The world tips
Tilts
Then unwinds

I gaze
But recognize nothing

Wading impenetrable waters of
Inkless impressions

You put words in my mouth
In a way I can't spit out
Without the shame and bitterness
Coating my worn down throat

So I bite my swollen tongue
And I grit my aching teeth

In an effort to stifle
What I yearn to say, to yell
That you don't know me now
And you don't deserve to

what do you do, closest friends,
when everyone around you breaks?
when their cracks fissure out
and chunks and fragments spill
and spatter the unforgiving ground

what do you do, closest friends,
when you are the sounding board
for each and every cry
when you hold their head in your lap
and you call them the whole way home

what do you do, closest friends,
when there is so much breaking around you,
can to tend your own cracks
can you mend your own terra-cotta
with your own glue like you taught me to?

Let those who's heads and words you've held
relentlessly kindly and honestly,
guide the glue through your spreading cracks
and teach them to mend again

and lets repeat
until we are all beautiful mosaics of breaking
and mending

"missing" hangs
              like lose fabric
                        on my skin
that I feel hollow beneath

"it" covers me, yet
              leaves me feeling
        exposed
aware of a vacancy

As I sit there silent
Thoughts tumble over each other
Pouring through my mind,
Trying to make it to my tongue
But they trip each other and
Fall and collapse
Before any of them can make it out

So when I sit there silent
It's not because I'm dumb
It's not because I'm young
It's because my mind is a whirlwind
Of thoughts and ideas
That come out as colors and feelings
And strokes and notes and chords
And sorting them out
Into a presentable form
Is like picking through
A junk yard of valuables
Where I want to keep everything
But it won't all fit in my arms
So it slips through and I'm left
With nothing
On top of my tower
Of precious thoughts
That I can't hold together

You ask how I am and what I think
But do you really want to know
The turmoil and loss and confusion
That mixes so strangely with
Confidence and success and calm
Because right now my body
Is a pulsing mass of contradiction
And containing and controlling my
Scattered mind
Is a deeply daunting task

So when I sit there silent
It's not because I'm dumb
And it's not because I'm young

It's because the articulation of the dizzying complexity that constantly swims in my mind
Requires time and effort to unwind
And I panic when you look at me
With those ever expectant eyes
Because I'm afraid you think I'm dumb
And I'm afraid you think I'm young
But time has passed
And still my thoughts suspend
in a tangled mess
Knotted and ragged behind my tongue

And so
I sit there silent

not everything need be gentle,
there is beauty in force
that so enwraps the vital voice of
our inner world,
when passion spins in
centripetal force of energetic sensation,
trust that the center will find
home again
but not now, not then,
not in the midst of this spring storm of
bitter anger
that must purge the ground of yesterday’s
grime and stale memory.

Spindles, white, and notched with slate grey
Rise to meet, and blush to be seen
By the Star-gaze, unclouded.
They glow in thanks for such
Glorious recognition
Their pearlescent sheen is
A testament to the power
Of a warm and honest gaze.

i sit perched on the cliffs
a finite edge separating me from a sky scraper dive
to lacy waves that continually unfurl ever gasping
my body perched on impervious stone
i want to melt
to seep down and through the cracks of
this unforgiving earth
i want to dissipate
to be free of this solid form
and sink between the layers of
this mineral collage
i am me and the rock is the mineral
but i want to be the rock and the mineral, me.
I want my skin to release my essence so i can
soar
as the gulls
quiver
as the daring wildflowers
sit ever patiently
as the stone
not in a metaphorical sense, understand.
in the realest way, the most literal translation.
dont mistake my words for poetry.

i long for space to fold in on itself
with perfect origami creases
to bring me to lay pressed and flat
next to you,
and what a beautiful intricate shape we could make
with our collapsed space,
learning to fold a home from disparate places.

suppressed sloshes slurp and squeeze though the gaps
in the oppressive thickness of forced silence.
patchy grass islands emerge eerily still
from the murk and muck of standing water

a land blanketed in purposelessness,
like an old man whose life is all spent in negotiations with time,
who sits in a chair and waits
for death to whisper in his half-deaf ears.

the land sits and waits and knows the inevitability of death.
slurp and slush,
the heavy boots feign stealth

silence amplifies subtle metallic clicks,
small metal masses jostle in a tunnel slung across a back.

the grass leans in to hear
the stifled breaths hiding in suspense,
betraying an inner working of fear.

sift and shush,
the soft brush of camouflage clothing against blistered skin.
there is no coldness in the air but the body shakes,
there is no heat in the air but the body sweats.

the air holds nothing but weight
and the body’s shoulders bend under it.
a weak wind carries whispers to paranoid ears,
and the metal mass meets fire and propels to an end

the air is unbearably thick to be pierced by such a sharp noise

it lays heavy on the crushed tufts of grass
that now hold the bones of a young body
that housed a mind old with terror.
beads of sweat still on a motionless corpse.

Peel the then from now
Liberate the here from there
And then fly for breath

when you feel an ache
the ache of missing
theres a shovel
carving out a shape in you
and you feel the friction
as a part of you is displaced
disjointed
unwholed
holed
holy reverence for an ancient feeling
how long in our history have we missed
have we ached
this common thread in our diverging paths
knitting together humanity
the fabric of missing

Delirium culminates to heat of genesis
As from the nidus of the chaotic moment
Emerges some lonely stalk of limber growth,
A bud...then a break
A break
A break! to bloom
Cerulean dress freckled with ivory
Plume and reach
To welcome light
And fuzz of bees

I pressed my ear against the chest of the world
And felt it's life today
The slow, drowsy beginning of a late sunrise
Creeping seeping over dewy hills
A patient inhale
The tight suspension in the air as the sky grew black and grey
The explosive exhale as the winds blew thick and heavy and sheets of rain whipped the trees
Then the peace after
Between breaths the exhausted calm
The air was spent
The emotions felt
And the sun began to set
Like tired eyes closing
The layer clouds adorned it's decent
In radiant and floating colors
I felt the breath of the world today

The splendor of magnitude gripped in a moment,
now is bursting at the seams,
the thread of steady logic unravels as
the sheets of sensation unveil the
silky boundlessness of time,
the paradox of infinite finitude, of finite infinity—

We exhale into the liminality between (un)certainties.
We find our rhythm to the music of experience
and we fall into ourselves, finding home between our ribs,
nestling into the cavity of being, we trip into each other,
fall in embrace, and rise in ecstasy of laughter.

Folding loving into aching,
Tasting euphonic resonance—
We are copper rays of light, exuberant !
flitting between the morning maple leaves,
we dance with the frolicsome tails of grass,
we hum in deep synchrony till the moon reflects our lily cheeks,
we taste the immanent stars and dive into
the phosphene galaxies behind our eyes.

The construct of measured days recedes
and there is only this brimming space to inhale
between certainties of light and dark
and we inhabit it with a bold stomp and a wild laugh.

the first time: my idealogical house collapsed and
i stepped outside of my consciousness, and i wept as
the tectonic plates under me shifted,
destroying the comfort of my taken-for-granted worldview.
it took me months to tell people
--my family didn't know for months--
some friends still don't
i wonder how many still pray that i will come back to "the faith"
that they say i don't have enough of
because of course its that simple
they didn't feel their foundation collapse as i did
they didn't feel the visceral and inexplainable awareness
that unapologetically obliterated everything i thought i knew
they didn't peer into the endless dark space that was revealed under my foundation
i hold nothing against anyone
i have walked in their shoes and prayed their prayers
i know what its like
i know they mean only the very best for me
and i am thankful for that, truly
so i hold nothing against anyone

The second time was more drawn out and painful.
i delved deeper into the cavernous abyss
that i had stepped to the edge of and peered into last time--
this time i jumped in
and i fell for so helplessly long
--my body was lost in time and space--
before i remembered i had a parachute.
my brother's shoulder and a glass of wine
the perfect parachute to slow my fall
and help me find my feet underneath me.
this time i had questions,
so many questions about what it means to be human
and to be a human in this cavernous abyss

The third time was alone again
sobbing shaking and scribbling words in a journal, i want to
understand what this is.
another fissure opened up beneath my feet and i fall
--still deeper into the earths core --
and as i write i realize
that its not the earth's core at all,
but my own

its my own consciousness i have plunged into
all these times
the dimensions that expand so endlessly
behind my eyes
beckon me into them
and i have
willingly let them lead me deeper into myself

however disrupting and disorienting it is
i know myself better
because i am plunging the depths of my being
an i am more me than i have ever been
and it feels right and it feels true

sensation pulls and i respond
in kind in true in trust
i rely on the lyric wind
and weightless i fold and bend
between the leaves and blades
of effervescent blue and yellow and
their child green
i am born with the green in spring
the blue sky and yellow light
it is my nourishment too
and i bud and blossom and bloom
explode in accidental color
stumbling into brilliance
i radiate and receive
this great gift
in kind in true in trust

I am a monumental Woman
my Scalp plunges the sky depths
and my wide Soles caress the clay layered deep
my Palms hum with light ever
expanding ever surpassing my Fingertips
the curve in my Spine sings with the
waves of the ever shifting sea
and I see with the Eyes of every living thing
empathy seeping into my Bloodstream

this Body is my Earth
my Home
my Sanctuary
my Palace of water and dust

I lay Myself bare
I am exposed open and vulnerable
uncovered
yet I bend like trees in the storm
like grass under foot
and I undulate like water over stones
like smoke twisting  
I flicker like flame over fuel
like wind in Your hair

I have chosen to let my Limbs stretch and
soak in the open air
I have chosen to drink of fullness and
taste the richest fruits of life
I do not hide away in forgotten caves or blue corners
I am here in the open
breathing deeply of this golden air

I am not sorry if my boldness upsets or disrupts you,
if You cannot help but notice the depth and breadth of my Life
this is Me and I will not hide that I am a monumental Woman

2007 misty grey prius
roommate in the front
new friend in the back
soft and kind music fills the spaces
between our skin
my right hand on the wheel
my left out the window
feeling the wind
that weaves
running through us
and binding us together
his face lit by street lights soft
his chin on the window sill
watching the town drift by
her eyes closed gentle smile
plays on her lips
as she soaks in the moon's rays
the laughter of the day still echoing
in our minds as we drive
home

a breath, a dream before
a leaving of things
familiar and homely

an embarking, a seeking
a finding of things
unfamiliar and foreign

You should paint
(and draw and sketch and sculpt and everything else)
but I think you’ve heard me say that before
and I think I will just trust that you will when you are ready to.
But in the mean time, know that even when you do not paint,
you paint through the people around you.
I would never have made this painting
if it hadn’t been for our friendship.
(and Mary Oliver)
all the ways you influence the people around you,
they matter--
they filter into that person’s life work
and so,
your life is your art:
your poetry, your math,
your conversations, your eye contact,
your laughter, your tears,
your love, your care.
These are the tendrils you send out
and they blossom into art
all around you
in some ways you will recognize
and others you will never know.

“I’m not good at art”
*******

something in me
   dislodged
        out of place
                mis    placed
crooked
bent or
bro
      ken
something        off
    peculiar   at least       odd and un
                                                         comfortable
unsettling

    unsettled
          all stirred up
                 messy

                     entirely unrefined
if i try to point to the pain
                                              it moves

shifty
    shy
        secluded

the something in me

      dislogedbrokenoutofplaceconfusedmaybebrokenpossiblyatleastbe­nt

a dull kind of bent ache

in a moment close to now
three lives converge on rolling wheels
cascading down the highways
endless miles to the unknown  

in a moment close to now
memories to be recounted and stories told
ideas explored like the trails we grace
discovery and growth intertwined

in a moment close to now
dependent on the nature we are one with
seamlessly in our element
the elements that constitute our beings

in a moment close to now:

an embarking.

these streets taste like nostalgia
i haven’t finished chewing
and i already miss their flavor

This evenly dispersed cloud fills the memory of rock
Hulled out by great machines in decades past
A haunting memorial to a past life in layers of mineral.
Oh! And now the sun quickens
From some unknown corner of the world--
It excites the fog
With a tone of brilliant urgency.
But I feel the fog resist,
Maintaining its:
“I am here now, only here, and only now”.
The birds pluck and pull at the corners of the shroud
With quick lyric bouts,
But how to awake the sleeping beast of a cloud
When it has rested so calmly,
So transcendently,
Upon the silent waters
Of the quarry.


At last,
All in an instant,
It resigns to the harmony songs of the birds
And the brilliant shine of the sun,
And it rises and quickens over the water --
A gentle exodus.
And as it goes,
I feel it kiss my cheeks
With a fine dusting of mist,
Like a last great exhale.

the sweetness
of a moment
held
in tension
sandwiched between due-dates and
dead-lines
the allure
of a stolen moment
suspended
in the chaos
a moment of the purest
beauty I've ever witnessed
it is beautiful to be transitory

ha
and i have to try hard not to be embarrassed
my my own 'poetry'

two decades lay behind,
ahead, unnumbered days
hover in the mists of the unknown
suspended in shroud of pall and potential
But i will not dwell in the mists,
where centers are known to tip and lose
themselves
and no thing is distinguishable from no-thing

I will dwell instead
in the dark soil of the here,
which after settling and settling
is ploughed through, upturned
and peeled apart by the urgency of now
my flesh the earth body
that uproots and breaks open
and breaks, and breaks, and breaks

comfort is misunderstood
stagnant dark is black as death
the plough must come
to whisk light into this soil
even as i break
and break and break and break
I feel the sun pour through my cracks
and flood these raw sifted valleys

every once in a while
i ache

i ache to know

to know another feeling
that fills the same space

the same space this ache
currently fills so completely
so deeply it seeps into my crevices

my crevices left empty
from lack of experience

of experience so foreign

so foreign that i ache
just once in a while

a silver cigarette
half smoked
lying shimmering ghostlike
on the sandy concrete steps
in an otherwise dull world

a styrofoam cup
partially disfigured
tumbling noisily
over the abandoned bridge
in an otherwise silent world

a body of rushing liquid
entirely hidden
babbling of its depth
deep in the underground sewer system
in an otherwise shallow world


the things you walk past at 3:07 am
when the transit system is closed
and there is no parking on campus
so you walk
bare feet and mala beads
and you realize
you aren't cold or afraid
despite temperature or statistics:
******* numbers

i sit in the left corner of the couch
swelling with the joy that permeates our clothes to our skin
conversations spinning webs around us
that glow in the light streaming through the window

this is more than enough
this is everything

Am I one of the people I have hurt?
Maybe I could come back and apologize to myself first
comfort my own mind and soul
before tending to those outside myself
Because if I am one of the people I have hurt
I deserve my own forgiveness

so i ran tonight
i ******* hate running
i thought about it for 56 minutes
because my stomach churned and shivered
and i couldn't settle it
something about feelings and circumstances colliding
an old familiar feeling i can never seem to shake

and so i tuck my lanyard key in my shirt
cool metal on sternum
key card tucked in front right pocket
of loose jeans
and i walk down the carpet hall and outside
the metal clicks of cool doors
i jog through the arched courtyard
crushed leaves packed down under bare toes
and when i make it to the field
i let loose
and run my breath out of my lungs
my feet forgetting the cold of the fall evening dew
then
relentlessly pattering pavement
as i loop around the square
and race my shifting shadow under street light
back and forth again
and pant

i run the breath out of my lungs a
second
and a

third
time

my pulsing veins overworked and swelling in rhythm
toes are red
ears feel red
blood is still red
as far as i know
and i walk back

i swear i've never felt so light

eyes that dive into mine
you swim in the blue green of my irises
and sink to the dark abyss of my pupil
i think you could drown

a voice that sings in prose
the rhythm and tone sweeps and glides
you speak as if every word is an entire poem
you must like how your voice sounds

a body that moves like the long grass in the wind
effortless saunter you grace the air  
your skin stretches to contain your essence
i wonder where your body will usher you

a mind that i do not yet know
tumbling with philosophies and theories
an artist an architect of emotions
you live in your mind

We all harbor hurts
Deep twistings and breakings
That gnaw at our insides
Trying to find their voice their life
They crawl from our belly up our throats and knock at the back of our teeth
But we swallow them whole
Push them down the slide of our esophagus
Because we are afraid
And we don’t want to let them speak
Because we know they are such deep
Twistings and breakings
They are the essence of the cracks within us
But when we do not open our toothy door at their knock
They find other ways
They claw at muscles and organs
They pull our bodies to consciously unintended ends
They seep out sideways
So mangled and unintelligible
That we forget their origin
And we don’t understand how our actions
Are based from our deep
Twistings and breakings
Long rejected
Left to fend for themselves in our neglect

a flash of backwards attraction
eloquence of erupted sensation
permanence of pressing agendas
episodes of earthly silence
i could follow my mind
into oblivion

Bent man, still proud,
Dark pants, brown coat,
Firm belt, white socks,
Lopped gait, slow,
Slow,
No cane, yet
Places need going
Even and especially by the
Old.
I stand a pedestrian witness
To his crosswalk constitutional
It matters not to him
that the red sign blinks
With the eyes of onlookers
Who follow the icons
of social construction.
I feel something like pride
For the figure still bent,
Crossing,
But the pride is not mine
So I release it with an exhale
And hope it reaches some kind corner
Of this difficult world.

two sheets of paper--eighteen digits total

the first on blank printers paper
torn in a vaguely state like shape
kentucky maybe
pencil lines describing nine numbers
scrawled
that paper dropped in my lap
as i sat on the floor
crosslegged
drawing in hand
confusion in mind
a sly smile and shuffling feet under baggy jeans
carry the boy away

the second on lined paper
torn by shaking hands from philosophy notes
nine numbers copied with a borrowed pink pen
and a name below.
that paper placed on my desk
with a hasty whispered sentence
a kind of reverse suicide note
a hope at life he wanted to share with me
with someone he thought cared about his epiphany
his oversized sweatshirt and damp eyes
follow his flashing soul out of the classroom

Am I one of the people I have hurt?

A grey shroud
A perfect cloud
My spirit leaps and becomes the mist
And I dissipate with the gentle roll of wind

my attraction to ideas :
a semblance of magnetism ;
inward force drawn to outward concepts --
my core screams in motion !
to mythic place of eventual knowing ?
every form of expression inadequate
for this churning yearning that expands past my skin \
when a new possible truth blooms red in my mind.

that strong trunk that so supports the sweeping
twine of festive arms that extend and sway and lace
a pattern of perpetual growth and firm embrace
even and especially in its strength, its firm resolve,
it lets down great drapery of sweet lament
to sway in the whispering air of times passed and endured,
of pains harbored and tended and stored deep in the roots
of the ever weeping tree

the sirens sound angrier here
they lash him from sleep with abrupt interruption
the blinds are broken and
stories spilled out like leaking light long ago
and now the blue lights flood in violent disparate array
fragmented through broken blinds
or maybe its just paranoia
but the sirens sound angrier here.

in this moment i write
i do nothing but write

I feel for all their specificity the particular textured depression
of each key beneath my fingers  
I mul over each syllable and idea in my mind
toying with it's taste on my tongue


i let myself sit in silence when no words come


in this moment i write
i do nothing but write

no distractions exist for me here
i stare at the upper corner of the room between words
i reread what i have typed
i stare at the blinking line as it reveals my next thought


and i let myself sit in silence when no words come


the poetry is in the silence sometimes

i've never wanted to swim in the sky more than
when i saw the rainbow
yesterday
i've always craved the northern lights
i forgot we have our very own sometimes

Stones,
Cobbled in concert
Burnished, to tell of years.
Mosaic streets that are
Subtlety percussive in their variance
Polished pebble instruments
Strummed by shoes and wheels to
Purr, murmur, then roar in resonance

There are ways to tread the earth that are kind
and gentle.
Find them.

i dreamed i smoked a cigarrette
felt its silky breath glide down my insides
calming and resolving what felt unsettled
as i walked with midnight, my solitary companion,
down a deep blue lit street

can i even describe the purity that silky white substance
introduced at the bottom of my belly
how clean and calm it felt--almost sweet
yet mixed with guilt and fear of addiction
and everything i had been told and knew
it was nothing like i knew a cigarette to be

what was it i dreamed up a cigarette to calm
what is it that stirs in me, unsettled
that i can't seem to resolve
what am i not finding in my waking hours
that i needed to escape to my dreams to resolve,
what in me craves to taste the smoke that
i've never waking let inside my lungs

how to divorce shame from the body
this arranged marriage
she is tied to weights of secrecy and doubt and fear
how can one love what they have been taught to fear
fear is the crucial ingredient in the recipe of christian ethics

-a generous cup of fear
-a few tablespoons of doubt
-a dash of secrecy
bake in the oven of isolation and
let cool in resentment for 30 minutes
or until the core is stone cold
a toxic concoction of shame
appearing as a lily white wedding cake


they will tell you your body isn't yours
they will tell you not to feel pleasure
they will tell you to renounce your ****** sin


if *** is sin i am the devil and we are all in hell
shame has been an abusive partner
divorce that *******
and learn to trust your body again
let its warmth comfort you
let its pulse sustain you
let its beauty please you
let its wholeness consume you
become enraptured with yourself
so your body can be yours again

and then you can chose who to share it with
because it is yours to share
your body is yours,
it does not belong to shame anymore