Hey, you,

Standing there, your bags all packed to go -

Tell me what direction that your sailboat wants to row,

You passed up every riptide, defeated every storm

Now all that's left are calm blue seas, the waters taking form


Of what you hope to do in life, again I must declare

However long it takes you to, I'm sure you will get there

If every small dilemma failed to saturate your plans

If problems didn't stop you, fault you, end you, then what can?


Hey, you,

Waiting there, unsure of how to sail -

Just understand the shifting tides: you'll get there without fail

Close your eyes, grab my hand, and board this raft with me

We'll help each other through the squalls and sail across the sea.

i’m going to try and stop you from running away
though I KNOW that won’t be the case
as water budges, so will the fish within
even I cannot stay your hands and helium eyes

severing cords upon cords of unearthed roots
you saw upon it the last of the raining season
so far late had been the day today
as if it were to never conclude, begin anew, tiring you

however, vacancy in the eyes holds again—
smite in the soul, quaint and unending;
if you left this hour, I would be so fearful as to think
nobody would notice a thing had been misconstrued

and nobody had—
you fell upon your ideas
left with the milky way
bleaching the horizon for minutes and nothing more
nothing less

I was staring up at the sky
yeah, try and stop me; a crystalline finger switching the lights
on and off
stars and sun
taking forever to memorize the constellations

Oh, gravity
your game is an impossible one
keep me on the ground, so I can feel the constructs of my body
waver between all possible paradoxes
and fail to impress any scientists

Together, here, somewhere
Among all the impossibilities of the known universe
As me manage to map out a new world from napkins and discarded
Paper plates
Our own is being thrown away.

Stubborn boy

Always treading mountains

Studying tables and configuring signals

Sending them deep into space

So far gone they will become black again

Reading slow

Maybe even more so

As capricorn’s last noise

Fills the air so clear

Purges the ocean of its madness

And the treasures buried deep below.

Stubborn boy

Will you not forgive yourself

And keep your lexis to you and God

For even now you

Cry a tear nobody will hear

Shake a violet ‘till the last petals whither

And fall to your feet.

Stubborn, stupid boy

And a rotten small thing

As it crushes you into a tiny

Uneven sphere of sadness and a grievance not so

Uncommon in funerals

And a marriage two fortnights awake



Alas a gift given is a gift taken away

A violet shaken is a flower unjustly undone

And a stubborn boy

Is a thing everyone will try to keep away from the darkness

But will not keep the darkness away from him.

Tried and true

You will suffer with the rest of them

It’s written here

In the oath you signed while your eyes

Still knew not the world

And your palms

Clean as a morning sky

Still brushed along the pavement /

Crafted globes.

The reservoir that ran through town

And strung across the wells

               Who thought its life, its pipings rife

Be better suited bells



But bells are made of copper

Poor reservoir of steel

               Last chance to run, but answers none

This world is so surreal

make me a poem out of the rain
and when the droplets ooze down
the sides of the covers
of my favorite novels, clinging to walls
as unorganized as they were
when first put there,
i will write you back with ink and salt.

so as i was there that day,
out of focus, you were too,
out of thought, you ran across the room
to say goodbye to a dust cloud, a cutout
of where i had been
and then you sat down there, poem in hand
unsure of what to do next, or yourself.

the subway tram was unusually fast
it sped across continents in seconds
derailed itself, almost, from reality
and passed me by when
my thumb was clearly visible
when my suitcase, clearly empty
toppled from gravity’s little game that it played alone.

i won’t torment you with postcards,
i’ll try not to call at inconvenient times
trust me, the last thing i’ll do,
is make you a poem out of the rain
and tie it to a pigeon’s dying leg
for you to see –
you dyslexic monster;
i love you.