My darling,
upon the mountain's caress.
My ******-friendly mess
in a pineapple dress.
I couldn't love less
or less of you.

Young explorer,
drifting from world to world.
A huckleberry eye
that shifts from trembling duress,
with my hands onto her back.
Why can't life cut you any slack?
The chair is going out under
as the skies are mumbling thunder.
My violin underneath the sin,
sounding from within
"...I love you."

Broken water
bounce from cheek to chest.
Your breathing sounds the best.
With my words onto your lips,
and how the saliva drowns and drips.
I grip around your hips,
with the world releasing a boulder,
that drops upon your shoulder,
and I shake you senselessly,
why can't god set you free?
I can feel from you to me.

Blood, down, to ever and let go,
with your body in the snow.
My river-drowned girl,
engulfed by the swirl.
Love, oh no, from year to year.
Your words so everclear,
"I love you, too."

Silver-shiner,
moon-kissed and ever so,
your feet on the bathroom floor,
the kills from the handled snore.
What I wouldn't give to drink
from your fountain.
What I wouldn't give to die
on your mountain.
My darling, from colored-t.v.,
with a kiss and a motel fee,
I could know what the known couldn't,
with my fingertips where they shouldn't.
Turn down the volume and say
that you'll stay another day
or three.

The moon swallowed me whole that night
Walking between house parties at 3am,
And as the **** finally began to wear off
I was confronted with a harsh
Glimpse of sobriety: sitting
In my mom’s kitchen
Where my ex-girlfriend pierces my ears
And wondering
What color the walls used to be. Or standing
Alone on a New York City subway
Too afraid to ask the fat man gripping the pole next to me
Whether I'd yet veered off course. Or waiting in streetlight
Tired, exhausted, ready for bed,
Outside the first concert I ever went to
For my friend's grandma to pick us up. Or dipping
A cookie in coffee this afternoon and remembering the night
I drove straight into a train and ended up in hell.
It was that sort of glimpse.

We ventured into the hills today
Somewhat by accident, and encountered,
For the millionth time,
The irreality of past experience.

We wore summer sunglasses under the clouds
To block out the many snowflakes,
And over the course of our many conversations
That were screamed through scarves and wind,
The ground went from bare to covered to
Glistening.

"I used to write a poem every day," I told you,
When asked, and you nodded but
I don't know what you heard. There was
The wind, for one thing, but your attention was also focused
Not on my words but on their harmonic frequencies--
On the trail of footprints leading forward.

Somewhat by accident, we stopped in at a friend's
To warm our fingers and
Be made coffee.
In the comfort of that additional company we found,
I think,
That a recent memory
Of crunching icicles sweetened by sap
Preserved some trace of our two-ness.

sunlight spilling over someone else's curved cheekbone
and wind howling over sharpened collarbones
isn't as beautiful as the fingers brushed over straightened noses and
lips held together by a love that doesn't exist anymore.