a wise man once told me
that to be thrown in love,
one's spirit must fly
to age four.
there, you would find
your eyes as tourmaline
and your heart
as a malleable ore.

now i am
in love with you
and i feel about eighty years old
and i've found
that youth, then experience,
respectively,
is like living in silver,
then gold.

i've never liked to hike before
until i met the trek
from the volcano to the shore.

emerging from the cold grey sea
wet and sleepy
to meet fields of grass
where light plays in the sweet-smelling air, like
the pleasure of cold water
or warm honey.

past the crevices,
tramping through fields of laurel & mantis,
the golden mountains ***** to greet me
like a kiss on the fingertips
after a story read and chocolate melted
in a house with tea rose air
until --

hark! a black pit,
the gorge leading
to the Path of Everywhere!
opening and flooding with
the world of color
and putting forth sadness and insight!
gaze upon the silent wonder!

the air up here speaks to the ocean
with a silver voice as a constant decision.

i often sit by the eyelet and breathe in the warm black,
dangling my feet in the thick air,
and it seems to dive through it
would be to find a home in that i could live.

A B C D E F G
find out what you mean to me
if you don't, i don't care,
i'll pull down your underwear

H I J K L M N
i think you'll always be
my best friend
and really, who cares
if you're a man?
we drew our cooties pink
with a highlighter pen

we painted our faces
with turquoise and yellow
& really, your brown eyes are
gorgeous, fellow,
we sat in the sand and built
columns out of leaves,
& wore our crowns like
daisy weaves

O P Q R S T
you make up most of me
with your smiles, your laugh,
your hair, your ears,
our marijuana and our beers,
as we grow older,
our hair grows longer,
& we don't care to cut it
because it feels good knotted
in the summer

U V W X Y Z
we make cookies at night
and pick up bugs in the grass,
we hold hands on the road
our feet like moon rays stroking brass.

what if we were castle turrets?
our tasseled but torn flags whipping the clouds,
dragons tearing off the shingles
with their nostalgic disorders.
we could be sagittarius.
emerging from the groves with purple,
bruised collarbones
only because they stretched miles within
our bodies like archers' bows, bitten
& shooting unintended victims.
which i guess is what i was always scared of,
mulling your jeans around in my room
and eating frozen strawberries alone,
staining my fingers with more than just
your sharpie-written love letters.
milky-white plant smoke can permeate hands
just like your smell can permeate my canyons,
sending tremors inside of their fibers
giving us scars that we don't like to burden,
sending rocks into our jagged feelings.
what if we were golden like our naked skin
under the olive branches that inevitably
mean hate, anger, shame, and the bee sting
of slaps from loved ones?
diamonds can pour through our smiles,
fill our upturned palms
and give the rubies of our tattoos to a shrouded god.
i've been listening to song lyrics & hurricanes,
& i understand now.
i understand what it would feel like
to belong to someone.

you make my heart
beat fast and hot,
but i don't
know what to do.

when i open my mouth,
the passion drains out,
and i'm still
thinking of you.

it's like my veins
pumped steel & diesel,
& then were
introduced to blood;

the molecules
cover the floor,
atoms yearning for more,
and i'm in the room
while it floods.

he kisses my hair
when i cry,
because he reminds
me of dill,
and i remind him
of scout.

i always thought
the pool was so cloudy
from body heat & red-hot emotion.
god, she's such a good swimmer.
she twirls under the crystalline blue
& when she emerges,
she takes a breath,
& then explodes into movement.
she glides through the water like air,
& i don't know how.
i tell her she should be a fish.
she laughs & claims she wishes,
then she would be able to
swim in the ocean,
where the water isn't cloudy
with liars' sins, cheaters' tricks,
& ******' rancid perfume.