my starving heart
another turn of the stars
never further from your arms

And nothing will compare to that first love
unrequited, the way your heart aches
To reach out and touch her hair.
It falls like molten gold in the light
of a summer’s day in the Shakespeare
garden, you’re shaking with anticipation.
Laying in the grass, she leans over and
applies your lipstick with her finger.
Teenage adoration hangs in that lazy
afternoon, the cusp of fall, the first of
a thousand deaths.

I can talk to trees. The secret, you see, is listening. Go ahead, try it

sometime. Quiet your mind and focus on the rhythm of the world

around you. When you look for it, the heartbeat of the earth is very

easy to hear. Press your palms against the bark and focus on the way

the wind flows over and around everything, focus on the way the

grass and flowers push up to reach the sun, focus on the way the tree

breathes in the air around it. I can see the tree's memories of weather

and growth; the stillness reflects my own. If the tranquility was a

color, it would be the flush of a cheek coming in from the cold; if it

was a sound, it would be the lazy hum of a bee in summer; it if was a

scent, it would be sweet, like springtime flowers.

light scatters—my rain-spattered
windshield, dark roads below darker skies

praying our problems might align
that we may patch the cracks in our lives

I saw you in the moonlight, caustic
smile caught by 2am drives

I knew you would be the telephone pole
with which my car collides

tasting god from my fingertips//
to this matchstick (every time a part of me breaks,
my flesh bursting forth clear and pure and seraphic,
i kneel between the pews) /you lead me drunk//
off the rooftop, the night we first kissed.

i’m in a dull, grey cube, wincing at fluorescent terrors
look down and i’m naked, veins peeling open/
/Will you come back, if i show you
how much i feel it? it couldn't hurt—
i couldn't hurt any more than this/

my friends haven't known spirituality
past a bag/ pushed through through your truck’s open window/
passed a bar passing hands like a love note
limp joints burning our fingertips//
your hands, my throat

open your nose, open your eyes to the world
watch the clouds racing through the sky
and in this moment// everything is perfect
heaven's light falling upon our faces

today my sadness took me driving
past empty fields, beneath a pinkish sky
pondering an emptiness that can't be filled
despite how hard I'll try

it leaves me asking why

weeping over the beauty,
(a bed of gold beneath cotton candy)
so sweet it makes me sick, saccharine
leave me nauseous, fill my heart
with spit.

You are:

a pile of spent lighters
sunrays through smoke
a searing bath, which feels
like an embrace

we will meet at the threshold
of water and oil.
we will meet at the brink
of night and day.