it’s difficult to articulate the precise difference between drawing pictures and writing words. neither is particularly honest, especially when you ask me. there’s always a temptation to let a small truth stand in for a larger truth, and that is inherently a little bit dishonest. universality is only for some, only sometimes.

but imagining it is there more often and more broadly helps put a leash on the chaos of coffee shops and prison cells and tenements and castles. to imagine we are all held together by a shared sensation is a thrill irreplaceable by a one to one experience, by a touching of foreheads or being in love.

that’s only if you’re a good artist, though. sometimes you just have to draw exactly what you see, and then the only stretching of the truth is acting as if the chair legs aren’t there because they aren’t visible behind the table. if you’re a really honest human being, you can draw them and then erase them. but nobody is.

To grow up a restless gull, itching to go in every feather, spreading fingers across continents and craving every one of them. To finally go and lose your hunger. To settle into the next place like it’s the last, tuck your head under your wing and know only parking lots. To forget the sea was yours.

To need to hear the same song every day to keep your head. To paint a mural of where you’ve been so nobody suspects. To avoid eye contact because you’ve got nothing behind yours. To forage and forget. To forage and forget. To forget.

dizzy from the onslaught of the springtime I thank
my lucky stars for strings and steamboats I thank
my quiet mind for resting sometimes I think
my lungs are stretching in your absence I worry
that I ask too much of you

to find a place to call home
where the bed nests flush in the corner
and the arms don’t loosen till you say so

to show all of your teeth and blow away
the bombs and dark purple air that cloud your sleep
and invite you to stay a minute longer

to live in boxes if that would make you closer
to knowing what it’s like to be a maypole
or a wild turkey or a king

to square your shoulders when you walk
and when you shudder
and when you listen

to find a place to call home
where you can leave without asking
if it’ll be there still at dusk

from your cohabited bed, you say you can’t see out the window
only in the living room do you feel peace, only during economic conferences
do you remember who are without a frame

springtime air doesn’t taste the same without winter giving way
and you say you’d like to be where people wear sweaters and
comb their hair. you still comb your hair when you remember to
and you think you’ve still got a way with words

but you don’t use them much. you blink often—
who’s to say why—and over crackling lines of hi-miss-you
i hear your voice ache for my bricks and long leash
and hot-cold orange future

you don’t know the half of it

pointillist muscles ache
by turns sharp and muted
echoing soft water lilies
once planted, twice uprooted
caught on canvas
then let go

the radiator sputters
stoic but senile
they taught you acrylic lakes
were more gray than blue
and you paint
by the book now

hard winter holds your brittle fingers
in what it imagines is a gentle grip
you smile to hide your grimace
the quiet sun politely reminds you
what you promised
then let go

this morning rings no bells of my first time
moving lead-legged through elm-split mist
to your doorstep

that day was tinted mustard-yellow
i had my eyes covered tight
and the trembling was mine alone

this morning is all green
like the inside ring of your iris
and the trembling is everywhere

i wait patiently
the mist moves
and not much else