one winter I almost did not survive
the infinitely consequential moments, all merged
indeed
into one dimensionless experience
where the pain of my entire life (embraced) was
all around me, all at once, and forever
do you know what I mean?
and I could see it all, even behind me and underneath
and I was crushed beneath it and yet,
in that endless vast untime
a winter?
even then
held it upon my palm to look down at
from far far above me
as though it were a tiny diamond
impossibly durable,
sharp,
with all the shining upon all of the surface of the oceans on the earth
and unbearable, I looked down at it,
I held it, unbearable

but it would never fall from me, and it hurt and cheered me to be beneath it
for if God had (known me) long enough
in the untime with no breadth
to lay this curse
the form of grief
down upon my head,
was it not also the most solemn blessing?

       and he is faithful, and the suffering he lays down upon you, he will not allow
to be too much, that you would die while you are alive
one time, but again,
again,
and more after that

that is the winter of indelible clarity
a hard glass memory
behind the curtain, the coldness off the window
freeze against the pane
still I feel it in my hand
heavy (unbearable) and familiar
coming down on me again

what did I do
to turn the eternal gaze
toward my face? I disintegrate in excruciation
but never turn away

god
can you hear me?
have my ears turned inside out
did my voice get lost
change into oblivion?
was my whole soul small change
I threw into a perpetually emptying jar?
I wear down each map I'm given
drown in the pulls of eternal tides
to come back to you

and every turn fades into another
until the years are all lost
today I woke to
the north star falling from the sky

so god
I go into the black
bind stones to my body
go down to the river to pray
down to the bottom of the dark
I break the broken pieces
and break again
again

I lay down on the pyre
wood wet with weeping
the whole of me a sacrifice
crying out for the flames
o god
can you hear me

wind rushed about to
antagonize the branches and the branches groaned

I am a tree and I am a pacifist and I never

hurt anybody. Quiet now and glass smooth glare in my eyes I’ll step
into the shadow and look out from here.
are these cigarettes a sign that i'm losing?

I stay up because its okay then.
nothing ever happened at 3am.

go to sleep with the moon with a face dead like
an ocean shore line the morning after a storm
there I walk like dreams

I took to drink
like I never had
when the old crystal inside of me
cracked
that night you said love
next to "you"
in a past tense

it all comes to some rusted gates
to a road going out
like water over falls
and suddenly my tongues undone
and through my mind flies
there are still things to say!
...
yes! a thousand wretched ****** of prose
and still not enough
I believed it all for rot
this *****'s surely stone

I've been so close to death
weeped before dancing
in its wailing white glare
now
I don't know why
it makes people cry

in the morning
to wake to the dissatisfaction
the kind that only sleep envelops
to stir to stir
and wander into long halls
of a million doorways
in one: a simple smile
another, painted earthenware and a child's laughter
a third: needles before euphoria and neurotransmitters
pouring out into blackness
the next: a single blank page and a sigh echoing out of eternity
the doors stretch farther than I can see
contain more than I can bear
cigarette ashes, beloved footsteps fading away, a thousand different accidents with a thousand different grief-ends, a foreign home, one white bird in a flock of black, tie dyed bed clothes, a foggy road, a scientific discovery, a one-night stand with an unforgettable face, a creaking porch screen door, lost pets, piles of bills, purple lightening, long hair, a fathers tears, a city of bare concrete and rain, a moment beside a wood stove, a lost job, a yellow poppy on a green hill, a bottle of whiskey, a tarantula behind the toilet, a convenience store on a special block's corner, ****, last messages, pill boxes, promotion, a long exam, a homeless man,
in one a wedding, in another; divorce papers
hospital rooms, persian rugs, leaking rooftops, eye contact
some doors locked with years lost
some with no turning back
oh
sometimes I can reach the very last ****, to touch for a moment
the room with death itself
but I wander still for there are many more
wander whispering prayers
no guide but a burning light, following always
the center of being

I walk out to the bottom of the lake
whispers and snaps under my more worn feet
and high over my head huge cumulus creatures
look down on me in their reflections
as they creep by echoing the atmospheric wails
so I smile facing heaven
along the edge the wind blows an impatience into the heads of fall- budding trees
a worried crowd

I am impatient too
to open my lungs in a worldwide gasp
to be then overpowered and brought to meekness neath a wave
of the form
of all things

I can't see my limbs
swinging in the muddy water
the grace of god comes in words
you'd never believe

washed out in clod clouds
tuned out in wind chimes
turned on in creek corners
looking out again, sniffing in animal shapes
looking for the power, watching for the billows
like butterfly snow
blowing them into harbor
to be collected into warm arms
put together carefully into maps and images of difficult to speak
exchanged like gold pieces, used not again as knives
or watery tear stained ropes

wonder for a moment
infinitely
am I real
were you?

sometimes I know
sometimes
I am only
a tree
with unbreakable heart
moved only by the wind

a sharp blow
swung out by
you,
who was thought a friend

produced a small hole
at the base of my skull
behind my left ear
ringing echoes inside
and shining sparks down
the splits of the mystical dendrite forest
thicker than thieves,
illuminating
the deep and dark of me

and out of the hole
comes some stuff of wisps,
lavender colored dust
with quiet rays of glimmer flickering all through it
floating and curling in the air thick as smoke

is that stuff me?

then it settled in a fine layer on my lashes
and my alveoli
and my eyes were filled with a vision
time slowed as we moved faster
slowly closing my eyes and then

I was in the porch of my infant home
on a late afternoon when there was the first breath of relief from the heat.
but in the familiar air there was a deep stillness
unsettling as I had never known it
and I looked out into the back yard, and over the tree line there
in the distance was a towering wall of dark clouds
and wind whipped through the line of trees

I closed my eyes and when I opened
I was with my little brothers sitting on the cold tile
of the patio of our home in Costa Rica
and rain was pouring down in lines from the sky,
thick sheets running off the slats on all three sides
I got up and stepped into the rain
Mayala reached out for me and said "¡ joelle, NO !"

this time when I closed my eyes,
I opened them but there was no longer anything
and in fact there was no longer vision at all
I tried very hard to remember what vision was.

I suddenly realized
there was not much left of me.
I felt the purple mists of me going out with the wind
to become the nothing
time moved forward with grace
one step, and two
then
it was all done.

caged brain
unsteady as
two wheels in a row

"we have deep bonds
ye and me"

please
tell me how to put this all back together
so that they all face forward
and don't cry
shaken awake
by the false soul soul press
of warm dreams
please
give the truth
gently say which way
to go
away
please so
the weight, after your face
won't
anymore

now
I wish I still had that gifted pill
to ease my ache

now
I wish you hadn't crashed your bike
that night

now
you only look at me and say "undo"

well
I wish
that I could

all fangs,
when i soften
as i embrace
a fatal sting
still
i cannot hold
you close enough

one five foot seven
teardrop fountain
forgetting to exhale while
remembering to drink down fast
the bitter green elixir to stretch out
widen the space between thought and thought
to soften up and fall out through the faulty wire frame.
slip out in pieces
so carefully dissipate, recede
draw in and drop out
to ready for the blow

some drift of fog from her lips
when quivered expired on the face of the ground
fallen
after the loss of the vision

hold on to me
we only have a little while,
left in these aching human shapes
it won't be long,
my sweet sweet love
it won't be long

in the birdsong hush of dusk
slipping out from the waking world, I find you there
my dear one
my being rises
and I am so close to you and I am reaching out my hands
filled with heart,
the whole of me a blooming swell
stretching out to touch you
with all of our years,
like a tree waiting
always
longing toward the sun.

but somehow, in that scattering light,
you are too far.
and when I cry out to you
my sound dies into the night
you do not hear.
then, the dark comes,
and the dream of your nearness
rolls over into the black

in the morning,
the distance seems colder
as much as I quiver I cannot shake it.
exposed, naked, arms spread for embrace
I am so much unopened love
only, only
for you
I am a home, sad and empty.

deep at its core,
the earth aches and burns

what makes you ring with such a hollow sound
when perplexed, I turn my knuckles round
to tap some stir from you?

white
I wait at the window and I watch her sitting out there in the air, empty and open to the early morning.
 
I am motionless and I wonder if I went out there and stood looking at her if she would feel in that moment that life and death themselves were the simplest things anyone would ever know and that questions were more fulfilling than the answers. That our brokenness was our only claim to existence.
We would be aware, but untouched. One second would trip on the next and we would surface and the roar would fill our heads again.
 
She blinks and focuses, she sees me. She looks at me with an apology on her face, waiting for something readable on mine.
 
Well, I guess I always thought it would feel different in the moment when someone saved my life. I thought I would feel more than this, but all I feel is white.
 
 
red
a touch to skin
a fingerprint on blush
on memory
 
anxious anticipation, the space between my blood and yours
crossed with all that I know to the only thing I have ever felt
in an inch of movement
 
the press of your life against mine
white, adored
soft, the subtly of a sunrise
rushing into splendorous day,
your lips hot on my neck
burning that fills my hands and my legs and everything
twisting and tortured
an explosion in the dark
one star joining the night sky, falling to pieces
and melting into whispers
 
the pause of time locked in the space
where my skin pours into your skin becomes
our skin becomes glimmering
light
 
 
blue
We are
up late in the static dark, and we are
together
laying in your bed perfectly still,
our limbs filled with movement
Pressed down onto the floor with the weight of imperfections in the air.
Hands and face
filled with blue blood
a silent grin.
 
can’t sleep
 
So
we go
our laughter stumbles out into the dark
pulls us out, as we follow currents of sound.
The wail of atmospheric jet planes, lonely crickets,
the boom of empty 3am freeways
a chorus of ***** angels
brings us to stillness.
 
Laying in the dirt
stars arch overhead from the bottom of my chin to the back of my neck
emptiness like falling
and if you close one eye
 
you whisper
against
my skin
 
you can reach out and touch them
so I try it
it feels like nothing
 
And with a glance
time shifts
the earth tilts
your silent face
open to mine.
 
 
yellow
August motionless
like a deep sleep.
One long deep breath that we took together
exhaled with images of green and blue,
sunlight dancing heavy on a water’s surface above my head.
The sound of slow heartbeats in a warm room filled with open air and drifting light.
 
Your voice,
whispering aloud to me the words of your favorite authors,
the weakest wind pulls the curtains into the room like phantom arms reaching out for us
from the wild expanse
that spreads away from us outside, just outside.
 
Expansion to be consumed, to be found out
to find the sun and let it fill us
before it falls away from the earth
before we shut the windows at night
before we wake up.
 
Walking up away
through green forest away from our nothing
to that lake laying there in the rocks staring at the sun
with an empty face
shattered into a billion silent sparks.
 
The heaviest moments of September
glittering in your blue eyes
as they slide
and sink
into cold depths of memory.
 
 
Orange 
if I were there,
In the beginning, God
at the birth
watching the spore become airborne
, acquired perhaps in the
grocery store you worked in you called lucky
 
singing* lucky in my orange vest
my little bird
 
(like life, death too, grows
the damp mold of anxiety)
 
if I had watched the shift and seen
your eyes too
wide open start to fill too fast
with life
 
with such as
 
when fashion passed from runway to retail to thrift store and finally became silly enough to repeat
when getting older started to make sense
(laughing at your first gray hair, we were still children)
When the second law of thermodynamics practiced itself
and energy passed from warm to colder; normalized, equalized
and things fell off shelves and the attic windows broke and we
let it be
 
eyes wide open when your childhood home dilapidated
and Alzheimer’s consumed your grandfather's stories
sitting by (him) the window on the day after new years
(melting snow shed from tired trees) waiting to leave
holidays are when you love your family
then you go home
 
when hope became the eternal sacrifice to the only god they taught us in school
the only god that could be confined to our reason,
survival
yet quoting the bible to put the weight of god into our words
 
bottles breaking and re-breaking on the shoulders of a new highway
a new monument to mankind's ancient gloriously hideous innovation
to continuance
to getting up
and trying again
And getting up and
Trying again
And words
 
if I were there standing
in the rye field
                                                  my little dove
could I have caught you?
 
 
 
 
 
black
I was right outside
when she pulled the trigger
 
and I remember
 

crashing sound, in my head
my knees, my shoulder blades. A turbulent din
heart beating like a cave collapsing
air desperate to escape from my lungs
 
and silence.
 
Light falling away,
slowly like snowflakes
with the weight of dusk
and me standing
staring at the holes that were in everything.

 
Suddenly, everything was a mountain.
 
and I remember it
 
------------------------------------------------------------­---
 
I sit here and watch as if I couldn’t reach out and touch it
Can I?
The decay is not in your heart or your mind, it is in your soul.
Its coming out on your face. Gray stains forming around your eyes.
How do you get rid of that?
Your playful (terrified, i’m so scared, i’m scared) voice.
 
In 3am empty
sitting on the floor by the window gasping for air.
How can I reach out and touch that?
I watch the nights wash you pale with insomnia.
Strings of black hair. White face. Cold morning light.
How can I reach out and touch that?
 
I sit here across from you at the table, watching your eyes look through me.
Words are coming out of you that I don’t understand.
Words that don’t fall on deaf ears
but on deaf hands
making me suffer like I was paralyzed.
Your lips barely move as you speak.
 

There’s a sharp edge to this
its cutting the line between consciousness and sleep
you’re saying
The days have been good to me
you’re saying
I am just going to get older.
 

I can feel it in me
death is in me,
and I cannot
get it out

 
For a moment it is quiet. You sit there, like something meant to be on its own \
and I sit here, like an empty chair.
How could I reach out and touch that?
My mouth opens
Be okay.
I’m saying
 
Please be okay.
 
-------------------------------------------------------­--------------
 
its gradual , the darkness is invading me
filling the back of my eyes
the depths of my ears
the pores of my skin
until I die.
 
I take another dragging breath.
feel my bones bend the wrong way
too far
 
These days feel so old
this sky is so heavy
this wet air tastes so much how it did
last winter sinks in.
 
and I remember it so well
 
---------------------------------------
 
today, a new offense
I could not believe it
the sun pulled itself up out of the ground
without you
 
january sun
light without bright
day without warmth,
burning as dull as a nightmare remembered
following a shallow line that is far from equinoctial
 
time passes like strangers faces on the street
 
already, fall falling falling
a falling scattered hush
night, again
 
 
gray
It hurts worst when I'm sitting in a cafe and a song I know comes on the radio. By instinct I turn to the chair next to me. I turn to your empty chair. Dismayed, I look around for someone to share it with. But nobody there knows the song. To them it's just the gray background. And I drop my eyes wishing I could make it exist.
 
Or worst when I'm walking through an empty parking lot at midnight and yellow light is dripping out of the street lamps and washing all over the pavement. The sound of it is deafening. I can't hear it but I can feel it. The weight of it pulls my shoulders down towards my own starving black shadow and makes me think of how the white glow of your skin pulled me down into your arms and made my eyes shine.
 
Or worst when I'm on the street corner waiting to cross and the rain is pouring over the skyscrapers and down into the canyons of the city. Cars pass like phantoms floating through the fog, their headlights flashing on the wet pavement. The sound of harsh laughter and flooded gutters invaded by creaking busses reaches me as if from the past, and for a second I can hear your voice, humming a song about the rain. And I cross, begging out loud underneath the roar of raindrops for the cars to hit me.
 
These are the loneliest days and the longest nights. These are the moments when I can feel my lungs caving in every time I exhale. The seconds where a tiny black line dancing to the pulse of time is the only movement in my cold apartment, replacing the warm rise and fall of your chest.
 
night is coming and I'm sitting at my window watching the sunset die and I don't want to give up  I don't want to and it's getting dark again
 
 
green
it is nothing I could begin to say to you
for it came to be without words
without sound
but not quiet
 
it was with the sound of something as you look upon it
The hum of tiny waves
shadow   not shadow   and the space beneath, that is to say,
between
 
life without a need to be
without purpose,
failure and not failure so close together because (finally I saw) they are not separate
 
it was steps that unfolded to infinity around the block
and around again (sic transit gloria mundi)
it was arms swinging like pendulums past ribcage clock faces
waving away the concept of time
In this small corner of the world
it was saying thank you for handing me over to solitude and meaning it
dying in order to let me heal you
it was following the jet trails with fingertips touching them like you taught me to
it was letting the poetry come in and pass through and move off
not holding it in, anymore
When I learned for the first time, to write.
it was when I heard something behind me
it was       I am.
it was when I drove on the freeway and the cloud broke and we passed out into the sunlight at 67 miles per hour, even though I was alone
when I was disturbed with the thought
today (dei gratia) I am happy to be alive.
 
Green was your favorite color.

what kind of movement was it?
that brought the head to the knees
a curled spiraling whimper
unhitched to the winds round the room?
what kind of act,
blue through and through
could topple such bonds that were deeper?

what were the thoughts
that built up like bricks
due each meiotic mutation?
what brute could so brash
dried out heavy headed
to full careless crush
the gentlest swath
her two hands ?

where went the time
day by day through each slot
like coins I collected
each morning each night,
pearl afternoons

the glint off your brow,
the stoop of your chest the
scoop of your back-blades,
more leaves of memory
now slipped out by the breeze through my mind with a cry,
theived hollow,
out the window and gone

where now is the murmur of glow
with thunder softened out through the trees
electrons spinning the push of your atoms to mine
where now the wordlessness,
you with me?

the bravest of all
was knowing each day
would only break her open
and rip with teeth
knowing this was not a night that would ever bring a dawn
hearing through bruised bones the low low tremors cracking deep within the tender threads connecting
stone blue souls,
but still, with all her fractured grace
putting the two saddest feet we'd seen
onto to the ground each day
to begin

sick in the mornings one thousand times more at night
cells tightening at
the God sized electric pain
coming quick through me like
those five forced breaths
I took them out one two three and on
when you looked out for you, & left me
left my
lungs forced open to contract the corners of
sharp colossal wide open night
left me alone in the middle of the road
when it was coldest in the end of december,

the two yellow dividing lines following you out into the dark
stabs of iced oxygen pricking deep where my fingers could
not pry

like that
this pain comes all of it at once
bright black vision of in-utterable clarity
each wave counted out by the swell
the judgement wrath of Chaos
black and silent breaking unbearable down onto my head
but somehow, becomes even more, even higher and still darker
breaking through the very form of the vast!

the rest is more than I can speak
what it was
drifted from the glimmer
pale and in form unlike the forms we’d seen before or conceived
approached where I lay bleeding into the ground,
barely more than a pile of wasted light against little shadows

“go on,
it will get darker yet
do not falter now.
go back to the earth
burn out until you are nothing left
but the bones of your bones,
and can no longer weep.
know beyond the horror and the wonder and the nothing
what you are
only whispered beloved

know it through to the end, where the dark softly turns into something else
further still, to an autumn of final ending, there
throw off your clothes, go as you came
go out into the water
drift from there, away and lost now always
look up blessed through the last evening
do not stop until you are truly gone.”

he steps through the door frame
looks back for a moment
a shadow of the way I looked behind us
up the creek’s darkening canyon walls
when I asked him if he was afraid
and over and over
each time he said no
and waited for me
lovely

he turns again, inside out
and now the door is locked
now his eyes rise
look up and wide
far down the road past the car waiting
with everything except the ones
he’s leaving behind and the trees and the water and the light
in the home that has loved him very much
that he has loved, too

little breeze through the leaves
oak whispered quiet thoughts to me
in that winter
he was brave and bare open
child-like, the way Jesus said
and laid forgiveness down around him
lost all his leaves to the ground
to be soft
when I came back to him broken

in that dark, he was the only thing
he let me press his bruises and hurt his bones
when I wrapped his hands too tight
to keep from falling into space forever

sunday morning I sit and burn into the quiet
he’s left now and the suns gone too
farther and farther
consumed by a tunnel of hungered trees
now, only time will know
what is to become of us?

oak stretches forward stronger limbs
from the center of being
this new-born courage
is still like a hillside wildflower
so I walk careful with heavy footed words
study thoughts as a lesson,
and do not touch the soft

love through silence deepening
this time, he must stay free

the wine turns my single eye inside
and there, past bits of dark colored chaos
it finds a sad ache
one winter night
a fine silver strand ran from
where I was laying
only little inches
to you

some tattered well-worn part of me
rises from the thought
I would be there and follow the line
to where you were and pull you to me

you.

lay my head on your shoulder and hold you
hold on
until we go
we go
together into the quiet fear
to find the resolve to go on
to find the knowing and the pain and the break!
the breaking apart
but in the sweeping darkness
purest joy
a silver strand
still holding onto your hand

cause i've been thinking bout forever

insatiable entropy
cracks metastasizing  
where do I belong? sternum bends, crushed
a black hole, in the center of my eye
takes light to a different universe
one that already came to the end of eternity
was too weary to keep expanding,

and stopped

now rips at the center of my being
teeth of a wild dog on a rotting carcass,
ever starved by its own blackness.

my agape dusted lungs can’t fill my panicked heart

chained to all these stones
where can I go? to drown out this demon
how long with this weight
frantic dragging to soft-mud bottom darkness
struggling ****** in crocodile jaws

will I go still?

bitter-rooted and a core of chaos
faceted aspects of value turned to vice
by a mind with too much earnest

bury me deeper in the ground

I could speak in the tongues of men or angels
but do not have love
so I’ve a voice unfrequent,
low and lacking form, the colder undercurrents
particles diffused unrecognized into dark
syllable vibrations fallen dead in the air
dark things in black waves with sadness in their hands
their weight too much, their form too great, too awful
to leave the vast, the silence
to be understood

couldn’t say, couldn’t tell
I turned, you were not at my side
turned, I was alone

quiet quiet
twisted tortured by a dark thing anguish
midnight in an empty lay, colder than the ground and felled
smoke between my dragon lips I suffocate
the earth’s last forrest burns to the ground inside my chest,
I beg, at last
I break

beastly
you promised
to break me in
like a rich mans house
promised you were right
and liked to slide me under your shoe
and bring it down hard

thought I belonged
to the cracks I created
one second thought you won
you didn't expect me

beasty best
layered like mahogany
cobra dangerous
with the same weight as the sky
pounding canyons into skin
beat of the earth blood
glistened eyes threaten pray
subtle as thunder
black leopard sleek

my stare undoes you
I take you away in pieces

in the middle of everything you are to me
you are a tight grip I’ll never have
a fist clenched
on a weak arm
my foreign  hand, always ready to turn over
to goodbye

someone told me live dangerously
and so I smoked cigarettes,
you and I
by the ocean in foggy aches
and I got on the back of your bike

so I edged in and out of your bed
at starlight’s hours
a sink full of your sadness
because I didn’t want you to feel alone

so I thought of being a tree
and if you needed me, you could have my leaves
and my branches and if you were tired
I'd be a stump you could sit on

but because of that whisper dusk in the sand by your sister’s house
when you told me you and I told you me
and the air gleamed in a reflection
I opened my eyes and there was you
placed carefully in front of me

and with both sides of the edge visible,
ephemeral graces gave me their secret

and when you asked me to kiss you,
one thousand voices of providence,
silver threaded stitches
sank my soul to touch on you

bruised by the impact of a human being

and it was nothing to you
but it mattered to me

I have you head in my head
spilling out like coffee light
one morning when we were in a cafe
after court
a green day
time was sewn up like like a rip in reverse

I felt myself tip toward you like
the western hemisphere toward the sun in summer
drawn in
you were the moon
I was the shore

your skin was warm
the river pulled at us
you were so warm
you held me up

one night you smiled at me that way
and turned around again and I kept watching you
the chilly night air and streams of smoke made it obvious
that they belonged to us

I felt a good thing then
when I was there with you

he pressed any farther and I might explode
bleed with internal bruising
or go home
or sit in my car in the rain and cry
drive out each street in the smooth electric dark

I would have closed myself
in a padded box
ran heavy into the fog
sank deep into wide open black pupils
out of reach

to be impossible to touch
but feel every single thing
like a white burn
or a long knife

to
stare at you and not say a word
not say a word all day
i’m in the middle of an ocean of reaction
and it is perfectly still on the surface over mile long depths
and you’re pounding on the windows of an empty house
slamming your fists into the three inch thick ice of a frozen lake
screaming and roaring as you sit there quietly nervous
I hear you
and you hate me a little bit because you love me too much

but there were swift and silent teeth
sharp as noon
ripping through our paper trails
through my skin and my veins
to my bone

I'm being taken by tremors.

pour your burning coals onto my head
spit into my evil eye
me
Judas
knowing God as guilt and
spilling over with guilt

I drove out every street in the middle of the night
I was coronated by the rain
glistening
with shoulders hanging from the sky
I spun around and around in my head
the trees danced and pulled at each other and at me

and I entered cathedrals
wandered into hallways alone again
with softest footfall
kneeled to cruel earth,
and slowly washed away with the runoff

in a thousand directions at once, and at three thousand degrees
rushed breaking shattering gray veil after gray veil - parting them all like a sea
with mere energy of joy. Held back, shaking pulling at the gate for too long.
39.244667,-121.052524
like a bell ringing from a church steeple
like the first time you felt it too
like mountain incline
like contact
like getting up again after a blow to the face
like the sight of the sky straight above

light with a new wavelength,
split fast into the dark
oak leaves falling and spreading in frigid air blacker than night
and rich and alive and rushing toward me like sound
I held on, screaming my lungs to death! bathed reveled in the confusion.
I was there with my eyes wide open, my heart beat so fast over your nightmares.

and I loved you.
I loved you I loved you I loved you

My heart rests on my lungs all the time
settles into my lung.

Laying on my side thinking
left side brain thoughts
until I turn over and find you.
And then there you’re curled up nestled in the right side

I remember a feeling from a dream I had. I swell a little bit.
Turn onto my stomach and it all moves, a white wave to the frontal lobe.
Then there I’m wading through you, putting my fingers into dopamine tide pools,
widest eyes in clandestine memories.

Watching you laugh with the biggest part of the sky caught in the curve of your mouth
lurching when the world froze that way forever for a second.
Wanting you to stay as long as I’m there.

Conjuring you and your little evening glow,
because
I need company.

he’s going to falter fold out like a staircase
in the face of
cambrian ice and you’ll hold yourself out like
you could have been absolution itself



you’ll be thinking about the ones that look like they’re comfortable
in their own skin and poked out light
and upward facing rays and upturned faces
and scattered papers



you’ll be versed in angel’s tongues
but paralyzed by syntactic blindness
silenced by the dome and everything thats happening
without you

sometimes you come back,
like the peculiar awareness of finitude
soft footed
after we’d been in that small room together
cold
pouring out in white light
leaning over and smiling gently
with a surety of falling snow winter outside
and you described seattle and kurt cobain
and showed me your jars of sand and jars of honey
and I smiled gently and loved you.
and we went out in the cold and you smoked a cigarette
and everything around us was hushed wet in dark gray
you were something that made me ache
honest human, dark and earnest
opened ahead of me
wise and naive
I felt like I’d known you somewhere before
I held you in my vision but didn’t speak

as you told me what men had done to you
I picked up something that was shining on the ground
and thought about what men had done to me

I would have laid out the universe

As you laid there, as though invisible.
sending strands of color over you
through me, venous
I watched and listened
your messengers to me
tilted my head
rolled around pushed water out of my lungs
touched you, glanced you barely,
on the knee. nodded slowly, with my eyes open. adored you for an instant

pulled
all things in waves.
pushed

your breath on my neck
hit and left me
a horse feels the water at its ears
and struggles not to drown.

undone skin
knew you weren't there,
but wandered for something anyway

joy in confusion, I knew
could be the beginning
of learning joy in
learning joy

when I put it on your shoulder,
something tight in my head
got caught
and

I went to the river
wishing to death, (as it slowly unraveled,)
I'd left with you

motionless pull up and drag
sick leans on my bones and up through them,
I look at something else and see death

sitting plainly
not even twenty feet away
quietly seeing back at me,
seeing only black and feeling only what I feel

you’re next to me and a minute later you see it too
and as with you, you see it as something else
you get up, “let me show you that.”
stride, as you do, to its side and as if it were truly a thing,
pick it up
stride back to me and turn it over and over in your hands
and I am shuddering in your affections
my clear reproaching eyes
are adoring you

oh, solemn and before I can think again
I am moving away and seeing in reverse the things I saw when
I was about to see you
the sky is opening up for me
I am flying with the sun
but you’re fading out,
sleeping radio static
becoming still
and I am finding it difficult to remain in motion

my faces are the
about faces, my little breaths
are little deaths
I am like your cry at night

my time of day is seconds before dark
when suicide is a life-long contemplation;
a standard deviation from the sidewalk,
and the sunset is a reason

my day is the day when
suddenly,
your addiction makes you sad instead of happy
so why don't you stop

my breaks are all the breaks and
window sill stair fire escapes
used for smoking under-age
I've got it figured out early

my ocean beats against the rock of ages
I'll raise my fist and ***** on my own defiance.
I'm aching over my forgiveness, begging,
is Jesus still in pain?

well

I am the backs of everything,
bring me out
only in your holiest
of holy moments.

Consistent like middle eastern conflict.
The corner of the pantry holding the infinite consumer
The pound of the waterfall
slow, slow.

This grace is sick like
bringing some dark of disease to
every place God gave me
to escape to.
The Midas of somber sad
begs them all not to come any closer.
Curled up to process, process, its such.
Each cry stops the tracks flat
everyone please remember to remember that you’re forgetting.

and remember too
when you’ve read enough to put the gun in your mouth,
to stop reading.

The recognition was incomprehensible and I thought of my face in the mirror
the look and the sight of the white line cigarette pinched narrow and thoughtfully between his very first finger and his thumb. It was the pose of vocabulary. An expression of the understanding of words and the pauses that build them. A sigh for the sighs that frame them. He was an only. You don't look and forget.

I lean over throw my shoulders right in front of you towards the far corner of the room. A deep breath and my skin fills my dress. This is the physical of release, and the fabric falls. You fall into the light laid out on the floor your face follows up to me while it turns into a question. Adhere to vertices and hide the lift of your lash.

You want to know which way I'm going you mean by that which line of verse enunciates me next. I understand but you don't. In tiny things we find enough to let go. To demolish wholes, flood systems, blink. In tiny things we are commanded to go on. You’d known, but I - I had not yet walked home of solitude since we had spoken to each other without interrupting with another.

Open your Bible to show the empty room static that with more knowledge comes more sorrow you are very sad. You’re on the cross of tired and hungry because man does not live on bread alone and can we ever be sure of what God meant by that - especially when he conceived of distance. When you read the red letters give your eyes to the sky and keep a hand on either side of my face.

Deep underneath my eyes I think of you (I think you see me thinking you) and see you trying to write into crossing paths with poetry itself, specifically, the ****** embodiment when your words expand beyond yourself and with a turn envelop to evoke another. I open my mouth slightly, shut it and lift a hand to you to say: it walks in with it's own grace, beyond force. wait, love Everything, you try to create into it is only taking - only sit and wait. Until you stop taking, nothing. but you had known, the wait, I had not yet not known

the pause was helpless but the silence was becoming. There was no choice, we kept going

life flashes of electric blue glancing out from every strand
you soared in a circle around my head
little wide angled hands reached for you
alight on my brow allow me to
cut angles into your wings
cut angels into your wings
I don’t know when I’ll raise you once again over my head
to push you away from the earth for only I and
the sky,
can bear your lightness
every dull
cold spinning remnant of of a vast fury of fire,
circling into itself to fit into the shape of infinity,
long since gone, the last bits of you form
a raw shape of my being, draw my soul into substance
fall away, dissipate, and unlike everything else
you join nothing
do not begin again.
and so much more
you take it all with you and
I have no words to tell that
no one can hold onto the last of anything,
you are no more

It is her warmth in a cup of tea
her whispers that rattle the window screen
her eyes that open as mine close.
Her shoulder that holds my head
when I fall asleep
on a pillow.

She colors everything.
She brings exquisite language to my lips
she sighs,
before she speaks a different language that
I understand.
(the a’s sound like raindrops)
that leave trails along
the windshield.

When once I belonged to
a life as delicate as lies and grapefruit knives
I read her
brief and clear
on her own face.
accidentally bare,
precious.

Life saved in the turn of a head,
at the sight of a name, a familiar name, more than
a name. in
a hand on my knee
in little things.
I took to the street to the city and the bridge to pass as a cliche
I thought of everything about her wrong
remembered that I forgot to say goodnight
before I turned around.

We talk in the way words fall
off and away,
as the melody subsumes the lyric’s soul
the sweetest notes of digression
waste the abundance.
Reduced to the center and I am less
all that I need and
nothing more
hanging from my shoulders;
skin that is white
in evening light
when she touches me
she makes me, I look at
the world, is small
sitting in the palm of my hand.
and I can see clearly from one end to the other
this is why I love you.

I am the brick and she is the window
when I kiss her cheek.
In the words good morning
I press my lips to the shape
of her eyes and feel her hovering shadow
spreading cool over my skin.

When I say no
I reach my warmest corners
round her body
over her shoulders
and pull her into the late night
held against my bones,
I have no intention of relinquishing.

She is angles and degrees
walls and windows
the words written in book folds
histories and the aspirations of ages
tiny brash movements and sight,
all.
To armies and invasions, I lay down infinite surrender
in between our silence.

For,
a thousand words
and I could never tell her
what I've needed to say by
arms and legs pressed with heat wrapped
round her waist.
Theres no explaining the way a heart aches.
What I’d tell say is                     (quiet [skin & heart{beat}] friction)
somewhere between this line,
and the next.
Let's talk about something else
Or our heads will float away
----------------------------------

love is the way my body leans
Can you see the way my body leans towards the east?
your words weigh light, their trails are long
through me, I say
love is that

in the morning, softly
I can feel her
still
against each point of my body
And my aching arms

whisper three words
and,
back again
to the beginning.

the sky speaks to me
jet trails
say: its going to be
ok

the small wisp clouds say: what a
terrible
waste
of a mind

the heavy ones say: set your feet
lean towards lake shores

the overcast says: where is my head,
when I cannot sleep

the rain says: come here
the snow says: lay down
the sun says: hang your shoulders from your neck and
laugh with the enemies of your lovers

sunset pulls at ivory, the moon hums
picking up every piece to put it back in the box
chides: you might as well have said so
each star whispers the name of each day
I have lived
its own name is the period at the end of the line

the deep hue says: hello
bending along the line of infinity to
meet the light hue
an exposition of uneven symmetry
it writes on me
a hand gentle on the head of a child:
where are you looking for
it says:
I am not as transparent as I seem when
I am pushed down into the earth by the night
it says: no,
here am I again, born again, in the dew
inhaled once more into heaven

to prove the boast,
sunrise spills out in a violin voice
climbing through a thousand different beginnings
extending from tree tops,
pulling civilization upright
with a breath of wind
it clears its voice

and speaks to me

Something in the way shapes take tonight
The lilt of cello bones
tastes of far reaching

I think the trees moved
reaching into the road
light pools
to put things into my head

I want to lay each sentence into lines
in the way that heart beats
thick and heavy
only to pick them up into my lungs
little devil hands little devils hands

to
lead me off the road

your eyes and
the night that I forgot to drive on the wrong side of the road
drifted slowly to meet the mud bank
anyway
gaze intent at my hands in the half light
Wrapped around roots like a farewell embrace
that moment of elongated suspension

like the last time they spoke

pause and breath
pulled in and pushed out
and
lift
For the first time since I was five
The rush falls away
there sits the world

goodb

--
*ye

prelude
wake up into crystalline air
can feel
the swaying trees pull up the body
waiting for dreams to run
wash
off

no one can imagine what the waker has seen
the glow of love through a pure heart like light lost in honey

-

I'm sorry for interrupting. I just have
Too much to
Say:

I know

You understand the way salt tastes on my tongue
I understand the way you sit in the middle of the universe
Right next to me
Poking holes into my skin
with which
to fill with words
Painting pictures like drawing bridges
Over these mile high canyons
Standing at every side

these* these words spread like openings into the ice
pride as you asked to see a face I had never before shown

Towers of words and I say
See things simpler
To myself
but already I see them as they are
Like the moon behind the cloud three nights ago
pulling at the edge of the sea

I moved to your gait
To gravitate towards feeling
Like moths
shimmering
The incoming tide
reaching for humanity




your silence takes a shape into mine
How could something so much like light be possessed?
How could you clasp to your bones, a wave that pulls eternally at the shore?
you make me think, I was thinking

I think he would have said
don't you see it has to be this way?

one         small         point                in the dark

How would it be,
otherwise.
Those angel’s hands shaped perfectly (as always they were)
on your neck

and you would have said you’re saying
pointing into the dark,
your weapon words stand so small next to your mortality
and
I love you with nothing

A man without a heart is
a gentle threat
A man without a heart
Lacks only what you hold in your hands

A slip into abstraction
How young we were how young
Yet how young were we?

afterword
stutters stilettos
sick skin sick
beautiful
letters
left this morning
while you were away in
mourning
silhouettes
cigarette shadows straining
shadow eyes
in this dim light
old
grammar
makes me ache
in between every line and I wish
you were more human I wish you were
less

it is nothing I could begin to say to you
for it came to be without words
without sound
but not quiet

it was with the sound of something as you look upon it
The hum of tiny waves
shadow   not shadow   and the space beneath, that is to say,
between

life without a need to be
without purpose,
failure and not failure so close together because (finally I saw) they are not separate

it was steps that unfolded to infinity around the block
and around again (sic transit gloria mundi)
it was arms swinging like pendulums past ribcage clock faces
waving away the concept of time
In this small corner of the world
it was saying thank you for handing me over to solitude and meaning it
dying in order to let me heal you
it was following the jet trails with fingertips touching them like you taught me to
it was letting the poetry come in and pass through and move off
not holding it in, anymore
When I learned for the first time, to write.
it was when I heard something behind me
it was       I am.
it was when I drove on the freeway and the cloud broke and we passed out into the sunlight at 67 miles per hour, even though I was alone
when I was disturbed with the thought
today (dei gratia) I am happy to be alive.

Green was your favorite color.