while you're elsewhere

I cross the street
my clothes saying all kinds of things

only chewing hot gum 
from the ground

I'm getting nine sunburns 
in exactly 2 days

crying in my sleep about you
lost and found and lost without you

lost lost lost dreaming
without without without you

crowning the head of a new-found bed
my mind 2000 miles away

on a website I can't name
in words I just can't say

receiving half-baked 
barely feigned communiques

I sure hope your brownies 
all taste really great

cooled by zoned out intuition
distance and a lack of faith

warmed over by the universal 
radiance of blacktop

shooting baskets

pretending to be young

trying to look like I'm not trying 

crushed hands dying

outside in the unrelenting light

the heat the sun

flushed and gleaming dying quietly

smashing down remainder feelings

finding myself alone for the 4 millionth time

filling the grassy blankets, the cracked cement,

the invisible bedrooms, the mismatched plastic chairs

with tiny Xs in the air

coughing alone, fresh sage smudging

hungrily awaiting a BBQ that will never come

no feeling in my future 

numbly unsupported perhaps undone

seconds after peeling 

another sad corner

I watch a scrawny kid 

handing rocks thru a fence

holding my phone 

like the hand of a child

my shoes tell lies about me

dirty and unresponsive

scattering like moths 

on the arms of strangers

marveling at all the form-fitting irony

the youthful sense of danger

always on time for fashion 

none for revision or tradition

to hear what you are doing

your own repetitions

to hear what can be heard

while feeling so hollow

tiny Xs in our eyes

we parted like greasy hair

all the soil turned over
but our fields left fallow