They came
out of the sun.
They came as one,
and then burst
into a thousand
brightly
burning birds,
colliding
kaleidoscopes-
smashed up stars,
mashed up Mars-
crimson
in my eyes,
feathered
arrows
in flight,
flocking
to the flood
beneath us,
the stars fell
like trickles of blood
from the brow of the sky,


I was high.

So high.

I sleep with the pigeons,
I sleep under bridges,
a deteriorating photograph
is all I have.
She left with that winner,
the one that looks like an athlete
but he's actually an artist
you know, the one that gets noticed.
I can't blame her, I've lost it all.
These are the types of injuries that occur
when the ethics are below your pay grade.
So now I sleep under bridges,
the grass is my bed,
and I
bathe with the pigeons.
I keep a hat on my head
while I read the paper with my shoulders
hunched over, although I don't
get cold anymore.

Agitated at how this guy has me figured
out, I just want to throw him on the ground.
I look up at the board in front of me
now and see
that Bukowski has me cornered again
and I want to scream expletives
as loudly as I can, but I catch myself
just before I begin to vent because
the three and four year old children
all around are the only people that
don't yet hold me in complete
contempt and I'd like to keep it
that way.

I tried to turn you into a poem,
to reach my thumb to the crown of your head
and compress you, deflate
and swallow you like the pill.

I never made you into a poem
because you had me pressed to the wall,
and the blinking cursor couldn't swim
in our plastic hugs.

Now I've made you
into a poem, and squashed
three months to thirteen lines
I can fold you up; crumple
you into a sock drawer.

I got you seeds to celebrate
What had taken root today
And like an annual, with this I say
I’ll plant it all again

I got you seeds to represent
How we’ve weaved our spines
And bent— towards one another
To grow together, slowly as we went

How our round-up ready
Slow and steady
Romance sprouts its head
Giving new life with the price
Of growing on the dead

I got you seeds instead of flowers
(With the hope of daily showers
Falling on our head)
So that you can watch us come alive
And after a year’s time we thrive
And I promise you, should we survive,
This time next year, I’ll plant it all again.

For flowers last a week, maybe,
And in all their splendorous glory
You only get to watch them die
So slowly, it may be.

But I say we are more than that
So, with this, I tip my hat
And tell you like an English chap
“Have a jolly good day”
Because with a love like this
And promise like that
And the One we both believe in

Why the hell not?

one year, we will scramble the seasons
so a summer yolk bleeds gold
into our white winter pages

leaving our islands on a plane
we will watch the clouds pull a mottled curtain
between ourselves and our mothers

in a campervan, we will etch lines
into the pale stretch marks of America's belly,
litter mountains with conversation

we will build our own climate with our lover's arms
wind a thread through an atlas cross-stitched
with icicles and sandstorms

we will enter the new year with sepia forearms
a thousand rivers gushing through our heads
stomachs rounded, full of sun

Our Last.


We promised,


Shook hands,


"we are done".

But with one more wish:

A last kiss.



In this moment,

the one we both knew was wrong,

something felt right.


Was is the acceptance of the end,
or the awakening of something different,
softer?

In that one moment,

the kiss,

I was swept off my feet,

with some kind of reassurance.


Was it recognizing the end,
or finding the whole reason it started?


We danced,

quietly,

in a way we never had.



There was some sort of control.




I could spend thousands of words,
trying to figure the feeling.
But i know that to you,
The kiss,
was The end.