A wisp of floating smoke
Is carried blindly into my lungs
And embraced warmly
By the clammy bruised hands
Of a girl I no longer really know;
A girl whose chapped lips reek
Of two-year-old chap stick
And the ephemerally tattooed
Moments of mine

But then I exhale
And the smoke dances up to light
From the almost new moon

Though I’ve been ready for bed
Since the moment I woke up
I take one more sip
Of ****** sangria

One more “drag”-
As I’ve been taught to call it
By the older, cooler, kids
Who take a lot more drags
Than myself-
On a cheap cigarette

One more kiss
On one more set of lips

And one more fleeting thought
That maybe it’s all just part of
A single careless search
For the set of lips that kisses back;
A search with no regard for
Whatever face to which those lips
Could be mounted...

Though I know that’s not true-
As I finally
Close my eyes,
I know (I think)
That’s simply
Just not true

I didn't even think about it.

My metaphorical
All-encompassing
Grey mist of time
And uncertainty
Was literally there tonight
Clouding the moon
And the hills
And the present

But I didn't even think about it
Beyond appreciating its beauty
I didn't notice
That my favorite metaphor
Had shown itself to me

Perhaps I've become less scared
Of all the meaning
In that grey mist

Or perhaps
I simply still struggle
To find the truth
In all my fiction.

The last leaf
On the oak tree falls
In the tradition
Of the first
And now the branches
Are bare
And Winter has come
And Ubuntu
Means nothing

The first time I slept beside you in that basement
You were a stranger
And now you’re a close friend. But somehow
The sleeping hasn’t gotten much more comfortable.
My neck has hurt all day.
And when I said “happy new year” to my grandma
I still felt like I was holding back
A fourth round of ***** –
You know the vomiting actually hasn’t gotten much better either.
I remember the first time, sitting
On somebody’s aunt’s friend’s bathroom floor
Texting my sister “I’m drunk, I’m sick, I’m sorry”
While this ****** girl that I hadn’t yet fallen in love with
Held my hair back figuratively
But you
You held my hair back more literally last night (it’s gotten long),
And you know that I’m glad we’re friends
But that cheese fondue my mom prepared
Didn’t taste so good coming up the other way
And I shouldn’t need, I shouldn’t want, I shouldn’t need
To swig back so many shots
To tell people how I feel
Which might not even really be how I do feel
Because that girl wasn’t really all that ******
And ever since she left (I left her)
I’ve been looking for something to cling to and
I haven’t found it in this person or that person
So I tried to find it in this sea of bottles
But all the bottles empty quickly
And my neck has hurt all day so
Just don’t take it personally if I don’t
Spend the night in that basement with you again next time.

My neck has hurt since she left.
And I’m still drunk.
Still sick.
Still sorry.

The sun set
Out my window-
Its light bounced
Off your eye lashes,
Your *******,
And my warm blankets
Into my eyes

I thought I wore nothing but my watch
As we made love
And I saw you checking the time,
Just seeing
How long we had left

But I noticed later that

(“If a train came right now
Would you get out of the way?”
We were in the woods
Standing on this quiet railroad track
Where the birds chirped loudly,
Annoyingly unaware of the silence
We required.
We hadn't spoken
For several minutes
And I had been thinking about this
For a while
As we stood staring straight ahead
Both of us half hoping...

My answer came quickly:
“Yes.”

You turned and walked away
Unable to face
The most fundamental difference
Between us,
Laid out so blatantly.)

I had preemptively worn a moment
That day
As well.

After my parents got divorced
My dad moved into this tiny, ****** house
On Sunset Drive.
After a few years there, he decided
It wasn't yet his time to live on Sunset Drive
And so he moved again.
But that house still stands there
And each time I drive by
I try to reconstruct a home within my mind
That is within those four falls.
The exterior is the same, so in this reconstruction
The interior is too--
A shaggy carpet in the hallways,
A bunk-bed in the room looking out at the maple tree,
And a garden out back, exploding with tomatoes.
Of course, there might be tile in the hallways.
A couch in that room once mine.
And just a few lonely cabbages in the garden.

In each variation of the past
I have tried to find a home,
But home has moved with me.
Within old walls
Is new furniture.

The new blends itself
So inexorably and so imperfectly
To all which is so ******, ultimately:
Skin, blood,
Pricking ***** fingers in 4am closed bedrooms,
All in a testament to some great Being--
A Being that is Being knows what, cuz
It's all just a good acid trip that's too far out on its brink.
A good acid trip still on its brink or just now on its brink or
Brink. Breaking point. Newness inexorable, it is
With too little blood that I ***** my finger, but
Still I will do it, knowing that I cannot step back from this ledge.
The threshold that reality offers
Is often too much for the mind.

You looked at me today
(When I finally forced your eyes
To meet mine)
Like I wasn't just. stranger
But a homeless man on the street,
Cursing at you and beggin you
For the dime or nickel
Which capitalist America
Demands you not give up

The time we spent the evening
Making love in your bed
You told me you wished
We were just ten years older
So we could look towards marriage
And a family.
I wonder what you think
About that night now

Driving through the darkness
The Wendy's bag
On the side of the road
Can start to look
A bit like roadkill-
Which it is
In a way,
Because no matter
How many broken people
I cram into the front
Seat of my car
And no matter
How many cigarettes
They've all been smoking
The blindness
And the landfills
Which push the rich
Further North of the city
Will continue to push

If I ever get addicted to cigarettes,
it will be because of you, Mike—
the screenwriter and smoker from Miami who I met
amidst the gentle crashing of the calm waves. It’s not
that I needed to smoke to accent the stars,
already so powerful in their summer sky without haze, but
I did need the smoke to accent you, Mike, to
hear about the time you climbed a mountain
where the air was so cold and the wind so fierce
that in your tent, your body created an atmosphere
dialectical in its warmth and surreal rain. When I
cough up phlegm in the morning, I’ll be thinking of you, Mike,
and as that brownish yellow glob slides
down the thin metal drain, I know I’ll think
that if I get addicted to cigarettes
because of you, Mike,
then it won’t be such a bad thing.

Blue spirals painted on my body, we sailed,
cataclysmically cascading in your spaceship
through the little towns which, in their
infinite stillness, see only movement.

Your voice brought me back for a second, Joe.
You spoke as if you might be reading a poem
you wrote two years before, saving, all that time
just for that moment.

You chugged ***** when we got there,
features illuminated and distorted in the candle-lit cold,
as I lay with your girlfriend in bed
and watched you to stay warm.

All the cars but ours had gone in the other
direction, but we'd stayed true to our course.
The void of the morning, reminiscent of the previous warning,
let the blue spirals seep, in the snow, through my skin.

My dog’s eyes are wide;
He’s more alarmed than I’ve seen him in months
Although to be fair
I haven’t really seen him in months.

He looks at me
Like I might be able to make the wind stop
But I’ve been too busy lately
Blowing through with that wind
To even pause and scratch his ears
Let alone change the weather

I listen to the November rainstorm
Blowing through with the violent intensity
Of a first kiss
Or a last ****
And though I know I can’t change the weather for him
I still take a brief pause during the storm
To scratch his ears
And calm him down

"Hello Olivia,"
My fountain pen
Drunkenly demonstrated
In my dad's kitchen,
Which the girl who sat
Behind me in math class,
Carefully collecting lists
Of favorite words
(Penultimate; ephemeral),
Cautiously observed
Was not my kitchen too

Ink from my pen
Leaks from pages ago onto this one
And even as a joke I can't believe my lips
Touched yours tonight.

Also, my hair's been getting longer.
I know I can cut it off at any time
But I'm not ready to set the bottle down and part
With the person I was six months ago

But it's time. My skin is dry,
Those lips that touched yours are chapped, and
When I'm being honest with myself I know that if,
At the end of this persisting winter,
I have a single ******* atom left in my body
From the day I was born,
It'll only be explained by science I'm unfamiliar with and
Not metaphor.

I look across the table
And my eyes catch yours
And I wonder briefly,
If without the pressures,
We could be happy
As two parts of a whole

But then I look away
From your eyes and I
Gaze outside instead
Thinking that maybe
I'd be happier out there

I hope my mom
Doesn't still cry
Every time
I pack my bags
To go to my dad's
But I wouldn't be
Surprised
If she did

I do wonder though
Whether I'd be surprised
If she didn't
And I wonder too
Whether she still
Thinks of the bag
That always travels
With me
As hers

I drive away
From the front porch
Of my life
And I look back
Across the almost grey
Dying grass of that lawn
And I can't believe
That I ever stood there
Imagining myself in your place

But as my car
Idles in that driveway
Failing to reverse
Out of that old stretch
Of black pavement
Which used to lead to home
I picture myself

I'm walking across
That raggedy carpet;
Stepping across
That white tiled floor;
Opening up that fridge
And sitting at the dinner table,
Drinking red wine
But then

The gears shift
And I'm turning away
From the only house
You could afford
After your greatest lie
Became a truth

And now
I'm looking towards
A grey horizon:
My life an impossible pattern
Of re-occurring themes:
Yellow lines passing me by,
Stolen grey sweatshirts
Leading me home

And everything
Leading me towards
An uncertain variation
Of present blue

But the road is a loop
And soon
I'm back where I started-
Right back with you
Idling in that driveway
And wondering
How come I couldn't
Have just let
That glass of red wine
Be my last

Sighing slowly I walk
Back into your home
And I lie to you
Like you lied to us because
Across our generations
Lies an entirely
Too plausible
Palindrome

I wrote you love poems
In a pink sharpie because
I was falling in love with you,
And the more I listen to this song
(Sixty four times tonight),
I think that it isn’t fading
Like the chords she played
As I held you
And as we swayed

I wrote you love poems
In pink sharpie
Not thinking of you
But thinking instead
That the four shots of *****
Maybe made it okay
For me to kiss you

I wrote you love poems
In a pink sharpie
And then I threw the love poems
In the trash,
Not drunk enough to forget
That showing you
Might make you cry

Those love poems
That I wrote in pink sharpie
Came out of the trash this morning though
Because somehow
I thought a few tears
Might make everything better

I lied to my mom the other night
About what I had for dinner
With my dad
Because I didn't want her to ask
Why it took so long
To just eat a pizza
And I didn't want her to be sad
About my half-shrug of response

"Write while you're drunk,
Edit while you're sober"
But words are words regardless
And the initial intent might pale
In its ultimate juxtaposition but you-
You mean just as much to me
Still.

The Earth dripped in through your body,
and there in you was the third fire, it
also about to fade, and me
also on its shore: subconscious and surreptitiously
begging those embers (smoking and cracking) to be
so much more than they ever were
in the form of a flame. Your thoughts
came out in poetry, dear. It was the way
those decomposers crept around
your frontal lobe that seemed
to say: “Remain. Smoking and cracking,
subconscious and ******.”

Sooner or later the world of clip-on bow-ties and bodies
will crumble—the society and class so high
that their calves'll give out and they'll stumble
through the blue T.V. screen light. They'll fall,
laughing and crying, on my carpeted basement floor.
And then, in a little moment of weakness,
light pouring in through too poorly closed blinds and
lips so close that those tiny little hairs brush,
we’ll all know
that that last hug goodbye
feigned its insincerity.

‘I hope I get addicted to cigarettes,’ I remember thinking.
‘What if I’m falling in love with her,’ I remember
just loud enough that she, through the window-pane,
could hear. Can hear. The Earth
dripped in through her body, the Earth
drips in through your body, semantics don't matter though
because here it is. And I
(Smoking and cracking.
Subconscious and ******.)
am still sitting here, on the shore of this third burnt-out fire. I’m focusing
my breath with my fingers,
not allowing myself to hope, but still waiting.
I’ve always had mixed feelings about
gasoline. (The Earth dripped in.)

We always thought
That the post-war generation
Might actually
See the end of war
But here we are
Riding the waves
Of two world wars
And I sit
On a front porch swing
Watching kids
Ride by on bikes
And thinking that their smiles
Might be as ephemeral
As the war
That will end the world

And after my country strikes,
A move it has to make
In this apocalyptic
Game of chess,
I'll just pray
To gods I don't believe in
That whoever is drafted
In my place
(Maybe one of these boys
On their bikes)
Runs and joins me
In Canada
Rather than fight
The Russians for Israel in Syria
In corporate America's
Name

For almost two years we’ve been sitting on a conveyor belt
Heading straight for the potato peeler, which will
Slice right through our thickened skins and puncture our vitals;
A cold cruel machine designed to sit
In industrial kitchens
Waiting for Sodexo’s next batch.

But we—
We’re from the farmer’s market and we are not
Four inches in diameter and six inches in length.
We are clunky. We are knobbled. We are
Purpleyellow and we are waterysweet.
We are not
Iowabland or a poem of rhyming couplets, yeah
We are free verse and we

Had *** because we’re friends.
Or maybe because
We love each other
In one way or another.
Or maybe because we’re lost
Or maybe all of the above, yeah—I don’t know, I just know

The potato peeler won’t accept us for a second.
That mechanical grip, slicing slicing slicing,
A fumbling tumbling in countless browntowhite progression,
It won't accept
Our color, our flavor, our beautiful swirling eyes,
And for a while I didn't either.
But whether we have two more months on the belt or twenty years,
I know that our knobbled progression to nowhere
Will have been one of everywhere.

I am equally as invigorated
By the temperance
Of modern convenience
And the dominance of nature
As I am terrified
Of total dependence
Of modern man
On everything electric

We stood between the two doorways
In a little room that was outside of inside
But not quite outside.
We were there and the cold was there but,
At least in terms of God and of War,
We were alone.

It was with utmost neutrality
That you spoke of all you hoped to change and I,
Like that night we laid drunk on the dock
While you outlined all the times you'd almost died,
Was silent.

We lingered in that little room
A bit longer than we needed to,
Already engaged in the sort of pre-emptive nostalgia
That I know will tear these last few months apart.
But soon enough
You walked through one door,
And I through the other.

The cold bit at my face in all the places
I'd hoped it might not, and I thought,
As I walked to my car,
Of how cold the water had been
When we'd jumped,
That warm summer night,
Into Lake Erie.

your lips hung, slightly parted,
as you slept through the morning.

your face was smooth
and your tiny nose ring glinted
in the light that passed through the pine trees
and into our tent.

i stared at you, over there, for a long time
from where i lay in my sleeping bag, over here.

i knew that, just as it happened two years ago
when we lay in the bed at my mother’s house,
having spent the night together for the first time,
your eyes would slowly flicker open to meet mine
and i would somehow have to account
for why my gaze was already fixed on yours.

i prepared a hundred different good-mornings,
some chipper
           (“good morning!”)
and others saddened
           (“hey, good—um… good morning.”)
or only a little bit saddened
           (“hey there. good morning.”)
just to seem more natural even though
they were all still going to be a little bit
too chipper.

but i looked away at just the right moment and you muttered,
in your tired voice,
“how did none of the rain get into the tent?”
so all my preparations were obsolete.

i told my mom tonight,
that we’re no longer whatever we were
and it was only the fourth time i can really remember
tearing up in front of her,
although it surely happened quite frequently
when i was younger. after
scraping a knee, for instance, or
getting scolded by my brother.
the skin on my knee has healed now though,
so i’m thinking i’ll just try
not to be so concerned.
about anything, really.

Hyperbolic ceiling
Of patternless white paint:
Massive human herd.
Fumbling over itself: a mountain
Climbing, climbing, climbing, the bodies
The zombies
And super-imposed on the moving and falling
Of all of us Sisyphus
Are two faces, one mine
Teeth biting lip
Tongue in throat
Intimately, privately,
Darkness on white space.

“I’m an immensely private person,” Michael said,
His hand clasped in mine, the bodies
Moving across the white skin of his face, too—he
Stuttered—and then he
Stopped—
Remaining.
I nodded as things passed
From blue to red to back; as things
Throbbed, everything so ******,
Blood pulsing
Into my body from his, from

The veins in the ceiling.
Oneness, omphalos, the knife faltered
His
Chest was my chest, like his hand, and I
Felt his inhale,
His lungs my lungs expanding contracting,
The human herd still
Dancing dialectically
In sync with the moving mouths and kissing lips
Of super-imposition.

The world played me in reverse
every song I know by heart
and in that striking unfamiliar tune
my face was smashed down in the dirt
where I had a half-second thought
that maybe it's these bugs I like
and maybe it's not you, but then the
rain splashed down so loudly
that it made puddles in my shoes,
and my body's just an ashtray
whenever it's used. I feel my heart
pouring out my skin, and out my mouth
comes the swarm of words and mud
once locked so tightly by the thought
of your lips as the barriers to mine, so let's
roll these chunks of mud around my yard,
we can make a whole mud-man
with a rotting carrot for its nose,
the stench there to remind us of
all that we once knew.

On good days my dreams are the blackberries
Hanging from a bush they cut down
Where the little kids used to go
Six years ago
To get their hands purple and chew nervously,
Fearing their parents might walk down that little path to see
Their kids had left the pool.

On bad days my dreams are the white squares of paper
We put to our lips to change
The aforementioned 'their' from an 'our.'
Hoping our parents don't walk the path again and connect
The size of our pupils to the
Purple of our ancient fingertips.

It's the same wind that knocked down the black-berry bush
That writes these words and holds these white squares
To lips. We had a good dream together
Not long ago.

Just beginning to start to begin to
Come to terms with
Where I am and how,
I walk away suddenly
From those old dreams, those
Rev-lations of sound,
To meet you--
My consistent stranger--
Under guises and veils and a subconscious resistance
To the idea that it's now been a long time
Since the title of stranger
Was really appropriate.

I wonder whether you'd be falling for me if you knew
how crumpled my body is
from taking that plunge.

I had my arm in a cast once, and
when it was removed the skin there was dry
and pale, and there were these
discolored dead patches of skin that
incessantly refused to wash off in the shower that night.
It took me over a week
to regain my full range of motion.

Now, I think this cast has been removed. And
I swear to you, I'm trying. Keep falling.
I will do my best to catch you, I just hope I
have my full range of motion back
by the time you reach me.

We stood on Lake Erie while the sunset
exploded in the sky to someone's East,
and a storm system blew violently
though ours. There was such a contrast
between the two halves of the sky: one
illuminated with orange and red
and hot pink, and one black, dark,
and foreboding. The ice
was half-melted, and under our feet
was a shallow pool of water. Whenever
the wind blew, it looked as if the water
was rushing towards us, trying to grab us,
looking to pull us under
through the cracks.

I'd dreaded going to Lake Erie that day.
But the journey was good, sitting in my car,
playing soft music and talking. The destination
was good too, with it's opposite skies.
The only rough part
was the trip home.

though you don't know it
we both think
of the same thing
when we hear
that song-
that song  that plays
in between glasses
of red wine
(which help
to get you through
your day)

every time
we hear it
i'm reminded
(as i laugh with you;
sip from your glasses
filled with your
red wine)
that you're

an *******

and i'm sorry
that this wasn't
what you wanted-
in fact
i know
that the first time
you heard that song
in the context
that we hear it in now
you were smiling
(the smile
of a man in love)

but when i hear it now
i'm reminded only
of a man out of love
(a man
who has lost everything
but pretends
to have lost nothing)
and i'm sorry
that that man

is you

New Year's resolutions rarely carry into February
But the resolution of a new year
Will last twelve ******* months anyway.

It is the chipped ceramic gnome
Left to weather outside an abandoned apartment,
Which calls me cataclysmically to the forefront,
Asking how long it will be
Until I get to write '13' again. Or '12'. Or '08'.

Because to get used to writing '14'
Is to get used to the empty space between fingers
And the mess of my room, which will only fade
When I do.

It won't be until the storm comes,
When the gnome falls from banister to sidewalk,
That I'll stop asking how long
And begin to write '15' instead.

Let's get addicted to cigarettes
Together, darling-
And running too,
Because somehow
When I'm with you
Bettering myself
Is just as fun
As destroying myself

But whether I'm on
My third cigarette
Or my tenth mile;
Regardless of
Whatever leisure drive
We're taking,
Whatever joke
You're making-

Let's be together

For that drive, that cigarette
That run, that joke
Because I love sitting beside you
And hearing your laugh;
Seeing your smile:
You bring out the best in me-
Even when we're focusing on
Cigarettes
Instead of running

Fleetingly holding
Air of lungs in palms
I gaze up at floating blankets
Incapable of warmth
And hanging just below
The stars and bodies bouncing
Off the water in my mind

Though confined to basement
I see the shore we stand on,
Skipping stones
Across the lake
Until me my body throws
To a wind too powerful
To threaten sailing thoughts
Like the hands I hold-
Refusing to understand
The weight of breath

The lights are off,
The fans aren't spinning
And even when the sun
Is shining through the windows
I still look at the digital clock
To check the time

Everything that in the day
Seemed like a leaf
Was now nothing
But blackness
Showing only
Where light
Could not penetrate;
Black lines dotted
Against the near-black sky

(You try to read
My poems
As messages to you
But every conversation
Is made of shadows
And I'm sorry
But these poems
Are about me)

I needed to tell someone else
Because I couldn't let
The only person who knew
All (or I guess almost all, now)
Of me
Fade into a ghost

Somehow though
Today's sharing didn't relieve me
Of quite as much burden
As I thought it might

Some of these books
I wouldn't remember reading
If they weren't on my bookshelf

They say you're not supposed
To wake up
A sleepwalker
But more often than not
I want to remember in the morning
The moments I fell in love with
The night before

I want to really remember
All the books on my bookshelf
And some of them
I haven't even read yet

Wake me up.

We sailed counter-clockwise
Through black water and pumpkin sprees,
Dangling footnotes of bookend conversations
The closest thing to clarity in speech--
But we understood the solar flares and the sunspots
And when our bodies sank into dank swampy muck,
There we were in cold moonlight
Naked and shivering and sweet, the whole balance
Of cosmic radiation flung skyward, like
It was all right then, it was all right now, everything is
Like in that movie we watched apart but
Somehow also didn’t, like how the time I tripped
On that drug you were on, my friends and I burnt our fingers
Making stupid fortune cookies
All so contrived, but the morning before the pumpkin sprees
I found a fortune on the ground that didn’t even come from my cookie
So, like it asked me to, I took a chance
And discovered that it wasn’t just my chance to take, cuz
There we were scrubbing our legs in bathroom sinks and showers
Trying to clear the muck away from skin and hair but the dirt
Was so persistent, and the persistence
Was so telling… Regardless
Of how many green globules of antibacterial soap
We squirted onto our legs, the world just wasn’t going to get clean, I mean
The world just lends itself to filth, and sometimes
You have to set the soap down and cry, or walk outside
To see the sunrise
Over the distant hazy hills,
The sunspots and solar flares
All suddenly laughable
Despite their previous profundity.
And even if it wasn’t just my chance to take,
Still,
I’m glad I picked that fortune up off the street and
Read it quietly to myself, standing there with countless
People passing by.

We’d sit on the back porch
On the Fourth of July
Spitting watermelon seeds
Into the tall grass,
Which glimmered in the midday sun.

The competition of who could spit the farthest
Never really with a winner,
It was mostly about the feeling of the sun,
Glimmering on our pudgy cheeks,
And the opportunity to abandon our napkins,
Letting that cool watery juice spill
Down our white shirts, leaving pink stains
And permanent reminders of summer

Of course a tattoo is only as permanent
As the body that wears it:
I outgrew the shirts around the same time
As the world outgrew those little black seeds

This year on the Fourth of July
We sat inside making small talk
Because there weren’t any black seeds
In the watermelon we ate:
Just dehydrated flesh, the color a little
Farther from pink and closer
To the off-white color of those flakey little seeds,
Which were miraculously allowed to remain

I thought of you today when I noticed the dirt underneath my fingernails
And when I felt the wind in my hair as I flew down a hill on my bike
And when I stared at the Hocking River again as it gently swirled downstream.
When I realized I’d be going to bed early and
When I thought about sleeping alone,
As I do almost every night.
When I decided to go the long way home.
When I sat down on a bench, ate a granola bar, and sipped away the rest of my water.
When I threw my shovel aside and dug with my hands.
When I wiped the sweat from my brow.
When I looked at my Aloe Vera plant and realized I hadn’t watered it in a while.
When I watered my Aloe Vera plant.
When I left the dinner table before the rest of my friends to call my grandma
Who once told me that you and I should get married.
When I laughed at my own thoughts
And when Ani DiFranco came on my Spotify.

I don’t exactly know what I mean
When I say I thought of you.
I don’t know anything exactly, I mean
What if the universe jumps erratically through temporal space,
And each moment only seems continuous cuz we only remember what came “before” it, as we say?
When I say that, when I think about that,
I guess I’d call that thinking about you.

I thought about you when I thought about
Getting ice cream
And when I thought I got a splinter,
Neither of which
Actually happened.

That night
In the middle of the road
You held my hand
And pulled me close

Talking conspiracy theories
And laying
Side by side
Everything was almost
But just not quite

Part of me wishes
We'd never moved off
To one side
Or the other

I would have loved
To stay there
And hold your hand
In the middle of the road
Forever

Through the store window
Of time
I watch you
Buying my first books

“I actually knew the author”
Enthusiastic.
“That's nice”
Waiting for her shift to end.
“I loved him”
“That'll be twelve, fourteen”
“He loved me.”

Author distributed
Or self published
Or non-existent
I can count
On at least
One reader

And I walk away
From that store window
And go on another walk.
Your use of the past tense
Had begun
To bother me

I'm not sure
Whether to fill this first page
With visions of you.
Because even as
Your heartbeats resonate
Within each stroke of my pen,
To love you any longer
Would be like sitting here
Sunbathing under clouds,
Denying myself
The human necessity
Of truth

I felt biking up hill today fairly alive
And then I sit in stuffy dormrooms or walk through hallways
I crouch at desks to copy and paste old thoughts
I jog from toilet to shower to make it to class on time
And still I am three minutes late, like I
Wrote in my little notebook that “I have to stop
Letting my desire for something supersede my feelings for the individual people in my life”
But even as I wrote it
Pissingdrunk against the side of my friend’s pink house
I didn’t know what I meant, scribing only
So that I could figure it out later:
What the hell I meant by ‘desire’
What the hell I meant by ‘something.’

I felt biking up hill today fairly alive
And then I’m called upon to have opinions,
To finish my homework
To take out the trash
Or
To define ‘desire’
To define ‘something’
And then to flip the supersedence around,
Yes I am called upon by myself and myself only
So I’m not gonna finish my ******* homework today.
I’m gonna let the trash continue to rot.
I’m gonna define ‘desire’ as a product of rational society
And I’m going to define ‘something’ as the oppressor class
And I will fly past these nets
Like a proud and bold Icarus to
Sit on my bike

Remaining and lingering
As I move through temporal space.

And then I will love.
I will be loved.
I will be subject.
I will be humanized.
From an axiological point of view,
Anyway.

The grey sludge on the sides of the roads
Has really been there
Since the heat of July
But only recently did my focus shift
From the glistening white
Of our summer snow

Maybe I just need another
Attitude adjustment-
Let's go have a snowball fight;
The seasons don't seem to be changing
Any time soon

Unmelted candle wax
From two hundred melted candles
Litters a granite counter top
The metaphorical resonances of which
Were lost three weeks ago
When the counter swam like water
In hallucinogenic bliss,
As through knowing each other more, not less,
We fell finally all the way out of the love
Which once seemed so much more solid
Than water