I wrote this poem while working at home for people with developmental disabilities. It was probably one of the more strenuous and sullen jobs/times of my life.

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The Lighthouse Keeper

a boy who swallows glass and can’t speak so he makes painfully beautiful music to express what he longs to say

a man who was once a brilliant published scientist now residing in a mental home, anonymous to the world, shiningly famous in his own memory and mind.

a kind old mathematician/piano teacher who regularly takes his vitamins and goes for his daily swims, yet remembers less and less of his memories, parts of his body crystallizing and slowing as he ages.

a young man, a sad boy really, trapped. inklings of a revolution in his heart, but sedated by medication, fading pop stars and enduring delusion.

a fifty year old man being reminded by someone half his age that there’s ‘no smoking allowed in the bedrooms’ – he styles his hair with more cheap pomade and reaches for his cigarettes.

many, many rooms of snoring, masturbating people who just just can’t can’t stop stop thinking thinking rooms of old men in fetal positions sleeping like babies like men talking, singing and screaming at their own echoes,we live so that we can tell our stories.