down goes the world,
the only kind you ever knew,
skies felt grey,
in the truest of blue.
your mind was lost,
you dimmed all your fire,
you held to each thought,
as each one felt much lighter.
all things have collapsed,
your breath of relief,
the sky was now broken,
your words now unspoken.

darling,
stroke me in this instance
strike me in my temple,
there is patience here;
the ground on which we stand
for now,
knows no fury
the sky is washed with lemonade
and you can see, on the outskirts
a dark, foaming omen.
but never mind him.
we are in an aperture,
angel sweat cascades
like sparks off an anvil
stain the soul with an evergreen petrichor.
we are human. and we are not.

lemonade, aperture, petrichor—
the sky will enrich my hand
with yours.

I believe life
            is better when you
        turn the music way up
    and  think about  the  lyrics,
                  eat too much
         chocolate, smoke a lot
    of  marijuana,  walk  barefoot,
            talk about weird ****
                     like magic,
       with  weird  people  who
              believe  in  magic.
                Hug strangers,
      and have good adventures
                  with a lot of
        road trips to see all the
 the  beauty  that  surrounds  you.
                  These things
        won't make life perfect,
                 but they sure
        as hell make this strange
                ride  more  fun.
         Be fearless  in pursuit of
               what sets your
                soul on fire.
         Remember  what it's
               like  to  really
                   feel alive.  
    It's not what we have in life,
              but  who  we  have
                     in our life
                          that
                       matters.
                                ­                                                   Jon York   2019

Hello there, it is me.

Who am I, you ask, 
well, to be honest, I am not quite
sure.

Who is this
        I
I speak of?
Is I am or am I is?
Who is me?

I have not met this I.
I have not met this me.

But they can tell you much more about me than I can -

They tell me I am woman.
They tell me I am white,
Jewish,
smart,
promiscuous,
fat,
kind.

They say I am defined and thus I try to define:

amongst the 1's and 0's,
those bits concretized in the grid of the orchestrated I for all the Others to consume.

I do not know this I,
and so I consume myself so that I may learn and I may imitate.
So that I can be I,
But who am I?

I say I am strong, but I know I am weak.
I tell myself I am the smartest dumb person, and the dumbest smart person.

Yet I am not who I was ten years ago as I am not who I was when I started writing this poem as I am not who I will be when I finish.

So who is strong and who is weak?

I am all that I am and all that I wish I weren't.
I am everything and also nothing.

I am not man, but I am not woman.
I am neither kind nor mean, fat nor thin, smart nor dumb.

I am desire and I am pain.
I am suffering and I am happiness.

I am the breathe I am taking but I am also the tightness I feel at the armpits as my chest expands,
there isn't enough space for the world in my lungs.

I am larger than the world,

I am fluid.
I fill space,
expanding into,
invading the empty.

But I am the emptiness.
I am also the world.

I am you.

I am.