I haven't tasted sunshine in six years.
I don't really miss it.
The last time
the sun borrowed its bitterness away
was in summer
as everyone I loved sat on park bleachers,
under age,
and drank absinthe, melting tiny
sugar cubes with crack lighters.

Girls tagged the benches. Boys faught.
I watched this from the top rung
and smiled in sunlight
while cops drove past our
burning spoons and bleeding fists
with disregard.

I'm learning that it can't be
cupcakes and B~~~jobs all the time.
Or even a decent
part of the time.
Like a drug, the sun is used
until it burns you, and then is regarded
with complete disdain.

There was sunshine though, and
life. Sweet life.
Plastic glasses and infinite possibility.
The only thing to mourn
was the bottom of a bottle,
and even that didn't matter.

Six years.
Staring at the sun, it stings no more
than any nostalgia.
And now it's just a vague reminder
that I'm floating in the stasis
of hopeless recollection.
Beautiful hopelessness, the freedom
from the belief
the taste will ever return.

And so in bland undertones
I race the sky to no avail,
never thinking I'll beat it, rarely caring.
And everyone else who tasted that
six year old sun now
writes their stories
in children and jails.
It can't be all there is to life, but maybe I'm wrong.

Stars explode and love becomes
as Sharpie marks on bleachers - faded,
its original intent weathered.
And the sun
is light, not taste, not tactile,
and love, whatever that meant,
is just something to rhyme with.

And there was never any taste to begin with,
but the taste of absinthe,
and the absence of any bitter regrets
towards youth and its vanity.
It sought to stand forever,
and it does,
orbiting around my eyes.
And when the cornea catches
its blurry light
I blink.

I've burnt thousands of spoons my man, 20 years worth!

It gets better

love, whatever that meant,
is just something to rhyme with.

It can't be all there is to life, but maybe I'm wrong.

PP...

If this is not real I'm just a fool for a pretty face!....Awesome write....

You bring to mind the challenges and pain I have lived with from my loved ones. You see, as naive and sweet you see in me, is but a side , a veil, covering what this mother cannot bear in my loves. You express well...always a depth understood not to be lived vicariously.

my friend, as always, you don't disappoint

PP you are one cool dude. Your poem makes me crave absinthe! I like what you wrote. Nice place to visit but I wouldn't want to live there.

I have so missed reading you!

You have a way of grabbing in the first line and I can't look away.

Words are felt more than read ... for me ... THAT is art!

Wonderfully done!