i cradle courage

while i can. By the grace of

God, I can do this.

Sometimes
when you repot a plant,
no matter how healthy the new location
   it curls up into itself and dies.
Even though there's
just as much water and
just as much sunlight
   hell, maybe even more
the plant can't grow anymore.
It's shocked,
it's stressed,
   it's already weak.
A move can do a plant good,
   but sometimes it's too much, too fast.

Except

Sometimes
when you repot a plant
it does just fine.
It hardly takes notice,
   or maybe it thrives
   even more.
The plant grows taller
looks brighter
smells sweeter
stretches its roots deep into the soil
and leans into the warm sun on its leaves.

being
somewhere else
is not the same
as being nowhere
at all

just like

being
loved differently
is not the same
as being loved
less

"Try it out." he said
And my stomach
tangled with my brain
hunger
consumed me
but not the other
way around

we had always been
unvarnished
and mostly untouched
but then
I crept into the
basement of my
halfway thoughts
and there I wished
to hear him
one more
time

but I knew
his pale,
blue moon voice
had been lost
and I knew
the past could
only feel good once
and cigarettes couldn't
be smoked twice

I knew better
but still
   it came as such a surprise
that each fraudulent feeling
wouldn't seep the same
and even through
your stumbling words
I could tell
that you meant
well

she told me once that she worshiped the
forest of her body and the garden she had grown (like spring
                                          all over her outsides).
she said she loved skin the same way i  loved
marlboro blacks and sweetwater blue (obviously and
                                         uncontrollably).
she screamed compliments at me in
soft words with rough meaning (like ****** knuckles against
                                        freshly cut grass).  
she assured me that it was okay to wake up
in cold sweats with heavy limbs (unmovable and brittle,
                                         buried under sheets).

but i knew better.

Leftovers from a red hot feast
My heart turns gray with ash.
As smoke clouds infect my lungs and flow into my blood stream
Soon enough I was destined for suffocation from within

Volcanoes spit ash out into the atmosphere
I inhale ash and exhale happiness
Gone with every breath goes every smile I have thought of.
Disappearing with every breath my motivation flies into the atmosphere and burns up into ash.

A crackle and a pop and a slow burning fire in the brick fireplace.
Heating homes the old fashioned way,
I am ****** into a vortex to the sky where I can fully appreciate life.
Where the sun smiles down on all of the boys and girls and makes ashes glow with embers just wishing for life once more.
But after all, all stars burn out.

A forest fire rips through northern Montana.
Smoke filling the air while ash fills the heart full of burned memories and homes
Part of what once was life turns into the most innocent of monsters.

A volcano erupts in Pompeii.
A city paved in ash I am lost.
A family buried in an unmarked tomb
that they once called home.

Writing on the walls suggests propaganda existed since time has.
A man wrapped in a lambs wool tunic and a one inch coating of ash
Lays his head in a museum.

After all,
Ashes, Ashes.
We all fall down.

Be wild
Be free
So to leave the hollowed masses blushing
With reminders of forgotten roots

Tear clothing from imprisoned flesh
And let light nestle back
Into ruins abandoned not through time
But for ugly Godful shame

Savagely unhinge choking steel doors
And let loose a fiery green
Send forth flames of growth
And sparking soul
Leaping high into the night
Taunting the darkness
Beyond the reach of Jove

Light pagan candles
And chant ritualistic
Prayers of Yes

i watched blankets of people
rip themselves off of you
one by one by one
you were no longer beautiful to them,
the wrong things became important to you
and so
they left and you
turned cold.

i still find you beautiful
but i have divorced my heart from you
there's not much to say when i see you,
not enough space to feel when i'm around you,
not enough affection to resuscitate
all of the moments you let me drown.

i don't want to hate you anymore, but
i don't want to love you either. both of them are
painful, so i get caught in between.

i wish i could wish you a happy mother's day
and feed into your belief
that you are a good mother, the belief you use to cover up
your deep seated self hatred
but i can't.

i will always find you beautiful
but i won't be around anymore
to tell you that.

Texas, you ran on me like blood,
miles of road building up for an anticlimax.
Sun on her back, begging for rust,
wringing herself for another hour of daylight.
Green and golden grass through the windshield
speckled with red.

Made me want the coming dust,
made the vibrant greens of the humid East
seem like anthills worth cementing over,

Golden red. Wind whipped through the car windows,
nostalgia in a place I'd never seen.
I wanted to break you. Time was too still,
change was too slow for me. Southwest America had my name
drawn in dead bug splatters and drained coffee cups
somewhere ahead.

Time doesn't translate to these long miles,
it's just you and me and something new, something old.
Me and the windshield and the dead bugs,
and flitting thoughts of North Carolina,
repeated songs, hard silences,
and something chilling about these dead towns.
Some salty Pacific air already on my tongue.

Something nameless to remind me that being young is bittersweet,
and I don't know what I'm running from

new was sitting across from me
her skinny was wider hips waist
hair by face was precisely framed
in the neatest skin of comely youth
i was talking my kept my mouth was
to slaver words dear as quickly heaving
as to her ears i might impulse the livid inch
of her pristine lips to defeat my useless sound