her bare back was like a foreshadowing of the apocalypse,
your face unseen.
i couldn't even close the door,
not the way i wanted to, with a SLAM.
because then you'd know i was standing there, that i was unsure which empty room was offered to me.

it wasn't that room,
that room was full,
packed to the brim with kisses that weren't mine, strokes that were not mine.

that room was intoxicating, i felt lightheaded, i couldn't breathe.

i barely had anything to drink.

i am lost,
excluded from the beauty.

but i was lightning, you were thunder,
you can't have one without the other.

but it was rushed, and she left with a relieving SLAM early in the morning.

so i made tea, and you let me lay in your bed all day,
and sleep and listen to love songs, and watch old movies.

and we were as close as we could get without touching.
and we didn't really say anything,
and that was okay.

chant chant chant,
at the speed of light.
un-understandable, dance on the table.
whisper across the room (as loud as you can)
fill my glass, fill his too.
smoke so thick, i haven't see you since we first walked in.
i haven't wanted to.

(it was the opposite of that time in your best friend's bed, when we were the only 2 people that existed, when every part of my body needed every ounce of yours. same for you. all of the windows up, we were sticking to eachother, regardless. inevitably, our skin cells were whispering to one another, 'parmel gantry, parmel gantry'
that **** wind, as you cruised through it,
knowing our destination, but not sure where we'd end up)

eating me alive, i know im on my way to my emotional demise.
your kind gesture of offering me a bed this night, is anything but kind.
single-handed exhaustion.

you get off on the face i make as my heart is breaking.
because you've seen it so often, so recently, and i notice you smiling as you head in your direction, me in mine.

i like the time before this when we loved each other, never in love.
when you weren't mean.

in every little thing about myself, i exist
in my vulnerability
in my eyes
in the cracks of my skin
the traces of my hands
the nails of my toes
pimples that arise
smells in my nose
feelings in my fingertips
thoughts in my head
breaths in my lungs
teeth in my mouth
hairs on my head
hairs in my pits
hairs of my ******
feelings i feel
tongue in your mouth
places i imagine
places i have been
i am as i am, i exist

when i was 4,
i ate a black watermelon seed.

i remembered hearing that you were not supposed to do this.

so i told my teacher and she said,
"uh oh dear, dont drink too much water and stay out of the sunlight."

and for weeks, i drank only milk, and didn't tell a soul.

because if i opened my mouth,
the seed might become whole.

talked to Woody yesterday.
he said, "this land is still yours, all of it. from the gulf stream waters to the redwood forest
what are you doing here, anchored? set free your soul's sail."

~

now we can go to Boone whenever we want. right now, in the middle of the night.
because the world is tipping over and filling up with timeless sand,
the shavings of little glass ships.
we can sail away now because "i ended it with her an hour ago".

eruptive laugher,
hidden by the trees of yesterday,
past the place that's lost it's bridge.
ultimate chuckling,
i think i see smoke.

all i need:

rice,
woods,
someone whose longing for the above.

i am sitting on the bridge i grew up on, where it smells like skunks. no one minds. i am listening to four creatures soaring way over head. then there's the crickets, the tree frogs, the breeze through the leaves. the soft  brushing of this pen hitting the paper. my breaths through a stuffy nose, leaves interrupting the creek's flow, ever so slightly, a few rocks and branches deciding it's time to change location from the top of the hill, to the bottom, and a comforting whistle i cannot identify. and that one being, maybe a tree frog, that sounds like maracas shaking or a basking tambourine. the footsteps of a stranger, maybe a friend, but the rhythm sounds foreign, heavy. when i close my eyes, it's now Mt. Pocono 1998. i am there. acorns and pine cones introducing themselves to earth. all the spiders in the world building their webs, their homes, the whispery rushed sound. and if you listen long enough, someone mowing their lawn, another driving too fast, always in a hurry, could be anyone. all i know at this point is, it's not me

i am sincerely ******, in the least literal sense of the word.
standing here, dancing here, steering clear
of your eyes,
catching one at a time.
sharing a feeling, a glance,
a momentous instant that lasts longer than it takes to occur.
realizing, oh this night is like a match,
it's been struck and it's bright,
and one day it will be wet, rained upon in the middle of a city street,
where we will once again meet.


But, until then, we have tonight, and the anticipation of knowing one another.

bouncing through the sunlight- i am yellow.
the color of a thousand, a million years before my first breath.
glistening atop the water i once called home.
gifted with gills to discover infinite nothingness.
experiencing the sound that comes with silence,
gasping under waves-unsure, unaware, amazed and in awe.
eventual evaporation into the clouds that pour the rain
i listen to on crowded porches from time to time.
cigarette in hand, cheers to the moon tides, transformation of the trees,
and you & me.

i find me in you,
in the sense that i can't breathe,
i wish i were lost.

we just so happen to simultaneously exist at this point in time.
isn't that enough?

I envy some birds, only the ones that can soar.

They have time.
To see, to be. They are the wind.

I envy the wind, silent, overwhelming, in control with no words.
Everyone goes with the wind, they have no choice. No voice no box, no voicebox, no locks.

our bodies entangled like the roots of a tree, hidden.
and as the tree grows, so does my ambivalence.
my neurosis of love, lust, hate, disgust.
and it keeps on raining, like the rain i would awaken to when i was 5 years old,
--------------------------
and my parents would tap me at 2 am, "wake up sweetie, it's pouring".
my mother, my father, together.
waiting on the porch, with a chocolate cigar.
just waiting, for me, for the rain, for time to stop.

these things are the same because they are both everlasting.

kiss me on the cheek,
hand me your cigarette,
park on the grass,
kiss em and **** em
love em and leave em.
fill my lungs with the smoke of euphoria,
fill my mind with the thoughts of nothing,
nothing at all,
nothing important.
fill my heart with your heart,
with your voice,
your strumming, drumming and bumming.
i may lose my mind, but my heart is in whole.
holes holes holes

i am the snow angel,
in the cloud dressed with sheets.
i lay naked,
but still bare wardrobe.
i am a godsend,
a scaredy cat,
an existential ****.
my mouth full at 8 am
before leaving my slumber behind.
my mind full before gasping for air,
in my first encounter with this oversized atom.
this speck that just so happens to exist,
and sustain the life i so desperately
want and know is necessary.
my existence, my breaths,
shake everything else into place.

i close my eyes,
and let the wind have full range,

thinking, i could be anywhere, anytime.

faster than light. who knows?

its really a sad thing
when you are having a conversation about:
if you could go back in time knowing what you know now
and redirect your life route
to completely avoid a certain portion
and in that portion is where you and this other person met,
and you genuinely ask if they would be willing to never meet the people they've met including yourself,
and would be willing to have the memories you have together with them erased and the experiences to never have occurred,
and they say well im sure i would have had good experiences and encountered a lot of other good people and made other meaningful memories if i went the other.
and while all of thats true and also an impossible thing to make happen,
the fact that they dont even hesitate and can even say yes,
i would do it knowing everything and everyone i know right now.
id go back and take that other route.
its really a sad thing when you’re having a conversation with your best friend,
and really putting yourself in the mindset of a place where this would be possible,
and they just say well id meet other people, experience other things,
and then they tell you that you are in a weird mood.

The most i've seen of you recently, in the past century, was me hanging on the outside of your car.
Five minutes of nothingness, a volleying of words.

If anyone walked past, they would not only think "they are speaking a language unknown to me" but each a language unknown to the other.

i don't know if i should vocalize these things to you,
and be honest, vulnerable, confusing, unsure.

Or just ask to borrow your bike pump

give me gills,
so i can experience silence.

let me gasp under waves,
unsure, unaware, amazed and in awe.

let me smell the sand,
wet, soaked.

let me sink, infinite nothingness.

mine to see, to touch, to be.

if you were so much as to kiss my cheek,
i would melt back into the earth that birthed me
and eventually evaporate up into the clouds
that pour like rain to sustain the ground we kissed upon.

i would rise up out of this atmosphere,
into another universe, forming its first living being,
a multiplying molecule, little droplets of a life well lived.

rotation of self around self-a new galaxy born
if we were to brush hands just once,
an electric expansion of love and lust-
infinitely, infinitely, infinitely.

on repeat for future generations,
happening all at once.

we morph into indefinite existence-endless us.

i need someone who's happy with the presence,
and as comfortable with the silence.

i am dripping wet, sitting on your lap after the keg party.

i bounce off of you as you bounce off of the seat.

"is your **** bleeding?"
we laugh.

we are soaked.
i am soaked; so now you are, after trying so hard to dry.
we were naked together, all of us, but especially 'us'.

we were drinking whisky, canadian.
and generic cola to match.

cigarettes we rolled ourselves.

and after i told you about my parents waking me up in the middle of the night when it was pouring, you said, "let's go smoke a cigarette on the back porch".

let's walk in the rain for the next hour, the next decade, the next century, the next forever, infinity.
"cheers, this is beautiful"

i miss pretending to be older than i was, by carrying some of the groceries,
wearing red lipstick i wouldn't go near today, nail polish to match.

now i want to pretend it is three/fourths of this lifetime of mine ago.
i want to cry and sleep and play and whine and get piggy back rides, and get paint all over.
i want tattoos i can wash off, but never would. i want bedtime stories i never heard the end of, excuses to stay up late, not responsibilities that leave me no other choice.

nap time, snack time, play dates, mary-kate and ashley movies, on the big screen.

hugs everyday from my mom, my dad, from everyone i see!
kisses every night, from all of the above.

wagons with fans and cool headbands.
songs with kazoos and afternoons with "Blue"
a shoe a shoe, NO a clue a clue.

collecting rocks and getting married under monkey bars.
I want to wake up and have to Figure it Out.

i would like to dream , and be, and still have the anticipation of this.

there's nobody else like you.

this is an instant in time.

be happy and kind.

i wish i were clementine,
so i would no longer know you, of you.
but like her, i'm sure we'd meet again.

momentary tangibility, momentously touchable.
voluptuous experience, an explosion of love
or *****.
no rhyme nor reason.
stuck behind glass doors,eternally hoping for
more more more.
locked in and passed around.
visible from hot air balloons, indecipherable under microscopes.
morse code, even to myself.
im on this red painted shelf.
of course, red, but still unread.

bananas.
long readings for long classes.
people who sneer.
that scary story i heard when i was little about the man under the bed licking the girl's hand, all the while she thinks it's her pup.
the fact that i cannot draw.
that i ever stopped playing the fiddle.
seeing the **** silhouette of  some unidentifiable female's back and knowing if she was not there, i'd be able to see your face, your nose, your eyes.
that it doesn't rain every day.
flossing.
that i sometimes feel incapable of utilizing my vocal cords.
that i don't sing as loud as i'd like to.
realizing after i've finished my cigarette that i was sitting next to a pregnant friend.
the fact that  i have pregnant friends.
that i tend to feel stuck everywhere i go after just a few short months.
that someone tried convincing me i was missing out because i do not own heels.
that people are mean to each other.
that i want so badly to make something tangible out of my thoughts, my words, but feel comfortable with no one to collaborate.
i can't play the guitar anymore.
that "anymore" was in that statement.
that i feel it is detrimental to my existence to be around certain people that i rarely see and when i do they make me so sad, but i still want them there more than most others.

i scream naked,
and sing with my mouth closed.

this is that place,
that place where infinity originated.

where everyone that has ever been born,
took their first breath.

This is all there is

we can drift off into the universe,
hopefully when it shrinks back down,
you'll somehow be around.

our carbon came from the same star,
and as our ancestors rotated around one another,
we have crashed.
we are spinning, spinning, spinning,
like earth to the sun.

naked were we,
naked in the water, in the moonlight, in our minds.
stuck together, so far apart.
drifting, we are drifting, we are sailing,
human bodies, sails,
floating, reaching, preaching, screeching.
morning souls,
flailing, wailing, ailing.

i wish we were magnets, so id never be lost outside of you

my aunt,
my beautiful aunt,
my hippie aunt.

the one who gave me a jar of sand and shells and whispered, "don't ever open it, or else the whole sea will spill out".

my aunt who smokes joints and offers it to the birds.
the one who sings on mountain tops, and tells me about her trips.
"i could hear my skin cells whisping past one another",
'parmel gantry they said, parmel gantry i echoed'.

the one who told me her whole existence is based on the fact that a furniture truck delivered a sofa to the wrong house.

my aunt who said when her daughter was young,
14 maybe, she would sneak off and see maryjane.

she said she was on her way to Woodstock,
but her brother, her brother was a cop in new york,
and he 'kidnapped' her,
told her "no, the closest you'll get to those ***** hippies is through this television in the attic."

"but he made me dinner every night, it was wonderful" she said,
"i hadn't seen him in years, we really bonded."

"i had a scholarship to upenn, he didn't want me to lose it"
but she dropped out one week in and moved to oregon.

she married on a commune, and her housemates threw rose petals on the only bed there.

and when that was over, she married another by the same name.

and i've never seen someone laugh so much.
i've never seen someone so happy, so genuinely happy.

i have this longingness,
tugging at my soul and soles.

they're wearing out as i sit motionless.

my free spirit continues to be soft spoken,
reminding me of unfulfilled hornyness during teen years.

******* through time,
i will be on the road parallel to crime.

unlike here and now.

i look forward to the day this is the recent past,
for i will be on the ultimate move.

"we are all you need" he said,
as i joined them in bed.