it's after 2 am...well, almost

try to pen verse.

then prose.

and then backspace

on the digital spaces

that thoughts

poetry

dreams

all the noise

that this life 

is, will be -

have come to 

become

numbly

but blaring

voices of truth

try dispensing

what they think

is life-altering

advice, or maybe

it's just nostalgia.

maybe

the five-lettered name

that I call myself

has now come 

to stand on

the outside.

maybe his fingers

can trace

fogged bathroom mirrors

or windshields

without remembering

the bends of those syllables.

come on.

it's just a couple of them

anyway.

and here you are -

beating yourself

with your demons

and cheap liquor

at least sit

with seasoned wine

and have a glass

seated across

the devil.

it's only done.

I hunt around

for inspiration

in words that 

are being penned

every now and then

across the Atlantic.

speaking of the Atlantic

do you ever think 

of stories

that could have been?

of hands that

were too close

and then too far away

all at once.

cry freedom

cry freedom

he would say

with the corner 

of his lips

and his fingertips

when silences around

you both

would strain to engulf 

the otherwise merry songs

bursting forth in your

hearts.

oh how I long

to tell those crooked

eyebrows

that I miss the stupid gaze

underneath

and the way those eyes

would crinkle

everytime I made them

laugh.

one two three million

maybe we're all

on our own journey.

maybe my street is

never going to be yours

and my fruit vendor

who fancies 

people call him

"Two Brothers"

will never make you chuckle.

or maybe there is

a grand plan

or a cosmos

that we're all a part of.

who's to say - 

our stories are our own.

are we canvas.

or the brush?

I'd like to think

of myself 

as both. 

the painter and

the paintee.

however - what if 

I was intent on painting

your hairline

onto my story.

the tense seems

to have changed

and I will have to evoke

whirlwinds

to really know.