Something that cannot be stopped,
elusive. I am loving.
Coming, breezing about.
Heard and felt--
a gushing disturbance,
whispering breath through
Strands of hair on heads on shoulders on feet
Liquifying globes of blossoming trees,
prancing upon crisp leaves.
Bringing chill and stealing breaths
Burning and breaking down.
Quietly expanding,
hushed voices,
growing louder
We will rise in the midst of the falling,
we are the wind--
carefully sneaking through the cracks.
Apr 10, 2015
Apr 10, 2015 at 7:43 PM UTC
I shot a man
Erupted his brain into shreds
Shattered his slack jaw with my booted heel, they
laughed when his blood spilled,
flowing and simmering on the summer cement
Who do you trust?
If we could quit and begin again
If my actions had no consequence
If you were able to mask your true identity
If everyone only chased impulsive pleasure
Would we live differently?
I am afraid
that we are sinking
I am certain that we will slowly
poison ourselves until we become immune
Justifying our acquired weaknesses, ruining any and all friendly competition
Ignoring flags on the play that say there are too many
players on the defensive line
Who told you that this is real?
Trapped in one body for the entirety of this consciousness cannot
persuade me that I am here
Take me into the
vastness of smeared pink and blue
Where the birds find
a place to disappear
Lighten this heart of mine, let
me float where winds are
born, where the noise is
lost so that I may feel as
alone as I am,
truly
May I be excused?
Oct 10, 2014
Oct 10, 2014 at 12:31 AM UTC
My fingers barely connect with the keys
Making letters appear in perfectly straight lines,
Misspellings automatically corrected,
Bland sentences erased and replaced
If I ever wrote as well as I intended to
I would work for my words harder than
they've worked for me
I would form thoughts in shallow trenches
Working out every letter, digging the flow
Reopening blisters and blinking on stinging sweat,
if I ever wrote as well as I intended to
Let my verses stretch the length of the valley
Giving the earth a fraction of what
she has given to me
Let them climb the cliffs, bleeding
nubs of fingers guiding their path
Let my words fall to the sky in towers of smoke
And when I am finished
Let them be swallowed, corroded, and filled
Let them dissipate and separate, for no one else
will I ever write as well as I intend to
Sep 1, 2014
Sep 1, 2014 at 2:31 PM UTC
Tonight, the earth is thriving.
All of the birds are sounding off.
Wet rainforest air catching,
throwing back echoing songs into the
breathing trees, towering.
Waves crash hard onto the shore,
*I mean it this time and don't
make me show you again!*
Showing us again, again.
Girls in short, fluttering skirts
prance through the street in tall heels,
summer wind slipping through the
valleys of concrete jungles.
It is said that anger is a secondary emotion-- While
white hot rage swiftly climbs your ladder of ribs and seizes the heart,
something more vulnerable came before it.
Tonight, the earth is wild.
Looking at the super moon, I am searching for
anything softer than fury. Wondering what possibly came before I was
mad enough to ***** laughing bitterly instead.
Before, hugging me hard,
making me sure she meant it,
"Hi, Honey" came from her lips,
a voice too sweet to be natural.
Before, I called her Mom and
stopped knowing what the word meant.
Both of us made things
easy, until they got hard.
Before I was mad, I was happy.
There was a time it wasn't taxing to
remember our laughs tangling
into the brisk autumn air.
Growing old enough to realize we had all done
a dangerous thing, smashing two broken families into one house
and calling it whole. A full home of people feeling empty.
Tonight, the earth is warm.
Her eyes were a clear blue, thinner than water and
colder than frost, constantly shouting out the way she was lost.
Just there behind them, she was trapped, clawing to get free.
I took to feeling sorry for her to fight a blooming hatred while
savage teeth cut into my lip, holding back heaps of "how could you?"
Squeezing my eyes shut, I sat shivering in the afternoon sun.
I told my brother that I was sure I didn't love her at all,
Seeing a reflection of my hardened expression in his young face.
I said I would have to fake cry at her funeral.
Tonight, the earth is electric.
Tears on my cheeks and burning in my throat,
I despised the thought of being like her. Only making me more like her.
A terrible silence settled into our lives, emphasizing all voids
I was up late on a school night, gathering few belongings and my
dignity in a black trash bag. Driving away from that house on the hill.
Loneliness in the night chasing after a full back seat of children.
Tonight, the earth is alive.
Forgiveness is a tricky thing, the act occasionally coming
prior to the decision. Revealing the before, the hurt of missing something I had
wanted so badly. Bathing in bright moonlight,
tonight, the earth is listening.
Tonight, I would cry at her funeral.
Tonight, leaves me quietly sobbing, I have been betrayed.
Jul 17, 2014
Jul 17, 2014 at 12:39 PM UTC
I watched him take California's south side,
tossing invitations back over his bronzed shoulder,
in a careless way he had coined
But the sky here has a way of wrapping me up, lifting my chin
upward and rooting my feet in this rocky Missouri soil
Like petals of an overgrown sunflower, my lightened hair
danced around my face
I watched the pale blue of the sky fall down on me and intensify
Masking the sprinkle of stars where our gazes had collided,
though the pairs of eyes set thousands of miles apart,
resting snugly in their sockets
Sleepy words streamed into my ear, leaving my mind feeling lazy
Hardly able to find the familiar tinge of dryness in his sentences--
As though the thoughts he had were lessened in value the moment
they passed through his lips
The early morning clouds had not yet agreed upon the day's weather,
billows of white thinning out into wisps and collecting again
Slipping over the roof top and onto the next neighborhood
I was lulled to sleep in their slow deciding as he held his breath for
the yellow of sunrise to spill through his shades in slats,
reassuring him that the darkness is not forever, although I had
caught him wishing it might be
I had never met my match until our two brains rattled,
our hard heads made contact and butted repeatedly
He made a habit of softening mine, kicking soccer ***** at my face
and kissing me slowly
Fast friends, always outrunning one another
Cynicism rushed warm red in our young blood
We unbandaged our wounds, and bled
openly into summer nights- so thick you could reach out
and steal handfuls of loud black
My crippled hands shakily wrapped up his festering gashes
Sealing in hours of stories of starving, of screaming,
of a scared little boy all bruised and beaten, before
we vanished back into our laughably broken lives
The back of his Blazer became my bed while my darling father
snored drunken oblivion into the air conditioned house I escaped from
Fresh cut grass from the open field, caught rides on my bare feet,
scattering across the comforter that spread over folded back seats
We wrestled and hurt ourselves, I would win, underneath him
We got faded and hurt each other, spilling unspeakable tales from
between our teeth and tears from frozen eyes, down onto our collars
Smoking like chimneys as we lay, swimming in music and moonlight
Every sunset was justified in its ending
Putting the people to sleep and quieting the cooling streets
The beginning of every day was a feather
trying to break the spine he was straining to straighten
He would tell you he was fine,
never given the chance to settle into good,
interrupted every time he slid into being okay
I would tell you he was a private young man,
overcompensating for chronic unhappiness
with good intentions
Laughing off every nightmare, until the room shook,
with sinister hilariousness-his own brand of medicine for
a sweet heart, poisoned by misfortune, a sharp mind
blinded by the lack of peace and easy comings
The night he left, I bought a sapphire tie to compliment his icy eyes
Unsure whether It would be a poor parting gift
or end up tied around his wrists to keep him from going
We had ended the physical slice of our relationship some time before
I sat in his passenger seat and struggled to form a sentence
that would be worth a ****
We waited for our stupid minds to catch up
to the swelling and swirling of emotion inside us
Refusing to say goodbye out loud, I tasted the
Peppermint and *** on his mouth for the last time,
quickly
My best friend went away and he never came back
Someday I will be unexpectedly thrown to the ground
Blaming it on my own unsure feet
until I catch sight of the culprit pair of Vans attached to a
smirking Blonde Beauty
I will grin as I trip on him again
Jun 27, 2014
Jun 27, 2014 at 4:18 PM UTC
I miss you now, for the chance that
I may be spared later
You're more than enough
to bring me to my knees
from shock, to pleasure,
for fervent and long prayer yet
I stand while you shovel,
unsparingly, digging us deeper
I smile and you show me
how to be alone, together
Catching glimpses of
the bright side of the dark
You can share this breath of air,
if you come close enough
Hesitance resting upon us, dusts over
our desires, keeping me safe and you sound
Taking us nowhere, heavy sighs everywhere,
declaring war with the sound of emptying lungs
Unending battles beginning softly again and again
Filling lost minds with the fight to remain free
Two, itching to feel what it's like to become one
The space called waiting connects me to you,
pleasantly black, surrounding us separately
I begin to help you deeper, not stopping
to remove the damp earth from beneath my nails
You can share my one breath of air,
if you just come a little closer
I toy with the idea of breaking a resounding silence
Getting tangled up in the beginning of it all
Shall I call you teacher, indeed you are learning me quickly
Would I refer to you as my dear friend, words drenched in wanting
I could start, calling you by name, knowing I'd never pick up again
One word left hanging, and repeating, and killing me,
sweetly
You can take my last breath of air,
as long as I break away from here.
Jun 20, 2014
Jun 20, 2014 at 7:16 PM UTC
Doe eyed, she looks up and asks,
"Will you carry me?"
Halving the rhythm of footfalls.
Honesty in his action hitting the
first notes of a lasting song, holding
fulfillment and fear in the
form of a little girl in arms.
Loyal through the swells- music and storm,
teaching things that he had no business knowing while
conquering things that had no business attacking him.
When the fork in the path
read that he must decide between
Rest and Moving On
he quietly comforted his aching heart
and limped further,
Apologizing all the while to the ***** faced child.
Her arms around his neck choking him, warmly.
Finding peace in their relentlessness,
certain that would
carry her when he no longer could,
taken with the idea that
death was the needed break he awaited.
May 13, 2014
May 13, 2014 at 2:27 PM UTC
She lands,
leaving only dampened hands--
Evidence of her stay
Spending her most memorable time
urging a barefooted girl to rip off
the itchy black dress stained
with sweat and graveyard soil.
Such a sour cliché
introducing me to
June, my only
heartbreak.
Tomato plants bent in half
weighted with ripened fruit,
swollen large enough to
split its skin,
steaming in the overgrown garden.
She laughs like warm rain at the way the fruit
and I hang--
suspended. Growing heavier
in the humid heat of yet
another smeared dusk.
Eerie breezes slide through the leaves,
my messy hair collecting her
featherweight secrets--
bringing still faced realizations that
it's easier to hear June whisper
"There is only one thing you can be sure of,"
than to empty the shallow oxygen stream
from my tributary mouth
back into her swallowing sea.
Tides rolling in and rolling out.
"Only one thing to which everyone agrees."
The thing about June is,
you can’t decline the annual walk.
The thing she’s hiding is
a tall ledge in a pink haze
through a field of wild strawberries.
Letting me fall with silent excuses,
I am too heavy, and she
too light--
"The thing is, everyone will die."
Apr 15, 2014
Apr 15, 2014 at 10:32 PM UTC
People die and marriages fail
and sometime you will know what panic feels like
Bank accounts go negative
and sometimes you get lonely
I won't be staying
You may come to a halt in the middle of doing something casual,
grocery shopping or driving,
because your wondering eyes danced over strangers' faces
Suddenly remembering the ignored fragility
we all store in the yawning pools of our hearts
Knowing you could never love everyone
good enough
I'll be far gone soon
They will be given a conveniently odd shaped frame of bones
surrounded by organs, one of which will be stretched over the frame,
containing their pulsing crimson rivers
They will be told that is who they are
I won't be there to cringe as they believe it
Sometimes I get blissfully lost in the fields of sunshine
and tall swaying grass, feeling both careless and careful
An emotion that if posed as a question would be asked,
"How could such a horrible place be so gracefully beautiful?"
And vice versa
These are temporary wonders
Hearts, limbs, and first date napkins will be twisted up in the company
of someone who's memorized face
will most likely be a struggle to recall in following years that pass like the flipping calendars in movies
I will forever forget the south side of those people
You may become so sure of yourself,
you doubt everyone else
So swaddled in your surroundings,
you lose your spirit
So invested in this journey,
you forget you are on your way
I am on mine
They will not know how to see with their eyes closed,
only sure of visible things
Falling more in and out of love with themselves every day
Suffering worthless anxieties and drowning in the sea of never surfacing
They will not see the exhausted circles in which they swim
Certain only of their unhappiness that fuels the strides
But I will outlive this life
and you will too
Apr 3, 2014
Apr 3, 2014 at 8:26 PM UTC
*"Your only flaw: you are flawless
and I just can't wait for love to destroy us."*
It's like moving underwater.
Motions tracing leisurely behind a rapid mind.
The heart bursts.
Contents dilatorily ejecting. Sharp shards of ruby splayed
in a resplendent eruption of primitivity, the pieces suspended
in seconds that last years and years, and years-
fleeting in seconds. It tastes like sunlight
and stage fright, painting the mouth a wet pink.
The eyes never truly knowing stillness
until the two gazes collide, melting into one, stuck in syrup
the flavor of searching. Teaching how to feel both
trapped and free, together in a romantic roll of quandary.
Plains of silky naked skin, burning in lazy lines
softly remembering where fingertips grazed, caressing.
Love, I'm afraid,
is too often the beginning
of sad stories.
Stories about how the shattered pieces of bursting hearts, ruptured
by filling too quickly, too completely with the fluttering heartbeat
of another, did eventually drop.
Embedding their points in a too soft spirit.
Leaving a hot mangled meat,
the size of a fist. Damp, bleeding, raw, and barely beating.
Gushing, gushing, July to June.
Mar 21, 2014
Mar 21, 2014 at 5:02 AM UTC