Questioning Youth

When were those nights
of cold beer and even colder bottles,
musty and brown,
filling our yearning youthful stomachs,
sad and planning the mornings
treasure of cardboard pizza,
cheese terribly hard and tomato
spread like a jackson pollock
murder mystery masterpiece
across your kitchen floor,
waking to the worst-greatest pounding
head trauma, throat burning,
internal gymnast hangover,
the room blurred
and a girl in your arms,
or in your bed, someone's bed,
where were those nights when you told us
we'd live forever, and we felt and believed,
truly, truly believed,
Answer me now why the beer tastes stale
and bitter, why the creases grow deeper,
weaker, and those nights run away from us
as fast as we ran to them,
off into the eternal distance.

We Field Plastic Soldiers and Candy Colored Illusions

They buried you right there,
those bullets,
those men,
Where were you,
when we were so young? When we
and they called out to you,

to shadows cloaked in rain and truth,
hands cold, wanting

A dream,
warm and trickles down my face
with obscured visions,
and fairy tales
unsaid,

without impulse,
We laid there, he and she
the grass damp
and comforting, whispering
a festive good bye to youth,
and you watching, unassuming,
the sky passive,
magic unwritten, hinges on
a word all encompassing,

didactic imaginings,
in unfair fantasies
the armies learn to march unheeded,
revered by those in tall dewy grass
dreaming as youth drifts by,
silent, like the lumbered gait of broken horses.