III.

there is a boy with big eyes and warm hands who is holding one of yours.

he is driving with the windows open, an old red car careening down a dark street, and he keeps looking over at you

and you can’t stop smiling. he pulls over just to kiss you and you feel

*****, you feel wild, you feel sinful. you also feel free.

sitting in a lifeguard chair on an empty beach with the sky a perfect canvas of stars, your head on his chest and his lips on your hair,

you feel beautiful and new. you feel understood, you feel known.

he whispers soft words to soothe you and his hand on your back

drives you wild in the best way. you can’t stop kissing him and you want to fall back onto the sand and live forever in this moment

but there is always change coming, always, and it’s coming soon.

even when you can’t hear the clock, the minute hand still spins along.

IV.

the boy takes you into his house and you come home that night with bruises on your neck. you took your shirt off

and threw it on his carpet and you’re trying to forget how he asked to kiss your stomach

and you said "no" too loudly. you kept telling the boy you wanted to leave,

but he kept kissing you and asking you to stay, and now you haven’t slept

and you have to hold open your eyelids if you want to get anything done. he keeps telling you that

you’re beautiful as if it should fix everything, as if his opinion alone can cure you, but all you can do is thank him

and hope he can’t see past the walls in your eyes.

he drives you home and you’re wearing another boy’s sweatshirt, but you're past caring.

you wonder offhand what he would do if he knew, and that’s all, and you stop wondering.

The red river runs warm
a beating drum
heard for millennia.
Finger on a pulse
the cities of Earth.
Mosquitoes.
Termite mounds
castles of dust.
Vampire bats.
The wasted air
expelled skywards.
The red river clots
hearts turn cold.
We may be dead
spiritually
brother
or sister.

I bought a picture of Jesus and it's hanging on my wall.
When a man walks with Jesus, he has it all.
Jesus lived on Earth and died to pay for our sins.
Without him and his father, mankind can not win.
I've learned a lot about Jesus at the Kingdom Hall.
When a man walks with Jesus, he has it all.

V.

so often you have felt the ache of the world in your bones, sitting in your chest like a boulder, but you’ve always gotten through it on your own

and although there is pride in that, and strength in that, it is also lonely.

you can only fight so many battles by yourself before you reach a threshold of desperation you wish you’d never known,

and it takes hours and hours of sitting on the cliff’s edge before you can bring yourself to stop looking down.

it takes a moment for you to notice that this time, however,

you are not alone in your looking.

maybe this boy means something as simple as not having to fight alone anymore — 

to have someone in your corner, who may not understand exactly what you’re feeling,

but who always cares, and who offers enough love to help get you through.

Flames form above the clouds.
And I'm stuck here wondering
How did I get so lucky?
Despite the storm coming down,
I'm blessed enough
To find the sunset.
How can I be ungrateful
when the sun comes back
every morning?
And leaves me at night
With its shining and cratered
Lunar light..
What did I do
to deserve this
magnificence?

4/13/16

Soft kisses
           Against
                   hesitant lips
Turns quickly too
              Hair pulling
                    *followed by 'i'm sorry'
then-suddenly it was love
             And I had no idea-how
                         too escape 'it'
but ****-painted, panted promises
            Are useless during
                        day lit seconds
Do not leave me beggin' for more
                 I could have destroyed you
      *instead, for you. I came - undone

Our culture is lost
The future no longer belongs to us
Today I have realized this

Today I come to create my own path
And one day I shall die
Everything left behind

Someone will arrive and forge their own destiny
Raise monuments and a culture
And there they shall remain

A new people will arrive
Free to construct their own legacy
Unbound by anything of the past

A being must be unchained.

We were the exception to the rule
We were the silence in the wind
We were the weapons of mass destruction
We were the end in every friend

We were the moonlight in the daytime
We were the covenant of emptiness
We were the broken raft on the beach
We were the clumsy in clumsiness

We were the railroad headed nowhere
We were the meteors in the atmosphere
We were the liars in the candlelight
We were the dry eyes behind the tears

We were the serpents in the underbrush
We were the venom in the veins
We were once the pillars, yet now the pillaged
We were once the sun, yet now the rains

VI.

it means

driving with all the windows rolled down while the sun is setting over the clouds

and the perfect song is playing. it means

running across dark streets because

you snuck out to see him and he is parked down the road,

waiting for you. it means

holding his face in your hands at one in the morning

and willing there to be an alternate ending to the story:

not one where you leave, or he leaves,

but one where we stay here, looking at each other, forever,

and nothing else happens.