At first
the shuddering of the rain
is a new noise.
You can hear the cloud drains
being pulled all at once

With time
our minds push it to the background.
It spills over the other sounds still.
Before the bird chirp reaches you
it has dodged the downpour
has been coated
and adapted a slippery, drenched quality.

Waves of wind will join
to sheet across streets
flood the ditches
slap building sides
and finally leak over the threshold
where the wet shoes brag
about where they’ve been.

Bounding down through the sky
with a brother, so high
while we’re tied at the waist
so we don’t float away
from the mothership.

Suspended in nothing
I observe where we are,
and experience true stillness
for we cannot help but turn with the earth
as we lay still on it

We are from a world
that we want to change
but progress is earned, not given
and below us it changes
with or without our influence
and at its own pace.

We spend so long away
in ourselves,
barely touching the surface
of what we call home
with no idea what’s really out there.

as we fall to the earth
in a moment of birth
I know I will miss
empty space

I want my gravestone
to be a stepping stone
or a bench
or a kid’s slide
or anything other
than a waste of space

People will always keep dying
but the earth isn’t getting any bigger
and if we keep digging graves
one day the whole planet will be full of them

Years later earth will be a tourist attraction
a ball of dirt covered in headstones
orbiting the sun for our forever
like a pin cushion
in a planet model

I don’t want to be just another dead body
I want my bones to be carved into tools
or trinkets
and I want my skull to be
a ceremonial bowl
used to anoint future generations
into adulthood

I don’t want to go to waste.

A child
Laying on the ceiling
Has the look of me.
To the left
Another incarnation of myself
And on the floor sits the source
Of these reflections

There is no door, no window
To this room’s cube
Where all surface is mirror to light
No shadows.
I am surrounded by myself
Unable to escape

I am matter
And being so I am the only thing reflected
Endlessly

A compelling urge
opens my arms
my body is spinning,
And humming.
The cubic prison
Does the same
and friction of the self
is born from movement

I stop spinning
But my reflections do not.
The humming intensifies.
Glass starts to crack

I am thrown away from myself
Through and above the room

When it shattered
My body fell forever,
Until it hit the ground

This life
Can be boiled down
To a few out of body experiences
In my boxers
In my bed
With my dog
Laying on the floor
Between the clean pile
And the ***** one

It can be traced
By borrowed books
And cigar butts
And little bits of broken glass
That I still find on the back porch

It can be measured
If you hold it up to the light
And see how much shines through,
Leaking out the other side
Like the drip of a faucet
To be carried away
By the river
That takes all life
Eventually

I found myself
Washed up in the dark
On the cool wet stone
Of the shore.
I couldn’t see the river
But the current rumbled
With the voice of the ender
Reaching out to pull me in.