The first wind calls a coolness
to wait around the tips of ears, tickling
and teasing away like zephyr in the air with child-like wisps.

The second wind is married
with specs of dust like ants in a pool of honey.
Jealous clouds follow like a thick coat holding warmth from us.

The third wind brings a bleak—
ness. A flamenco show in the air now is
performed by specs of sickness—twirling—*****—coughing—death.

The fourth wind is a mistress
caught less tepid; throwing trees; swinging
tall buildings like spiked morningstars and taking away the song.

The fifth wind shivers hard
against the glass air; howls, then shakes,
then breaks the sky into momentary cracks of white fire.

The sixth wind sheds misery
from between the dirt and the celestial
shroud into little vials, then freezes them for a short while.

The seventh wind showers the earth
in a shifting of silence and still sympathy and
Within the storm a small hummingbird twists with the sky.

The wind gossips.
    A bush of roses, crimson,
    explodes into the air
    and carries to the feet of
    every woman in need
    a scent of hope.

They won't turn black,
and if they receive acceptable
amounts of water
and finite amounts of ******, unsensible behavior,
they will see many years of flourish.

It's not everything; to sit and watch the world
shift between abstractions is like sleep.
Life's not love.
Life's not wisdom.
Life's not nature.
Life's not anything
but a blue-brown paper bag to carry your thoughts
because there is no where else to put them.

I wouldn't say ironic. We aren't really trying to discover
secrets. It's not about that.
You can sit in swamp musk and find it
after realizing the world is not so disgusting,
but that we are.

It's about coping with yourself
and all of your ****;
biting ankles;
sewing shoes together;
selling the ridiculously semi-sentimental trinkets
your parents gave you and making some cash;
buying hookers;
taking them to the park with your dog;
watching your dog find happiness
and knowing you'll always just be
almost there.

I remember sitting on the dock
in the summer.
The sky was too deep for stars.
Gentle lightning struck the mountains beyond
the lake, shadowing
out every stress of my existence
with pure energy.
I have no wisdom from those moments.
I remember only the peace of floating idly.

There was no need for thunder.
There was no need for rippling in the water.
There was no need for the distant calls of the loons.
There was only the simple silence
and my brain’s imagination of the chaotic show
that may or may not come.

The world outside me had fallen into
an infinite vastness
between each distant fractal of light.

I am not a religious person.
I don’t believe in God,
and I think divinity is subjective.

But I’ve always believed in the entropy of nature
as it delicately chooses leaves
to twirl in a pending storm
like a quantum fate.

I was content when the house burned down
    and melted silicon pasted the walls with portraits
    of everything I left pending.

I know fear isn't what we're taught to embrace
    but when I can place it by my bed and sing it a song
    I feel happy.

Two years ago my future was an old rope with coarse twines
protruding from every angle.
Before the scars on my hands formed,
it burned a lucid orange and left no ash.

Fifteen years ago I melted
mini Lego faces with sunlight and a magnifier, only
to test peering into their minds.

Ten years ago I traced the textures on my walls
with black pen, and found images of ***.
I slept beneath women taking
the deepest breaths through mouths like ghosts.

Five years ago I asserted that the eye
is a portal through which we
believe madness.

Yesterday I realized the human mind is
a sparsely written program that generates
feelings and functions less efficiently
than a melody hummed into a paper cup.
So I re-wrote it.

Yet, I still find faces
where there are no faces.

Turtles are amazing beings not
because they strut like a conqueror of fruits and
small arachnids and
wisdom
but
because I look at them and see a beast that, maybe, once, held itself with great wings
and breathed fire on mankind.

Too many ages ago the earth stopped
moving for a day
and shards of time in the stones
began pointing North instead of South.

I am a rock, too—
pointing and never faltering
but maybe soon
when time stops again for a moment and shifts
everything
will twist like a compass suddenly spinning
south;
I will stop and move in a new direction
because everything static is hopeless.

Seeping
at the end.
I'm inbetween places
and drunk and just sad.

But I wouldn't be letting you in
if I wasn't the least bit
happy, too.

And I am.

Blank pages are the most aggravating aspect of writing. A dead tree, defiled by human interest, can apparently taunt quite well. I want to shred it--to rip it and throw it away. My carnal urge is to destroy possibility. But why? Fear. Waste. Boredom. Ongoing projects are boon to my blank pages. That's why all of my blocks of thought begin so atrociously.

I dare you to write
poetry that breaks the rules.
Haiku? Sonnet? **** it.

Dusk is a named fish;
a coy koi stinging the sky
with its timid tail.

There is a moment on the cusp
of a decision which may fork futures
in which anxiety extends its jolting
grasp so firmly that all realities
pale and flicker.

"TO BE GREAT."
"TO BE HAPPY."

My mantras.

And yet the ghost of such essence hovers
about me and grows stronger with my
resolve.

Anxiety is the paradox of sound thinking.

And yet, it is also a thing
given a name
so that it may be driven
away.

Sing slowly with heart.
The world will wait for us all;
together, on fire.