Someone took a pair of shears
and chopped down all the buildings.
Now I must turn my head
to see the whole sky,
splotched with wisps of white
like an old man’s stubble.

Barren hills swell up like blisters
on the smooth flat land,
their windmills slicing the sky
like blunt razors.

My foot squishes over a rejected nectarine.
I kick it as I walk, watching it roll unevenly
on the pavement
until it plunges down a gaping storm drain.

large, and in charge as I'd like to put it.
chunky, pudgy, fat, plump
however you'd like to say it, however
it is none of your **** business.

I am not a number on a scale
or a mile that I haven't run
I am not the size of my waist
or the "excuses" that have lead me to "let myself go"

But I, am human.
Say what you will
but I love myself.
blonde hair, blue eyes
a sense of humor that can't me measured with something so feeble as  measuring tape.
A love of life that will not be put to rest just because I may need to take a rest every so often.

How do you measure happiness?
not on a scale
or with inches
pounds or calories that seem to sneak up on you in the middle of the night and make your pants a bit too snug

we judge people for judging people because judging people is wrong
we blame society for our corrupt nature,
but we are society.

Comfort is like candy corn.

The first two kernels are delicious:
a gratifying waxy smoosh between your molars;
the orderly bites of first yellow, then orange, then white.

A handful sickens,
sweet lethargy trickling through your insides.

For years, I have been working
so hard for a kernel or two.
To my surprise, I now have a barrel full.

It turns out that I like the idea of candy corn
more than I like having it.

Silence is where dreams are born.
Where broken hearts clench in agony.
Where gentle breezes lift dandelion seeds from hands of children.

Silence is at the top of rollercoasters.
Where parents gingerly bend over cribs, to set down sleeping babies.
Where forks hover over steaming bowls of home-cooked spaghetti.

Silence is where there’s nothing to breathe but water;
Nothing to see but ghosts;
Nothing to hold but letting go.

The Earth is hungry.

Down by the train tracks,
her smooth skin ripples and buckles
until her lips part.

She swallows the rusty railroad spikes.
She gobbles up the old rubber tire.
She devours the discarded work boot, ankle first.
She slurps up the dusty cheetah-print blanket like a limp noodle.
Something resembling a flashlight sinks into her gaping maw.
She drinks deeply of the shimmering oily water until her skin cracks.

We proudly call things “man-made.”
Yet we’re just borrowing them.

Despite our arrogant defiance,
they all return one day
to the Earth.

Why let the choking fear
of what is to come
rob me of the serene solace
of now?

When I was little, we had a tree.
He carried himself like a social outcast;
spindly protrusions with stubby green needles
trying to pass as branches.

They jutted out,
perpendicular to his wiry trunk;
strategically separated,
like feuding relatives at a wedding reception.

My father named him Ralph.
He was neither tall nor short.

At Christmas time,
he was adorned with colored lights
and bright glass globes.

His wannabe branches drooped
under the comically heavy baubles,
as if decorated by Charlie Brown himself.

In his youth, Ralph’s
modest redwood container
buckled under the force of his ambition.

“I want more,”
he whispered from his suburban cell.
“A land of my own,
where I can stand among giants.”

One day, it became too much.
As hot days stacked
like dry pancakes,
brittle brown cracked through his veins.

Ralph was no more.
But he lived on,
because my father gave him a name.