To hold your heart in your hands
To clean the rust from spindles,
To wipe the dust once again
As I excavate gears from sand
I thought I heard your voice
but it was only the wind
Play god,
The sun is setting over crops
I might never find you,
golden as it were
The fields remember me

Only sadness in the wake
The architects rest their case
as I watch the smoke billow from the road
Every moment, every glimpse
enveloped in the soot
Everything I was, now never
Ashes swell like undertow,
Photographs that held their own
Years of storms and floods
Burn with what's left of us

Aptly adorned in newly formed cracks,
The walls find new ways to hide the draft
It's nothing but melted wax
Falls back into the dish
Scratches and scuffs on the hardwood floor
and burns on the table
I know it's an eyesore
Tiny freckles on the wood
draped in white cloth
to hide them from the world

I bury my bones in the yard,
like pictures that you carried in your pockets as a child
All the nights I slept under the car
just to be alone

When I found a strand of hair in the hall
I watched its colors fade,
greying in my hand
I heard a plane depart overhead
but all I saw were trails of white and silhouettes
Torn from the surface of skin, hastily
Leaves the residue coated in debris
Thrown to the curbsides of old trailer parks
Just a memory
but it looks fine to me

That's when I dig down,
Buried under dusty flannel sheets
As heavy as the plaque that coats your teeth
Down,
Foundations that have long since cradled you
You know

Aptly adorned in newly formed cracks,
The walls find new ways to hide the draft
It's nothing but melted wax
I am the wick
Tearing the floor from your hard earned home
I meant it as a token of love
I want you to know the baseboards
long for your touch

Let my bones pollute the soil
Leave my keepsakes in the dirt
Wrap my heart in aluminum foil
Bury me in my favorite shirt

Heard a crow from miles away
Lost its voice in the digital artifacts
I left my penitence in the rain
Now one with the weeds
I guess this is letting go
Burning photos, this was never home

What you left in your wake
forever lies
in piles on the seats of burnt out cars
remembered only by the cold street
Holes you dig
on construction sites and lots
only contribute to the rust that coats the wheels
My dying neighborhood
It's never a gift,
just a somber voice that haunts the faucet's drip
as you get dressed
and wonder where it all went

My town is a living cold sweat
Startled from blissful dreams
My memory leads me back through barren dust
and copses of evergreens
You whisper like water glistening
Ships in the distant sea
My breath's not the only thing that fogs the windows as you leave
My head is a factory
It hums like a dead machine
My memory leads me back through desert plains
broken up by streams
You whisper like water glistening
Ships in the distant sea
My breath's not the only thing that fogs the windows

Left stunned by her gaze
Flowers bend to her gait
Left stunned by her gaze
The shards of glass in my heart
Why don't you stay?
Why don't you cry?
Why are you afraid to see the flames
as they burst into the sky?
If this is a loss,
then loss is my place
I am the flashing shadows on your face
Why don't you stay?
Why don't you cry?
How can you hear the birds sing
without ever asking why?
I am a gas
but I leave a stain
I am the fingerprints burnt into your waist

As if sorrow comes home,
without slamming the door
I left my notebook etched onto the walls for eternity
This is a curse

The shirts are sticking to my back again
The smell of burning wood reminds me of home
As water hits the dust,
sounds like ever-melting snow
And the morning sun
reveals the lack thereof
Forever in the after
and holding my own arms
I tear a wall down every night
It's just a mirror on the other side
Forever in the after
We bask in dying light

In spite of all my instincts,
I follow the glow
My reflection seems much clearer
when watching rivers flow

That was where I found myself cascading
Like feral dogs that exited the womb as roadkill
Just to be a stain on the garments of the engineers
and revel in the specks of sun that graze the landfill

Don't you come crawling back
to etch your name on
what we built from your scraps
our home, get away

That was where I found myself cascading
Like feral dogs that
limp across roads from home to home
Ever-aimless,
I was never owned
My dying breath will serve as the final word

I hold my breath and shed my skin
Ascend, as the architects enter the frame
I feel the breeze above my house
and watch as the ambulance carries me away
For every cent that you have made
a bird drops a grain of sand into your machine

We'll parade your head around the sides of your front lawn,
We'll remember you for everything that you have done,
With a shrine of trash and roses in the parking lot,
You're a bastard and the greatest man I've ever known