Dear old friend of my childhood:

Thank you, for finding me here,
Greeting me with an old feeling,
Familiar weightlessness I've missed,
Misplaced by life's heavy grounding.

Thank you, for lifting me back, up
Back, up through the crisp sky,
Legs pumping ferociously to fling me,
Faster, higher, popping up from your seat.

Thank you, drawing peace back in,
Swinging my fears far from my focus,
Flinging my head back, heart held high,
Ears ringing thick with airy laughter.

Thank you, for throwing my perspective,
See the moon, see the mulch below,
See tops of tress hung with goons,
See dewy grass, see the back of eyelids.

Thank you, for holding my hips tight,
Pressing out wrinkles of over-worried woes,
Squeezing, hugging, assuring you're there,
Catching my bouncing *** from flying away.

Thank you, for squeaking louder, louder, louder
Than my malicious runaway monologue,
Your steady metronome keeps me in time,
To the muffled beat of my heart.

Thank you, for calling others round
You're a common ground for misfits,
A shared memory of past bliss,
A shrine to the good old day,
Thank you.

cold sweat startled wake,
to blinding grey light
cutting through torn curtains,
splaying skeletal silhouettes on the floor.
squinting crusted-shut eyes,
trying to determine the ghostly hour
lost between fragmented fever dreams.
head twisting inside-out to wrap itself
around old virtues, stand true
true blue friend, I'll surely desert you in the end.
hand on my burnt Bible to swear
my oath of destruction,
on a war path to eradicate
everything i resurrected
as an effigy to home, love, and identity.
structural anarchy - from imposed symmetry,
to the empty abyss surrounding me
where a single whimper can bounce
off itself, into crescendoing agony.
gather all the rubbled remains
of the once sanctified temple,
but piling stones straight to the sky
won't build a shelter for the aftershock.

red-eyed pigeon pecking for scraps in the sand
staggering through white-washed ripples of land, and
separating cigarette butts from orphaned leaves.
the sea is heaving her depths
ever toward the static shore,
sure that sore feet will willingly greet her
refuge from the blistering sun.
sons of fisherman
scuttling about on waves no bigger than your thumb,
humming drum beats
to the wind and romancing the sky.
the clouds dome over the earth,
mountainous and whispering wisps upon the water.
my hair is bleached, painted by the daylight
and I am gradually washing, washing away
into the sea.
the world tinted cerulean
my tongue rolls out mysteries, doubts, prophecies
trying to envelop contradicting truths
in a shrinking shoreline.
disillusioned, hands fall slack
from the choke hold at my throat
and salted air rasps into lungs
grappling with the gravity of  tides.

tell me,
what clammors in your mind when you cannot sleep at night?
what are you clinging to when you do not rise in the morning?

I curse my body daily.
Waking up with the sky, my tongue
lashes red sunrises onto my thighs,
my lungs vacuum a familiar
poisonous plume. Oh!
the relief of mortality!
the sturdy promise of decay!
An ancient blood pact with the moon
turns me sour at her zenith,
and I slink down in my weather-torn coffin
smirking with anticipation.
Crashing waves of maggots pour
over and through me,
shaving away this amorphous effigy
to dust, debris.
Released back to the soil,
soaked in dew,
reformed in clumps by absent-minded shoes,
bled dry by stelliferous roots of sycamores -
my body giving birth to life
in ways I never could before,
in ways only revealed to me
by death
the spurious specter becomes pure again.

My ***** worn feet
Retracing the same journey,
Many souls before me,
Many following behind.
I feel the steps realign,
I've made the same footprints
In the same soil, again & again.
Remembering recurrent realities,
Replay the drama, another reincarnation
Of my eternal soul, slowly
Lifting back the veil, peeking into
The same void of dichotomies,
I feel their resolution has once before
Resided within my understanding.
Now a forgotten fable, told in foreign tongue.

I am here, now.
But I am also a primordial memory,
I am also a vision of the future.
I am here, now with my preconceived predictions,
My view tinted the colors of my past,
But with each new sun rise,
I reach beyond to open myself, again & again.
The flowing current of energy,
Unfolding new perspective in front
Of my eternal awareness --
May my colored glasses be rainbow,
A kaleidoscope of amorphous patterns,
All turning with the rhythm of the universe.

when you’re living in two places at once
you're really not alive anywhere .
when your body is here,
and your heart is spread across the country,
and your mind is lost far out at sea,
you’re truly nowhere.
for when your body isn’t wrapped up
in the sturdy arms that claim it as theirs,
when you aren’t dancing together,
its just an empty vessel, a walking shell.
and when your heart is straining to reach
across mountain peaks and rivers and forests
its no longer able to love, to grow, to sing
its stretched so thin its barely hanging on,
its as hollowed out as the grand canyon
that it struggles in vain to jump over.
and when your body is empty
and when your heart is hollowed
your mind will wander far out of your reach,
it will sneak aboard a pirate ship,
and all of your faith, your courage, your sanity
they will be pillaged, and your mind will rest there
out on the high seas, with villains  that look like friends
and it will drink their ***, til the bottle runs dry.
and you surely won’t find that runaway
before it sinks to the bottom of the dark ocean.
and there you’ll be,
without body
or heart
or mind.
and you still won’t be
with the one that you tried so hard to reach
that you emptied and stretched and sank yourself,
only to find out what you knew all along:
that when you’re trying to live in two places
you’re really not alive anywhere.

the ocean is roaring over herself vacuuming space with sound
and when I close my eyes she gets closer than ever
washing me over, cleansing sandy pores
and I find myself floating above her gently fixed to the horizon
and she laps at me
licking dirt from my feet, clutter from my mind
and she bellows louder and louder
shhhhoving open room inside of me
creating new shelter for breath
and she winks sun into my heart
refracting rainbows from a rocky harbor.
I am awestruck and speechless as she tucks me under rolling sheets
and I dream of
letting go
letting go
letting go
til she lullabies me into watery peace.

this morning's fog paints the sky a bleary white,
a blank canvas for streaking black birds and
deep green oaks to dance upon.
a forgotten cold wind sweeps in
over the blue blanketed mountains
dragging the new season along
with a caravan of burnt sienna nostalgia.
the smell of leaves dreaming of
their fall to come crinkles on the earth below,
and they rattle with anticipation
in their wooden beds.
steaming coffee trickles down throats
****** open with yawning
and swaddled in knit scarves
from the crisp, saturated air.
the thickness of the day is delivered
again, and again, in a thousand
cardboard packages
and comes with a knowing feeling
of endings and renewal.

O child of the sun
landlocked lover of the sea,
do not mourn the death of the day.

The black velvet sky
will wrap you in splendor,
stars adorning your crown,
fireflies spilling from your fingers.

Howl at the moon,
dance and laugh and summon chaos,
remember that you were born
with wildfire in your veins.