I smelt the rain before it came, as
The smiling sun was tucked away.
I knew then that the time had come-
For singing children with kites were done,
Their joys and smiles gone with the sun.
And butterflies
(yellow, orange, and blue)
Had to run and hide
Until the storm was through.
These daffodils, lilies, roses, too,
Will stand beside me,
Water rushing at the knee-
A thousand city skylines,
Waters fallen previously,
Gigantic ships tucked in a bay,
All stand waiting for this day.
Like abandoned cars upon a country road,
They will take on every load.
Here I am,
Arms to the sky,
Like those daffodils on the
Cloudiest day, the loudest night.
Every piece of grass,
Every grain of sand,
The rain stops for no beast,
The rain stops for no man.

He'd been watching the world
Through a whiskey glass,
Seeing every distorted image
Of her that passed.

A decade ago,
They were adoloscent children
Living on their parents' means-
Adolescent children,
With adolescent, childhood dreams.

Sometimes, it takes separation
To recognize guilt,
The meaning of content,
What matters and what does not,
What lives, and what will rot.

Whiskey, they say,
Has a habit of wiping you away;
Legend states that
If you pour it over a broken heart,
The cut will heal...
But legend also has a way
Of blending what is false
And what is real.

Skip a few heartbeats
And a few pyramid schemes,
Stop half-way and you'll see
How they did love eachother once,
But not like she needed to,
And he
Not as much as those childish dreams.
Chalk it up to loneliness,
Weariness, curiosity,
Or what have you,
But there was an intimacy,
That much is true.

Sometimes, it takes lonliness
To reach an understanding,
A sense of self,
How to keep your heart upon a shelf.
Sometimes,
If you can figure out the grief,
You can figure out the relief.

He'd been watching the world
Through a whiskey glass,
Noticing how those images passed,
Feeling he was free at last.

Standing silently upon his raised throne,
His stage,
His front porch to the world,
He played his fiddle
Like an Appalachian yell,
So that even the dust in the air
Hung on every note
As they rose and fell.
They fled from the man in perfect time,
Like jewels falling from the crown,
Like a storm leaving its cloud,
Like Earth birthing her leaves and grass,
Like memories
From an empty whiskey glass.

What I mean to say,
Is that if you're sitting there,
Listening to 'Mozambique',
And trying to figure out
What happened to 'you and me':
Release me from you
Like an Appalachian yell-
Yell, yell,
Until to feel the quell,
For I have screamed you out of me,
And then,
At last,
'You and me'
Can both be free.

Pressed together like autumn Oregon leaves
Wet with morning rain;
Hot like the taffy liquid in a
Chipped mug leaving coffee rings;
Mysterious and hurried like the breath of
Two young people, standing on the porch in love;
Weary as a new mother tilting bottles,
Preferring not to sleep, but instead
To thank her Lord above;
Rested like a helpful hint nobody will use,
Which came in the night but
Went with the wind too soon;
Pensive like two friends sitting
Like bookends on a fallen log,
One sighing, the other patting a faithful dog;
Airy as a Venice lady in a lacy dress,
Planning parties, creating the most beautiful mess;
Stretching like the blue sky over the dry fields of Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Pelennor;
Hushed as an old street in Ishpeming just barely
Coming into dusk-
Your understanding of my appreciation for you 
Is a must:
A must,
And nothing but.

He didn’t know what time it was,
Except that it was early,
And he wouldn’t need to be up for hours.

So he turned his head toward the
Only window in the room,
Which was so white that it appeared
To be encasing ten feet of snow.
It was April, though,
He remembered through the neon glow,
And the room was 17 floors up.
The old hotel was silent,
Bathed in this new sunrise, so
Cold and refreshingly bright;
This new day- this white, ****** light.

And then there was the girl-
Sleeping beside him like a kitten
In a sea of pale linens and downs,
An arm over her forehead,
Like a dozing damsel in distress.
She’s fragile, he thought,
Fragile and rare as a glass unicorn,
The heart-wrenching, Tennessee Williams type-
No broken horn, but something
Indistinguishable setting her apart;
Like the pure sunlight, here lies
A beauty so blinding, yet hidden from plain sight.

He didn’t know what time it was,
Except that it was early,
And he wouldn’t need to be up for hours.
Her arm twitched.
The room was boomingly silent.
The infant light made a golden bar across the bed.
The air was crisp.
His breath was warm.
He felt chilled.
His skin felt raw.
His eyes felt raw.
His heart felt raw.
Her skin looked soft.
He wondered if her heart was soft.
He swallowed quietly.
He felt his head pound against the quiet.
Her arm twitched again.
A long-forgotten childhood scar shimmered,
And he decided that this particular mark
Is innocent, but…
He would move a mountain and
Protect her always; keep an eye on her,
In all her wild wonder,
Rather that give her another.

And then there’s the slight voice:
"Beautiful as if made of marble,
Untouchable as if made of glass,
If you’ve ever wondered how an angel sleeps,
Now you know at last."

And while he slipped back under the covers,
He slipped helplessly into a love from which he'd never quite recover.

Sometimes I just want to stand all alone in the middle of a forgotten field on a sunny day, with my hair down, singing at the top of my lungs until I begin to cry at the feeling of sweet release, when all my raw emotion is just hanging in the air around me instead of crunched up inside my heart, making me feel weightless and heavy all at once in that one brief moment, because all of those things I've been holding inside about how you make me feel, how you were my magnum opus, my greatest work, and how after I created you, you still left without me and didn't even look back as you were strolling away, are finally free from me, even if only for a tiny, earth-shattering second, but I don't know where I'd find an open field at this hour, and I could never pick a song anyway, so I'll just sit here and think too much like always.

It lingers in those midnight moments,
During the black stillness
Of the cold, technical mornings,
When all is silent,
Unnervingly frozen in time.
It hangs in the air,
Desperately waiting
During bouts of repetitive silence,
When memories move into focus
And doubt sharpens,
When the only noise
(Your shaking, lonely breath)
Rattles the walls,
And old thoughts accumulate,
Suffocate,
Like yellow fog circling the hall.
It's the little creature that
Perches on the shower curtain rod
As you stare at your reflection
In the bathroom mirror and nod,
Giving him his cue
To fly down to you,
Landing gently upon your shoulder
So you can feel the breath,
Hear the whisper loud and clear,
Saying, "everything will be alright, my dear-"
And at last you give a smile, 
Stretching from ear to ear.

I need a love that walks at a leisurely pace;
I need a love that's poor, with a handsome, lucky face-
One that can hold the world in its big, rock-steady hands,
Ready to lay foundation to its best-laid plans.
I need a love I can look in the eye;
I need a love that's loyal, that proves it from time to time-
I need a love I'm not scared to touch,
That will not bend, that knows too much.
I need a lonely love:
A heretic-of-the-heart hognose snake,
Preparing to strike at mid-day
In some familiar place,
Grinning mysteriously
As it walks at a leisurely pace.