I am, you are...
thinking... that you know where your heart is and how
to stay out of the eye of the storm,
or how to look away from it and
all those things that are so easy to get frustrated about
                                                                ­                                screaming into
pillows falling
                                        faster into
light
dark
close
open


SHOUT: you found the things the world threw away
the light of day
                                             showered in
blood spattered
                                                       ­               men with their faces down
clouds
gray
open -
red -
close


STAND

even blind you know the world never started spinning on its own
you could sit and wait for the river to drown you
or be the first to reach out

it takes one

the wall is tipping she said
she stood, he crouched, she laughed
this height suits you she said

the world was spinning and they stood despite it
they stood because of it
the world was still they always said
meanwhile crawling
running hiking into the bleakest desert
the deepest tree-cave
now that i see no one i see myself she said

she ran
she ran like the world couldn't spin without her feet,
like the moon needed her sweat and sparks to grow again,
she ran like she couldn't stay still enough to look into
another pair of eyes

her feet collapse every night, the same every night,  the same every night, the same every night, the same every night

i've always feared patterns, she said

When I think about the things I did to you, it's like I've died and woken up at the same time
like crying for the first time, it's been so long since I've felt anything but this when your face catches me by surprise
like remembering a solemn moment of fingers slipping off the tablecloth without touching,
signifying nothing or so you (and even more so I) thought

once

many times

like realizing rain after you've been soaked through three layers of clothes, and having thoughts free of scorn even though it might be just like the rest of them to call tears a downpour.....
.......
So dramatic, and oh, the irony of every statement I could think of
like magnets, we seem to cause problems when we get too close
although you don't seem to notice anymore

Sometimes...
The world closes you into its arms and you get freaked out.
You always wanted that feeling of being held... but it isn't worth losing your sight...

Sometimes things are dark.
One wonders, while they watch
another blindly ***** at air,
what one might find if they
adjusted.

Sometimes the air is black,
black like behind your eyesockets,
filling your lungs like the tar you swore to never touch-
so deep it seems to seep from your very pores,
seep..... and harden.
So much for flying, there goes your monstrous visions of
avoidance
You are the statue, frozen, groping blindly at nothing for eternity
(not that you would have necessarily moved very far)



Still, though, your tears stain the pictures of people you miss. To you the world is boundless, but you seem to see it differently than all of them...

Still, though, MY tears stain your pictures. To me the world is boundless, but I seem to see it differently than all of you...

speaks the sepia soldier, what say you-
the grass no longer greens
nor is greener blurred through waters-
temperatures rising tasting compromising flavors
savors sun-kissed fables
staples followed Mable
Mayflower, spring strings with color
streaming ribbons gleaming
glass against fingertips
and breath- like a tiger, or a rat
frantic like the dying man's last rap
prayers echoed like-
air.
falls from the precipice to another peak,
"we never speak"
precious, precious, pretentious
quote us phrases, lay we down like concrete,
in concrete
surrounded by concrete where we'll dance and it won't matter that
we aren't dancing

I can see your eyes
trying to hide behind glasses you surmise
no tendency to free nor fear to be

I waited as an outline
watching curtains fall to further shadow
making out a hunched figure -
shaded but clear as the note
you purposefully wrote illegibly-
Look at me!

You walked away bent and kept
your curtain nailed to your head-
and I gloriously alight instead.

they were calling you some sort of modern genius and it sunk lower than the irons that drug a stranger to the ocean's depths
you were walking without shoes to train yourself to the cold, hard reality that set in when you
woke
up.
thinking about feet never solved your real problems, though, and they consumed your genius brain like words soaking in your skull coming out of the womb, like an alien language being shrieked in sirens, jumping you out of shivers and bones and whatever you considered home
at
the time
there were people all around you, with strange faces and no faces and words again, but with people the words were blossoming; yours were maybe weeded out and you spent all your energy trying to nurse them to life, and **** out all they could give you, but you cancelled yourself out in the process of thinking you couldn't stop thinking they called you
obsessed
and time was passing, passing, blurred-
all you wanted was to blossom with someone.