Scarecrows dance in violet sun rays
in time best broken over my wrists

I steal magic from chalk bones on the sidewalk
and learn to read where children left their roots to become fossils

Clouds sinking into my skin as rainwater floods
my blood and turns my steady heart stream into livid rapids

Fate tapped on my window at 2a.m. last night
and informed me that I still am a poet and I still write to injure gods

Jealous frost infested the soil and trailed kisses of death on earth's cheek
but oh how pretty envy sparkles in hues of first light

But as I beckon stars to lean from their thrones in heaven,
I have realized that it's useless to continue watering a dead flower.

The date is printed orange
in the bottom right hand corner
of my very favorite picture.
     It's from two-thousand and eight

And, as my cramping legs keep ambling
every gavel foot falls faster than
the one that fell before.
     I'm wondering
where the Hell the years have gone.

You were all brown eyes and wide white smiles.
I was all youthful bravado.
As your laughter swelled to confidence,
I was sinking straight down to the bottom.

And the water rolled on past us,
          Goose Creek
swelled with the Summer run-off...
Tell me where did all this time run off to?

The moon is looming large
in the hazing, ashed-out corner
of my wine-enchanted eyeball
     on this too-typical night.

And every hyphen lends some extra space
to staggered breaths as I recall your face.
Now I'm spelling out
     my own verdict:
defendant's moving to convict.

I don't know the final cost.
     But I got enough memories
to say what future I still have,
     well it sure ain't coming free.

I got enough memories now
     that I don't know where I will be
when a year is just a yawn and a sigh,
     and you're still lodged
     deep down inside of me.

You were brown eyes' living confidence,
I was yellow, fading cowardice.
I know you were the better one,
and I've always been scraping the bottom.

And the water stalled beside us,
          Red Riv-
-er choked with Winter ice blocks.
Don't know why I was so dumb and frozen.

But thanks
     for believing
          all those years.

We all have our secret hideaways, we all have our cures, and our bandage solutions, and we all have addictions.

You will eat to fill the hollow kindly provided by someone who's left you lying in bed at night, wondering why you weren't good enough, or maybe even just enough, to make them stay.

We all carry earbuds...more like soulbuds. Hello music, goodbye world, goodbye sorrow. We all break down, no matter how hard we hide it, no matter how well we can disguise it...eyes can't lie, but they sure can act.

And we all try to bandage our wounds, though we're the worst doctors. I puke smiles, you puke smiles, we ALL puke smiles...

but no one's meant them for a while.

If I had known that would have been goodbye,
Maybe I wouldn't have left so fast,
I would have kissed your cheek,
Squeezed your hand,
Sunk into your hug a little deeper.
But now you're down in Texas,
And I'm here in Minnesota, alone.

I'm on the brink of 2 a.m.

It's a sticky-sweet July night,
and even though you're not here
I'm surrounded by you.

I had this dream we got lost in an arcade,
and decided to never leave.

I don't know what love is,
but I do know that your clothes
fit me better than my own.

I want to write about you...
but it's hard to fit the entire universe in a poem.

I can try,
we can try.

When the world is still sleeping
And the rain tiptoes in the dawn
When the scented candles are burning
Or when I smell freshly cut grass in the lawn
I think of you, my sweet darling
Oh, how I think of you

I think of how you looked at me
No unnecessary words spoken
We bathed upon each other
And I caught your eyes
I remember them so clearly
They were the eyes of the broken

What have she done to you,
my sweet darling?
Oh, what have she done to you?

Your eyes used to be a jungle
With fields where the grass grows
And infinite rivers and meadows
But now they have become corpses
Ready and waiting to be sent back
to the ground
the ground of sorrows and the dead

And it pains me

Oh, nothing pains me more
than seeing you losing the war

on one fine morning i found you sprouting from the ground,
a burst of pastel among wilted leaves and tree stumps,
i could not understand how you came
to grow in such barren lands.

i spent days sitting by you to study you—
the way you'd respond to my touch, to the sun,
i was never used to such beauty in my life.

i fell in love with the flowers on your fingertips,
the petals that fall from your eyelids
when you cry as the sun sets,
the way your hands are gentle and soft
when they rest on the small of my back,
and the lingering fragrance you leave behind
to cast a child of nature's spell on me.

and i promise,
i will do anything to keep you beautiful and alive,
i will water the lands around you
and protect you from the crushing steps of people
and the drought of this world's ways,
just please promise
you will never wilt and fade away.