The flame will burn still stronger
And the cheers will echo loud
If you, my dear, just linger
In my world till we find our ways somehow

I feel my heartbeat quicken
And my jaw clenches tighter each moment
As you kiss like years gone by
And we smile and laugh in rhythm
With the neurons, sending signals sky-high

We dance with the doves and daughters
With the trees and daffodils that sing
They enchant us with their canter
It rings in my ears till morning

And the drum rattles harder and faster
As you struggle to keep me on the ground
But I cannot stay here much longer
The clouds are calling my name, now

For how can I resist its beckon
When the heavens wish for comfort

Only because you want me
The lust yields too strong to divert

I throw my gubbins out
in my net, casting for a
dinner to feed you
by spoon.

My words are gubbins.
Irritating impulse of
fingers and joints
bending around your waist.

Our speech is gubbins -
puked through esophagus
bile and awkward conversation.
A belch of early caught perch.

We make love like gubbins.
You flop wrongly, I flip coarsely.
Our toes knot and break.
We kiss backwards.

I cry gubbins
on your sweaty shirt.
Your gubbin caught dinner
still smudged on your cheek.

I wake up to your bucket of
gubbins from dinner next to the bed.
I bring it to my boat
to catch our next meal.

In a fourth grader's bed there are rats eating at her mattress stuffing,
Stealing for her own young.
They nip at her toes while she finishes her math homework.
She always is hungry
Because at night the vermon crawl down windpipe to steal mother's cooking.
Mother is forced to throw away the mattress like a forgotten sock,
But fourth grader still wakes up sick from churning bile
In an empty stomach,
Because Mother was just fired from gas station #12.
Fourth grader has forgotten the feeling of warm toes, comfortable back, and being undesirably full.

It's bothersome
To come home and find you nagging
Impatient
And irritated
Waiting to tuck me in

Untying my shoes, you pester and bicker
Bicker and pester
Frustrated, I must remember you were only worried for me

Ascending the stairs, you use the passing lane and beat me to my bedroom
All the while nagging, what you do best

I slip my night clothes on, while you have already made my bed your home
Spending five minutes to find the prime spot and position
You are picky, finicky

The light goes off, and we share love the way we know and are familiar with
My knuckles out, you smudge them with your chilly pink nose
Your arms relaxed, I rest my hand on your belly, patting gently as you hug me back with all four appendages

All angst is forgotten, a routine chain of events

You are my cat
And you are my mother

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 twinkle, and I admire the youthful colors, the whimsical smile you bring to my cheeks
You shine, and I reminisce on times of old, times of hot cocoa and Christmas music by Chicago
You glow, and I weep

**** you, O Christmas Tree

**** you for keeping these memories alive and lush, so vivid to the naked eye
I break when I think of pajama nights with lusted love making under covers of protection,
Silently loving underneath my parents' open ears
And the mornings with cuddling
And the nights with Elf and How The Grinch Stole Christmas

Why does my Christmas tree bring white hot tears rolling down my face?
Its beauty could make any malnourished child sing, yet it just withers me as I remember our first dance
          Yes, it was by the tree on that Saturday afternoon.
As I cry, I still cannot forget you, because you used to be there to catch these drops before they fell on my lap

After six months, you still haunt my every thought, in every waking moment I exist.
I am scared for myself-scared I will never go a Christmas again without the horror of our past-
          What will never be again,
And what was merely a Christmas wish impossible to grant


Is this how God intends to torture my broken soul?

I lay outside
The wind sweeps through my hair, covering my eyes with my locks

This wind is a brisk cold, it chills my insides, making me feel alive
But at the same time, I can't survive the space between us

Pulling,

Ripping,

Tearing

Our relationship apart

Like a ticking bomb, I am waiting for it to happen, the day when you will pull away...

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.

What was the purpose of difficulty?
Whoever wears the crown, I'd like to inquire them on that particular question.
And then the follow up:
Why give me so much?

I struggle to remember the reasons as to why I made the choice that I did,
And my head cannot carry this burden along with the other necessary parts of my life at the
moment.
I need the relief I deserve,
And I will fight for it as long as your arms are open.
But this might never be enough,
Your arms may have never been open to begin with.

I imagine you cradled inside
the wing of your rocket ship, vacuum
sealed, sheltered from the noise of solar wind.
Remembering our goodbye at the launch-pad
Creases the aging skin around your eyes.

Tears, weightless and buoyant,
Collide with the sputtering, decrepit
valves and cogs
tracking your orbit
through Saturn’s dust.

You bottle them in mason jars, capture each one on fading
fingertips like paper white snowflakes,
Sealing them inside with aluminum twist caps.
You fill each one and let them clutter the windows
like drunken periscopes.

If I could shine a flashlight through these memory
telescopes, black and white 1920s movies would reel
cracked turtle shells on the highway,
Four rabbits, their intestines spoiling on mowed grass,
Synonyms for “stupid” piercing into heart with arrowhead.

    You curl tighter into the spacecraft,
    Breathing uncontrollably, painfully.
    Canines cut into tongue to suppress sobs.
    Folding over naval, knees to forehead,
             The gravity of surrounding, misplaced moons
             pulls you to collision with an asteroid.

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.

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.

When I stare at my wall
With the right slant of head
I feel my toes in Superior sand,
Remember the silhouette of your hands
On my back. I hear the water,
Your breathing, how they were
The same. I feel your timid face
On my nose, telling me stories
Of every crevice in your atrium.
I taste the warmth of your tongue
Breaking through your blossomed lips,
Inching nearer my teeth with every ended
Chapter of aorta.
I catch your warmth as it boils under my chin,
despite Northern winds,
watch our chests weld into one with our heat.
I see your soft eyes,
Drowning in your heavy lids
As they fall asleep to the sound of our
Silence.

But your hands were too big for mine
That afternoon.
I think maybe you need to shrink,
Or I need to grow.
Or we will meet in the middle,
Frightened and in love
with our new shape and size.

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?

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.

We stare at each other while in an
Under-rehearsed waltz around the coffee table
Keeping us an armwidth apart.
Stiff as oak, we resist the breeze from the window,
Tensing with the smallest tremors in our roots.

Touching our fingers will let the dominos fall-
Your jeans taking off my socks ripping off your shirt pulling
On my bra straps- I walk toward the couch,
You, the window.

I start to wonder how your hair looks hung to dry, sweaty,
Over an ached and trembling brow
When you hang your hat on the chair.

You tell me the evening weather is pleasant
While my thoughts are in our hands, clenching,
Longing for skin and breath in grasp.
My eyes light a wildfire on your neck.

Every step is flint stone and steel wool.
Can I take off your coat
Welds the air between us stiff, baking
And begging to be dowsed.
The floor ripples under your extended palm.

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.

When my ear first orbited your throat
to listen for a roaming balloon of nestled flesh
I heard trailer home hollowness
in copper vein pipes.
You draped a scarf over your superglued
neck, telling me it was normal to fistfight
death at 35.
On Dad’s desk, your weight breathed feebly
inside a sandwich bag. At night
its nuclear green cast Orions across our ceiling.
I never knew what real stars looked like,
while you had completely forgotten.

Years later,
in the dark of our 17-acre home,
you handed me your thyroid in its bag
swimming in opalescent fluid
and you looked at Polaris for the first time,
as that same glow painted the Big Dipper
on neighboring snowbanks.
I dropped the bag on the dry rot porch.
We heard your cancer flatten to a deflated bicycle tire,
sweating from death,
watched through squinted eyes as its glow turned
from hazardous neon to cinder.
It dried in the moonlight,
a forgotten, frostbitten raisin,
and our eyes readjusted to the perpetuating darkness.

I saw it then like a long constellation
line connecting star to forehead.
It had been a lie before,
but the North Star is truly the brightest
in the sky. We looked through its surface
underneath the star’s skin to its heart space,
and we realized that Polaris can only be seen
when thin plastic holds inside
damaged shadows of family
dinners bathed in deionized salt,
where I ponderously stared at the ****
in your esophagus, drawn with knife
like ruby crayon into office paper.

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.

If only my arms reached once around the world.

I would sweep them back and forth, combing each and every surface,

Until I touched you.

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'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.

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.

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 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.

Shall I go all life without you, wondering if I will be able to breath?
  The way you make things easier
    The way you make things optimistic
      The way you make things harmonious
        The way you make things happy is what makes my heart beat
Is what makes my brain function
  Is what keeps me alive...
Shall I go all life without you, wondering if I will be able to breath?

There was a way of the flip in her hair, with liquidity and lethargy,
That brought young men to their knees.
She walked with such lust that their hearts reached with open mouths.
They gasped in an effort to
Just for one moment
Breath the same way and in the same space.

In the light her skin shone like platinum in heaven above.
She magnetized the very molecules she made contact with, and the air bent around her like hot syrup.
Time slowed for her only,
Or perhaps she controlled time.
Every man's ring finger felt lost in a void of blackness. The small golden hoop was pocketed,
Play time for the masses.
If only for a second they may earn her attention, that second would become life itself
That second may end sickness, hunger, and poverty.
There was never a time of deeper betrayal when she came to town


And while the men swooned, the women cried, for
They could never achieve the beauty to be loved.
And the tears twinkled a deep blue,
As if stolen from the ocean directly.
There was never a time of deeper sadness than when she came to town.

****** 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 like when you lean on MY shoulder
Not always the supporter, I enjoy supporting you too
You can cry around me
It's okay to be scared, vulnerable
These shoulders are not just ball-and-socket joints of attachment
They act as tear collectors, and confidence boosters
They're always here, unless for some reason I lose them
But until then, know they are at your disposal
Here whenever need be

As I love you, it feels just like breathing
Like riding a bike
Like flying a kite

It's quite impossible to forget how to love you

Simplistic, the act of sharing love between us

Like jigsaw pieces, we found each other in a sea of different
Shapes,
Colors,
and Sizes

We fit perfectly, because we were designed to coexist

In the same space
At the same time

It's a humorous thing
How scent can take you places
Past, present and future
Relive fury
Remember lust
Extract happiness
O sweet aroma
Teach me to conjure these feelings again

O masculine, divine smell
Covering my clothes
Filling the atmosphere with mesmerizing fumes
Intoxicating my mind with sensual aromatics
Drink me up
I will **** you in, I will take you in completely
Take me to far away places, dreams and memories of soft kisses and tender hugs
Of romantic dances and innocent laughter
Remind me of past events once enjoyed
Resurface memories far and near, quiet and loud
Let me live them once more

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.

On Mars there is a merry-go-round,
Carnival music cast into ether to scatter through the asteroid belt.

There are probably fireworks on Neptune
Set to the solar system’s intergalactic anthem.

Several stars away, a few light year blinks,
A thoughtful ear might hear a car crash, the dislocation of a shoulder.

Hubble, aging in ancient expanse, no doubt squints.
She struggles to focus, senile metal heaving in its last orbits.

What does the sound of the border between Space
And Earth feel like? The inside of a vacuum cleaner? A harp string vibration?

The belly of the Sun churns from the low gurgle
Of gas station sandwiches. This is why he is stationary.

We crave the experience of watching a supernova
And listening years later, anticipating rising crest and falling trough.

Eons in our future, we’ll hear the coo of the waking universe, muffled
From primordial placenta, slapped to breathing by the biggest question.