I know exactly how you’re ******* your new girlfriend.

I know you’re going to play “Sing for Me” by Yellowcard in the background. I know you’re going to **** on that song like we never danced to it at prom, like you never learned it on acoustic for me, like we didn’t make out to it under my lit Christmas tree.

I know 9 times out of 10 she’s going to initiate and that will **** her off.

I know how long it’s going to last you, how you’re going to try so hard to old it in but in the pit of your stomach you know it doesn’t work.

I know your glasses are going to fog up and get smudged with face grease and you’ll need to Windex them afterward.

I know you’re going to say “I love you” to her right after. You’ll mean it, but regret that you do. Soon you’ll need to fix that.

I know you’re going to eat a bowl of Raisin Bran once you’ve dressed again.

I know you’re going to talk about this time until the next time, and she’ll give in just to shut you up. Also because she really does love you, and wants to please you.  

I know you’re going to beg she sleeps in your clothes without underwear before showering, and she will if you reciprocate.

I know you’re going to talk about *** like it’s divine, like it’s balanced on a pedestal located in the most untouched corner of Eden.

I know you’re going to treat all of this like a chocolate fountain, infinitely filling and never squandered.

And you haven’t been home, so you don’t know that the first place we made love is demolished to rubble and stone. You told me good things last forever,

But I know you lie. Yellowcard told us “no looking back when I am gone”, and for a year and a half those words were wedding vows.  

But you’re obsessed with conclusion, and feeling,

So you’ll leave her, just like you did me,

To feel again, because these love affairs are nothing but alcoholic drinks you choke down to numb.

You said don’t look back when you’re gone, but there is no forward from here.

His trees in the yard looked like
men standing beside a dead
body wondering what to do next,
With shovel branches
And shotgun leaves
Soaked in ember autumn blood.

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.

The joint in your hand quaked
Under the pressure of your diagnosis,
Its flame slipping into the air,
While your last puff trickled into left lung.
At first you smoked for depression.
Now it was a cry to God,
A beg for mercy from lifeless feet,
A trip down a flight or two of stairs,
A fall in the shower.

I didn't know how you would walk again without your toes
Knees
Hips.
But I learned your condition is a silent killer -
it started with the smallest flakes of skin,
As Satan lit an accurate match to singe your nerves.

You told me you had MS
And I didn't know why your breaths became frantic,
Or your tears screaming.
"Mean spirited",
"Mouthy sister",
Was what I told my friends.
God was playing jump rope with his spinal cord.
Multiple sclerosis didn't roll off my tongue so quickly,
first attempts were stutters at best -
I had to grow up first.
And while I was lying about your health
You were in agony over your grandmother,
Dead for five years on a stained hospital sheet.

In the end she begged for death,
And we have years to go.

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.

How can I still breathe?
How do I still walk?

I go home

Grab Mom's knife

Slit

Crying, I hide the remains of my mangled wrist

Days go by like nobody cares
Nobody talks
Nobody loves

My Mom is home

An audience

As I grab the knife, she screams
All breathing stops
I lay on the floor

My Mom picks up the phone

The blood is draining
My life is fading

As moments go by

The radio plays

"All You Need is Love"

You won't see me as I walk through the door
I'll go swiftly, maybe you won't notice
As I disassemble all we have built up
You won't see me as I break the billions of bonds we had
The millions of moments we had been through
The thousands of thoughts we shared
You won't see me as I destroy it all

I'll make it easy,

I promise

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.

I look back at the past and wonder
Why had I not forseen
Why had I not predicted all the pain and suffering that has plagued me these last two months

But I realize that one must learn from others
One has to experience pain before better future choices can be made
The vast amount of information I have digested is far too valuable to wish away

In the end, everything happens for a reason
And I respect and honor my God, be Him Buddha or Jesus Christ, for teaching me this life long lesson

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.

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 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.

What does the painter do?
    When he finds his home empty
    Night after night after night
    An empty fridge
    An empty bed
    An empty heart

What does the window washer do?
    As he tends to his helpless mother
    A sponge bath and blended dinner
    To quell her terminal aches and cries

What does the mechanic do?
    As he beats his wife out of alcoholic rage
    And she prays for the husband she married to reappear
    But he won't come,
    Not until too late

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.

Am I doing this right?
Do we punctuate in slow motion or should we scream with no meaning behind crystal words?
And how do we define good from great?
If we dream it, can we make it?
If we want it, can we get it?
Do my rhymes make ripples or meaningless disturbances?
And will these ripples even cause waves? Will the motion become an ocean?
To prove yourself is to move mountains, yet mountains come by so infrequently today.

We possess the story telling wiseman within us all.
He belly laughs and wonders at tales of great.
The music he produces out of his fingertips flow seamlessly within the words of old.
And we wish to tell the novels inside of us yet we draw into each other like hibernation,
And we ignore the signals written in front of us.
Forever shading grey the power of our thoughts and feelings,
Wiping our faces clean of originality.

Personally, I need the success I deserve.
There's something inside that pushes the letters through my hands onto paper.
The drive courses like hot maple syrup,
Accelerating the existing liquids,
Pushing my limits to get what I want.
I want to prove I have to do this,
But I was always caught wondering if these words I give were prescribed or abused under the table of lesser men.
There will always be the greedy, the skeptical who question my right, who question my point of writing these rhymes.
But I must keep going,
Or these words will raisin,
Shriveled and wasted in graves and ashes.

When a man found a rotting piano
In the woods of Germany,
Each unplayed note traveled through his red blood veins
up to his brain painting colors of wound and gas mask.
He could hear the music of war within each taste of sheltered forest air.
In his nails, shadows of bleed
and drops of motor oil,
the residue of sea salt from the hulls of ships.

The man
Thought of all the Jewish and non Jewish fingers
That never touched each key.
He played all the combinations of chords never played
On the tree trunk next to him.
The man felt his right fingers cramp,
Riger-mortic,
And saw his fallen brother behind the largest tree holding his palm the same way.
He thought of all the stiffened hands sitting in holes dug by living hands,
Hands begging for one more sip of water soup,
Hands begging for freedom,
Hands begging for death.

The man forgot his salt crusted boots.
The man couldn't forget how his gas mask could have saved two more hands to play the unplayed piano.

****** is a tough thing to digest, it
Haunts the deepest pit of your stomach,
Steeling food swallowed,
A perpetual hunger.

It crawls on all fours
At midnight
Up the throat.
It's a slow process.
Burning pink, beating flesh
With acid coated paws.
You feel it as a chip not fully chewed,
A pill taken in absence of water,
A greasy grilled cheese.

When I feel it beginning
To swell in my throat
I brace myself
On the kitchen sink,
Notice my distorted, clammy cheeks
In the stainless steel warped metal,
Fingers digging into the pressboard cupboards.
I don't have anything but time
To cool the flame under my tongue,
Inside my teeth.

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.

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.

When you look at me
I kiss you with my eyes,
Lashes hitting each **** in your heart
Which I taste in my mouth,
Rusted iron clots.

When you look at me
My knees buckle
Under the smell of your warmth
Behind each tooth,
In the snug of your baseball cap.

When you look at me
My fingers resist to trace
The lines of your face, down
To shoulder blades and tendons
In your arms.

When I look at you
I sweat in anticipation
Of someday, maybe, understanding
Everything blooming about you
Under the beds of your nails.

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.

In every way, they are forgotten
And we under think their power, their purpose.
We seldom ponder what we would become without them,
And never stop to thank them for what they have done.


Mother,
     Thank you for taking my temperature via forehead
     For stirring my Mac and cheese
     For washing out my clothes' stains

Father,
     Thank you for changing my diapers
     For versing me in ping pong
     For writing down my painting's names when I could not spell

Lover,
     Thank you for rubbing my back
     For holding mine in yours
     For loving me tenderly

Friend,
     Thank you for braiding my hair
     For painting my nails
     For grabbing the tissues when need be


I presume mine becoming frail, old, and flimsy
What will we become in this aging process?
I doubt we will mature like fine wine or expensive cheese.
Ridden with disease and pain, we will fall to my sides. And no one will be thanking us anymore (not that anyone ever did), because we will be nothing.
Do nothing.
All the knowledge, will power, exercise will never change the **** outcome.

Someday we will stir our daughters Mac and cheese, or remove her stains from her shirts, and someday she will do the same for her daughter.
Yet this all must die someday,
There will come a time where I can no longer stir the boiling noodles on the stove,
No longer shred the brick of cheese from the fridge.

There's not a ****** thing to do but wait.

Little tree,
You grow tired of creating mouse-sized shadows,
Lose hope when your leaves cannot cover a whole human palm,
Wither when your fruits are too small, bitter, and too unripe to stomach

As the other taller versions of you tower above, they steal your food and tuck you away underneath

It's hard to get noticed in a sea of fish so vast only the insects can fathom its size
It's hard to survive in a crowd of Darwin enthusiasts

Ah, so young, and so deprived of faith in success.
I have faith for you, tree. Brother, we are the same.
We all just want to make it.
We want to be one of the great Redwoods pictured in magazines,
They take all the credit from us

Don't worry, friend.
Together, we will break through the underbrush,
Show them what we can do,
Prove our greatness once and for all,
And stand tall with our comrades of the vast forests everyone knows by name.

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.

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.

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.

I'll fly you to the southern shore of
Hudson Bay,
tucked into my chest.
You will watch the trees become thicker,
the humans lesser,
and I will watch your eyes widen
your mouth corners curl.

I will hold you by the creases of your arms,
dip your toes into icy Canadian ebbs.
Your naked shoulders will shiver
in North American wind,
whipping your skin with
Chippewa feathered designs.

I'll drape you in buffalo pelt
weave your toes dry in ****** hair
crown you in northern pike jaw.
You will mesh into the chestnut treeline,
fingerprints flowing into root and permafrost.
When ready, we will ignite
our forgotten primal wings,
ride the air stream home as baby eagles.

I've wanted to draw Native American Art
On your etch-a-sketch canvas for two decades,
And now given the opportunity
This spectacle I'm immersed in
Disallows me to master the act of this ecological connection.
The water behind me whispers, slowly,
The words necessary to ****** me.
My fingers slide along the slanted planes of sand,
Memorizing each blemish
Created by the ceaseless power of Earth.
Every tree stump boasts the bust of a woman,
Tantalizing in its mossy negligée,
But ashen by the blade of an angry flame,
Stripping them of life.

Superior's Two Hearts tends to my
Earthen love affair
As a fishing lure guides its victims-
With careful precision
And a predetermined purpose.

I have meandered onto the patch of land
By following that drum beat
Of the blood-flowing waters.
Graced with the flower of fruit,
Blueberries, the crooked banks become
A whole cosmos of wonder embedded in soil.
So I fill my mind with the swirling waters,
And my stomach with the periwinkle nectar,
To finally pick up my pen,
Not to draw pictures of your beauty on sand,
But to write words of your wisdom on paper-
The strength you have given me to
Become something other than a blank page.

Dear Old Friend,
Oh the hours we've played, the hours we have spent together
No words are spoken, none are needed
Our connection is physical
Gentle belly rubs
And warm, soft, furry skin gently keeping winter chills from inflicting my being

I recall the days you would fit on my lap, resting in-between my thighs in that comfortable crease
You had pupils the size of a pinky toe, and your nose was in proportion to a dime
Sweetly, lovingly, I could hold you in my palms
Where did those days go?

I now must kneel to touch your feeble, aged body
You lay down most days. Tired? Pain?
I wish it was the first option

Your time has come, my companion, to be better once more
The hours are numbered, and I am counting
Though it hurts, it helps to know you will soon recover

I want you only to be that innocent baby again
I want the webs of your paws in my little fingers, I want your fluffy, perfectly soft self sleeping on my lap again


Sleep once more, sweet pet
Sleep eternally and immortally

I looked at Dr. King's grave and felt his love
Support my lungs while I breathed in air
Full of chapel pew and piano key ivory.
The world seemed more manageable in the presence of his granite home.
His wife was nestled under his knee,
She curled under his wings
And I could feel the rumble of their flutter on the concrete
Underneath my arches.

I sat in Dr. King's Baptist Church
And saw his mother's shoe prints
Stitched into the floor,
Where she smelled those wooden benches in her leaving breath.

I watched Dr. King's childhood home
As his father walked into the door frame,
And Coretta looked on in a Sunday school dress down the street,
Longing for smooth skin
Of bible infused hand.
I felt the same rumble in my toes.

I saw the world in twenty faces
All watching with me,
History in shadow.
We smiled at the colors of our skin
Standing together,
Watching the memory of a house that created our shared joy
And hope for the next minute to be more equal than the last.

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.

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.

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.

You had a butterfly
Glued to your ankle.

I imagined it flying
Up your thigh,
Crawling up the
Curl of your hip,

Resting in the arch
Of your ribcage,
Then finding your shoulder
To whisper with fluttering
Into your earlobe.
I felt it too.

It found your nose,
Standing with sucker feet
Over your septum, painting
your eyelashes with wing.

I heard my tongue fold
to the roof of my mouth.

Your watermelon vine fingers
Caress my sunflower stalk spine.
We dig our trowel toes into the lome
Of my mattress,
Cover our shoulders in frost-evading fleece.
I hear your heart ripen under your skin.
I smell the heat inside your lungs
Growing and expanding in the August crisp.
You seed a whispered kiss on my lip.

You are planted inside me,
digging into me,
And I bind to your stem
With my peach flowered palm.
We bloom at the first ray of morning as
I weave deeper into your trellis arms.
Our breaths match the pull of the wind.
You touch your forehead to my breast,
Our stems heaving.

Here we grew our love.
Here we grew the foundation of our separation.

I wish I had never tried *******.
I wish it was some fresh mystery
Calling my name,
Like Satan seducing a lover, a victim.
I wish I could watch a needle point kiss,
Search under my dress and sink into myself,
Folding over pelvis,
Tell myself I'm ****.
But my voice shakes,
My lip sweats-
I never learned how to lie to myself.

Everyone lies
When they say self love is
A fulfilling replacement to foreign flesh,
My palms are no exception.
They twitch,
My limbs are gangling,
Alien-like,
Nothing compared
to the comfort of your fingernails
And tarnished knuckles.

I try to find the time,
I'm too busy. I'm too tired.
I convince myself I'm perfect for dwindling moments,
But my elbows do not
bend to care for myself
Like yours did.
I take baths by candlelight
With Marvin Gaye and The Temptations
But my fingers wrinkle with water and I weep for my ugliness.
Im hungry,
But I eat before and I feel sick,
I starve myself instead and ***** from the sensation of skin on skin-
My skin.

My skin isn't as feather-like as yours was,
And self love will never float as softly
Above me as yours did.

I like to drop pebbles into water,
watching them turn and swirl in the waves,
while they transform from a stagnant object
to one with a chance at life,
to cute craters in the foreign objects of rivers,
to carve an indented home into sand and clay.

I let them slip from my fingers to be pushed ashore centuries later
by some animal, in mouth or hand,
and if they hold my pebble closely
to the nape of their neck,
feeling its morse code vibration,
they will understand to let it slip through their own grasp,
sliding through the atmosphere,
kissing each fragment of pollen,
back into the pool of consciousness.