I'm a little too familiar with
gas station coffee
(and restrooms)
I know all of the roads and the mountains
that line them
I have known every cheap motel
stared at every continental breakfast
(burned coffee and rubber eggs)
and I can pack for anything in ten minutes or less.

I have known cities lit by the night
and passes comfortably fringed by fog
skeleton trees on dead beaches
gas-station Cheetos eaten at 3 am
sleeping on a friends shoulder
or listening to another iPod playlist
alone in the dark
the casual immodesty between traveling partners
and wearing 3 layers of sweats
to ward off the cold of the journey.
I re-read poetry by flashlight
while ghosts of headlights flutter
as I leave everything behind me
again.

I love the road blazing by
because it takes me a way from everything I remember
away from the family that is not mine
away from the cages and bars and lies about my beliefs
about my identity
the oppression of mandatory religion
the self-destructive hate
who I used to be.

I wrote poems about my knives because they were my comfort
they were beautiful to me
I romanticized my pain because I was a romantic at heart
but a romantic without love
and so I turned to blood and knives and tried to make it into poetry
thought that it could somehow be beautiful
and the sad thing is that it was
it gave more comfort than my family,
it was closer than my friends,
more reliable than any god.

The road scours that all away, reminds me
that I can leave, I am free, there is more to the world
than what I grew up knowing.
More than Rush Limbaugh and misogynist preachers
more than latent racism and open homophobia
more than my shame in my acceptance of these as normal
there is a whole world where
people don't live chained to bibles
and that gives me hope.

I have never known home here,
but driving and driving and driving
shows me that the world is larger than I know
and maybe I can find it somewhere.

The gleam of the skyscraper is like sunlight on
a pond glimpsed through trees or a free
and joyous river

I am thirsty, yet I have no desire to drink. The well
is poisoned.

The towering architecture opens to the marvels of modernity; their shining windows reveal
the revered throne rooms of CEOs, and workers tapping away
an army of ants to ensure order, according to their rules
and handbooks but above all
by uncertain individuals watching those around them.

And the violence of their tapping keyboards and polite emails
and the penthouses to which they aspire
the life of a bank throbbing
through the steel skeleton of a building that is larger than life,
larger than
those left to die
      trying to get some sleep in the streets
      kicked in the ribs by police
      a different kind of life haunts their heartbeats.

The city has swallowed its own streets and sidewalks
and spits out skeletons
bones dry from its desperate extraction
****** to dust to coat that shining cityskape, the sweat and blood drained from pores to make the steel and the glass
drips away slowly, revealing only dust.

The well is poisoned -
I am dying of thirst -
I wonder which death
will be less painful

untethered
uprooted
the soles of my feet
tingle from nothingness

the dry scrape of the air conditioner in seattle and
hardwood floors that hold no softness
city skyscape gleaming silver
a beacon to the
unmodernized less fortunate
of hope to become
automatons like us, to become more-than-human like us

untethered

what is human
we must be, i suppose, and yet -
if we are not 'what it means to be human'
if my heart is content in its coldness
is that wrong

i have betrayed - but - who?

to be untethered is to be true, to drift
from the solid shores of meaning is to fly and
to be free means to let the beautiful parts of yourself die and

I have made my decision.