of life amongst the mundane lives of fathers,
brothers, children, and wives.

it is easy to mistake the coke for snow, the pills for candy.
they are & we are the children.

we are brothers,
we are brothers,
we are brothers.

one fucks we all fuck
that's the way it's been,
the way it'll always be.

every piece of ass is a different piece of ass but
results in the same kind of metaphysical & carnally
despotic & empirical release.

we are bloodhounds.

we walk between each other, we speak words on top of words just to make sense of every broken thing in our lives. the moment
we realize our lives are not our own, that our lives don't love us, that we are all fucked; fucked in the same way is the moment we stop and melt.

we melt. we melt. we melt.

so i look to the brother on my left & the one on my right & the one in front of me. we depart. days from now, the coffeemaker drips thick black awakeness into a pot in the most simple of manners the most clockwork, the most who the fuck cares because every morning i wake up & don't care don't care don't care. i am dead inside. so are my brothers.

the people i know i watch die as they grow old and i remain in my unending youth, my forty something mind that laughs when an old person falls or when i fuck another man's wife or when i sit in the bath and think of infidelity.

i laugh. we are brothers. we carry the burden of manhood.

why bother concerning ourselves with present adventures when living comes more gracefully from nostalgia, from letters, from polaroids. the humming of the vacuum cleaner bludgeons my skull. it is perverse. i shave and cut my throat.

if i would've pressed deeper and held a knife i would be dead.

i cry in the mirror. nobody hears. everything is silent.
when i am alone, i am alone.

when i am with my brothers we carry each other. i say to myself:
i melt, i melt, i melt, i melt with you.

on fatherhood

"on fatherhood"

have we spoke about death and dying?

the subject speaks the way autumn leaves fall-

cold and inviting. i notice our child

run through our house

and i shudder as autumn cools

around my feet and hands.

my son the fortune teller: he reads my hands

blue eyes locked to my grey, dying

eyes. my heart beats and my oatmeal cools

i look to the window as he traces my palm, "fall" i note,

& shudder. i house

my fear as i turn to my child:

"thomas, my son, my child

my fate isn't marked in the lines of my hands

nor is my worth represented by our house.

i have more to do than be afraid dying."

my hands fall

& there is silence, ice cools

my heart. gaia's third season cools

the earth, before nature creates its fourth child-

December's white terror. after the orange and yellow fall

leaves are collected by my son's hands

as a means to protect what has been so busy dying.

his tiny relics crumble on the floors of our house

thomas craves to house

something deeper than Earth's yearly cools.

he claims that i am dying

i tell him, "my child, my child,

you have read my hands.

but it takes more than breeze to make your father fall."

though how can i tell him when i may fall?

i gave him and my wife a house

that i worked for with my worn, weathered hands

and then my alarm cools,

i remember he is only a child

and i tell myself that dying

does not mean to fall, but to let the soul cool.

i built my house & gave my child

the proper hands & the proper notion of dying.