There are those who die with the wind,
and those who inherit,
staring, steam-eyed, at the blistering cloud scattered sky,
scanning for a safe place to land amongst our feet.

Everything starts at the bottom.
Sun peaks over the orange Horizon,
Sea crests and bellows, ebbs and flows,
History begins at the Beginning, and so on.

People start at the feet, and wheel their way up.
So often there are toes caught in the zippers,
the hairs of our feet singed on the swelling soil
we plant our feet.

A Sun rising.
A wave crashing.
A human being born into a dying world,
deprived and blinded,
it's beauty swept away in the panic of a coming storm.

And some day
I will sit on my back porch
in infinite, consecutive jest,
staring at the night sky.

And, best of all,
I won't trouble myself wondering
why I have the itching inclination
to look up.

And, even more so,
I watch, contented,
a celestial understanding:
The stars. They speak.

Save a piece of me.
A laugh, a smile, a subtle flicker of my eyes when the lights turn on.
You have to remember something, so make it small. Don't keep the battles,
the strife, the words I said and never meant, the words you never thought you knew.

If you save anything, let it be a moment. A second.
So brief, so inconsolably unmemorable:

A candle's flame. A flower's lonely petal.
A breeze, pushing us both in opposite directions.

He was a father's son:
quiet, respectful, hard-working.

He loved the winter. The snow flaking
off the trees. Chilled little prayers.

His father had seizures. Every once in
a long while, his father's eyes would lock
his mother's and his being would tense,
frozen like Cybil's lake across the pasture.
Writhe, foam at the mouth.

He was an old man now. He remembered
everything about his father.

His raspy, charmed voice. His knowing brow.
His leather bound skin wrapped around years of a blunt ax and needy firewood.

As the son's eyes closed into nothing,
he remembers Christmas with his father. A reunion of sorts.

He would ring the doorbell, his father on the steps.
He would invite him in for coffee. He would refuse, only to say, It was nice to see you, George.

Yes, you too Dad. Take care.
Goodbye.

There were days I thought I'd never open my eyes,
days I didn't want to, days I have long tried forgetting.
We called it the Aftermath.

The calm always settles before the storm.
So they say. Hardly could one handle the
violent twists and turns in the winds you spun—
I could never quite quickly enough grasp
a branch to hang on to.
I wasn't yet strong enough. Yet.

The days after the storm, I sat idle, nigh—catatonic
outside your apartment door singing 'Sweet Caroline' like a *******
child because, in my childish, young heart, I thought,
You can hear me. You're listening.
The return silence was deafening.

Nothing was audible, save the radiator buzzing in the hall and the fierce, intrepid lapping of winter wind against a broken window pane.

On her arm, the tower of Pisa bumps back and forth with her swollen sleeves.
On her back, standard holometabolous insect flutter flames it’s way heavenward.
Her thighs house songbirds, yellow, flightless—beauty is her.
A cobra draped around her neck; an olive branch psyching back, rearing it's head, infinite.

Her body is a shrine of shadowy ink.
Her cheeks have become temples.
I lie my faith in them alone.

1
O black golden cleanser
O ebony shrine ballast
Pry open mine eyes,
sharpen my senses like cutlery
& envelop me—
Is the day so young

another cup please, just to
Get me going

2
Heat
Not quite that of a fire
"but trust me, don't touch it"
Let the smoke stiffen
& soften become the
summation of particles & at once
lose all sense of being

I'll have a smoke now—
maybe I'll kick it a little later