Empire! Empire! (I Was a Lonely Estate)

There is a picture of Jeff, me, and you Standing on the docks of Long Beach Harbor Like we had discovered it or conquered it on our own As though we were spanish explorers claiming it for the queen My hair was longer then It was right before the Fourth O...

When I was eight or nine I took a trip up north With my brother, my father and my uncle We woke up early and packed bagged lunches And cans of pop into a cooler And drove to a canoe rental in Mesick We split up in two canoes I imagined us as Lewis and C...

I watched your cheeks flush, colored by an air from a calgary cold front Your breath made ghosts spill into the night And gather as if they might not disappear I had heard a rumor you were moving back home! But even if it was true, i did not expect to hear...

Will the same mistakes haunt you like they used to do? Or are you afraid that your body won't let you choose? You are your father's son, and the same disease that holds you held him once! And i know if you push this hard it will still take hold You cannot...

We have been watching you for weeks, getting weaker This time next month you'll be gone How do you say goodbye? How do you spend time waiting for... I should be home with you 

I wrote it down, in case i might forget how tall you make me feel- Like i was towering over trees and buildings (and you made it sound so easy) Then, i would wear your strength like a bright badge pinned to my chest Right there, you made me swear i would n...

I was wrong, you were not bigger than this And long before i was baltimore bound You had changed- your heart was not in it And the fewer words that tied your hands to this, the better Cut all ties off, and retreat to your father’s house! But i think it’...

On a late spring day, when summer began to take shape You lowered your head to bear an uneven compromise How your voice held steel, make sharp by the sound of it aloud! You were drunk on each syllable; you could not even hear what it sang When you were yo...

I remember when you thought you found god Painted a cross on your forehead And wandered around my backyard like a saint Or a shepherd tending to his flock The irony was not lost on me And for all your newfound love You still seemed like a bastard The...

Summer, Linden County Park Half the population beach-bound Children doggedly swim The maybe four-feet deep out the barrier allowed But we haunt just a mile away Tracing the faded white pant from a cross country track meet When we come into an open field...

I became an atheist the Junior year of my spring semester in college My friend from back home moved into our already crowded two-bedroom apartment That now housed four And five when Cathy would move in later that year He was unyielding and used logic Li...

City lights grace the interstates, The way you moved your hands through your hair when you feel alone. Remember the flowers you picked when we crossed over Madison? You were so sure you found yourself that you branded it into an oak - the one you swore...

You had made plans for the colder months ahead And braced yourself for disappointment Michigan winters have such a way of isolating breath from your body But they were such strong traits that your father passed down to you And when they wore you out, they...

He long days piled into weeks before you'd speak, as the storm crawled to meet the shoreline. and it began to rain at once! I tried (i tried, i tried, i tried) to keep the awful things at bay from you But it was on the air and useless I might as well have...

You bobby-pinned your auburn hair back As we crossed over the washington state line in my grandfather's car We were fleeing the scene of a california coast line Where we buried our dreams among the gridlock and concrete Barefoot, we pulled off the road,...

I almost died at twenty-one In January, driving northbound on Abbott Road The car in front of us slammed their brakes down hard And slid off onto the right-hand shoulder We were probably following too close But I honestly can't remember We swerved int...

You carry all your weight- Tightly stretched across your face Like evidence or proof that everything aged you I measured steady breaths (afraid of truth, or of being rebuked) "what horrible things cling to you?" I did not expect to get an answer at all...

Will i ever understand how anything gets done? I tied a knot in my heart for you, thinking that's what you wanted I tried to make my voice sincere (tell everyone how hard it was!) And anyway, i could never reach your ears Like the weight of it's wings were...

My three best friends and I planned a week-long trip For our spring break during our senior year of high school We were untethered and free and grown We left before the sun rose and began the first leg To Virginia Beach for a couple of days Before headi...

All the streets had emptied, spilling forth like a parade, and you Were eighteen and i was eighteen. then, all of east lansing was Littered with collegiate speak and irony that slurred new beginnings With tired speech. now, it serves as a constant reminder...

In fall, the year you grew to be six feet I tempered my fear into haste A worry that dogged our mother She, the baby of three, asked how So many things could take flight at once There are no easy answers, and even thirteen, i Could not think of a sure...

Nurse your wounds, you are no soldier We are not men of faith So that, when we die, the only thing that touches you Will be the worms of earth, turning earth over earth I have not forgiven you I don't think that i will Will you ever know how hard it was...

You threw your hands up in the air That’s when I knew You had made peace with yourself And all of the anger Balled up in tight fists Went slack when the cancer won out This is how my heart broke This is how my heart broke This is how my heart broke T...

All of this time i should have known, but we buried our hopes in our throats And though it spared us from honesty, it could not deny anything else After the air cleared and the anger left our bodies, we slept more soundly We slept more soundly! On denton,...

I was ten years old when my grandparents on my father's side Celebrated the 50th anniversary of their marriage Our family piled into our tan '85 Aerostar (The same one that famously died on the way to my Younger sister's dance recital when the entire driv...

You were a secret kept Far from my heart I know i should have wept But no tears found their way out You were an avalanche A sharp decent with fast words, deliverance (i will not be ashamed, i will move perfectly now) And i, the minuet Kept time by sorr...

Oh no! I thought you'd changed Take back all the things you said I remember thinking this evidence You left was damning enough But you took all the words from my mouth and pulled them out How could I not see you for what you are? But you turned all the w...

Found out how scared you were To ask how i knew everything But not how i ever blamed you I know you were never aware So how could you say "sorry, how could i take and take And never think of you? I'm not sorry i don't care about you." Found out how lit...

Oh, the city burns! Nero would be proud My mouth fills up A eulogy comes out What a waste of breath! Spoke, but nothing else My heart pours out Slow down Put your head in clouds Oh no! (i am alone) 

It flew out your mouth, "you can drive me anywhere- just drive me anywhere but here tonight." The length of your neck is a lonely parapet; you are armed to the teeth and looking for a fight It was in your mother's dress that the temper finally showed signs...

I nearly lost you on our wedding day It was early afternoon And you were leaving from lunch with your best friend When your vehicle careened Into an SUV as it turned out in front of you Violently flinging you into the waiting airbag You were shaken and...

It was fall when we came back From a failed transplant out in Southern California I remember crossing the border to Michigan And feeling my heart almost leap out of my chest I was back home I felt whole again I turned to Cathy, and she was beaming too...

Oh, you had littered your clothes across the floor where we last met Like a trail of things we never said- but what have we ever said? Still, it was 1998, and we had plenty of time to reconcile But i was more concerned with what came next then i was of forg...

Long after the lure of home was lost We were holed up in our room In the guest room of my parent's house That was once my bedroom We had spent so much time waiting And wanting to come home That when we came back, we came without purpose Or it was all sp...

My brother graduated college in spring And we were both living back home In the town we were raised in For the summer One afternoon, we went swimming On the lake across the street With a couple of friends By the house where my roommate my freshman year...

You spoke with a nervous tick that betrayed control I know I counted the times you touched your fingers to your throat Seventeen That night, at Sara Holden's going away party You were as pale as a ghost Ivory white I think it weighed on you that you w...

For the evening classes I took in college during winter I would bundle up in layers Before making the mile or so trek from Holmes Hall To get across campus By the time the classes let out The campus was all but abandoned And I felt like I was walking in...

Will all my twenties find me so guarded? Lettered and documented by meticulous word choice and closed lips To read like: All things bear this- A purpose! or romance! But the truth is much more complicated than that And i am still trying to learn how t...

I knew that you wouldn't change, but i bit my tongue and swore Resigned myself to carry on despite you But you would not match my stride and cried "foul! foul! how could you expect me to care about somebody else?" And after all, who would expect anything e...

The smell of salt hangs in the air Heavy, and pregnant with tears How could i have ever have thought i could call this place home (where a sea of concrete swallows everything) So while you paced the floor of our apartment (a prison for two months still...

On New Year's Eve last December I was out on tour playing a show at the Fire in Philadelphia While you were all alone at home The only body occupying our lonely apartment I watched the TV through the window from outside the bar And counted down the seco...

It was almost like snow Elsie counted the number of flakes Before they came to a rest on the soft summer grass She lost count at fifty-four Her mother lay draped across the lawn Like she hadn't slept in days and days But how could one possibly sleep Whe...

Your hands were broken But you wouldn't cry out As we tore your heart apart Should i thought of you with sadness? Or a small, small, price to pay... But you should have known better Oh, i admit to no wrong! You should have understood I had no choice, n...

After graduating from college I moved back home to my parents' house in Fenton It would be the first of three more separate stints My brother helped get me a part-time job Peddling paint at Sherwin-Williams The idea was to stay for a year and save up...

Though I know it’s not true I still believe that I have the body of my late teens Or early twenties And that my legs could still lead off The four by one team that would have made state If we hadn't dropped the baton during a mangled hand-off Age has a v...

Last night, i dreamt the old, sea foam green paint In the room my brother and i once shared Was swallowing up the walls again (a forest of latex reclaiming acres of land) You were there too! Swimming in your father's army jacket and sprawled across my fl...

In the infancy of our relationship When we were almost exclusively hanging out Together with friends Cathy and I went to St. John's Applefest It was held every fall in the parking lot of the Catholic church I had attended as a youth Converting the quart...

Our apartment was breathing Like each groan was its last will and testament Or as if every single secret it heard was a weight on its chest It just had to get off And the marching band that follows my upstairs neighbor around Is keeping feverish time dur...

I have not done in my five years what you did in yours Your twenty-two versus my twenty-nine I know it does no good comparing lives But I am such a slow, slow learner And at times, not at all Should I stop writing now? I could give me life to better thi...

A borrowed prayer died before it filled your lips Your grandfather was the one who taught you it To speak in troubled times, to carry you to port Now mechanical, it seems so meaningless And what do I think Death is death is death And no amount of prayer...

You settled into uneasy sleep, a subtle hint that things were changing And every breath of labored rest brought new designs of old regrets And how they aged you! How they took your strength away! (when they entered your body and pinned fear to weight) Pu...

My parents offered me one hundred and fifty dollars or a Varsity Jacket To be adorned by my track and band Letters In the form of a big, bright, orange "F" It would have been a keepsake at best Never worn or dressing my tiny high school frame Like a unif...

We slept by the ottoman Autumn rushing to our ears (a symphony of leaves kissing leaves kissing leaves) This time last year, you were a ghost Trapped in your room and spanning the length of your bed to your door Like it was the atlantic What a differen...

The week before summer ended Danny and I were swimming in Runyan Lake It was the beginning of the end of all things And we both felt change coming like The passing of seasons was a banner or a tide Danny was on the verge of dropping out of high school A...

You wore a hand-me-down dress that never fit quite right Your mother's frame did not favor you The summer she passed you were born, and you father lost his job He could not handle it (or you) You wore the saddest smile that never fit quite right Your mo...

Don't say goodnight. Is this your life, or are you Holding on? Dear it's alright to say enough! To let your body break down And they will never know what broke your heart. If only I could say how sorry I felt Don't turn your head- it's hard enough to know...

I spent one week every summer at Camp Tapico For every year I was a Boy Scout The camp felt like an entire separate country Or as if the rest of the world had disappeared And we were the only ones left alive We traveled in packs We rode our bikes every...

Oh sure, you can look for reasons And try to be them, for a while But you know you can't be her answer She was never after truth Will your mother still blame you If she knew all the words that she said Drove you here A half a world away Destroying your...

You always wear neutral colors You are a forest of gray and brown And your bed is always empty Elizabeth was right You keep your guard up higher than a castle wall And your hands are always buried in your pockets I know what happened On the grounds of...