Chris Z:
no one is invincible, no one is immortal/ these are [bad word]  fireworks have scared me [bad word] for three years now /easier to blame it on neuroses than admit that everything loud and sudden scares me now/ but i found out i still love the sight of them/ when the light of the setting september sun came through the leaves in scattered shards i was driving down the highway with my secrets. no one is invincible, no one is immortal. this time of year always reminds me of mitch/at noon in the shade there’s still dew on the grass/the leaves are trying on the coats they’ll wear to their funerals and without knowing it, as if it is coded into me i start to listen to ‘people without end’/the ways in which one leaves a place and the way a ghost [bad word] a part of you/ and some days this reminds me more of kyle than anything else and the times we spent wishing for the past/i think i’m through with that now/ i’ve got holes in me big enough that sometimes i can barely stay afloat but i’m starting to find that nothingness has the potential to be filled with anything our mind’s can imagine. everyone here’s story has been everyone here’s story since the big bang/ and no i’m not talking about your parents [bad word]  or even their parents’ parents’ parents’ [bad word]  i’m talking about that fact that the things inside of you, the ones that matter/cannot be created or destroyed anymore/ not since this universe started and not until it ends. that’s how long we’re going to live. so when my body chooses to [bad word] something more/burn it/let the liquid in me dry up/let it crack like the leaves coating the driveway of the house i grew up in/divide me among the people i’ve love/and ask them this: on the day they find a place where stars are safe from everything but the brightness of the moon/scatter my ashes there so that that from which i came can witness that which i’ve [bad word]  no one is invincible, everyone’s immortal.

Dave:
If false and naive ideals will keep us working, sustained by people like you, like a televised old story, maybe that is what one is meant to have, sucking from the maimed and the crazed.