I ain't afraid no more
of the darkness
and the sadness
the 4AM thoughts
I got used to loving deep
with receiving nothing in return
I accept the rain
the sunless days
It isn't going well
but I ain't afraid no more
of the monsters in my head.

i read somewhere that every face
we see in our dreams is just the face of someone
we’ve seen before, remixed and regurgitated
to fit seamlessly into a new background.
our bodies cannot conjure anything
that doesn’t already exist somewhere.
they don’t know how to.
when i dream about you, all i see is hands.
i don’t know what that means.
when i think of love, we are both sleeping.
i don’t know that means, either.
sometimes i fall asleep in the valleys of your body,
in the juncture between your neck and your shoulder,
and you let me stay there until i wake up
and i get greedy on borrowed things.
if i hadn’t been there, i would think that some part of me
invented the sound of your heartbeat under my ears.
it’s funny what you remember, what your brain holds on to.
we forget 90% of our dreams, within five minutes
of waking they’ve already evaporated.
i remember every time you’ve held my hand
and it’s funny because i’ve spent so much
of my life afraid of forgetting things,
my grandfather’s voice and my grandmother’s eyes
and all the times i’ve felt truly happy
and last summer when we were the only car
driving down the street to my house late at night
and our voices were fighting against the radio.
i’ve spent half of my life afraid of forgetting the things i love
and now i can’t forget anything about you.
when you talk sometimes i write around
the cracks and pauses in your speech,
i build whole worlds that don’t belong to us
in the in betweens of your sentences.
i try to turn your words into confessions
and then pick them apart into promises.
when i call you baby it gets stuck
in my mouth, caught under my tongue.
when you tell me you love me, i memorize the way
the words curve in your mouth and i dream about it.
i dream about your hands in my hair.
i don’t know what you want from me
and sometimes i don’t even know what i want from you.
what do i know about love anyways?
i want to keep it in my bedside table
and only pull it out when it suits me.
i want to swallow it whole and i want it to leave me alone.
my mother thinks we’re in love. so do a lot of our friends.
i think we are in love, sometimes.
if i read us like a script, i would think we’re in love.
it makes sense from a bird eye’s view, but it’s hard to see
with your eyelashes so close to mine.
you told me that you had a dream about me once.
you told me in the dream you got in your car, the old one,
the one where the speakers didn’t work
so you stuck a portable one in the passenger seat
and we just had to scream the lyrics extra loud,
the one we parked in the mud that one june
and had to take to the carwash,
the one that we sat in when you were supposed to be
driving me home and i just kept hanging on to the door
in the driveway, telling you one more thing
and one more thing and one more thing.
you told me in the dream you got in your car
and started driving and driving until you got to me.
you told me you hugged me and you held on
and you held on and then you woke up empty-handed.
so please, don’t tell me that you didn’t love me.
i was there too. i know what i felt.
i know what the quiet of my driveway sounded like.
i know what inside of the palm of your hand felt like
in the dark of a movie theatre or in the sunlight of july,
what your arms felt like across the my shoulders,
the way your breathing evened out under my cheek.
i don’t know i could have made that up.
i don’t know how i could’ve conjured that.
i can’t imagine something that wasn’t already there.
i can’t dream about something i didn’t already have for a minute.

I was a child,
and you, an injured swan,
resting by the lake I skipped stones on.

My parents didn't notice when I took you in.
Children don't have much,
but I thought that all I had was enough

To heal you.

So, under the cover of night,
I wrapped my sleeves around your wounds
And you wrapped your wings over mine.

But everyone knows that mere children
Cannot care for a living being
All by themselves -

All by myself.

And my tiny room was nothing
Compared to the skies and lakes
That you loved.

They say children are observant -
at least I saw your sadness,
so I took you

Back

To the lake where we first met
and there I told you
To fly.

I was a child,
and you, a graceful swan,
soaring from the lake I skipped stones on.

The vulture is a peaceful bird
She watches, circles patiently
Waiting for life to become death
So she can gather what she needs

The vulture does not maim or slay
And causes neither harm nor strife
She walks in the shadow of death
And so turns death back into life

For Emma Ottinger “I put out (my stories) just because”

“just because”
that’s the best excuse you got girl?

cause be-ing
just
is a **** good one

way back in March
wrote a declaration^ to all those just
beginning with an iota of courage and
a good story telling
way of seeing and the
secret sauce-way
to spin my imagination in
my eye sockets
with their well words,
for I am a drinker of
the beaujolais firsts of the new grapes
of young poets

words welling springing from between
the oohs and ahs and the damns -
I wish I had wrote that...

so here’s a hero push - so many kinds of bread to
fill our baskets, please girl may I have some more?
so here’s to you - and the Great Plains that birthed you,
and the breadbasket of four poem/stories you poured out
that were so far from plain, how could you know of seas and sea foam and cobalt and mahogany human body parts?

and the speech patterns of waves that took me decades to learn?

use those “Jacob’s ladders between your fingers,”
“whistle me like a stray dog following,”
for that’s what “the kingpin of my flighty wits”
requires, for this old scribbler is now:

“firmly rooted for a girl who's bold enough
to crack the whip over her head if
ever went to war with myself.
A confidant that won't run,
won't offer half truth when
the whole of it
is all that actually matters.”

so write with that window light on and
wheat fields that can be reenvisioned as the gray-blue sea
from which I crawled out of croaking...
to read you rightly

6/25/18
10:25PM

If many people knew
That words
Once out of our mouths
Can either pierce
A perfectly beating heart
Or caress
A woe-stricken soul
They can either be a balm
And soothe the aching burns and scars
Or lodge as bullets
Inside a mind
Bestowing wounds
To be nursed for a lifetime
They can either make
A skin shimmer with hope
Or strip it of its lustre
Like dull ancient sculptures
If only many people knew
That their words are endowed
With a power so surreal
Which can either save
Or wreak havoc
Then perhaps
Less tears would be shed
More smiles would be exchanged
And this world
Would indeed become
A better place