what doesn't kill me

piles up on my

shoulders

pound by pound

beating down onto my

skin

the weight of all

the horrors I've witnessed

erodes away at my

back

turning my

skin

into dust and dirt

flakes of emotions

brushing away

with each gust of wind

what doesn't kill me

turns my

spine and bones

into wood

an infestation

of termites

crawling throughout

the crevices of my

ribcage

assisting in the

deterioration

of my

hope

You fall apart and crumble

Scattered ashes in the wind

No amount of twine will bind you

There is no substance left to mend

You tried so hard to be perfect

But cracked with their every word

No amount of glue will fix you

Nothing but prism dust letting no light back in

Riding through

Sacramento

toward the old part

of downtown

through the marina

just over the tracks

the homeless fish for

fuck knows what

kind of sewer-raised fish

in that water

my buddy is on his

beach cruiser and

I glance back

at him

while we pass along the water

old tents scattered

lives scattered

from meth

or methods against

law or society or

another person

or maybe the one who

is trying to make eye contact

with me is just an old fashioned

junkie dead to his dreams

and alive to his fear

I keep pedaling

and remember the good

things

the warm, salt water

of Puget Sound

the taste of good

wine and the sound

of warm waves

beneath the summer

of home

and above the

circles of whales

of seals surfacing

to bark

of crabs walking

along the sandbar

by the jetty

while my hands meet the water

from the dive

with the white

jelly fish safely

around the shore

of Alki, floating between

the city and the West Side

the water fronting

the buildings and

shores and islands

like

a

spectrum almost

mysterious to me

while we ride past the

marina and

into the beauty of

Old Town Sacramento

the city has a pulse

a vibrancy

a mix of every place

in California, when I

really stop to

think about it.

We sit and slam coffee

while I watch the

people

and think about

the shores

of summer

-burning alive after

the rain, the water

awake and stretching

for dusk

the waves rolling

across to meet

our feet

-warm, sun-soaked

and

waiting.

You can see it changing subtly as the seconds tick slowly past.

Minute changes hardly noticeable in the sweep of a day, and you know that what you once had is gone forever.

But you still cling to the memory of it in the forlorn hope that there may just be a chance that it comes around again.

And somewhere, in the back of your mind you can hear Carly Simon singing that old song.

I know nothing stays the same, but if you're willing to play the game...

And you realise that life is not that kind, there are no tooth fairies, and that your love is gone.

beneath this barricade of broken bones

behind this shroud of scarred skin

stuffed inside organs

spilling out of arteries

there is a garden of wildflowers

watered by the tears I didn't cry

growing from the depths

of my undiscovered soul

housed by the greenhouse

of my abandoned lungs

there are vines overtaking my spine

I feel the itch of soil behind my eyes

and I know no one will see

the beauty within this skeleton