It’s morning and very still and I’m walking perpendicular to three or four hundred but I’m their audience I stop to take a breath while Hunter Morris ninteenfiftytwototwothousandandone lays silently below me every time I breath out my breath floats to join the crowd but they’re really below me it’s hard seeing things for how they really are it’s Monday in December and somewhere in the city people press against each other as they walk -don’t tell me there’s not enough room- like hamsters huddling for warmth in a corner I ignore the dew and sit in the grass and
try to not be so much

You were something I heard
From across the room
Faintly
In passing

You were a rumor
An aside
Delicately whispered
(my eardrums abide)

Although I could not make out your words
I got the gist of you
And you stuck in my head
Like gum under a classroom desk

It’s pretty late
You’re standing across the room, talking to someone or something but I’m just here
These are your friends after all
But you look sad, like me
Like usual

Someone’s pouring me a drink and
I‘ve got that ichy feeling you get when you shouldn’t smoke your last cigarette
But you know you will
They say something to me and laugh

I’m sandwiched between a fantasy and crushing reality
like beautiful ideas that become **** when you write them down on paper
My feet are shaking, ready to move (anywhere)
I am the inches of terrible terrible air
Between the fruit on the tree and your fingertips
(you, tied to the ground, like me)

You can shout all you like, Tantalus
I know you
You’re just like me
We’ll never get anywhere
We’re frozen assets
We’re “get well soon” cards given out in the ******* cancer ward
We’re racecars stuck in the mud

But what do I know?
Why are we even here?
Do we have anywhere else to go?
I know it’s late
2:45 in the morning and raining
But I’ve got a third a tank of gas
and you’ve got that look in your eye
let’s get the **** out of here.

When I was young the earth was too
Me, organic barren mirror
The feeling of impending time
Feeling life becoming clearer

Though young I noticed towering trees
In lines, at random how they stand
Together reaching for above
But miles above my outstretched hand

Strong like soldiers at their posts
Always standing, always there
Their bark was scratched, but they stood straight
And I felt safer for their wear

We almost stayed there the whole night, a debt we thought we’d owe
I spent that time talking to you
And said how we should go

Did we error in sharing everything, even our biting woe?
You helped me and I helped you too
But paid less than was owed

Winter came, and how we felt the coldness of the snow!
You told me I’m an okay *****
But now I ought to go

But in our house our love lingered, it’s putrid status quo
Heaped on our floor a pile accrued
Of debts we came to owe

We let our shame gestate in you, then cut it from below
We’re too young to know what to do
Too poor to pay the debts we owe
I guess that I should go

Her faith it heals, her mind protects
In fear of love her heart erects
A wall of stone to keep away
The visitor her heart expects

Her virtue will not let her stray
To thoughts of him or let replay
The memories edging at her heart
By night she'll kneel down to pray

"Oh please Oh God set me apart
Give me strength, a brand new start"
Her logic, though, is deeply flawed
As love is strong but not too smart

Each day she's building her facade
And always keeping him abroad
By night beside her bed she'll laud
Love's absence in the name of God

Stopped in a field and down to lay
The night the land, no stars no trees
I've found an empty place to stray
Just me, the grass, the friendly breeze

Which washes over me in waves
Snoring bugs asleep below
Beneath my head a million graves
How far they stretch, too far to know

Or guess by clues from eyes alone
(Dark air Dark ground, they coalesce)
Morning sun makes its vastness known,
But for now the tired field digress

-es from crazed chaotic noon
Now darkness a blanket Earth adorns
And I a child in its womb
Not quite ready to be born

Soon bright day will pull me back
Life's a runner that few outrun
But here I float beside the black
The sleeping bugs, the coming sun.

The day awoke, not bright, content
With soggy greys, the light's been spent
In springtimes past, it will recall,
Though now it pulls its winter shawl
To shelter it from windy cold
Inside it sits, inside grows old-

I
   Could
                 Sleep
                                  Forever
                 ­                                           But
                  ­                                                                 ­     It's
                                                       ­                                                                 ­    Of
                                                          ­                                                                 ­                                              You              
                                               ­                                                                 ­                                                                 ­                                                                 ­                                     I'd
                                                             ­                                                                 ­                                                                 ­                                                                 ­                                                                 ­                                                                 ­             Dream

A mother must be many things
First, she is a vessel
Faring seas not so calm

Then she is a gardener
Shining sun with her smile
Willing flowers out of the dirt
And picking out those weeds
Spreading seeds with a hope
That doesn't wither when the snow falls

Then for some time she is an acrobat
Balancing high in the air
Carrying great weight on her shoulders
Still, the audience will never
See her falter

For a while she may be a critic
Stiffly accepting nothing
But the best

But ultimately she is herself an artist
Chiseling and shaping meticulously
With gentle hands

I know
For I have been
Hauled
And tended to
And carried
And sculpted
With great skill
And love
More abundant
Than the oceans she once sailed

That moment
Our hands
Touched

Linger

Your eyes
Bashful
Looked away
Stage left

(To what?
Believe me
I've studied
The still-frame
In my mind
Ever-aging)

Then
You pulled away
As did I
Because the world is a cold place
When it's just us two

A thicket of yellow light
Shone stubbornly through the cold
Outside my window
This morning
So
(Spent as an old dollar bill)
I stumble downstairs
And build my little worlds
Which will hide in the sky
And escape into the ground
Then I
(Empty as the air in your pockets)
Lay me down
As we both begin
To forget one another

Your letter came
Did I not tell you?
It's not as if
I've housed it
(little treasure)
In the pockets of my jeans
Or as if I pull it out
All the time
Because then it'd surely
Have been aged by my eyes
Which dauntlessly would
Explore the vast landscapes of your words
And, in each one it meets,
See everything you do
And feel
Surely if this were true
It would've been softened
Into tissue paper
By edacious fingers
Who can't help themselves
Because they think they're
Touching you

I'm worried I may
Have sold
My soul
Oh, dear
Only because of the way
You make me so happy
I could scream
At any given moment
And how
In the doorway
I kissed you
Shaky as a newborn calf
And your heartbeat
Was so strong -
I could feel it
All over you
Our breathing and touch
They were so soft
I thought the air conditioning
Might blow us away

There's nothing that can be said
About the beauty of your eyes
That wise men with pens wiser than mine
Haven't wrote centuries ago

Bright
They curiously follow others
God knows who
And hold the most amazing secrets
That I'll never know

Will the flowers always be in bloom?
The world ceases turning, for all we know
As we hold each other so close
A soft wind brushes through the trees
Who politely applaud us

But the wind changes, and so do the leaves
Their deceit comes as less of a shock to you
And as the leaves red, so do we
Sticks, stones, and isolation
All these **** me less, dear
Than to see you in the arms of another

I'll always know you as I did in Rome
As lovers often do
In each other we made our homes
How quickly our love grew

You eyes were bright, so was your mind
As we laid on Roman earth
Your hair was soft, your face was kind
Kissed by Mediterranean surf

As I held them all, how big I grinned
I'd never held anything so tight
We smiled, we danced, we laughed, we sinned
Under a perfectly sleepy night

We packed our bags without a frown
Hands clasped, we flew through the air
God, they must have weighed three thousand pounds
Still, it was not much for us to bear

Soon we returned to the commonplace
Each day a xerox of the last
The days we'd stare for hours face-to-face
Had now become the past

We'd come home from work, tired and weary
A clatter of keys replaced our secret knock
Tales of co-workers are endlessly dreary
Dear, tonight I'm too tired to talk

All that would grow was the foreboding quiet
Holding, I felt you resist
As I quit smoking and you on your diet
Made only muttered words and clenched fists

Soon anything would have us screaming at each other
We'd release the anger from our hearts
Rivers for eyes, you'd call up your mother
And we'd endure cold, cold nights spent apart

Now I find you hanging from the ceiling
You found the packed bags; you thought you knew
Tears and hurt and my mind reeling
Oh dear, I was going with you

I quietly burn with what's left of my home
But the flames can't hurt if I hold you
On the bed burn two tickets to Rome
Oh dear, I was going with you

I'll always know you as I did in Rome
The way lovers seem to do
Amidst the arches and the catacombs
How quickly our love grew

I could run off into never
And softly drift downstream
Well I could sleep forever
But it’s of you I’d dream

Let it always be
Us beneath this tree
Brittle leaves in our hands
Are crushed forever into sand
And someday so will we

And I want you to know
I'll hold you through the snow
The treeflowers will bring
Us their fruit in the spring
So we never have to go

I promise to stay true
Like the strong wind which blew
All the leaves from your hair
They turned to dust in the air
And one day we will too

She asked me to write for her eyes
And other things less truer, true
I'm almost certain they were lies
As sure I am that they were blue

The color of the endless skies
A pretty, enigmatic hue
The sea, it rises, then it dies
Is it the color of those two?

You had asked me to write for your eyes
I can't give credit where it's not due
It was a fairly weak disguise-
You wanted me to write for you

One

There are an
Endless amount
Of Tick-tocks
Between
The tick
And the tock
When I’m looking
In
Your
Eyes

Two