Love not found under bed sheets,
But found in the heart,
Spread thinly as the beach sand
That dirties my feet
When we ran into the woods.
Connected by fear
And our hands
As we stumbled upon safety
In a city of giants undisturbed by society,
I felt your thoughts sweat through your fingerprints,
Siphon into my blood to pulse through my body.

And when we lit campfires for our lungs
You tucked me close to your knee,
Your elbow resting on my femur,
Rushing your thoughts even faster still to my heart.
I felt your love nest at the base of my brain,
And I was reminded
That I love you,
How you love the thought of loving me,
And how much that will never matter.

It must be real,
If hearing the blades of grass
Whisper to my toes
Makes me think about you.

I am nothing to you,
A mere particle of flesh
impounded by the pulsing gravity
Perpetuated in your dizzying, unfathomable motion.
And you are everything to me-
Provider of energy,
Life,
Warmth,
Love,
And a home-
I can only hope to be as green as the trees
Who give such beauty to this landscape you call your kingdom,
Who smile under your radiance,
Who breathe for the planet.

If green was the color for thankfulness
My heart would bleed chlorophyll.
I would paint my world in pulverized leaves,
Coating my tire treads to gift you thanks everywhere I traveled.

I can only guess the reason I transplant orphan saplings into ****** soil
Is to give back to the one who gave everything.
Maybe someday the trees will streak my palms with their thankfulness pigment.
My life lines will allow rivers of green to flow across my skin smoothly, just like water,
Down my arms, coating each hair and fiber.
My fingers will sprout innocent leaves, quivering in the crisp evening wind.
They will sway East and West,
Finding North in between,
Shadowing my neck to cool its newly forged bark,
stiffening my posture and stifling my movement.
The freshly cut spearmint grass will leave their green fingerprints on my arched feet,
Painting my soul with gratitude.
I will point my branches to the sky,
Kick my roots to signify my green heels and toes,
Embodying my brethren until the rain washes away my new skin,
Praying that you notice me.

I see my thoughts nuzzling in your brain,
Dripping with anticipation,
Drugging the both of us simultaneously,
Organically with steady pollination.

Neither of us quite understand
How to express our fascination with this newborn flower,
So we do what we can,
With smiles here and there
And small conversation to trek the bridge between us.

Someday this may bloom if we nurture correctly,
But no single answer exists as to raise a child,
Start a fire,
Or grow a garden.
We will create our painting in the exact way we desire,
With our own brushes and canvas formed out of our skin,
With the paint from our irises.

What a beautiful feeling,
The budding of love,
With its uprise of uncertainty and swirling butterfly emotions.

Everyday I'm trying so hard to like my favorite things for reasons having nothing to do with you.


Today when I decided to drive on the meandering border of Walloon Lake,
Wildwood Harbor rd,
     The canopied trees
     flashing shadows of squirrels peaking through paws
reminded me of every motorcycle ride I accompanied you on.

     Holding tight to your chiseled stomach,
     hands cupping your belly button through your sweatshirt pockets,
you would maneuver your mobile machinery through every dip and dive,
garnishing curves with streamline, flawless breaking and acceleration.
       I would lean into your spine,
  imagining the path of your lower back as the map of our road ahead,
each bump and curvature a flawless representation of reality,
  the living moment.

Something sensual existed about the way you and I forged a relationship on pavement,
  riding the asphalt the same way your bending fingers rode my thighs.
     And every time I choose to drive our road with my less than aerodynamic Marquis,
each stomach flip from the unsuspected slopes
   transports me to lazy mornings-
         Naked and alone in any way imaginable.
    Purity and solitude,
truth, the end of it.

So I turned onto M-75
              trying to forget every reason that I love Wildwood Harbor for you,
                            and only remember the reasons I love it for me,
                                           but couldn't find any worthy of space.
                                           You made everything so memorable.

I call for my mother above the rounded crescent hilltops
but she never answers,
only my Biology professor who brought me to this place
so distantly
close to my own heartland.
And my love affair
continues to blossom over every rotten log
with its residing salamanders and larvae.

My hopes is that the Beavers will teach me to saw through trees with such precision and I can then become one of the greats.

I wish stars grew in your skin
Next to the oxygen humming in your lungs
To thaw your stagnant blood
So I could watch you orbit your part of the planet
Three hundred miles away,
Because your heart would then permeate faster than life's speed limit,
Scaling all the mountains between us to
Float in my peripherals like
Residual Chernobyl radiation.
Dancing hazily,
Constant reminders of my past
And the jenga monkey ladder to my future.

I never liked being insignificant.
Now please infect me with your cancer
So you can't escape again.

If someone tells you I love you,
Run them through triathlons while holding your hand.
Make them listen with their eyes closed to your singing voice,
When they tell you they love it watch for the formation of sweat beads at the edge of their hair line.
Have them catch you off a twenty story building
And then drive you to the hospital.
Wait in the ER for five hours without a cell phone to play games on,
Make sure they kiss your fingers while you cry in agony.
Starve with them for five days
While you survive off of nothing but salty tears and tender knee hugs.
Watch your favorite movie with them fifty times in thirty days.
Go out to your favorite restaurant five times in one week,
And most importantly,
Loop your favorite album on replay for 78 hours.
Buy five dogs and walk them through miles and kilometers of bike trails.
Have every single argument possible
Until you run out of things to disagree on,
Then bring every issue up again the next morning.
Get drunk together and say every possible ****** up thing that you don't mean.
File for a mortgage.
Agree on how many kids you both want.
Go through the loss of a family member together,
And convert to separate religions.

But most of all, make sure they really mean it.

I wish that God would whisper to his disciples
The words no one desires to believe.
I wish that God would **** his followers pretending to embody his words in gravitating accuracy, that
They are preparing for the end when really they're creating it.
The apocalypse is now,
In production as we speak,
Taking its form in floods,
Extinctions,
Heat waves,
And toxic wastelands.

Too late has man found solutions for irreversible problems.
And too long has man found comfort behind curtains and blinds,
Sheltered from the singeing reality
That is what Revelation preached.
The apocalypse is now,
And we hold the torches
Scorching the grass blades knotted through our toes.
We hold the torches and feel the power wielded in our palms,
Realizing the undeniable capacity of energy in the burning branches in our hands.
But humans love fire,
And that remains constant.

You're probably laying on your back staring at your inviting ceiling, slightly transparent,
Swirling together your collected pool of hopes and dreams
Just like me
At this very moment.
You are listening to indie music,
And so am I.
Sometimes I imagine we are listening to the same song simultaneously
So we can think the same things together,
Disregarding the time zone difference.


I just wanted to tell you that I would have walked across the gym with you at graduation,
You would have cried with me,
We would have hugged and held hands,
And we would have celebrated until our eyelids puffed and our hands became pruny
From our laughter infused tears.
We would have drank soda and not beer after the ceremony,
Because we never needed anything but ourselves, and maybe a camera, to have fun.
We would have changed out of dresses into sweatpants and flip flops, because we never needed to impress each other.
We would have driven in my car and screamed out the windows
Until someone called the cops and we ran away into my bedroom for safety.
My mother would have had a hug waiting for you,
A cake for us,
And a smile for eternity.

We would have made our way upstairs
To lay on the cheep Home Depot carpet and stair at my own ceiling, just as inviting as yours,
Counting the stars through the drywall we pretend to be invisible.
In the background,
Distanced enough for thoughts to still process,
A playlist of us beats in a fuzzy muffle from the dying iPod dock,
The kind of music you can't help but get high from.
We would talk of our plans and our futures and pretend they weren't separate,
Dreaming of sky scraping homes and earth-bounding trips to Asia and Europe,
Finding our destinies and origins here and there,
Then coming together to share our experiences.
And when things get too sad we would just enjoy the music and remember everything we had, everything we have, and everything we will lose.

I guess what I'm trying to say is listening to good music makes me miss you more than my poetry can begin to express,
And I'm so selfish for wishing you never left me,
Because I know you're happy there and I'm happy here without you,
But I'd be happier if we were listening to music under the same invisible ceiling.

I've been thinking about our hug you left me with yesterday,
The one that convulsed my shoulder muscles and made my ribs cry just a little,
But a good cry, like the happy tears after holding a new puppy.
You said in that way,
As you have made a habit of
With sarcasm and sincerity,
"You'll always be my sweetheart",
And then you said that you won't call me your sweetheart in public.
That makes me so angry,
And you think I'm joking,
But I'm not.
Because I can't stop thinking about how those hugs and "sweethearts" are dwindling,
How each time you leave for a winter in the southern states
I cringe at the thought that I may never greet you for Easter next year.
And every time we find you asleep,
Open mouthed on the couch
We only panic for a second as to whether you will wake up this time.

You stand like a family monument,
So unique in composition,
With your structured titanium back and chiseled limestone arms that threw me playfully and carried me as your cowgirl,
And transformed our red, wooden house to sophisticated tan siding when I was too young to remember,
With your skin so dark from perma-tan I thought you were black when I was 6,
With your infinite woodworking skills and artistic envisions with architecture
That crafted dollhouses and swing sets for me at 8,
With your callused hands beyond remission and your ever bruising fingernails that paddled us down the Ausable at 13,
With your steel toed boots sewn into your feet that allowed me to dance on them till I was 15,
With your artificial heart valve and five open heart surgeries.
Once I thought it was instrumental, magical, the watch nestled under your ribs.
But now every time I get that gut squeezing hug as a goodbye I can hear that valve faintly tick,
And I pretend it's not your clock,
Trembling with each diastolic and Systolic murmur,
Gears cracking and eroding inside your kindled muscles,
Struggling to keep up with its more natural brothers inside that engulfing muscle,
That which reminds your family of
Your selfless and infinitely giving persona.
But it only reminds me that your days of rock polishing
And dentured smiles are ending rapidly.

I want to live the high I get from lines embedded in your scalp
Received from the contact of my fingertips messing through your sawdust hair
Lacking a frothy shower, smelling of pure human,
Not some artificial musk.
I want the real you,
The sweat,
The blood,
The tears painting Native American designs on your belly button.
All 5'11" of your unique composition, including
Your esophagus spitting colloquial rhythms,
Brain stem communicating your radical ideals,
And trachea resonating hypnotic gregorian chants.
I want to nuzzle in the space where your heart belongs
And cuddle your muscles under my chin.
I want to exist inside of the real you,
Under the throat you swallowed me down,
Behind the jugular that gives me shelter.
And every evening while I drink your smiles to sleep
I'll polish your teeth for morning
To showcase your perfected beauty,
To educate others on my addiction for every edge,
Every corner of your soul and that which it resides in.

We walked down the sidewalk with our eyes set towards the elongated skyscrapers, while we stumbled and lost our footing in gaping sidewalk potholes. Each extinguished and singed our disheveled sneakers.

A bird, perched on the stoplight, found my gaze and sawed in half the barrier between our minds with all eight talons, hungry for a sturdier connection.

The car horns synchronized their stammering chants and buckled our ankles like marionette horses. They escalated until we could see each vibration pulse from the windows, liquefying the glass and homogenizing salad vinaigrettes.

The waters, collected in the sewers, began to rush into their respective reservoirs and pool at increasing velocities. The excess bubbled up through the drain covers, costing our feet in fresh rain from yesterday's storm.

Every vent coaxed heated steam through its pours and the condensed warmth reached our fingers, yearning to steal the precious gemstones encased in our jewelry.

We were invited to become the new asphalt, to replace the neglected pieces begging to retire to the gravel pits outside of town, recycling them into new beings and begin again the birthing cycle of the city.

Chicago,

Your energy rumbles up my knees and out my esophagus.
I speak your language with each vibration,
And while others find it annoyance purely,
I treat it tenderly and loop it through each tooth,
Threading the words you teach me.
While your speech turns to sentences I come to understand your purpose, why we are here
On this gravity defying sidewalk.

I feel your kinesthetics with every breath I take,
Whooping back out cigarette tar and gasoline vapor.
The river, long and un-obstructive, flows down to the base
Of the brain stem which you funnel your strength and wisdom through.
The geese tickling your nerve endings in the water
Never realized this liquid is no longer their home,
It was taken hostage a century before.

This city,
With its echoing winds and cloud scraping apartments
Understands me.
A symbiotic sphere.
It sees the future while others greedily pull the veil over their faces,
But He is unwilling to accept the imaginary.
Someday the stars will no longer glisten,
While every building, innocent and newly ******,
Loses the fluttering heartbeat it once composed.
The windows will project no faces,
Only empty chairs and tables
Collecting dust and milky residue of the putridity its children once carried in lungs.

Paddling my ****** canoe down the whispering waters
With my fishing rod in hand,
I acknowledge the persevering tree buds,
The attention seeking trilliums,
Dazzling all eyes and intoxicating logocentric thinkers.
The perch and bluegill aim to impress my lures,
And wish to give my martyrdom-like worms salvation in the highest sense.
Into the ocean I proceed, jumping ship to swim the length of my beaches,
My spaces of leisure and relaxation.
The May flies clench my shirt in their microscopic fists,
Dropping me cleanly into the nook of the reading tree,
Where I monkey-swing down through the branches,
Onto my napping hammock-
This I cannot call my own, but I act as such.
Yet before I drift,
And the sun begs for bedtime,
I climb, dog leash in hand,
To the top of my mountain,
Where I coo our Star to sleep
And bid the moon good morning.
But too quickly does my rule end of these kindled nights,
As another power swoops up under my running shoes,
At the same time blanketing me in my parka,
My cave until the kayaks hum and vibrate again.
My mountain sheeted in snow,
I resort to observing this complete different beauty
Through the hood of my oversized coat,
While from above my ski poles click into their fitted sockets on my hands,
The only way left to triumph over this land mass I call my own.

For me these seasons progress too quickly,
Yet been it this way for centuries.
Mother Nature shows off her powers as she extinguishes my campfire
With a wintery gust of thinning atmosphere,
And little do the birds complain as they frantically scratch at every remaining frost-lacking beetle.
Life goes on just as planned
While the Does and Coyotes huddle for warmth in their newly knitted sweaters.

If only I'd found love in something that never loved before.

The stars, shimmering off moonlit rivers, would sing for us,
Walking hand in hand, beside you.
Authoring the pages of our laughter,
You would covet words never spoken from your searching eyes, your reaching fingers.
Songs and poetry would flow from the ballpoint fingers we interlace.

But this love is naught found in reality,
Only found in death.
The textbook mind with unmistakable power,
The chapped lips continually trembling.
The beast locking doorknobs and car handles,
The creature shaping children's nightmares.
In death, where nothing exists but itself,
His sweeping arms would blanket the civilian he desires,
No arguments,
Death receives his utmost wishes entirely
always.

Death would cradle his lover in passion.
Death's infatuation would match no other man in the entirety of human existence.
Death would linger with each wisp of life escaping his lovers body,
Sipping them through his curled tongue like tobacco smoke.
Death would never lose his lover,
Death would find his lover in eternity and reincarnate her into flesh again,
The most bloodless cycle of all.

If only I'd found love in something that never loved before.
But this love is naught found in reality,
Only found in death,
The most bloodless cycle of all.

In good time the leaves will turn with fall.
The hearts of boney legged men will tone,
And I'll still be waiting,
Breath baited,
As I watch from a distance our connection
Drip toxicity and dissolve the fragile string that held us
In a perfect repulsive state with brilliant resonance,
Suspended at an equilibrium that allowed these trees to paint their seeded leaves.

My tree trunks tremble in the rickety winds
When your bird-like tongue,
Dry and writhing,
Whispers Shakespearean love into my stems,
Feeding me photysynthetically.
I lean into your fuzz embroidered wings,
Pillowing my leaves and supporting my
Cumbersome mass.

Our love is as natural as the grass plains in Oklahoma pre-Dust Bowl,
The slopes of the snowcapped Rockies,
Or the fragile tide pools of Southern California.

I am your sycamore, your willow that rarely weeps.
You save me from the stagnant waters of revolving seasons,
And grace me with a fascinating new level of life.

The dodecahedral light fixture wants to hover into my ear canal,
Humming distraction and anxiety,
Scratching at my white matter.
It nests on my shoulder, festering as a cystic rat
Nibbling at my lobe,
Tickling my spinal cord base.
Its patched gold foil,
Peeling from the age in which it has existed,
Dusts the line of my hair
In a metallic luster.
But this vintage incandescence only ignites my passion even stronger.
The bulb illuminates the dark corners of this coffee shop,
Blanketing any traces of apprehension,
Any remnants of doubt in saturated confidence.

My father sips his coffee and gazes at the suspended geometric glass object
Chained to the ceiling,
Residing over my command of the building,
And is indicatively pleased with my excellence.
The whipped cream glistens on his captivated mustache.

She came back on Christmas
to don the polyester white tree
and fleece lined blankets hung over edges of chairs.
But she always forgot to say goodbye,
as the hinges creaked upon her betrayal.

To fill the gaps between solstice seasons,
I stood in place
While party balloons hung plastered
to our shallow walls for months.
Other days a bath house for aching joints.
But never for the woman in question,
because she only came for Christmas.

The hours grew into days which encroached into weeks.
The dog-walkers passed,
The mail man caressed my farthest reach each noontime,
The daughter and son toiled with the mower,
The rake, my lungs (the dehumidifier).
The mother checked my fever on Thursdays.
But my rooms were empty all year,
Until the week of rushed decorations
And mass tear-down. All within four nights.

I guess the vacant tree gave me comfort.
The fibered needles and flame retardant tree stems.
I pictured each dollar store ornament as an entity of you,
Pulsing with life and beating of blood,
Vibrating in sync with the refrigerator and furnace.
But the fever-checking mother caught me mid-April
Molesting your Christmas tree, draining every ounce of humanness left.

And I knew when fever checker shoved it upstairs
You'd never come back to me again.

I was right.

I sidewalk-chalked the Devil incarnate
while my childhood innocence slept soundly.

It was at midnight
underneath the sterile galaxies and omnipresent suns,
behind the home of our opalescent father,
who only existed in just the right light,
just the right situation.

As I drew faster, my tears froze, fell,
and encased my sinful artwork in ripple lined glass,
a window into a lifetime skinned clean of happiness.

We are a subway.
We ride encroaching on our own spaces.
We bundle and fold each other
into outer significant dimensions.
Our arms harden to tree trunks
while our blood begs to flow freely under the elevated pressure,
grounding our Earthly existence.
This track beats on without destination,
regardless of bumps and bulges in the pathways,
our starting point forgotten light years before.

We try sharpening the images melting under this velocity,
and our eyes flicker back and forth attempting to follow these quickening pictures.
But we ride on,
crushed by the pressures of the Earth,
decaying the love we housed in storage,
now rationed up our stabilizing arms,
holding us averagely comfortable in this close proximity.

I never liked it when you called me Honey.
It dropped each letter and froze my throat shut.
It shallowed my breathing,
cut off my fluttering circulation,
swelled my eyes closed.
It propelled my heartbeat,
calloused my skin,
inverted my fingernails.
My vision bled,
you laughed at this,
and through my head rang your shrill cackles
as giant gongs infesting all sound.
You thought it was silly,
my transformation,
my drunken anger,
when you flashed your canines at me,
you Monster.
Only the most wicked can kindle their hatred into someone else.
Only the most cancerous find humor in other's tears.

Time is relative.
It can yell. It can scream.
But it can't run backwards.*

It takes 8 minutes for the light from the sun to reach the earth,
And hundreds of thousands of this exact timeframe
for the sun's inexistent sound to permeate in permanence.
A solar explosion would annihilate the human force.
Everything we know would sublimate into a vacuumed space.
All knowledge of everything,
Vanished in a fiery apocalypse.
Death would arrive before it even happens.
So what is the purpose of life if death could already be here,
Eight minutes from this moment?
The time it takes to boil noodles,
Take a shower,
Eat a bowl of cereal,
Could be the last spoken,
Thought,
Performed part of everything.

How should I believe time is real,
Death is cheated,
God is listening,
When this minute could be my eighth?

I swing my chainless pocket watch and count each of my five hundred seconds.
And wonder if it would be simpler to exist where time doesn't.
But each child climbs higher on the playground's jungle gym,
Reaching for doctorates and dissertations,
Their watches not as precisely examined as my own.
No worry of things that are all too possible
In just a matter of time-
School shootings,
Asteroid strikes,
Uncontrollable plagues-
While my watch counts nanoseconds as it falls onto Earth's surface,
Their watches spin rampantly,
Drilling into their sandboxes.
I see this,
The same age I was years before,
And these children melt into wheel chairs and death beds alike,
Their children mourning their passing,
While their children's children,
Crippled with tears,
Hold the hands of their parents in desperation
for an agony so ripping.
And all the while I see the sun exhale its time.
The trees ignite,
the sidewalks smelt with the burning grass and buildings.
And just as I peer into the beyond,
My rusting pocket watch clinks with the sanded surface of this childhood play box.

I love ignorance
almost as much as I love that distant smell of rancid toenails,
but not as much as I love the sound of crying, ill-changed babies,
nails on a freshly cleaned chalkboard,
a violent and exhausting ***** two stalls down,
or the jaw-work of someone gorging on a steak,
swallowed down by their tonsil constricted esophagus.

I'm okay with receiving a D on a test.
An F would never make me want to convulgely cry or scream
WHY?! WHY?! WHY?!
over
and over
and over again.

Perfection is the last thing on my mind.
I never feel the need to sketch a circle,
I just half-assedly drip it into the paper
until it portrays and eighty year old man's forehead.

I swear I haven't slept with a stuffed animal since the fifth grade,
because I always had the company of ten to twenty friends
at any given time.
I never felt pressured to look good,
wear makeup,
straighten my hair,
and do the skinny jean thing
even though they look like crap on my engorging thighs,
because everyone loved me as is.

I was never picked on,
I never had to try to make new friends,
but most of all,
I was perfect.

If life were a wes Anderson movie
My wallpaper would be faded 70's vintage.
I would live a hard life and love an impossible woman
Who would shower me with misguided affection.

If life were a wes Anderson movie
I would have the knowledge to complete
Completely useless tasks
That would somehow be useful in any given situation,
Like chiseling a canoe out of a solid oak tree
Or weaving a hexagonal basket.
My eyes would constantly be filtered
With a color so vibrant my skin would glow chartreuse yellow.

If life were a Wes Anderson movie
My happiness would exalt and spread to those around me.
My stories would fill pictures and paintings,
My walls covered in obscure posters and murals
that no one really knows the purpose of.

If life were a Wes Anderson movie
Bill Murray would be my father,
Best friend,
And lover.

If life were a Wes Anderson movie
Nobody would understand my purpose
But everyone would love my presence just the same.

If life were a Wes Anderson movie
I would be king and crown those around me my subjects.
My crown would be encrusted with the Latin phrase,
sic transit gloria.
I would be king and grace my subjects with timeless tales of ages past,
of tear soaked laughter.

If life were a Wes Anderson movie
I would be king.

This is the 492nd love letter I've written you this year,
the 492nd that will never be mailed.

Do you remember when love was spread
like salt on half-assed, ill seasoned chicken soup?
Those letters stopped at #341.
Now these prose are written to not one loved by,
but one in receival of pointless and misguided love.

#136 was the letter of our nights of dreaming,
in cloudless harmony,
how our minds braided from miles apart.

#302 was of the day we became closer,
now only a 2-minute car ride apart,
no longer were our spines purging so rubber-band-like.
We were closer.
Our love swelled to string our hearts tighter.

And maybe that's why #341 happened.
No longer a necessity to work for love,
for teenage passion,
only a ritual of Monday night homework after Drama,
and denial of Do you want to tonight?
Shooed by a My parents...

Should #327 have been about our love being too easy to come by?
Because I couldn't provide what you didn't even chance at.

So excuse me while I dump out my Starbucks in the fridge
and paper shred my valued customer card.

Let me hate coffee for you,
Because you're the only person I've been willing to hate coffee for in three years.
Those other boys could never tear me from the coffee shop counter,
I would latch on like a koala to a tree limb,
Thirsting for that satisfying and hypnotizing liquid.

Let me loath coffee for you,
Because I haven't been so excited about loathing coffee in three years.
Its tantalizing aromatics will woo me no more.
The other men in my life have no affect on my love affair with these beans,
Their scents loop around my neck and drag me in,
The craving becomes irrefutable,
My bones creak with each body convulgence
In response to the grinders on the espresso machines.

Please let me get you a drink,
Orange juice? Milk?
Gatorade?
I swear, I'll keep coffee as far away as possible at all times,
Avoiding every Dunkin' Donuts while driving,
Every quaint mom-and-pop coffee shop while walking,
And flight attendants will never dare bring a coffee ***
on their food cart when we fly.

I won't ***** this up with the **** coffee,
Because perhaps it was coffee the last three times that left things in rancid rot,
The filters from yesterday's shift never disposed of.

Let's go anywhere but a coffee shop together,
Let's go everywhere but a coffee shop forever.
And I promise,
I won't even try and sneak a latte around you,
But can I please keep my chai tea?

These diverging opportunities
Continue to split down the universe's seam,
as we propel ourselves in opposite directions.
Our affectionate thread can no longer pace itself with our ******* anguish,
the ravaging conflict.

My hands,
holding the repelling sides of our worlds together,
attempting to sew ourselves again,
grow weak from the increasing tension.
My muscles bend and flutter under my trauma,
the horror I feel with one picture,
the tears I cry as I sleep,
from the dreams of a patched world,
a needle unable to sustain my love for you,
and your love for me.

A flowered, timidly small bird I passed,
limp and shivering on the unforgiving asphalt
echoed within me all of which he never had
with his creaking sepia beak
through his lungs, out his throat.

He peeped feebly to plead me to lean closer,
I obeyed, slowly kneeling,
as to never disturb this creation.

He projects the coasts of Indonesia
to tell me how he so wished to dip his wings in its pristine water bodies,
He carries me through the forbidden treetops of the Amazon
withering over each exotic insect he never tasted,
He cradles me over the mighty Atlantic until we reach Australia
pointing toward each kangaroo and dingo he never spoke with,
And lastly he showed me the family he never followed
to warmer worlds, blanketed from winter’s rickety breath,
too afraid to conquer the blustery heights above.
Which led him to this moment, waiting for their return on this sidewalk,
losing feeling with each escaping tendril of life.

He spread himself to reach towards my face.
As I lower to make contact with his damp and disheveled wings
I feel each feather individually sweep my cheeks
as he died weepy and swollen in grief,
turning my skin pink with shame, because
we all lie hypothermic on the sidewalk, too timid to take the first flight.
And I, a fledgling,
have many miles left to pilot before the Floridian warmth will comfort me
in endless palm tree affection,
kissed by the fragrant shoreline.

City lines illuminated by animated street lights reflect off of your skin.
Images of infant filled houses
and hospitals with new born fetal babies, juxtaposed fatal mothers,
emit off your body
in black and white stop motion,
slicked by this canvas of fluid blanket
And you, victim of lifelessness
lie cold and waterlogged
inhaling liquid, the new source of oxygen,
your eyes fogged and inverted submissively.
What was sung to sleep by hymnal chants  
of incredulous mourning moans now lies
Dead
on a forgetful Sunday Evening.
The street lights give no respect
as they ponderously encroach,
Leaning in to hear your fleeting birdsong.
These lamp poles, tender and limber,
flex to form prayer circles, forgetting their rightful footings.
And with each inch bound tighter,
the circle emulates a power emitted through photonic light beams
bending irresponsibly to get closer to truth.

They then see it, and so does woman
Stopping by this wooded mausoleum.
She stands with inquisitive mittens, palms open and receiving.
Flecks of skin lift off your sinking vessel as what was you leaves into better places.
They drift, forming a clouded colony
crawling  up webbing left to lead them correctly.
Each inch spreads more purity,
each meter strengthens recent weaknesses.

Woman notices a cloud gather above you,
and each particle refracts the whole galaxy with increasing detail and accuracy.
As your body turns to skeletal structure
you seep faster into the silt-heavy waters below,
your bones creating playgrounds and Eiffel Towers, hospital white in hue,
so clean it hurts.  

The cloud moistens with rain,
it becomes heavy and starts to drift,
rocking,
in futile attempt to birth again.
And each fleck takes woman.
She spreads eagle and takes flight.
Toes lift individually and with lessened pressure,
she stretches each appendage as your flesh meshes with woman’s in unconventional ways,
every crevice and crack blanketed by you, what was.
The street lights pulsate as they observe in amazement
your transformation.
All is forgiven while the lamps induct you into purity
and absolve woman for witnessing this connection to God.

She must have heard the heartbeat bass drumming on my soul as she walked by,
In step to my own music.
The folk chords that created my favorite songs
Generated your will to march onward.
The car radio spoke the language that we discerned in an interstellar quantity.
Like morse code, we channeled our platonic love through soul vibrations that
traveled the ground up through our skin.

I wish I could cradle you as we breath in synchronicity with the pulse of the earth.
My steps will reach your pumping heart and it will long to be connected through the time of our music.
And I'd never need another soul to complete my harmonics,
You understand what humanity means and what connection gives
In hourless presents.

There's a point in life where examination and reevaluation is necessary.
When you feel as though you've hit not rock bottom, but the bottom of the rocky depths in below freezing oceanic waters
Where only eels would prefer to thrive.

And this place is when gay movie *** turns you on due to lack of ****** ******* in your own life.

I have reached the ocean's floor and am slowly drowning in a mixture of embarrassment and shame
As I watch my dad's eyebrows raise while I
Too intensely stare at the TV screen.


I understand if you judge, but for a moment just remember that all you ******* have a **** to go home to.
Then give a girl some sympathy.

I asked a flower one day where the world's going to go.
She shook her head and laughed,
Responded with an
"I Don't know".

I asked a bird one day when time will stop.
She motioned at the perched oak branch over our heads and whispered
"When this branch drops".

I asked a fawn one day if things will ever change,
She whinnied and stomped her feet,
As if I'd asked something strange.

So I sought next no less than the absolute best, the most humble of all that I could guess.
I found the blue whale, perfect and pale with his perpetual grumbling wale.
And I ask him where the answers were
But he said
"Child, save yourself, and no longer wonder".


If peace can't find these questions answered,
Then what does anything mean that I've heard?

I'd like to know if I am real.
Everything is too perfect to endure reality,
Pristine processes in a scuffed world.
Just enough oxygen for sustainability, connecting anatomic creations in perfect harmony.
Just the right gravity for breathing capabilities but enough to keep us grounded,
Just the perfect set of genes, containing electrons to keep cells clamped in geometric patterning.
Just the right degree of an axis to create all elements of nature, to nurture a 45th parallel with such virginity.
Just enough atmosphere to keep our fingers grasping, to stir vibration between atomic beings.
Just enough death to keep the cycle continuing.
Just barely.
But no one cares.

I'd like to know where we are going.
Not kinesthetically, no, but where we are going.
I think the world may turn backwards sometimes, and I'd like to know if that's true,
If it's ever going to happen,
And the circumstances, the consequences.
I'd like to know the circumference of Earth and compare it to the universe,
And remind myself of just how insignificant I am, we are, even all together.
But no one cares

I'd just like to know the answers to these questions seldom pondered.
I'd like to know the reason for everything.
Is it too much to ask why I am here, how I exist and what made me throb in those first moments of conception?
Do I dare wonder how my cells gathered courage enough to grow?
Do I dare guess how my parents earned a blessing so intimate?
I'd like to think my poems can seep into catatonic veins and make mountains with my words,
Is it too bizarre to believe the world may someday stop turning,
That it may reverse, and all of time will become corroded with processed steel and carbonated flesh?


I suppose I understand the methods of this flock.
I suppose I will follow as countless did before me.
"For the better", they bleat in monotonous drilling, chipping and cracking my weakened femurs,
And no longer can I continue like this.
I give in.
"I can't, you can't make me", I bleat, I cry so loud.
The trees plug their ears and watch each lifeless body
March over mine into the nuclear filled wasteland
And drink from its waters,
And the monster's tentacles slither around each sheep belly and drags them
In silent procession.
The lake ***** them dry and the radiation singes their woolen coats.
"For the better", they bleat
As the world falls down around me
And I am trapped with glass knocking me unconscious as it falls from San Diego to Chicago,
From Singapore to Moscow.
"For the better", I bleat, as I remember all the poems that smoldered to ashes before I put them on paper.

So I find my answer, too late to share with the others,
That yes, the world now halts its sluggish canter,
And the crunching of rock shudders beneath me,
And yes, the winds reverse, and we are moving backwards in a direction that never mattered to anyone other than me.
"For the better", I bleat, as the peak of the Chrysler building free-falls and splits my mind in two.
And all those prose, wandering and wispy,
Forever grow weight and sink into soil.

I think you should have made me say sorry
Before I had to come to the realization myself.
All the backs rubbed, padded fingers
Bruised in futile comfort
Came from you doing, living you, yourself,
Your normal of
**** it, **** happens.

No, I'm not angry at myself, because
You plant these seeds yourself and let them
Diffuse into your acidic tasting soil,
Dirtied by all of the forgotten questions
And
Dismembered, overcarressed words.
Stuffing filled ******* you shoveled
Over your shoulder,
Back onto the pile.

There's value you tirelessly overlook
In ending a fight,
Finishing a thought,
Having emotions,
Being a human.

It's your well deserved turn now,
You can do it,
   Just inhale
     Languages
     ****** expressions
     Subtitles
     Paraphrases
     Gestures
     Pantomimes
   With fluidity as each atomic being sifts through continuing passages

And go.
   Exhale,
           No, you're doing it wrong.
   Breath.   Out.
    What you feel,
Release,
      Allow me passage inside,

I've only wanted to help all this time.


         I guess we'll just start here.

How could you love yourself that night
When garbage dumpsters lined with arsenic created fragments of lifeless skin,
As it held her in place while you shoved all your self-worth inside something so personal,
As each damaging push And release roared with a decaying boom that awakened sleepers from the metallic snare drum rolls,
As you crushed her ribs and memories that she clutched in her balled palms.
Her flower petal eyelashes wilted with tears,
Her fingers whitening from aching pain and struggles not quite powerful enough.
Her neck screaming as she bangs her head on the moldy sheet metal for distraction.
Her mouth sock-stuffed and muffled,
Saliva soaked and injected with the shrieks you refused to hear,
Because you pretend this is pleasant,
This was begged for.

When the heart strings turned to cage bars locking you deeper inside
Self achievement was smeared inside her like hot tar, tainting what forever was
Supposed to be hers.
You tossed her to malicious canines, while she folded over herself into a puddle of weak vertebrate.
So next time I see someone slouching,
I'll recognize it as your slimy mark left in a spinal cord-severing chop,
An inhuman knot tied shorter than the original nervous length,
And a marionette stance that walks in a crooked meter.
When I see a sweater, tattered and ragged with compostal decay
Lying shameful on the cold asphalt
With a print of moisture underneath
Too precisely shaped as a woman kneeling in her own agony,
I'll remember what I saw that evening and walked by
Too quickly to notice.

Next time my index finger will already be on the 9,
My thumb impatiently on the 1.

Today I learned what walnut trees look like,
But this was only important because I learned this with you.
And there's nothing more to say than
You make something out of me.
The roots we create from our individual trees dig deeper and farther into Earth,
Sowing tighter our connection through 300 miles of inevitable distance.
The ends have found each other.
They dance and mingle in playful circles,
Set to an orchestra of crunchy movie popcorn, Harry Potter end credits, and songs forgotten to remember.
They braid into one and burst out of Earth, shooting into the stars,
Dotting each one,
Intertwining tighter with each meter ascended.
They bust through layers of atmospherical glass,
A ***** wonka elevator with no limitation.
We, our roots, cradle each other to sleep with peaceful and 100% meaningful "sweet dream" goodbyes.

Together we will pick walnuts out of space forever,
And then I will always think of you,
How we grew trees out through concrete.

I seem to be the only one that knows how to cite my writings anymore (O'Donnell).
Nobody but I understands the difference between APA and MLA
(Which in reality sounds much scarier than it really is).
Yes, citation is more than plugging a URL into citemypaper.net and copying, pasting, repeating.
Don't you ever want to learn to do for yourself and not through asinine websites that get it wrong half the time anyways?
Nobody cares enough to work hard, learn good... Excuse me, learn well.
Nobody gives two ***** about good grades and class rankings.
Just less competition for me, I guess.

But no, this is something bigger than that.
Why am I the only person who cares about where their words come from?
Where are all the people who used to fact check and actually think about what they say?
I just seem to wonder more than others the vitality of truth in words,
Of validity in claims,
And of proof in ambiguous pudding eaten without prior knowledge of its upbringing.
Is it really pudding? Well you won't really know unless you care enough to find out...
And who ever knows if you're speaking words of Gandhi or of Grandma anymore.
Giving a **** used to be something of importance,
Now put to the side with adolescent legend lessons.




I wish I could make you give a **** about this "silly" school project,

But that's not what we're really talking about here anyways.




Works Cited
O'Donnell, E. The Basic Principles of English. Mt. Pleasant:
        Elizabeth, September 15, 2014. Print.

You came home with us yesterday after we connected at the local homeless shelter.
Mom wanted you, and so she channeled through our eyes to guide us to the right decision.
Her absence was never unnoticed.
But we did well, with a soft heart we found you and you accepted our invitation.
Soft spoken quickly became pack leader.
As pack leader quickly became elder.
As elder became...
... Are you there? Did you wander too far again? Should I start the car to drive the blocked radius you love to rome?

But no, there's no need to locate my car keys, because you slipped beyond,
And I payed no attention to your foothold.
I never said my goodbyes because you fell so soon, without warning you moved into the darkest realm.

But I'm thankful for your simple passing at the same time that I weep for you, for my mother, and for your now lonely sister.
The transition was graced by something bigger than us.
Too long did we wait for Sarah,
When we had the chance to relieve we deceived.
And we thought it was beneficial but you had the worrying eyes that told all emotions,
You knew it was time, but we couldn't read you.
Thankful are we for the extra hours,
But pained are we for her extra suffering.

The last time I saw you, those eyes came back,
And I knew it was for you and not for Andie.
At this point I could have wished you peace for the last time but I didn't.
"In four weeks she'll still be here", I thought and denied myself of pain momentarily.
I patted your head when I should have hugged,
And I should have given 30 minutes, not 30 seconds.
I regret the time not spent just looking at you.
So I apologize for ignoring the signals you sent,
And I hope you forgive the lack of attention I gave.
When I see you again with everyone there to greet me-
Mikey
Jeffy
Sarah
And now you-
I'm going to love you deeply.
I'm going to make up for past bath times neglected and postponed.
But most importantly, we will all love you together as deep as the ocean,
And who knows where we will swim to?