To ride these rivers of light onward forever, screaming infinite curses to destinations and endings-
We shall never die-
Until the undertow finally ***** us, resisting with all our might, into the abyss of aeons and darkness-
That darkness is unknown, but not necessarily black,
As much as I know, at least.

To run on forever until my legs are ground down to pulp beneath me, and then drag myself on with ****** fingers mangled against the world's mottled asphalt
Until old age or blood loss takes me
And removes the "I"
From my existence.

To forge forward immortal
'til proven otherwise.

Life.

Life is, at its best and its worst, pure, unadulterated madness. The moments when we laugh and cry or we cry and laugh. The moments when we scream at the top of our lungs. The moments when we smile sadly. The moments when we collapse on the floor because it's all too much.

Love.

Love changes so much. From the first embrace of a warm body, kicking and screaming, to the last. From being loved to loving, yourself, and then loving yourself. And all of them are as different as the colors in the rainbow- gradient shades of warming light. Many things of one kind- or maybe many kinds of one thing.

But here we are. Where else would we be- no, Where else could we be? And here it all is. Just where we left it. Like coming home from vacation to find not a crumb out of place.
We are dynamically static, waves in an ocean, snowflakes in a blizzard, grains of sand in the wind-whipped dunes.

Together we hum a vibrant chord in the key of being, the vibrating thrum of bees busy at work to keep the scaffolding of what is from collapsing.

And here we all are. Here we are and everything is different but nothing has changed.

Where else could we be?

Interchangeability.
affixed to loss, affixed to
     loss of limb, or
             worse.
                                              She has the
                                              wildest hair.
                                      So wild it almost makes
                                            her look tame,
                                                   by
                                comparison. and she talks
                                            of magic,
                     no,
                         she talks magic.
                                      she speaks in smoke rings
                                             and with the light of god nestled
                                                            in her bounteous hair
                   those smoke rings float up to form
       halos
                    cresting her brow

                                           shining inner light out.
                                              she is lost.
or I am lost.
       either or, but not both.
we are interchangeably lost
                        and it is not that we are less lost together,
  simply that we are together,
              and that means
                     no matter
              how
                                                      ­    l
                                                           ­                                                              o
                              s
                               ­                                                     t
       ­  we become,
    we are found.

    I
          am:
Lost in liberation
                    in victory
                    in security
                    in madness
                    in
                      her.

Late nights alone.
Doesn't really matter which.
Sure, I could go get laid.
but that wouldn't even begin to bandage my problems.
Sure, I could watch some girl with daddy issues ******* in a chat room.
but that wouldn't even begin to fill the void in me.
And sure, I could drink this whiskey,
and I could pass out again.
In fact, I think I just might.
In my dreams I don't have to be lonely.
I can see the curl of your hair splayed in fresh grass.
In my dreams there's no difference.
And this whiskey's just going to help me get there,

right?

That's all we ever wanted anyway, right?
To love and be loved back
to trust and be trusted
to push,
and feel some *******
RESISTANCE
for jesus christ sakes?

Or maybe not.
I'm starting to think it's just me.

It seems the world's perfectly happy
with their g strings
their foam parties
their cam girls
their sitcoms,

their pleasure.

but not mine.

The window's cracked a bit
some cat had given out a lonely mewl
                   and I decided to hear his
                        swan-song

                      I figure he's probably just teary-eyed
                                            bout some girl
                                                        stood him up.

                                  We're both creatures of the night,
                                        things dracula turns into
                                                        when he gets tired of people
                                            calling him a monster
                                                                                 which I suppose he is, really.

                                 There's an owl in the spruce tree across the street.
                                         I can hear him belt the blues
                                                      if I quit fidgeting long enough
                                                 I wonder if they're listening to me too
                                                             while I click-clack
                                                                       out the window

                       trying to find some rhythm in the madness

                sing on, boys.
                            I'll be the percussionist
                            and you can riff all you want
                                  nevermind the errors,
                                        we'll just tell the naysayers
                                                   that jazz
                                             isn't supposed to have rules.

Split the sun
with an ax like velvet.
The braincase open,
the soul drips-
like egg yolk
onto the sandflats
the old blood ants march out
and pile up
into a monolith
sharp enough to scratch the azure off the sky
tall enough to disrupt the horizon
like a blip on your ancient EKG
that peaks like a drop in a pool
then crashes like a kettle drum.

No birds.
Empurpled sand towers darken silently
junipers twitch imperceptably
rattlesnake retreats beneath the dust.
A billion years of breath and tears
grinding the sediment down
a dramatic pull toward the distant sea.

Make sediment of me.

When a lack thereof
is all my inspiration
I begin to wonder what on
earth
I would write about
if I simply
had
what I want.
maybe we're just doomed
to write about sadness
and to be sad when we can't write.
maybe I should just figure a way
to be happy
when everything around me
dies.

The light is yellow without
  and blue within
as I putter back and forth
around the house trying to
remember the name of the substance
I am craving.
It’s not coming to me.
But it feels like a hole in me
with definite properties-
shape and volume
and weight.

The problem is none of the vices in this tiny apartment
quite match that space
or have the same volume
or weigh enough

so here I am
with the windows open
in my underwear
as the first real black of night falls-

trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.

Everything I write is letters.
Letters to my future self,
my past self
my conscious mind from my unconscious mind
letters to dead friends
letters to living friends I can’t speak aloud to
letters to god
letters to everyone all at once
letters to you.

Everything I write is letters

ell
ee
tee
tee
ee
arr
ess

A book is made of letters the same way a body is made of atoms
letters make words
like atoms make molecules
and molecules make cells make tissues make organs make bodies

and then fire breaks us back down to atoms
to ashen dust

So try to see the individual letters
because that’s all we ever were,
anyway
bodies built of grains of sand

books built of letters.

A figment of fictition
So persistent in perdition
Little distant,
Little hat trick
Lay her down upon my mattress

I spit hot glue
whether or not I ought to
It's never thought through,
never bought new
I never sought another off-tune

Sound
I'm perfectly happy with my own.
And life's an acquired taste (bittersweet trainwreck)
Just like a whiskey flavored sno-cone
So just

Relax.
Take your bags off and lean back
Discheveled chivalry,
Burning bush,
Uttered simile
Muttered quickly
In a sea of young blood and old trees

Just try and make a meek response,
recompose your shattered sconce
Redirect it all deliberately
with my newfound friend tenacity
I report a list of casualties
after a hurricane of history

Recurring dreams are haunting me
Face-to-face with Mephistopheles
Which I ponder in all honesty.
Should I fear the devil within,
even if I don't believe in him
or is it enough
that he believes in me?

Pale figure
softness laid bare
to the maw of the earth-
those gnawing rocks
sharpened by the rain.
They do not frighten you.

Even still I picture the cold dawn
of spring painting the snowdrifts
and you
in a silent snapshot.

Would that I could join you there
to hear your breath mix with the wind
to feel the heat of the stones where you sit.
They cannot defeat you-
they envy you,
for you are so unlike them.

You are the ghost
of these limestone hills
and you haunt me.

She's leaving in the morning
and she knows this
and I know this
and there's little-to-nothing she can do about it
and there's little-to-nothing I can do about it

and she knows this
and I know this.

She walks into the room
with her hair in a towel
and nothing else on
her ******* sway a little as she looks for the ***** shirt
she wears to bed

I'm lying on that bed
in my underwear
by the window listening
to the frogs chirp outside
and I watch her
move around out of the corner
of my eye
so she doesn't notice how
I watch her move.

Don't get all sentimental, I think,
it's too late for that now.

There's little-to-nothing she can do
and there's little-to-nothing I can do

and we know this-

Don't get all sentimental, ******* you,
I think,

but she's there now,
where I can see her
and my idle mind gets rolling

and there's little-to-nothing I can do.

The night closes in
and we're naked
to each other in the dark in that bed.
Close.
There's a storm raging outside
and she's leaving in the morning

and that's the end of it.

Hand reached up
out of hell today
grabbed me by the soul
the devil whispered
come with me
show you the way back home

In my mind
I see my past
In your eyes
I see my future
In my dreams
I see my own demise
By my fearful weakened nature

Hand reached up
for me today
showed me where to go
the devil whispered
in my ear
what he said, lord only knows

In my lungs
I feel a quart of blood
In my heart
I feel a leak
In my soul
I fear a worse tomorrow
I'm afraid to rise and see


The devil boxed my ear today
I reeled and hit the mat
Then fell into a lake of ice
And felt alive at last

Revitalized I rose again
And threw the final blow
I sent him back from where he came
now they know my name back home

In my head, I hear a sea of voices
In my ear
I hear just yours
In my dreams
I see a golden future
If it's real, lord only knows.

I have been aboard this vessel for
Fifty months
Nine days
Ten hours
And some value of minutes
Which is unknown to me.
I am
Lost
At
sea.
For a while it was bearable.
I have enough water,
Books,
And *** to sustain me.
But now all I wish is to see a pair of sails
On the horizon.

I have nothing left
But to wander the seas
And find whatever is there
For me.

Days pass.
I have sympathized with the stars;
For it seems to me that they are also
Sailors
Lost at sea;
Traveling towards their own fate
In directions
Unbeknownst to me.

At night I look up
When the sky is clear
And greet them,
I wish them strong winds.
I wonder if they have looked down on me.
I have confessed all my sins to them
For they are all I have.

The stars and I.

And we sail the same sea
But we will never meet
For we are infinitely far.
This is our curse.

At times I have fallen asleep on deck
Beneath them
In my hammock
As the sea
Rocks me
And sings songs,
Songs of ports and
Sails
On horizons.

It was on the morning following such a night
That I arose
And at long last
Saw
With my own eyes
A sail in the distance
And I maneuvered so fast as my small craft would allow
To be near to him
And as I came closer
I looked with my dusty spyglass
And my heart dropped from my chest
For he flew a black flag
Which bore upon it a skull.
I am writing this now as they approach
For I know I cannot evade them
Nor outgun them.
I am writing this because I now know my fate:
To die by their hands.

I am horrified,
But there is
One thing that will give me peace:
That I may
Finally
Sail
Among the stars.

Madeline had visions of you falling down the stairs this afternoon. She was sipping her coffee and reading a scrap of paper that had materialized on her table from some article about a meteor somewhere and it hit her like a ton of feathers or a ton of bricks.

Doesn't really matter which.

She gasped back into the present and fell out of her chair spilling the tar-black grog she had been pawing at to the oaken hardwood and sat staring at her hands there for a minute or more.

They were pink against the tan-ish floor.

Pushing against it she regained her footing and reached for the home phone her friends chided her for owning and called me crying you won't believe what I just saw I can't believe what I just saw I think we need to call her do you think she's alright?

I had just gotten off my flight.

I don't know I said I don't know who you mean where are you are you alright I just got back into town I was going to grab my bags and catch a taxi do you need me to pick you up

She finally noticed the fallen cup.

Catching her breath he slowed her pace and started to stammer how she didn't know it didn't matter never mind I need to go and make a call I'll let you know when I get out.

I still had no idea what she was talking about.

She hung up the phone and placed another call after a half hour no six hours no six weeks of ringing someone picked up the line she had dialed and she wept and laughed and asked if everything was okay and if she needed to go and if so how far she was a primed cartridge in a loaded gun

Everything was silent and the room spun

A voice replied something inaudible and Madeline laughed and cried not cried and laughed and wondered how she could have been so rash to believe a daydream like this

She rose and gathered all her bits

And together they walked her down the hall from her sun room to the kitchen down the stairwell-

And she fell.

And for two point five one two three seconds everything stood still but her and the world stopped turning she couldn't hear her own gasp or whether she screamed or laughed or cried she just hung in the balance she hung from gods fingers she hung above a pool of sharks and a pit of lava and everything she had never done she fell far and fast and hit the ground

An no one knows whether that made a sound.

I'm a little surprised
It took til now to realize
That I'm a little more than a
Little attracted to crazy.
Maybe crazy isn't the right word
That spark of divine madness-
The muse incarnate.
Sometimes they look very similar
And it takes months to figure out the difference,
In your case I think I just called it close enough.

Crazy beats boring, I suppose.
It overcomplicates things, that's for sure.

I don't know what love is any more
Because I've now discovered that one day you can be in love
And the next day find yourself the cuckolded brunt of a very brutal existential joke.
At any rate, that drug-fueled madness we shared, trying to fix each other so desperately,
Trying to feel something so impetuously,
Whether that was intimacy or just validation,
Collapsed. Go figure.

Madness at its finest,
And it left chaos in its wake.
For me at least. You seemed alright.
And I use the word "alright" very loosely there.

The sun
is in
your eyes.

I’m counting paces.
The distance between the warmth of my hearth
and my still-beating heart.

The shortest distance between two points
is just a handful
of measured steps
a mouthful
of tentative breaths
a fistful
of glove
and a heart full
of quiet tenacity.

with these tools I could walk anywhere-
name the points and I’ll join them
with a
trail
of
measured
footsteps.

I am riding through the old-time suburbs.
The city of salt pillars
I pass a bike or three
A jeep
A van with a six-inch lift and chipped orange paint
I round a corner
And suddenly all is quiet
Except for the squeaking of my old bicycle chain.
And I ex-
Hale

If you were here you would ask me why I sighed
And I would reply
"It's not a sigh, I just forgot to breathe"

I just forgot to breathe.

And I'm breathing now
My shoulders are at ease
And my bike is squeaking.
I wonder how often pockets of silence bubble up in the city
For a moment-
In this one spot-
It is still-
And then a car drives by and we resume.
I found myself in a pocket of silence in the center of a beehive this afternoon
And I sighed
Because the silence made me realize that I was holding my breath
So I exhaled
And relaxed

And then a car drove by
And we resumed.

The dark of my night is without contrast.
It is impending,
Heavy,
And it blankets and submerges
Like dreamless sleep.

The dark of my night is all-encompassing.
It wants to make me like it.
To fade me into static
And overwhelm me.

The dark of my night is without answer
Resonating echoes breaking like waves along my rib bones
Reverberating in the hollow cavity of my skull
Rattling the rice-grain small bones of my inner ear.

The dark of my night is haunting.
It sleeps and dreams of me,
Awake,
And pawing my way through it
With eyes closed.
It hides in still pools underground
In swaths of twilight fog
In places still untouched by the human gaze.

The dark of my night is motionless
And mute
And numb.

It's like being stuck on the same simple simile
something or other about the sunshine and your smile
waking up to a single sheet
bare feet, frozen
black coffee, scalding
Sweeping winds tousling hair just like
  someone.

What to do, what to do,
when even dreams are not a refuge?
What are you, what are you,
another smoking pile of refuse?

What's new with you?
Don't look so confused.

I'm sticking around like dead leaves in gutters
A sudden remembrance about something or other
Waking up to a single light
bare hands, sweaty
open mouth, dry
Pouring rain drenching clothes just like
  somewhere.

What to do, what to do,
when even dreams are not a refuge?
What are you, what are you,
another smoking pile of refuse?

And you haven't got a clue.
Don't be so amused.

I'm nervous.
Like really nervous.
Like shaking like a blender full of gravel nervous.
Like atheist in a foxhole nervous.
Why am I so nervous?
Because I have a nagging thought that soon I might just be the last-next-best-thing that ever happened to you,
Replaced by another, better next-best-thing that blows me out of the water.
Because you might decide I don't have what you really REALLY want.
Because at the end of the day, I'm still convinced that your attraction to me is the product of an elaborate facade.
So yeah. I'm nervous.
Like sweating fifty caliber bullets nervous.
Like ******* cinderblocks nervous.
Like chattering teeth cold sweats nervous.
Like dying young nervous.
Like being forgotten nervous.

And it makes me nervous that you put me on a pedestal
Because from where I stand, I didn't do anything to deserve this
I got drunk at a party and picked up a guitar and here we are almost a year later.

So I'm anxious
I'm distressed
I'm worried and jumpy
But most of all I'm nervous
Nervous because I think
You might one day figure out what I already know:
I'm not that great.
I'm lanky and goofy and kinda dumb sometimes
And I can be just as petty as everyone else
And I'm still pretty convinced you're colossally out of my league
So I'm nervous
Like shake-you-to-your-*******-core nervous

Like really nervous.

If I had back every dime I've ever frittered away foolishly,
I'd be rich
for a day.

Silent street
punctuated by a single stag
stalk-still
against the asphalt all around
ten points
facing up at the firmament
fixed frame
the steam on easy breath
pools, puddles.

Noble beast-

neither needs nor heeds my blessings.

Contrails, like brushstrokes
made with measured and elegant
exactitude
wash over the halo of white light
worn by mother moon-
the persimmons of night cut through
the vaporous blanket of winter,
swaddling the earth below in mellow
reflected light,
saying "carry on, my sons
and my daughters,
the night shall pass,
but until then I give what comfort
I can."

Nocturne,
whence she calls me
Nocturne,
whither I call back

After hours, when all
the lights turn out
but mine
I hear birdsongs
as the sun turns on
the sky

Nocturne
whence she calls me
Nocturne
whither I call back
Nocturne,
whence she calls me
Nocturne
Best never to look back

After lights out, and all
the streetlight seeps
through sidewalks
I see her there
she turns the sun
back on

Nocturne,
whence she calls me
Nocturne
I reply
Nocturne
I turn guiltily
Sometimes dreams remind

Sometimes dreams remind
Some dreams rewind time
Sometimes dreams rewind
Some dreams rewind time

Nocturne,
as she calls me
slowly I reply
Nocturne,
shill she calls me
Guiltfully I close my eyes

I live alone here.
here is my island
where no man has set foot
but me
and if you’re reading this it means
you found a bottle
and this was inside it.
You see, I have what I
need,
water, fish, and coconuts
the weather is fine,
I lie naked in the sun each and every day,
but I am alone, and dead to all the world.
The only comfort in which I can partake
is these notes-
some of them letters to family and friends whom I’ll never see again
some are descriptions of faces or trees or sunsets I’ve seen
some are just thoughts I want to give to the world
before I eventually die here.
I hope you’re reading this-
because if you are,
it means I didn’t wither in silence
to be washed over by waves
or blown away
in a storm.
You, the reader of this note,
have validated my existence
by confirming that I ever existed at all

and for that I thank you.

light leaps lengthwise
purging this promontory prismatically
awakening all us awestruck
shameless sleepyheads, spying
delicious daylight drowning
out obscurity and occlusion,
frameless fixtures focused,
beams bouncing back between
emphatic eyelids,
leaving lenses lacerated,
despair defeated,
darkness destroyed.

It's 11:57 PM
on a thursday.
I just rolled out of bed
and took a few hits off a roach I had
lying around.
What city lights there are outside are centered in the one block
around my window.
It was supposed to snow
but it's just gray
and damp outside.
Nothing moves but a column of steam from a mill(?)
a few blocks south/southwest.
Rising inbetween blue and yellow streetlights.
Water billowing up from who knows what body of water
and freezing again on the frigid air.
As if it were feeding the oppressive mist
over everything.
As though the sky were drinking from the Bear River
and sitting, fat and content
on top of us all.
Not snowing,
just icy and motionless
and gray.

The coffee in the waiting room
at the mechanic
is terrible.
They've got this old *** of folgers
with powder creamer.
But with four inches of fresh snow on the ground
on a saturday morning
waiting for nothing special
with nowhere in particular to be
it is very nice and in fact
even refreshing.

It's grey, but it's
warm
and the people almost all smile and
wave
as you pass, even the
kids.

Early afternoon,
and the street's still dry,
the clouds are too lazy to drop
their payloads down on your head.

It's a bad part of town,
or at least it looks that way.
*****,
a little worn-down
rubbed smooth about the edges
and rusting at the seams.
But you're an outsider,
you don't live here
and maybe this part of town isn't bad-
not worse than any other part anyway.

The clouds are grey overhead-
but it's warm-
and the people are nice-
and they almost always
smile and
wave
as you walk by.

No streetlight penetrating the double-paned glass from the outside tonight,
just a faint flicker, faltering
in the hollow of my chest
to illuminate the room.

Dim shadows cast are drawn with
menacing cartoon faces-
they laugh animatedly.

There is
so little light
when you are alone-
sometimes.

Maybe it's just the drugs fading,
but tonight I feel hollow.
And maybe it's just the feeling of coming home,
but right now I feel stuck.

Stuck on the simple sensation
of a warm body adjacent
as the night is erased and
a new dawn awakes us.

I laugh often, but I'm hardly ever
amused
mostly I just like to make people feel funny
when they are.
I sigh often because I'm hardly ever not tired,
tired of waking with hopes floating on hot air balloons
only to be set back down with the dipping of the evening sun.

And maybe it's just the ringing in my ears,
but everything is much too quiet right now.
Maybe it's just that the blinds are drawn,
but it is
so dark
in this room.

Sunday afternoon under sleepy film of cloudcover
in this, the most well-policed
(safe, they say)
town in these Unitedly Individuist States of
Solitude-
cry out for something to do,
give me something to DO,
i say
but even the bars and singular coffee shop are closed on the lord's day
here
and so a lazy afternoon on the back porch with the weekend wine leftovers in glass, in hand
watching the cats dream,
themselves even too lazy to chase the busy squirrels
who alone are energized
and chat their politics of nut-gathering
to the bluejays who nod kindly,
(nobility obliges)
but silently know all the tricks
'cause they're expert buriers of peanuts
themselves and have got nothin' to learn,
but nothing to do either,
'cept listen.

I hear the music of their conversation
and assure you, friends,
that this poem is garbage
by comparison.

Magpie alights on the eaves
tonguing a bitter wild berry
***** head left,
right,
decides against this spot
and relocates to a new one
out of sight.

Autumn happened today,
again.
Same as every year.
I was under the shade of the porch,
coffee in hand,
and smelt a change in the taste of the wind.
It's been at least ten degrees cooler
and I've donned the first piece of warm clothing
since April.

Magpie perches on the red wooden
fence on my right,
still gently squeezing that berry-
as if testing its ripeness.
Head ***** left,
head ***** right,
magpie flies away.

The leaves will start to turn this week.
Maybe next.
My coffee is lukewarm now,
same as the air.

Magpie sits in the yard
and carefully sets his lunch down,
prods his beak into the soil,
picks it back up,
and buries it for later.
Magpie flies away.

A rush of cold air sweeps through me.

Same as every year.

I rise and walk,
mug in hand,
back inside.

The night's cold.
Cigarette smoke's silken silhouette
on the steam trail
off my breath.
Defiantly shivering-
no, I will finish it
the cherry- red
down to the last futile drag
and me,
the only living thing
in earshot, breathing on
and godsbedamned
I sit
despite winter's frigid grip
just like snoop dog said-
smoke til the last hit
but I fired and missed
and there's something I missed here
though the air is all clear
and I can't hear anything
but a heartbeat-
beat-
beat-
under the empty stars
I penned these few bars
to keep my hands warm
to make the blood flow-
everything's hallowed and hollow
especially me.

I want to build an obelisk
A tower high enough to touch water vapor in the sky
With no light at the top for guiding ships
And no crows nest for stationing snipers
Too thin and narrow to house people or goods.
It will not be a monument to god.
It will not symbolize the rays of the sun.
It will stand alone.
and it will shout with a voice of thunder,
With the roar of lions,
In a voice that is my own,
"I AM HERE!"
To the cold darkness above.
I want to build an obelisk
To make my presence known to no-one in particular.
I will build it of ink bricks and paper mortar
On the terrain contained in this journal.
And when it is complete I will do as men have done since we first mixed clay with water and painted our own image on walls and shout my existence to the universe.

I.
Am.
Here.

Yes, I want to build an obelisk.

And when it is done I will build another.

Light killed night so I rose and rolled over
shaved and showered
then stood before the blinds-drawn-back
freshly foggy glass
I traced the outline of the ridgeline
of the mountains outside with my finger
in the condensation,
sat and watched the light bounce off the snow
til the misty glass dried
and suddenly all the details were clear
tufts of green
tusks of brown
standing up through the crusted-over ice
and crystalline facets of cliff-face
bits and bobs, anyway, of color on a fresh canvas
and all still
til I spied a couple specks
-and squinted-
not just spots now, but bodies on stilts
(four apiece)
and a ***** crown on the one.
Goats!
yes, mountain goats,
male and female,
traversing the treachery
in spite of it all-
though I could feel they had none,
not an ounce of spite between them
no!
not in spite, but in tandem
with the elements,
the terrain,
with each other.
The conditions aren't adverse,
I realized,
they're ideal.

here is here,
now is now,
and you're a little speck,
just like me,
just like mountain goats,
just swimming through it all
with grace
and tact
and majesty.

There is something magical
in the whirring
of a midday laundromat.
A cessation of pride,
maybe.
People all dressed in sweatpants
the air full of detergent smell
and the sound of coins clicking
against great tumblers
as they go round
and round
and round
and round...

The people smile back,
no use pretending superiority here.
Whistlers twitter on, folding towels and socks into neat, organized piles.
The children are well behaved,
their hands full of potato chips
given by their parents as a pittance for their patience.
The patient patrons
ponder on,
their empty hands crumpling receipts.
This, with the crunching of chips
and the distant whistle
over the percussion of clicking
coins clattering
in a dryer
compose an unintentional opera,

an ode to humility.

Humility's honorable honesty heals humanity's hubris.

Noisy trucks pass outside the floor-to-ceiling plate glass windows,
Where the hot air wreaks its violence
and men make their ways

in spite.

A steamy trail of particulate vapor issues from her lips
tracing the outline of her silhouette and rising
up,
up,
it diffuses into nothingness

Don’t listen to what your parents or teachers tell you, kids-

smoke is very ****.

she exhales again

slithers languidly through the still air
stretching for something-
rolls across my coffee table
like dunes in fast-forward
drips off the edges-

-gone.

She puffs a thick ring at me
it crosses through the void space toward me;
I reach out to touch it- to grasp it
and it dissipates;
she grins-

such teasing.

Smoke is-
and
is not-
it traces the airflow-
the negative space
like a jungle cat pretending to be
the light between the leaves

she knows this
and she can see that I know she does

Smoke
is why I am so captivated
So fascinated
so mesmerized
so transfixed
by her
and in general-

by women.

The rain hammers on the whistlepigs outside
like an organic xylophone
they fiddle with bits of grass in the dark

It's night and the chorus frogs
back it all up,
the humming of the refridgerator
the whistlepigs
the water in the pipes,
the rain.

I've been in this cabin in the woods
**** near a month already
and the incessant buzz of electricity trying hopelessly
to ground through the faulty wiring
in ten million appliances
still cannot be escaped.

Better to be a whistlepig
living beneath the floorboards in the damp
than a mouse in the walls-

but I guess I've never
been either.

Scrubjay alights on dewdamp juniper
Jree?
he asks
Jreee?

There is no one around to answer.

Brook trout leaps to catch a bug on the wing
and for one moment
she is suspended between the stars
and their reflection

but this does not occur to her.

Ponderosa’s limbs and roots
streeeetch
into the soil and the air
it has been alive for one hundred
and ninety years

but it is not counting,
are you?

And then one day in mid-february,
itll rain, sez I.
And youll be thankful for the eleven hours
o' day-light.
And a good lot of the street-grease-****-slush'll
wash down the storm drains.
Hell, you may even be able to call it "warm".
And obviously you wont be done
(its still february after all)
quite yet.
But itll feel like mornin'
which has its own perks.

Flowers smell just like stale wet snow,
sez I.

Inspire.

Expire.

Somewhere in the South Pacific
a human-shaped speck casts a bottle
from the shore of a tiny island
into the interminable sea.
The bottle contains a note
which bears:
a name
an approximate location
and a desperate plea.

The bottle drifts slowly away
flashing in and out of view
on the crests of passing swells.
It glides on mysterious currents
and a quiet modicum of hope.

Simultaneously,
Above a particular point in the Northern Hemisphere,
a ball of tin foil
labeled Voyager I
is crossing the threshold
into the world outside
the solar system.

On board are a pair of golden discs
engraved with:
images and voices of human beings
the relative location of the Sun to fourteen nearby pulsars
and a plea,
      naively disguised to look like a proud declaration of identity
                             but what proud and accomplished
                                       race of beings
                         would need to search for
                                 companionship
                            among the stars?

                         The little metal ball floats away
                                        blinking bits of data back to Earth
                                                              each grainier than
                                                                 the last

                                     tugged by the gravity of distant bodies
                                                               and a quiet modicum of
                                                              ­                                  hope.

I've tried portaiture,
but for some old reason
I find it hard
to eulogize the living.

And when I do try,
the details just never seem
to fit right,
it's too much
or not enough
or just plain inaccurate,
from a few steps back.

I'll paint your actions, alright
'cause I can watch those happen
start to finish,
but I wouldn't pretend to be good enough
to encapsulate a whole person
-all that transient multicolor light under your halo-
with my petty vain jabber,
my incomplete vocabulary
of unflattering grunts-

take it as a compliment.

The clouds are on fire-
puffs of vapor burning umber, leaving dark trails of ash in the east.

The watery sky takes no notice.

The snow silences everything.
I walked,
nearly barefoot,
into the whited sepulchre
of my backyard this
evening.
And everything was white
and the same
and silent
like the
grave.

I hummed a low note
just to break the
silence.
Just to make
absolutely
sure I was not
in fact
already dead.

It was
almost
a perfect moment
of absolute oneness
and sameness
and purity.

And as I began to **** into the unbroken blanket of snow, I pondered
if we are not
destined
to break the silence.

Dusk.
The black of undermaintained asphalt
in a ribbon rolling over
the volcanic hills,
the yellow of the centerline
flashing into view and passing beneath
in a rhythm,
like a heartbeat.

Jackrabbit on the shoulder
***** his head and springs
away from something in his imagination,
following the yellow dashes
in an awkward gait,
a single bold jump
followed by twenty yards of
dead sprint.

Not eight feet overhead
a pair of nighthawks bob and flutter
erratically
but following one another in
pursuit

of something I cannot see.

For some people,
Reality is too much to bear.
For some people,
The weight of the air in their lungs
Is too heavy to hold
And for some
Just living is
too much.

Call it insanity if you want
Go ahead, cast that stone
if you want

I call it a hyper-awareness.
And maybe a mind with too
logical a view of how
Illogical
It all is and how
Tragically
Ironic life is and how
Impending
Our doom is.

I know a fair few of these.
They are mostly good, kind people
Who have too good an understanding of the words
"Infinite"
And
"Nothing"
And of the point where those two words meet.

So to my friends who want to end it
Because they see too much every day
Who can't breathe because they're
Drowning in rising water-
I hope you live long enough to find
A reason to.
Because I am confident
That like with all things,
If you persist in looking

You will succeed in finding.