I had no filter
I said what
I was thinking
Like I was talking
To my walls
I ran in messy
Spoken circles
With no
Conclusions
No concise plan
No destination
And you, you
Followed my
Footsteps
And thanked me
For the walk
You'd never seen
Such scenery

Still hexed, unemployed, another daylong bout
between too much silence and too much noise,
a sweetness opens the hymnal: sing, rejoice.

And I'm an American male child, born in 1990.
Summon me a moment, Effexor one-fifty,
instant nostalgia, a natural reaction.

Polly Anna, hailing from Tulsa, has a key.
She's in my robe, dancing on the balcony.
And we're not drinking
as much as we used to be, yet talking
baby names by three.

And I can feel it, a future good memory
unfolding in real time. Her dark shape,
growing darker, shadows from bedroom
to bathroom and back again.

Oh, the profane things we whisper
to get ourselves out of character,
unguarded, empty-headed, free.

The notes of trained movement,
of calibrated ****** phrase, harmonize.
The walls, the lamp, the bedside table,
the mattress, the blankets—the room entire
converges.

My name takes on two more syllables.
Her name becomes soundless.
Hold time. Bend, baby. Boundless.

The rains came. The road called.
And the cities we coursed through on the way to Ulysses,
to Broken Bow, didn't they always seem to be waiting on a change, longing for us, as if time moved only at the sway of our arms?

The rains came. The road called.
And there was a sanctuary of our own, a quiet place to lay our heads and listen, always listen, to nature's nightsong. How many mornings did we awake to find a new sweet creature in need of a home?  

The rains came. The road called.
And we stopped counting the number of wheat fields we had walked, the caves we had explored, the antique stores we had perused, the cups of coffee we had poured.

The rains came. The road called.
And there were hospital visits, both of joy and joy's opposite.
Time did what time does best, shaping and reshaping the people
we love—and that's what we know best, isn't it? Love.

The rains can come and the roads can call,
and we delight in what we know of love.
Look, love is not a flower with a single season.
Love conjures prehistoric time.
We love not as two,
but as all the men and women who have gone before.
Fathers rest in our bones like mountain ruins.
Mothers carry our blood like river beds.
And the moments that brought us here,
could we even discern the major from the minor?
Why would we diffuse love of its wild alchemy?
Love rivers through us, guided by every path and climate a fate improbable, beautiful, holy, endless, intrepid, guarding, forgiving.

there is still
space
for love in your
sadness.

the way
your life
blossoms
depends not
in the way
that you water it

but in the way
that you replant it
over and over in
different mindsets.

in different soils
and environments.

seeing what suits
your characteristics.

seeing how much
the sun touches your leaf.

and how you release
oxygen back to the world.

the sun is exfoliating
my skin for you.

just give me a minute,
my love.

i am shedding the dry
past away.

and the sun
looked down at her
and said:

"wake up.
everything that is
asleep inside of you.
wake them up.

you are too
delicate to heal this way."