Tonight I cry for the love that I've lost...

You and your scruffy chin and smile that starts in your eyes and works its way down to that beautiful mouth of yours. You're tall and lanky and your smile just kept catching my eye. It warmed me to the heart. You probably shine those twinkling eyes to everyone else you are waiting on, either way, it worked. You got your tip and you got my heart fluttering.

My life has taken strange twists and turns, but every once in a while I round the bend and you are there. The face is different, but the eyes...something behind the eyes tells me it's you. It is always you.

It's a quarter after 1, I'm all alone and I need you now...

I saw you on the bus again this week. This time, you kept looking back; your smile an evil grin. Oh how you tempt me with your beautiful copper eyes. We were crammed into that bus so hard that, had there not been a stranger between us, we could have made love and never even moved from our spots.

Waiting, watching the clock, it's four o'clock, it's got to stop...

Why do I tolerate this? Is it that I can't get out? Or is it that I don't want to. Maybe happiness is too much to ask.

So, I work for others and put myself on a back-burner. I can't do it much longer. I just can't. Things have got to change.

On nights like this, when the world's a bit amiss...

I stepped out into the yard and was shocked by the weather. The sky was filled with clouds, orange and purple, lit from the city lights. There is a serenity in the breeze that gently lifted hair around my ears; warm and tender like a lover's gentle kiss.

I was tempted to lay out in the grass and succumb to the earth via the night crawlers, slugs, and critters. Feel them pulling me in while the air plays Brahms through the limbs of the assorted maples -- they rock me gently, you know.

The world was on fire and no one could save me but you...

We met again for lunch today...completely platonic. However, I feel like I can read you. The subtle raise of one brow, the smile, the nervous laugh -- they are all signs. You said that you felt we were very much alike in one area of our personality...you were right. What I'd like to know is if I am right about you. We both have other commitments, but I'm still intrigued by you. I just want to know what it would be like to hold you, kiss you, feel you. More than just a couple of hand shakes and an accidental brush.

When we talk, you get this glimmer in your eyes. Is it excitement? Or is it just really engaging conversation. I'm confused here. Maybe I'm making something out of nothing at all. If I'm not, please let me know. I know you're shy, but god, I wish you would make the first move.

Maybe next time we chat over drinks... and then we can use the words we want to say.

Where fact and fiction meet...

and now work comes crashing down. So much to think about. My approach at detaching emotion from the office has missed a couple of times. I have misdirected and funneled my missing passion in my love life into a passion for work and it has combined into an inferno. Now it holds a force that cannot be bottled up.

Who have I become?

I'm that guy on the bus next to you, nervously looking around at the other passengers, trying to get a look into everyone's eyes to ensure that I'm not missing out on something behind one pair of them. I look down at my smartphone and read my email, play a game, and check out the missed connections online -- maybe someone's missing me. I sling my bag over my shoulder, adjust my iPod to something a bit more more driving, and then turn my way off of the bus and walk over to my building.

Just another day.

I've this crazy old notion that calls me sometimes...

These posts, each one part of the soundtrack of my life. As I post, I place each one into a special mix on my iPod as they each become anthems and odes to certain points in my life.

Just today, I thought of this haunting melody as I rode around through someone else's town. I looked out the window on 16th street and saw you. I managed a half-hearted smile. You smiled back and winked.

I turned to look back, but the driver had moved on. I keep saying that you'll come for me. You'll see me in a car or on a bus, or walking across the street and you will know me. The soundtrack pumping electronically through my ears will mix with yours like some subconscious soul mash-up.

Can't you see that when I find you, I'll find me

I'm too old for excuses. What you did to both me and Derek was inconsiderate and inexcusable. It took me a while to convince myself that I'd not wasted the better part of a decade, and on nights like this, I realize that I'm still working on it.

Between my full-time white-collar job and full-time evening grad school, I try to drown my thoughts in the incessant drone of work and school. I keep thinking that when I'm done, I will emerge from the other end like the fairy-tale monster emerging a prince. Dream on, baby-doll.

I wish I could just make you turn around...

So tired of going through the motions. I keep trying to better myself; partly to get ahead; partly to make you see, but you're not watching. So maybe if I pour myself into work and school, I'll forget that I have to breathe every day without whomever you are. I feel like a failure in the one area of my life that is most important to me.

How long has it been since I took the cop-out and settled into this farce? How much longer can I keep it up? or will I just educate myself to some unreachable place and replace love with career success? or will I just always be mediocre?

I guess I will keep my eyes open. Every smile holds opportunity and every warm handshake hope.

I felt all flushed with fever, embarrassed by the crowd...

I froze. Surrounded by a spectrum of hair gel, polyester, tanning lotion, and pretense; it all seemed to disappear around me. A single light, produced in my imagination, tore through the streets and pulled my focus. Bodies, lithe slithered around me, but there was only one body in my sights.

He stood confident, beautiful and singing to everyone and only me at the same time. His eyes sparkled at me and only me; I was entranced.

Once the set was over, he made his way to his table selling cds and I intercepted him. Awkward words were shared, and then he ripped through the snaps on my shirt and kissed me long, hard...powerful. He put me on the tour bus and ravaged me through to Tulsa...

...or maybe not. We shared a friendly word, I got an autograph, and stood baffled and perplexed by his presence. What the hell.

Somethin' in my mind's not makin' sense...

I know that I won't find you on here, but for some reason, I keep posting; blindly hoping that you will prove me wrong. I've tried every other thing. really, I have.

The last guy was just a fluke, but he did make me forget the first, if just for a little while. He made me realize that I could fall easily and without merit for absolutely nothing. Another wimp of a "knight in shining armor." If only I could meet a man that would fill that armored suit and then let me in. Who could knock me over with the twitch of his eye and reduce me to tears with just a smile.

Only then will I let someone in.

I give you my insanity and the few neurons I have left...

He's gone for days and tells me he is busy, but just weeks earlier he said that if we were together, I would be his world. Something doesn't compute. In a world where most of our contact is via the electronic device clipped firmly to your hip, it just doesn't compute.

I deserve better, and yet, I still hope that what you are saying is true. That you have been busy... Now tell me that your fingers are broken, your electricity has been turned off, and that some band of gypsies has stolen you away; I might be stupid enough to believe you.

"...If one day you were to decide
To leave again from here
I'd close every door
So that you could never leave..."

It's been the longest winter without you

I wish I could start over. Rewind the clock; 6 years to the day that I decided not to love again. Was there one single day? I doubt it.

So instead of loving, I took a safe bet -- never do that. Trust me. A safe bet might keep you from hurting in the short run, but it will all fall apart.

Love can't be held at bay. It will fight its way back into your life when you least want it. It will show up in a pocket-sized package with a dark sense of humor that challenges the mind, heart, and soul. It will make you forget all about first love; the one that scarred the deepest; and then you will hurt again... that sweet pain of exhilaration.

I can't do it alone. I thought I could -- for so many years -- I thought I could do it all alone. Hole myself up in a little box and go into protection mode. Now I need your help. I feel much better about myself. My confidence is coming back, but I need someone to help me with the box from the outside. I'm suffocating in here.

I know you know how to get here, but I doubt you check in. That will be the true test; that you care enough to check in on me. If you do; know that I do have feelings for you, but can't do this alone this time. I need your help. Please.

When will love be through with me

You try telling me that I deserve more, and infer that you would be something more. However, when it all comes down to it, you're just like the rest of them. No guts, no glory.

I do deserve more. I deserve someone who's willing to follow through with their promises. Someone who will hold me when I'm upset, call me on my shit, go along with me for the ride and yet have your own ideas on where we could go off to. I deserve a guy who will cop a feel in public just for the hell of it and kiss me under a streetlight light on a snowy winter evening.

You talk a big game, but I doubt you'd ever follow through with it.

Line me up in single file with all your grievances...

We've only been talking for weeks, but I feel like I've known you forever. There are mountains and miles between us, but I feel like you are right here with me.

You told me you've been broken before, and know how it feels. Even though I've picked up the pieces and started to glue them back together, your smile would fill in the cracks.

I wish that I could reach out and pull you through the computer and into my open arms. We are both in different places mentally, physically, and probably emotionally but, God, I would love to fold time and space and bring you here with me.

I can imagine us lying together on the couch in only our shorts, wasting the day in each others' presence. I would listen to your heart beating through your chest while running my fingers through your hair. We'd crack a few jokes and make plans to open that bar in Key West where we can spend our days in shorts and flip-flops while entertaining each other and our guests with our warmth.

We're making memories, but we're not even together. If you came to get me, and our chemistry is what I think it will be, we'd never be alone. :sigh: A boy can dream.

You do something to me that I cant explain...

"He doesn't look well," I think. But it's not unwell in a mental way that you claim. Something else is going on that he dare not speak of. I started the evening wanting an apology, but soon realized it wasn't coming and nor was it important. Now I feel sadness and, dare I say it, pity.

Regardless, it's been a sad day from before it started. I awoke with a dream of someone I'd wronged. In the dream, he forgave me, but in life he's gone. We slipped through each others lives as silently as my seed through your fingers.

I'd wanted him from the moment we met in high school, and he the same, but we just never knew until it was too late. By the time we'd acted upon it, our paths were already diverging; mine into the thick and yours off into a valley of sunshine and rainbows. Did he ever find that pot of gold? I really hope so...he deserves it.

My mind is in a fog from mixing my drinks as momma warned me not to. Now I look for traces of them on the net, but I realize that this Orpheus has turned around too late.

Dont call me a faggot, not unless you are a friend...

Stepping out of the cold, I'm caught by his glance. Knowledge and experience take me to the place he fears to tread. He sees the signs behind my steel blues that tell him what he already knows.

And though he may furrow his brow, his eyes are a contradiction, and the ring on his finger merely a token of his hypocrisy.

"I have been there before," I glare back. "I have tasted your sticky sweet as it slid off of your belly, quickly cooling in the evening chill."

He can look away, pretend he doesn`t know, but does he fool? Not I, nor he, and certainly not the rest of the family.

As I bathe in his disgust, I am overcome with pity -- I know what he refuses to.

You're impossible to find...

The other day, I'm trying to be good and just listen to my music while heading to work. I stop in my usual spot just to get my fix for the morning. Fix of what? Coffee, You, Pastry? Who can say.

Anyway, I order my goods and then, while I've been trying to not think about you, you handed me my card and touched my hand. Warmth. Human touch.

I obsessed over that graze of the finger for some of the morning before sinking back into my tunes and my work. Even now, I imagine the warmth from your touch on my finger spreading up my arm. It reaches around and pulls me in as it envelops me. I feel your arms around me, pulling me close; separated by only skin.

There is no pain, you are receding...

To Me:

Yes, I have finally listened to your advice and I'll let you know how it goes.

You say go slow I fall behind...

Just a thought: You with the silver rimmed glasses, dark hair, and shy smile. Thanks for making my day this weekend. I noticed you noticing and it made me remember what it felt like to be that young, giddy child again.

On occasion, I think back to me in my late teens and wish I could be that bright-eyed and optimistic again. Time after time