Once, in seventh grade,
I took a class in a portable
that had a bathroom built in.

I sat behind a girl
with brown hair
that always smelled like dryer sheets.

When she would write,
her shoulder blades would
glide under her cardigan

as if the wind of grace
was making waves
on the skin of her back.

When she stood up
her eyes moves to mine--
the only mobile dots on a freckled complexion.

She walked behind me
into the bathroom
and I listened to her ****
while the teacher explained
that X isn't always greater than Y.

Spiders.

Snakes.

Late nights, due to the fact that once I saw a possum in our garage when it was dark out.

Good looking people not thinking I'm good looking.

Holding children. I might drop them.

My brothers growing up to be just like me.

Shark attacks.

Jumping off high places.

Headphones that go too deep into my ears.

Going the opposite direction of so many cars. I'm the only one going my way.  They're probably headed the right way. They're probably having more fun.

Realizing that, after being on the road for a while, my high beams have been on the whole time. Sorry.

Cockroaches.

Family reunions where I'm not sure if that really attractive girl is my family or someone's friend.

Climbing up the stairs of the Bombay ride at Wet N' Wild because there just slabs of stone I can see under. I could slip and fall right through.

Enjoying bad bands.

Letting my girlfriend look into my eyes.

Talking on the phone.

Growing up.

Refusing to grow up.

Reading this over if I ever finish it and realizing that I am something less than a regular human being.  Probably an animal of some kind.

Frogs.

Big animals.

Waking up one day as the same person I always have been.

Standing still.

My parents.

Not spending the rest of my life with the girl I swore I would.

Texting people too often.

My parents dying.

Whales.

My teeth being this awful the rest of my life.

Braces.

Making people think they offended me.  People never offend me.

Writing anything that's ever as good as Ernest Hemingway.  How dare I think that I ever could.

Running too hard.  My heart might burst.

Being unreasonable. Am I unreasonable?

Sticking my finger inside an air conditioning vent in a car.  I don't know if there's a fan in there.  I don't know if it'll take my finger off.

Getting people's hopes up.

Letting people down.

Fish.

Bees.

Being a teacher.

My laugh.

Wearing bad clothes.

Holding her hand too hard.  I might cut off circulation.  She might get mad.

My brother disapproving of what I do.

Heaven because it sounds awful doing the same thing for the rest of forever.

Finding out I've been gay this whole time.

Cracking my fingers.

Being a parent.

Whales.

Final exams.

Paranormal Activity 4.

Singing on cue.

Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.

Eating insects.

Whales.

Silence.

The open ocean.

Whales.

Whales.

Our love for birds is conceptual.
Birds are majesty mangled in a biohazard.
For us, the trappings of The Church weigh long and heavy
While freedom seems easy for the winged diseases.

The other night
We planned to go out for a wine special at a cafe
When we found a pigeon stuck under the hood of the car,
Pressed up against the radiator.
She screamed and laughed and gripped my arm and said
“We have to get it out or it'll fry!”

So in the shadow-casting light of our screened-in porch,
She strapped a bike helmet to my face like a hockey goalie
To protect my eyes from getting pecked out.
Oven mitts, a jacket, and pants tucked into my boots.
Protections from the bird flu.

With my arms stretched out as far as they go,
I popped the hood
And released the bird
And ran back to the porch
And she yelped and cackled
As it rose up
Flapping furiously, free and frantic and faithfully gone into the warmest night we’ve had in months.

Just today
I encountered her, face to the window:
“A cardinal!”
Which is a bird (her favorite bird)
I only ever see walking on the ground, not flying.
Clean, balanced, thoughtful of each step.
I could have held it in the cup of my hands, put it right up to my face, and felt no fear at all.

The bible says that one day,
the bodies of the dead will be raised from their graves,
and all peace will reign again.

My aunt Shelly was cremated,
according to her wishes.
"You'd never get see my body underground!
Save space for the next sucker put in a box for forever."

What will happen to my dear aunt Shelly?
Will what's left of her body be raised with the rest of us;
her smaller self rising, kind of like smoke, from the urn we keep her in on the bookcase
so that we can localize her presence whenever we feel it?
Or will we find God sitting cross-legged in our living room,
putting us all back together, piece by tiny, burnt piece?

I can't hear the cars,
but I can see them;
the rush of tiny sun-reflections moving south, towards the suburbs.

I can't hear the footsteps,
old men in hand with little boys--
each crunching the crunchiest leaf,
and then the next crunchiest,
and then the next--

The postman;
the couch;
the Sunday afternoon.

once i went to a baseball game and our team lost 8 - 4.
at least i think they lost.
we left at the top of the 8th because the town felt full beneath our feet.
my friends and i sank into the night.
we went to the river and watched the street lamps pour orange juice into the water,
watched it waver with the rise and fall of our voices, our laughter. someone got ****** and someone sang "lean on me" by bill withers. bill withers was divorced when he was thirty-five and then lost it all to the music, man.
standing still as violent criminals, we watch, and listen for a long time, we feel briefly for our friend who's parents are separated, but no one wants to linger on those parts of life.
someone (possibly the ****** someone) wishes he could sleep and never wake-up
and some of us ask him why.
he doesn't answer for a very long time, and when he does, his voice sounds like running water.
"we would never know we are sleeping, only that we never need to sleep."
we all just stay, and stare for a long time, until someone asks for another song,
but, no,
now I am tired, and I wish to go to sleep,
and in the morning, I can open up the fridge,
and have a large drink of orange juice,
right from the carton.

It's morning, rain has fallen making all the ground darker shade and I'm sweaty,
and, god, I didn't want to be sweaty.
I'm pushing panting up a hill in sixth gear on my six-gear bike because
the gear-shifter has long since broken
as a result of a time I cut too close to a
old-fashioned lamp post,
caught my pedal on it
and went spinning headlong into a rose bush.

The trees are green,
greener than I've ever seen them.
It's morning and the cars shick by, rolling atop the water in the road like Christ did in the early years.
A car slams into a puddle.
When did our lives become so perfectly metaphored in cars?
The a to B life; stopping only when stopped by a glaring light or harsh word; filling up and running out; breaking down only on the road, never in my own garage.

A warm rain will fall this morning.
I hear only the breathy whisper of my breath out my mouth
and engines and tires.
I think nothing, which is a hard-earned comfort
seeing as I, like every person, have a lot to think about,
ever since we invented the automobile; ever since we crucified a sinless man; ever since the moment we thought nothing, and were sent crashing into a rose bush.

I've got a laundry list of problems
That I am not dealing with right now.
But I swear to you that I will solve them when I am older.
For now I will let them simmer
Right there on the back burner.

Why is this not my bed?
Why are you not my wife?
Why is my house on fire?

Who left the oven on?

I’ve been home for a good solid month now and I still don't have a job
And all these empty days are beginning to feel like hell.
I know that God provides all that I need
But I don't think he knows me that well.

I need a 10-cylinder production car.
I need to do something that gets the cops on my tail
Like rob a bank or hit a cop car.
I want to touch you. I want to touch you. I wanna touch you
I wanna touch you I wanna touch you I wanna touch u.
I want to spend my days watching Happy Days with my family.    
I want to think about all these happy days spent at home.

Who left the TV on?

Do you ever have one of those dreams
Where you're drowning but it's kinda nice
And then you wake up in the bath tub?

Who left the water on?

Desk creaks under pile of calendars
Desk creaks under pile of calendars
Arranged like candy below a piñata
Arranged like candy below a piñata
Candy pile arranged below like creaks;
Calendar of desk under a piñata

I have not seen a new movie in a year
I have not seen a new movie in a year
I wonder what it is that I have missed
I wonder what it is that I have missed
I I I that is it.
A wonder movie in a missed year, what have not seen have new

It is time to walk about the place
It is time to walk about the place
I get up and sit down, my *** growing bigger
I get up and sit down, my *** growing bigger
Place bigger time up my ***
Growing down about the walk, I get to sit and is it

Sit in creaks under a bigger year
I have time to wonder what is arranged of calendars
I get *** like a piñata growing candy
I walk up and down the movie
It is that desk I have not missed about my new place
Seen it below a new pile

Cool zoo--
dry ground--
the kind meerkats treasure,
perfect for tunnels to escape sunlight,
and reside in--
be a part of--
whatever it is that's holding everything up.

It was December in Florida,
and the cold hung silent in the air;
as if someone spoke, heaven's branch might snap,
and snow would fall all at once,
and cover animal exhibits.

Christmas lights--
tiny suns,
each thinking its gravity formed the center of the universe,
connected by this green vein that seems to connect everything.

I watch my partner exhale,
my partner's breath resembling snow,
and somewhere in the distance,
we can hear a hyena cackling at my joke untold.

The silence must be unsatisfied here.
The air conditioning has broken for the night
so my family's all gone in to sleep
and sweat out their dreams.

These nights, the birds never stop their song,
in with the crickets who scrape on
and on
and on.
The harvest moon is out, and they must think it is the sun,
bulbous and orange,
like one wide eye of a tilted face,
looking hard at all these curious animals.

Now I know I have just a girl for a mate
and I'm only a man of a king
but what a god,
what a god
what a God! we must have.

What a god I sit with now,
sounding the humble noises of the night,
both of us wondering what it must be like to grow old.

The massive plastic rafts get passed on and
loads of new patrons climb aboard,
looking to face a hundred million gallons of white water,
and perhaps find something out there.

Our love has come and gone,
the trip down the Pigeon River behind us,
and we multitudes sorely pack the busses again.
We flop into out shared experience--
a brown leather seat with absolutely no buckles
in case of the end.
We are headed home.

The highway is constant and clear,
and the bus bucks and ebbs and soon
we are convinced it is the mother of us all.

The boy next to me begins to bob his head like a boat at sea
and soon, he capsizes onto my right shoulder.

I don't move, cherishing my place in his
momentary grace;
the calm part of his tumultuous river,
the cigarette to his stooping weathered old man.

Not after a long time,
he shakes awake,
lifts his head and is clearly embarassed.
He doesn't grin or apologize,
just makes small talk, moves slowly forward
down this relational river.

The kids on this bus see a tunnel coming towards us,
and it is subsequently announced.
"Tunnel ahead--everyone hold your breath!"

Everyone gasps as we enter the ground.
It is dark, and I am grateful for this moment,
and I breathe deeply for the first time
a breath not shared.