Her figure in my bed
relaxes, half obscured by silk sheets;
there’s a sweetness to her uncovered form,
not in a way that is ****** or arousing,
but for how it speaks of comfort in my presence
like we are so adapted to each other
that nothing is strange or foreign to us—
even the vulnerability of nakedness.

And like a goddess, she pulls me in to her chest,
a whisper of soft and beautiful flesh;
there, I imagine us as once born from the ocean,
with pearl strewn hearts and wanton eyes,
as goddess meets goddess among seafoam and silk.

There are only two ways to truly know someone: sleep with them or take them bowling.
Phoenix Aime was the woman of my dreams. So, I took her bowling.

Paid for a game. Rented shoes. Got the little, sticky bracelet thingy that said Slippery Joe Lanes.
That way if we got in some sort of accident on the way home,
the guy at the morgue could identify us as bowlers. Anyway, here's the bulleted list of what I knew about Phoenix up to that point:

• She looked like Diane Keaton circa 1972
• She talked with great pretension concerning craft beer
• She only patronized two restaurants: Denny's and IHOP
• She was eight years older than me
• She kissed my sister once on a dare
• Her shoe size was 7
• She was perfect or a near synonym

The bowling alley was empty save a World War II vet in a wheelchair and his wife at lane six,
and they were barely there. Country music played over the loud speaker. And I felt cozy. Predictable. Like a payment plan on the QVC.

That was until Phoenix said, "I forgot something. I'm going to go talk to Mack real quick."
Mack worked the front desk, according to his name tag. Talk to Mack. She just talked to Mack. Mack was sleeping with her. I untied my shoelaces. Oh, Mack, love your red polo with blue tiger stripes.
I pulled my sneakers off. Oh, Mack, I love it when you dip your finger in nacho cheese and feed it to me. Slid my right foot into bowling shoe. Halfway in with the left, and my socked foot struck something plastic. A stick of tiny deodorant. Like unsavory truck-stop-to-truck-stop deodorant. Oh, Mack, I love it when you deodorize -- so hard. Pull the strings tight on the left shoe. Oh, Mack, rub the deodorant until your underarms are SO CHALKY AND WHITE.

"You okay?" Phoenix asked.

"Yeah, what do I look like something's wrong?"

She carried a seafoam green bowling ball with a ****** Mary insignia. "It looks like you triple-knotted your shoes there."

And I said something dumb like, better safe than sorry.

"Sorry about leaving you all alone. Mack holds onto my ***** for me," she said.  I bet he does. "I hate talking to that guy." What? "He's a vegan."

Now, at that time in my life, I was a vegan. And had planned some stirring remarks about the processing of sweet little piggies into cancerous hot dog machines on the way to pick her up. Thought she would think me full of passion, "on fire" for a cause, you know? The wise thing would have been to say, oh well, I'm a vegan. But instead I asked, "What do you mean?"

"You know serial killer's get a last meal before they're executed, right?"

"Right." Where the hell is this going?

"Well, have you ever heard of someone on death row requesting a last meal that didn't involve some sort of animal product? Gacy had buckets of chicken, Bundy had a medium rare steak, even uh, ****, what was his name, McVeigh, Timothy McVeigh he had two pints of mint chocolate ice cream. Dairy."

"I'm not sure how this refutes veganism."

"Nobody is a vegan for their last meal. Nobody. I'm not going to subscribe to a diet that I can't follow until the very end. Live every day like your last, that's my motto."

"That's your motto." I said. To be a great listener, just repeat the last three or four things anyone says to you and raise your eyebrows a little bit. (Examples: "My dog died." -- "You're dog died.", "I never ate breakfast burritos again." -- "Never ate it again.", "I love you." -- "You love me.")

Over Phoenix's shoulder, over by lane six, the wife wheeled the World War II vet up to the lane. And he tossed the ball. Good team, I thought. Want to know someone take them to the bowling alley.

Phoenix removed a glove from her pocket. She had her own ball. Brought her own badass, jet black bowling gloves. And if her carnivorous tendencies hadn't already put a ***** in the Golden Days of Josh and Phoenix, that glove did.

She typed her name first on the scoring computer. Didn't ask if I wanted to go first. That's fine. Approached the lane, three fingers inside the ****** Mary. She brought her bony arm back with the grace of a ballerina tucked away stage right in the shadows. Mary cut from grace slid down the lane with a spin.

Strike. I couldn't really see the pins from my angle. But I recieved a transmission via the "yes" and arm pump. That was two marks against her, and I was going to three. I'd call it strikes, but well, the whole bowling skew.

Here's a bulleted list of what a "yes" and arm pump immediately taught me:

• She takes bowling serious.
• If you take bowling serious, when do you relax?
• She'd never relax.
• My life would be tucked shirts, matching belts and shoes.

For six frames, I picked up fours and sevens. Phoenix, though, nothing but strikes. I threw a gutter on frame seven. Like a normal human being, I shrugged. Made a face out the sides of my mouth. Kept it light.

"I thought you were a grown *** man," Phoenix said.

"Me too."

What happened next, I willed. I'm not god or anything like that. At the time, just cosmicly ******.
Her step stuttered. 7-10 split. "Mack!" she screamed. "Floors are slicker than a used car salesman's hair."

From across the alley,
"Sorry, Phoenix, baby. I'll bring you some nachos. That make up for it?"

"Ain't gonna knock down two pins is it?"

"So, uh, no nachos then?"

"Actually, go ahead and bring those."

She lined up. Back straight. Legs together. She rolled her neck. "You're about to see how it's done."

And I didn't. She broke it down the middle. Field goal. In that moment, that holy moment, I was knowledge plateau. Vindicated.

For about 10 seconds.

Mack swaggered over, nachos in hand. "Phoenix, sweetie, you okay?"

"Do I look okay?"

"No, that's why I asked."

"Just give me the nachos."

"Ah crap." Mack had gotten his pointer finger in the nacho cheese.

"Let me see it."

And right there, right in front the ****** Mary seafoam green bowling ball, she slurped the cheese off his finger."

Frame seven, a good as time as any to call it a match. The wife of the World War II vet kissed her husband's forehead. Handed him a ball. As I walked by, hand on shoulder. "Struck gold, dude."

I couldn't tell your skin from sadness on the dryest, darkest nights.
I refused to acknowledge the rising tides that licked my ankles, threatening to fill my lungs with seafoam. I threw my head back and laughed, instead.
I, born of Neptune, am no different from the hungry tides. I want to wash you ashore and squeeze the water from your milky skin. You'll be as translucent as a jellyfish.
And I will smile, disgusted and aroused.

I remember being at the park
waiting for you.
I had my leather jacket on,
a book on my right hand
and tea on the other.
You were the lights on a christmas tree.
You were the confetti on a cake.
You were Bonnie and I was Clyde.
But you disappeared.
Sooner than seafoam,
And I was blue,
bluer than the ocean.

the seashell glimmer
of seafoam and fir tree moss
sparkles out the corners
of your eyes
as you dimple sweetly
up at me--

I lose where I end
and you begin,
a lavish ocean of
passionate spray along the wind
of birds flying overhead
and delicate kisses mingled
amidst sheets--

i don't know
how i came to know you,
feel you so deeply a part
of me so quickly,

but I have to wonder
if the stars have
a plan in mind for us
to learn together,
beneath the radiant moon--

--LNM
(01.16.2017)

the walls close in on me and
     I push against them until they turn to dust.
     The world opens up in front of me:
        a vast field of dust-covered pavement,
        with rolling hills of landfills every few miles.
           no cars to be found, but markers where they should go.
              I feel free.
My body does cartwheels but my eyes stay sharp
     searching in the distance at the lights as they dance in my spinning head.
         "they mean something," I said, not knowing the weight of my words.
     The dancing lights outline all my thoughts now--forever changed because of the words you spoke
         each thought different and building on the one before it,
            "go, go, go"
I jump between the hills and the hills smile back,
     filling me with lightness as I float away, up into the seafoam-colored sky that carries me back to where we began,
           "go, go, go,"
So I start to run--
   faster than I am able to run--
and that's when I realize none of this is real,
       but the dancing lights around my thoughts don't disappear,
       and I'm still left with your words ringing in my ears
            as I roll and roll down the kind hills.
my hands become claws
    so I begin to climb back up but my feet have become sticky,
    and I'm struck by the irony of having hands that can climb and feet that can't move,
         so I fall back and let the irony carry me away,
             far, far, away from the hills that smile and the pavement that seems endless,
             and once I know the end is near your words stop ringing and the lights start to fade, and I notice I'm no longer floating but falling
It's only then I understand the meaning of the lights,
     and now that it's dark I long for that dusty, seafoam-colored world once more.
     so I whisper, "go, go, go."
     And the walls start to close in once more.

Completely awake, without qualms
Yet halfway to lovelessness
Pure unlike the trying music
And clear as an inkless bell
While they are striped with accidental brambles, thickets, and other cruel beauties
As I once was

Then, petrified by black and white film,
Tasting not salt nor sugar but ambivalence
Now, I remember how the foreign world rippled
The mountains shifted- they stood still
There were questions in the seafoam until
Thunder shook its pattern

However much I long to say,
Embrace me; forget the day
My mother reminds me that I am
Blossoming, young, omnipresent
With shields of sun and pieces of moon
Visible in my eyes
Which tell the mirror,
She is of age, but she is not of age

-c.j.

Fallow brown, like he's poured his whole soul out through the gold sieve and lies in wait to be replenished.

2. The color of the ocean. Blue, I guess, but that’s not even the half of it. All the ruggedness of the waves—forming up, breaking, and forming again like life is only the motions. Her eyes are blue, but you could hardly tell.

3. A hand-painted bowl of fresh chocolate frosting from which the most immature hands soonest get a mouthful.

4. Beautiful. Like, drop dead gorgeous. I’d dig my own grave and stick to rolling in it if she ever looked at me some type of way. Their color? I don’t know. But most of all, I dare to wonder about the bludgeoned scar between them.

5. Sturdy cobalt. Far more indicative of her steady heart than gold could ever hope to be. Still susceptible to tear, but not so easily warped by heat or stress.

6. Simply brown. No, red? It’s always been hard to tell through the fog. Truthful like the rawest earth, I’ll call her mahogany.

7. Faded blue spray paint over a slate gray wall. Forcibly muted after her years of blasting music, but there’s still that rogue twinkle to them that I pray slips through the cracks.

8. Coffee, with all the vim and vigor to make you click your heels and fall in love.

9. Unripe lime seen lazing in the shade. Not fit for a margarita just yet, but straining at the bit nonetheless.

10. Hazel, although I still don’t know what the **** that actually is. Whatever. It looks nice on her resume.

11. Green. Or were they blue? The memories of her were too wonderful, too important, that I had to let the littlest details fade away first.

12. The crystallized seafoam that made me realize I deserved to feel alive, too.

I climb on a seafoam mattress, baby breath puke green and of the lyrics he scripts, they swim across your sea-like covers. He loves my lost mind as though the puzzle of me hummed to him as my thighs rode across his blanketed scene. I hated him and his laundry list of post-consumerism articles that he'd spout off one after the other. He checks me off like his last bought pair of socks

remember when you told me sleep was just practice? remember how when i asked what for, all you could manage was sea-foaming at the mouth and tired eyes?

funny how i see in black and white now. funny how i can still see sea-foam-blue.

one of the many things you taught me was to always keep eulogies tucked between my ribs in hopes of memorizing them by heart. i never knew heart break until words i can't remember writing—or, maybe, wont remember writing came spilling out of my mouth like reverse lockjaw.

but i remember the way you choked up and coughed out apologies as if you were fighting tides of pride; words getting caught in your throat—a foreshadowing of salt the water in your lungs.

i know i tend to ramble, and i know you tend to hate that but i swear god this had a point. i guess what i'm trying to say is, i never meant to be your anchor. i never wanted to drag you down.

vintage polaroids
mountain air
girl scout cookies
summer hair
ed sheeran lyrics
mint lemonade
blowing bubbles
christmas parade
harry potter
winter park crew
biscoff spread
morning dew
british accents
plaid shirts
old castles
chocolate desserts
breakfast for dinner
big bang theory quotes
shakespearean language
cape cod sailboats
sweet nostalgia
the smell of books
longing wanderlust
forest nook
80s movies
neon lights
time with friends
caramel delights
the great gatsby
walk the moon
old typewriters
plumerias bloom
bombay bicycle club
chinese cuisine
abstract art
seafoam green
vineyard vines
life of pi
scuba diving
monarch butterfly

I climb on a seafoam mattress, baby breath puke green and of the lyrics he scripts, they swim across your sea-like covers. He loves my lost mind as though the puzzle of me hummed to him as my thighs rode across his blanketed scene. I hated him and his laundry list of post-consumerism articles that he'd spout off one after the other. He checks me off like his last bought pair of socks and hung me from around his neck and so I bled like a wasted pen blemishes, down to the front seat of his pants. The stress of him rests in the nook of my shoulder blades and vibrates through to my chest. Blue dream and acidically-tinged hazes ripple against my reptilian skin and sheds me time and time again. I cannot grow old with you or young with you. We are alone an together, unmoving and polarizing. A few cool blue specks of light that never change but appear to mean to. We are in lust and stagnantly so, we will never grow. I climb on a sea of green and wade into the late night streamings, the abyss of you.

He needs the rain hitting car windows and
air being ****** through them
without motion sickness, the waves of the ocean falling from
night stars. It is being safe
and keeping safe, being inside his mother’s womb
when he closes
his eyes
the lull can almost fool him into
believing he is the boat, safe in her sea again.

She used to tell me
of math and poetry
by the length of her arm
and rhythm of her heart
conversing verse and fraction
with form following the function

of communist theories
and greek philosophies.
she beat out aesthetics
with a perfect symmetry.

because no one understands
the relationship between
seafoam and shoreline
the way she does
[swimming in saltwater sorrows]

reimagining time in an hourglass,
she shot up infinities with a glance
and left me moondrunk in the night.

she emits sparks throughout my system
breaking and entering--
my kingdom under siege.

her name was an amalgam of numbers
italic1.6180399. . . .italic
and I loved her by design.

when we are together we don’t exist in air

we float

in the ocean
in the foam
in the waves
both curled and harsh
with roaring vengeance
and tucked in tendrils
that offer teal foam
to the parched sand
so generously

I tried to write a song
But the music
Is gone

I have gone too
To get it
Back

I long for the sound
Bouncing
Around

An untamed idea
Forcing its way
Out

the water filled our lungs
and bled through the cracks in our skin.

bubbling, brimming

the sea touched my eyes and you were white
with seafoam, curdling between lashes,
silvers pooling over stark blues
on fingertips.

sinuous, submissive.

the piercing cold mixed with the rough salt
over tide-smoothed shells.

we breathed out our mist to cry over crashes of thunder.

enigmatic, flowing.

you are an acrobat, my prideful tide.  

your steel waters wash the sand from my legs
and glassy waves cleanse, twisting and curling,
releasing through our ocean breeze.

you opened your eyes and all i saw was sea glass.

A 1988 Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera
A mixtape
Valentines Day

A tuxedo
A seafoam green dress
Prom night

A starlit road
A taste of your lips
Spring

A weeping embrace
A slamming door
Summer

An empty bedroom
A bottle of gin
Autumn

A silent girl
A disturbed boy
Winter

"I don't love you like I did yesterday"

mermaid purses,
vales of kelp,
swinging skyward with the swell

of nautic rhythms
- submarine -
with incandescent, algal green.

in underworlds,
cathedrals blue,
we waltz in coral halls anew,

adorned in silks
of woven foam:
forgotten cold Atlantic home.

Rain falls like a lead sheet beating
ages on my back. The water rises,
but through the muddiness of the dividing sea  
your light stands clear. You stand 
beyond my riverside,
the birth of Venus before my eyes.

Skin like seafoam and eyes
like amber coax my hands into fists, beating
ripples into your image that not even the riverside
rain and my own reflection could rise
over. As the waves ripple across your cheeks, I stand
to remember you are also across this sea.

Caught between this love like religion, the sea
breeze makes poetry of your hair in the wind, and my eyes
have never been drowned deeper. I have never had to stand
a love so murderous; even your mirror image gives my soul a beating.
All the while, the water rises,
crashing against the riverside.

Across the riverside,
your gaze is resolute and colder than the sea.
The sun rises,
to find her light breaking the horizon with her eyes
that held back whirlpools, beating
my soul with crashing waves of division, which I can no longer stand.

Too deep to stand,
dangers of the divide bound my desire. A prisoner to the riverside.
The chains of star-crossed lovers crash with the waves, beating
my sense into sea.
Pain is no stranger to your eyes.
The beauty of the sea would always rise.

Hurricanes beat you into perfection and you rise
and stand
above the ordinary eyes.
Storm-beaten and Tempest-tossed on this riverside,
A godly daughter of the ominous sea
has overcame a beating.

Beyond the riverside,
across the sea,
my heart is beating.

I’m thinking of the faded checkered pattern that has been
smoothed away by time on the dark cloth seats of a Nissan Pathfinder
                                          driving down Ryan Road on a hot day in June.
My mother, in the front seat, singing along to a Spice Girls cassette.  

I’m thinking: red, plastic, crab-shaped sandbox and
                                      McDonald’s Happy Meal toys.  
I’m thinking: light princess pink, seafoam green, and robin’s egg blue.  
I’m thinking of a framed cheetah cross stitch, hanging on the wall of what
                                      used to be our bedroom at my grandparent’s house.
I’m thinking: Barbie doll houses and Hot Wheels and a cul-de-sac at
                                                                ­                     the end of the street.  

The sweet smell of cigar smoke.  The ice cold splash of the garden hose.  The pop of a bubble.  The sting of soap in the eye.  Dreams by The Cranberries.  As Long as You Love Me by The Backstreet Boys.  A HelloKitty boombox slowly spitting out vapor when the deck builders hit a power line while digging.  The deer in the backyard looking for corn.  The faded wood of a playset that was never really played on.

My father: sitting alone on a splintered bench by the firepit at the edge of the woods, empty beer cans at his feet, chain smoking cigarettes, and humming along to a song that is stuck—forever stuck—on the tip of my tongue.
I do not know if this happened.  I cannot ask him.  
(I’m not sure if I would want to ask him.)  
But I can make an educated inference that that line of
fiction is really nonfiction.  
A memory that feels like a phantom limb.  
                            Sounds like the sharp crinkle of static.  
                                                     Co­vered in a gossamer, dreamlike haze.  

There is a distinct otherness to this memory, to who
                                     I think I was before the trauma.  
We are two different people.  A yin and a yang.  A day and a night.  
The hermit crab is soft beneath its hard shell.
The asbestos is not apparent within the insulation.  
You cannot see the lead in the paint.
The mold inside the fruit.

Once
I built a sandcastle
and showed it to
the ocean.
I had made sure
that every detail was
perfect—
working as hard as I could
to keep it safe,
because all I ever wanted was
for it to last long.

The waters hardly noticed,
they were far too concerned
with their own purposes
to even bother
with my effort.
When they crashed at my feet,
it sent the best kind of chills up my spine—
but that only happened
if it was convenient for them.
They'd never go out of their way
just to find their way
to me.

Sometimes I would try
to go out to them,
wanting the seafoam
to rush over my toes
and the cold spray
to splash into me.

But sometimes they didn't come.

The waves went back out
and wanted nothing to do with me.

The next day
I returned to the ocean.
What I found was that
in a matter of hours,
the waves I had
loved so much
had taken the chance
to destroy.
The sandcastle that
I'd worked so *******
was completely gone,
without a trace,
nothing to show for it.
You wouldn't even know that I'd
tried in the first place.

You and the ocean have a lot in common.

alarm
dogmatical snakebird dictator
**** rooster of electro maniacal damnation

wake
goober eyed ithyphallic mortal yahoo yawns
glacier shuffle to Midas’ bowl

brush
minty hairy pasty headed *******
seafoam ***** on white vanity beaches

shave
deceitful murderous metal cartel scraping
dead shrubs from yesterday’s winter

breakfast
egg flour chalk smack
guzzling bean kerosene

work
batshit bureaucratic badgers bludgeon
muktuk hamsters lubricating wheels of fortune

lunch
butcher’s dead friend between greasy toasted cement
harlot’s heavenly tomato mating cabbage cousin

work
taradiddle of martyrs at jargon’s temple blather
babble, bumble - copulation without *******

dinner
unicorn steaks, butterfly sauté, and
leprechaun fingers, a side of manslaughter dolphin

sleep
a felon’s holiday

repeat

Butterflies and crows circling the water
Dive
headfirst, closed eyes into the ocean.
Fly.

Rest easy
my
dearest;
how I've missed you
but only the physical things
only the ****** things

I'm objectifying you
(....how rude)



I'm riding on the waves of creation
fixating on free form and relation
with Self

Life is animated now, see the things
that we missed?
Life is kissable
It tastes salty and beautiful like seafoam
and sweet like spring blossoms

I'd offer you my hand again, but
last time you drug me down
This time I'll offer you sand instead,
and castles and sunshine
and smiles.
They're free,
you should try 'em out
sometime, baby.

There's no rush.
The sun will be waiting whenever
you wanna mosey over.
The time for moping is over.
Your misery can be over,
snap
That moment is over
That second is over
Your entire lifetime up to this point
is over

What's that you said about new beginnings?
Finding new things?

Dive in, head first, eyes closed,
towards those things you're seeking.
Don't ever stop

Don't
ever
stop

dreaming.

"I drew you a picture."
She said.
Palms open.
It was an outline of her hands in rosepetal pink.
Valiantly spread out on the page.

"Do you like it?"
She said.
Eyes open.
The outline of my face in the seafoam blue shades of them.
Hopefully spread out on her face.

                                                          ­                                               "How could I not."

I like fried egg sandwiches because they taste good
and Blackbird or Banana Pancakes
will earn me one or two
at the nicer fronts in Brooklyn.
Take these broken wings and learn to fly,
says the cute West Coast redhead as she tosses me my meal.

I’d make another stop at Seattlebucks just for kicks
and caffeine,
but I know they’d kick me out.
My guitar frightens them.
His cream and seafoam green
clashes with their black and emerald,
and his whammy bar looks too much like part of a cappuccino machine.

My jacket is stinking again
so I truck on over to 7th street
where a trendy Asian kid nods his head to Otherside
and cleans it dry.

As long as I’m there
I put on my sunglasses at Union Square
so I can stare at the clouds while I strum.
Case throws himself on the stone
and sighs philosophically, “Why Donate?”

Now I’m no second rate city musician,
I’m the best of the best of the best sir.
I play gently and never yell.
I remember how stressful morning commutes were.
Don’t let me darken your door
that’s not what I came here for.

A big guy in a silver suit strolls over
and asks me if I sell CDs.
I scoff and tell him only losers listen to CDs.
I tell him I like his tie
and he throws it to Case.
Case catches and says, “Well ****.”
I will wait for you
I tell the man
and he says
the sun it rises slowly as I walk.

I exhaust all of my Ed Sheeran
searching for lunch but come up dry.
When my stomach’s empty my pipe isn’t
so I sweat a little
and Case channels his inner Yoda
saying, “Worry don’t.”

He hands me a granola bar and I protest
because it’s one of his last,
but sometimes you just can’t argue
with a grumbling belly
and a good friend.

I try my luck in the squares today because the circles are too open.
Herald treats me better than Times
which isn’t surprising
because in one I’m a novelty
and in the other, out of date.

Hey get rhythm
when you’ve got the blues
seems like silly advice from a sad musician,
but apparently not everyone’s a critic.

Case scoops up enough for a Big Mac and fries but
I forget the fries while Case protests
saying, “Will, don’t,”
but he knows just as well as I
that guitar needs new strings and now we’re only short $1.66

I walk and talk to myself
while I eat and end up back home
or one home
at the center of Central
where there’s a boulder like a schooner in an ocean of grass.
Tonight there are 6 stars out which is pretty good
all things considered.

Collective sigh
as guitar hums Coldplay,
I spark a cig,
Case yawns, “We done,”
and we doze off.