The window was open in the dream
In the house I built from all the perfect sentences
The things more worthy to worship
Than clothesline windstorms and
Curtain-rod jousts between
Closet clowns and the nights they hid from.
These stolen wings are an easy veil to wear.
Would you believe me if I told you I had seen a unicorn?


I left a prayer in the south of France
In a church I called upon to swallow a sinner
I went back for it
The day when forgiveness meant
Switching the soles of my boots and body
the room was filled with every person I ever wanted to meet
I pulled a snake out of my throat and let it slither down the aisle
This was never a confession


My father was a carpenter
He built pews for a chapel he could not enter
I can count the fingers on his right hand
With the fingers on my left
The aurora borealis in my leftover love said
“You were Marcel Ayme the day we decided
That he was better at beginnings than at endings”


Rachel took a rosary to her wrist
I caught her blood because my heart couldn’t pump fast enough
To satisfy the ones asking
We cannot be tied to this desert
I’m getting slow motion sickness on the speed train to someday
Somewhere along the way we stopped shoveling coal into these engines
Started using the bodies people left along the tracks
“it’s okay,” they say,
“We’re recycling.”


A Panamanian child born on neither side of the canal
Wants this holiday hate crime
To be something other than a compass rose riddle
I need a weather balloon catapult to launch my words into orbit
So they can work weightlessness to their advantage
There were never enough chairs.
Every person at the table sat alone.

This forced perspective spills arrows from my coronet
All the things meant to ornament justified distaste
Is the sky any more magnificent when you have a God to shove inside it?
Is the sea any more deep?
Is this body any more powerful if I believe it was made in the image of someone greater?
I can see so much more with my eyes open
My hands are open on every rooftop
I can catch every raindrop


This story is a work in progress
Someday this patchwork of scattered significance
Will become subject to the needle of retrospect
But for the moment I can but introspect
On a night that belongs to the words I cannot say
And to the person I cannot say them to.
I never again thought I would breathe golden.
Teach me to make blue of enslaved fortune.


Teach me how to cry in a world that will not feast upon my insecurity
I am learning to trust though I see only the shadow of the moon.
I am learning not to hate this inherited flesh
The unwoven threads that fail to shelter these shoulders
The guilt in my gait that I cannot seem to shake
The unwanted wit that tears at the seams of sobriety.
It’s amazing how many words you wrote in my genetic code that can carry just four letters.
I was never brave enough to break.
I have no merit for mercy

Going home is a rubber band snap
Knee-deep in a mind swamp
And the only way to avoid the snakes is to befriend them.


White picket fences spell adopted ideals
And horses are reminders that you’re not going anywhere anytime soon

The elk mounted above an unused fireplace says
I have killed what the desert could not


This town is like quicksand,
Consuming you slowly under a promise of rapid escape


The desert seems unkind until you realize that mercy
Is not pumping blood into anything to which you don’t give a shot at survival
Even if that means thorns and a bad reputation


Some creatures are strung out and inseparable like prayer beads around the wrinkled neck of the wasteland
Others have been deemed worthy of solitude
I do not know which category I fall into
If I did, perhaps I would not need a blacksmith and an armory in my morning shower


Having access to water in a place like this makes me feel like a snake charmer
Here in the valley, time is ground down into a fine powder
As if it is trying to become the thing that marks its passing
If we could bottle time, I think the universe would have enough of a sense of humor
To make the bottle an hourglass


Climbing tall things makes you powerful
Here, they blame it on the Vortexes
The local translation of guide-book enticement is gruff and solid and spat out like the chewing tobacco it is shot through
This valley’ll either **** ya in’r spit ya out, but one thing’s fer certain, it won’t do it gentle


When the rain comes in its flooding frustration
I would like to tell it that the ground does not accept what it is not accustomed to
I would like to tell myself the same thing
And would, if I could be swept away as easily


The roads are strong
Still they crumble away at the edges to blend in with the dirt
So do the people
People you know
become people you knew
When your conversations grow punctuation marks


Whoever made this desert knew that some people like leftovers
And mystery meatloaf Mondays
They knew how to sell minimalism in a junkyard
Extending ten fingers beyond old motels and rocking chair cigars
To nudge the shoulder of the Lord with a whisper
Hold me like Shiva and sweet release


I will be the one spat out by this desert
I will arrive spinning like a waterslide cannonball
Into two-sided evolutionary discussions and
Yes, please, make that latte soy
No pamphlets at my doorstep
And a population who is okay with naked mountains and empty skies
Like I am


Maybe that means I’m irrational,
Condemned to questions without answers
But **** it, being lost is preferable
To being found by everyone but yourself

There is a place where the birds go
When the air grows heavy
And it is not South


It is here that I will find you
When the dust has settled


You say you want to sing my bones electric
You want to whistle from the rafters of rainclouds
Become the weight of the rain
The kind that only comes
After the locusts have gone
And we are all waiting for something new
To keep us inside


This century was the moment
In your late-night lunch break
When you got so close to the end of your cigarette
That you wish you’d left the filter on


We are one race with seven billion shotguns signaling GO


Still we spin
Like tornadoes in plastic bottles
Cursing hands and the landfills we all fall into
Eventually
We might stumble into sanity
And mistake it for a honeybee sting


Resurrection
Is breaking past the parasitic anchors
In your skin
Propaganda over-fishing
Sinking 5th dimension realities
Into yesterday’s tomorrow


I will dig you out of this town until my fingernails are black from trying to touch every color at once


Hold me steady like September
The birds do not need compasses
But I do


You asked to leave the lights on
That night on the forest floor
The canopy rising and falling in the rhythmic breath of night
Tracing a circuit on the inside of my spine
The curve that proves that
We do not belong in boxes
With straight edges


Learning to breathe does not become easier the second time around


Catch my breath in a butterfly net
Send it back priority


In some other city
You spend the night with my footsteps
I spend the night folding swans out of your conscience
Jimeny-cricket style


There is a place where the birds go
When the air grows heavy
And it is not South


It is here that I will find you
When restlessness tempts you to fade


See you in my sleep
See you breathlessly awake
And shaking at the pearly gates
Because excuses were the birds
That flew from your chest
when you put regret to rest