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ATB - Black Nights

baby, comon


you think i don't
care-
but believe me,
i notice.
the things that falter,
the things that
break-
little things that
render who we are
to who we never have been,
until the occasion rises to test.

pretty girls and their
long black hair.

typical boys with
hungry stares



No Place Like Home

as i child i
walked through valleys of oceans,
moons that never slept;
i crawled through fables of
unexpected dignity.

it was the battlefields of
those so wickedly possessed that
sung to me their silent lamentations;
lullabies i still know
by heart.

i search now through streets of cities that
are not quite yet old enough to know
or care,
for affirmation, for proof,
missing marble pillars and
tin roofs;

things that wander to me
only in dreams now,
from roads still parched with thirst.



Ryan I
12.22.06

Ryan used to smoke inside his car,
white pack of Camels, green lighter,
masses of scratched CD's on a dusty
ash-stained passenger seat,
where i would squeeze in and sit
indian-style and hesitant,
afraid the smell of his disintegrating lungs
won't have left in 2 hours-
but would sit there nonetheless-
studying CD covers and late November sun,
listening to the hatred of young children
filtering through his radio
as cold winter air nip my tongue and
a bubbling uncertainty grow in my stomach.

it was the way he held his cigarettes
with such poise and calamity, with such
conviction
(that he did not need a smoke)
should he ever run out or die young,
that made me loved him
-no, not loved him
with my heart -
but with a lingering questionable certainty
for the way he used to smoke inside his car,
a beat up navy blue Mercury Sable,
always in park.