After almost 5 years of hanging out,
all I know is that I am kind and sympathetic.
Not jaded,
but I wish I wore glasses.

Ice melted and the lemon soaked up the
deep plush juices of cranberries.
The smell of you was newly showered,
damp and warm
still looking slightly *****.

Water bottles, made of plastic
were slowly shifted in an Eastern ocean.
The separateness of their position from land
reminded me of us.

Dark brown ceramic ash trays smoked.
Lounging, we read the backs of LPS and
talked thoughtlessly about genius.
Jean shorts sagged and lost their body,
but still we felt pretty.

A really loving melody, Joni Mitchell,
played from downstairs.
Upstairs, a pillow between my legs and
background semi-trucks on the turnpike.
And picking up the smell of you, faraway and happy.

A sting of wakefulness and
gross masculinity too near.
The preternatural state of half-dream, half-a-wakefulness.

An expensive fan blew through the room
along with the air conditioner
turned on 54.
The room was chilly and a full bed was
packed with three bodies.

A careless sleepiness ascended from the sleepers.
Already awake, sitting upright, and staring
at a wall I wonder on the night before.

Significant wrong has been done in the past 48 hours.
Not to anyone in particular, anyone except the self.

In a dream I was asked to be dismissed
from the prestigious group I belonged to at the
university.
Somehow,
they had discovered by true personality.
I begged and pleaded to continue attending the meetings
and receiving the free merchandise.
They acted haughtily toward me.
They said they would still allow me to room in the same
dormitory as the other members but that was it.

In a second dream, a road was blocked by semi-trucks
that tote Ford trucks.
I tried to swerve around them in my parent's SUV,
but I missed the road entirely and my car slowly
dropped into a sewer ditch.
In my head, I thought, get your cell phone.
Luckily, I didn't.
Weight became semi-irrelevant in the water
and I could lift half of the car out of the ditch with my foot.
Only half though, because once it emerged from the water,
weight was relevant.
You know what I mean?
A woman I knew in grade-school pulled me out by my arm pits
and we called my mom.

I woke up and itched mercilessly at the poison ivy on my legs.
Weeks earlier, I had talked at length about how I wasn't allergic to poison ivy.
Weeks earlier, I had been going with two guys.
Now I was painfully lonely and painfully itchy.

Idiosyncrasies.
Convincing oneself that two very uncorrelated happenings,
phenomenons, even, are correlated.
See, like the dry skin around my mouth appeared the day we met.
It lasted throughout the summer and is clearing up, now.
Now that we are all clear.

Or, perhaps, there's been a mind-fog face-fog correlation sans
romantic relationship.
In that case, I've been blind.
Blind as a bat.
I mis-read, mistook, misinterpreted my own dry skin.

It's almost like,
at least it can be compared to the time when I went to the Urgent Care because there was a rash on my back and the doctor said it was shingles.
In some of the same breaths he also mentioned that usually only old people get it.
And, he said, he said people who are stressed, too.
And I said, "but I'm not stressed."

And then I thought, am I?

She said she couldn't describe how she felt.
Maybe it was like having stomachaches in the Panera bathroom
or ******* about the erred logistics in the directions  
or the echo of my *** on the toilet bowl.
It was probably more like asking a friend to explain the meaning of the phrase "social constructs."
It was more like that.

I refused to scale the wall of an abandoned bridge.
You were already on the other side.
You were spunky.
That's all.
Intelligence yet to be proven, but maybe spunkiness is better.
In retrospect, it surely isn't.

If they were intelligent they would figure it out.
My rocks, my short dress, my latex undergarments.
Your arm, your tattoo, your driving.
My heads out the window because it refused to be inside.
Refusal and acceptance all in a parked car in a peaceful residential place.

"You crazy," someone said in a book I read.
Be more smart, be smarter.
Say something so we can talk about it.
Look up from that gross glowing cell phone.

Nothing seemingly tangible has changed in the past twenty-five days.
Except I vacuumed all the hay up from my floor and driving around aimlessly suddenly felt inexplicably good again.  

I was kind of like an errant vacuum,
******* up innocent little cloth specks and dirt clumps along with pennies and bobby pins.
The crackle of looming damage did not faze me.

But now I am thinking about public education, and vaccines, and health food again.
I'm thinking about the pros and cons and it feels right.

He's raking the garden rake too close to my back side
so over my music I mumble,
excuse me.
Rather perturbed,
distinctly disturbed,
I think how I'd rather do it alone.  

Later,
digging fairly deep into some sandy ground,
two clumps of horse **** in the two of my hands
I feel close to the earth.
I get back to the land.
I get back to the garden,
because she told me to do it,
and without the hired help.

I'm too anxious to focus on short poetry,
but not anxious enough to stop eavesdropping
on folks who talk about poetry.

30 minutes to rush to the Detroit gate.
Stop the plane!
Stop the plane, at least, for me.
I know I'm going to be sick.
I hope I sit by someone nice
and kind.

I dreamt a dream that a polar bear and its cub
entered a home.
A home that I was inhabiting with my mother and father.
At first, it only lounged around by the sliding glass door
(with its cub).
Very sleepy like, very casual.
But we were curious about its being around,
so we traipsed around the door, gazing at it.
Someone opened the door! (******)
and I scrammed to some little-boy's bedroom,
locked all the doors, even the doors leading to the bathroom.
Sooner than later, my parents found a way into the bedroom where
I hid.
The polar bear was trying to get in,
to eat us we were assuming,
so we hid under the bed.
Then I said, "let's climb out the window!"
So we did. We sat outside by some bushes.
My dad called me at this moment (in real time),
said the fish weren't biting and he was going to go golfing.
I tried not to sound hung-over.

Armpits, legs, arms
pits of arms.
Instrumental music--dancing.
Hopping, shaking your hips, moving your feet.
Stretching, drinking coffee, going to the bathroom.
Taking a walk, taking a drive.
Deodorant!
Bookbag, handbag, no bag.
Watering flowers, looking at flowers, getting naked.
Looking at your nakedness.
Dressing, re-dressing, *******, dressing.
Salad dressing, soup, eggs over easy, black beans.
Singing in the dead of night.
Blues, pastoral folk fleeting, flowing,
meeting again.
Traveling, boating, tripping and falling.
Bird-watching, laughing, joking,
(Midwestern jokes)
Leaving, grieving, waking up.

Teacher, you freed me.
Bit by bit I became willing to talk about I,
Myself, perched on a toilet seat pushing the soft
cushiony fabric into a tight oval to
commemorate the virgins of the midwest.
I can only hope the tenants won't mind.
I am not familiar with their particulars.

The hillside--
a cardboard box.
And companies cut with exact-o knives along the edges,
removing the center.
Then, carry the useful pieces to me, for my white pine realty.
Leave the scraps to warm under an unshielded sun.  
Burn, blacken, gradually regrow.

To the man I won't ever see again:
I had lost my mate in a sea of similar looking citizens
and you offered me bread.
We broke and bit into it.
We commented on the subtly of rosemary within it.
I will never see you again,
but you fed me.

I look to cover my head with a hat
and call it a day
but my hair is too long because it has to be.
I long to protrude,
but I enfold, biologically,
because it has to be.

To be hugged by a narrow railway and a wide river
is to be loved by man and God.

Each time my eyelids close
I commit a new photograph to memory.
I hope I have enough space.

There is ugly in every beautiful town.
There are stone quarries, electrical wires, and spittles of trash
on every forsaken corner of the United States.
There is a cloud machine amidst fields of green
and wind mills with long milling legs
that spread like the slashing ceiling fan
in my hometown living room.

There are brown patches of grass
and seasoned bearded hobos, too.
There are minimum wage jobs, and minimum wage folks
waging the war against crisp, shuttered homes .02 miles
down the way.

Billboards, more billboards
crowd the view.
Dealerships, car dealerships
speckle urban seas.
Me, I do live for variety.

When all else fails,
cover me up in literary magazines,
filled with screen-print photographs and short stories.  
Light me up,
fill me up
with egg center yellows and humble rosemary greens.
Let her words, pained and smart, come out
of her mouth,
dance across the dashboard,
(eyes cast downward)
and onto my tongue.

When all else fails give me a light rain
and an intermittent run.
It's okay if it's overcast, but let me be sunshine.

How would you like to be on top of the cliff?
The one tree
with the best,
loneliest view.

How to remember a past year.
How to,
commemorate citrus burns and
the use of a pocketknife to cut pineapple,
and cutting pineapple,
and eating it on sunny, uneven brick paths.  
How to--

channel the extravagance of buying blue moons
from a local, local bar on a strictly dishroom paycheck.
How to

describe, being in the backseat, amidst new faces
amidst familiar songs and then stopping to observe
obscure insects that glow.
How to!

be without, pure two-wheeled freedom
on a path, proudly engineered and purring
toward a destination, marked by green.
Being alone,
so happy and so sweet.
How to?

The same "sweet relief" with honey,
on the same, quiet deck-porch-room.
Even when it rains.
How now?

Eyes, and oxytocin.
Late, late meetings.
Early morning greetings
and taking a liking to.

Ritual is not specific to any race, ethnicity, culture, way of life or person.
Tradition, if not engrained and present, is despair.  
I remember moments in youth:
pungent, exultant,
bike riding sand castle building,
good old fashioned fun.  
I remember some moments of ten to fifteen years ago, I remember moments from 6 to 7 months ago.  
I've forgotten some.

I opened, read, and placed the money aside
from graduation cards.  I was surprised when I opened a card
received from campus ministry leader with no money, only a sweet note.
I counted the money happily, twenty dollar bills, fifty dollar bills, seventy-five dollar checks.
I checked my text messages, every seventy-five seconds
and heart skipped, slipped a beat when my mother calls and says
she's driving to Canada, she's got to get a way.

Really she's locked herself up at the Econo Lodge behind Big Boy's
only, approximately, eight minutes away.
And we drive up, and she presses her face to the motel window, door locked secure, and I press my hand up to the window.
But she won't let me in.  
She consumes, she consumed.
But she wouldn't let me in.

When I come home from my first year of school
I will tell her
I am an actress, too.

I know some folks.
They sink down.
Sinking dirt into the ground,
landslide and erosion.  
Buildings, structures depressed and falling in.
Make yourself bigger, I advise.  
Open your eyes, blink quickly between the palms of your hands,
face a window, if it helps.
See the light.
Did you see the light? I did.

Repression,
hold.
Hold.
Keep holding,
hold on tight to your bike handlebars.
Hold on to the straps of your book-bag until
your elbows cramp up stiff.
Hold on to your blankie,
rub it all over your body.
Inhale,
do not suffocate.

Exhale,
and feel good and bright.  
You've done something good for yourself.
Feel good about that.  
You've just brightened up your whole house.

Day 1
We'll maneuver down your ecosystem driveway onto
Latcha; not on red-spray painted bikes, but in maroon Civic.
Lunches packed, cooler stacked, en route for 8 hours [we reckon].
I presume five hours away and three hours to Waterloo my dad will wonder about our E.T.A, and I will say, "we are about three hours away."
We'll have fought over D.J. and agreed on the Stones,
but you'll know the words more than I.
But we'll save money and lodge ourselves at a
friend's house with the same last name as a vacuum.

Day 2
9 hours to Rapid city, South D
hopefully to see the faces of old men carved into a big old rock.  
I'll look out the window and quote lines from "America" by Simon
and Garfunkel and be the best ******* co-pilot that ever was.

Day 3
Country Motor Inn, drive on, to the Country Motor Inn!
Hey,
now's a good time to take that Adderall.  

Day 4-8
To the coast,
to hike around the area,
to rent bikes,
to drink hip-hoppity PNW brews with yous
and you're new, cool roomies.  

Day 9
South,
Southwest
Airlines.
Clenching the arm chairs,
would rather take a 74-hour train ride
than be up in the air.

The direct, circular reaction between chemistry and electricity
gestates a cyber-space that pretends to know something
about autonomy.  
Unfortunately, the website sparks the Shakespearian within me.
Unfortunately.  It translates and relates with the mission not to deviate,
but as I read "O Villainy!" my eyes glance suspiciously at the sidebar propaganda:
Don't make these makeup contouring mistakes,
there are nine bases in hooking up now,
celeb quotes that will make you feel better about yourself.
"O Villainy!"
O, say this device don't know squat about me!

The slow **** of an ice-breaker
spearmint or cinna,
requires the utmost concentration.
The discipline to savor, the fight not to bite,
the earnest sensitivity to flavor,
like the first glance of attraction,
attention reeled in,
and action unsure and disabled.  
Bite too quick on the line, too soon hooked and released
but bite slow and revel  their favour.

You think, but you don't think when you walk
step by step, heel over heel, toe to toe, forward in the forest.
You think, cause you can't think about much else
'cept your next step, its the step that comes next.
Provided there's a path, trek steadily
**** the hills, engrain your heels
in the plush, pebbly mud, positioned sneakily
under the leaves.  

Presence, breath, refresh,
relieve, unwind, unconscious,
maybe even semi-aware of the subconscious,
slow down, speed up,
listen.
Hear!
Understand, demand [passively] your peace,
your piece of the land.
And you're a piece of the land.

Stick straight trees line hills, their arrangement phony
less than 5,000 feet in elevation but elevating humanity for over
sixty thousand.

For more than sixty thousand human beings,
think of fish stuck, are stampeded by shiny black
blocks of detonation.
Explosion for extraction, and teeny tiny port-o-potties
sit, enjoying relaxation where an ecosystem once
enjoyed rehabilitation after March.

We Marched on, up a gravel hill where wind
blew but we bolted our boots to the soil.
Sunglass-clad woman concealed her hurt eyes,
but her voice hurt enough to inspire a kind of
throat retching sensation.

***** up that black, ooey-gooey  you old, weathered mountain top.
Explosives like a firm finger shoved down the throat
denote a rock spew; regurgitate and repeat a dozen times over.
Flatten and deform, never to reform
the water-giving, life-renewing, shady shelter, stable
stool, magic majesty of my mountain.

Underneath a small lee in the park,
she tapered down so small; sapling pine tree.
Furled a wool blanket like a tootsie roll
used as a pillow and rolled into sleep.

Scene-by-scene dreamed of bedroom encounters
enacted on beds of flowers.
Remembered the words of harmonica blowing boys verbatim
as the dream shifted scene for half an hour.
And a small, four-leafed local sage man came at an importune time
and to write her a note.
Succinctly and politely bargaining with her;
"Would you give up lust for pure reason?"
Turning away briskly, she glanced toward a stump
sat down for a ponderous sixty seconds.
Slowly standing, eyes regal and demanding
she wrote back "no, I won't"

Shiver and shake and she's suddenly awake
power walking to a house near the river.

Sketchpad sans the sketches.
Instead, let the breeze ****** you.
Faded yellow, dusty lime, seventies orange flowers zooming in and out at you.  

Naked, bland eyes,
grainy, grease-skin,
too tight of pants and cold feet.
Shudder on the precipice.  

Who were the main characters in my life?

With the right light,
natural ponds of blue,
young-maiden skin,
loose skirt and **** feet
jumping off the precipice.

A doe ran across the road
and I rode without looking up
until I noticed, that we rode side-by-side.

Twenty, thirty seconds
we peered into each other’s eyes
in unison.  Looked straight ahead and then to my right.

And She crossed the path
two moving meters in front of my wheels.
Then again, we glanced back and forth between focus and fascination.

No wind, vibrant orange-juice sun,
and a dear, deer friend humming,
“I'm here."

Released in full.
Booming, thrashing, moving around, impenetrable.
Unrequited oxytocin.
Breathing out of mouth and nose.
Hormonal inspiration, and sensations that are insatiable.
Creativity blooming out of pleasurable pain.
Emphasis on the pain.
The unsatisfied, insatiable, pain.
Distracting and sickening but most of all,
more than anything,
freeing.
Allowing, and being.  
Human beings are ****** beings.

Insatiable, and me
all I can do is step
toe to toe in my room.

And feel, with all my might
the ******* that will wound.
But salt the wound, with continual
praise and remembrance.

Like a church all filled and all screaming, saying out.
"Amen."
Ah, men.
With dark hair, and deep grins and pictures next to bicycles.
Mix c.d.s and please, please, please.
Me, I'm the tease.

The unconscious mind can wander seamlessly through eight hours of time.
Searching, mending, forgiving, DMT-ing.  
Stir slightly dear, but don’t dare face the other direction.

“Let’s go outside,”
I say, but my suggestion flutters around your ears and dissipates into the air.
You sleep, you’d sleep all day if I’d let you.

Up and down, climb down from your parents bed
and crunch, crawl, creep, creak on wooden floor.
Hoping to wake you.

Forward seven months, and still sleeping every night.
Sleeping and moving accordingly with new loves.  
Draping arms and then later, struggling to remember a face.

The men sleep silently, quietly, without cease.
Never wandering or wondering or nervous.
Not self-conscious, fully comfortable.  

I sleep uneasy, unsure, and maybe uncomfortable.
Wanting, then pushing away, then wanting.
Sleep alone, then, you say.

Move back.
The halls will be yellow at the high school
and the front office won’t have ever changed.
The sixth-graders who paddled down the Little Miami
will have remained the same.

The hammock will sit stagnant,
waiting for that push, that shake and bake, that slap and tickle.
A black lab rising up from the grave, smelly as all hell,
will be there to greet you.

Ride a red-spray painted bike down
deserted roads, the same mountain dew bottle trash,
age-less hollerin’ neighbors;
home-run derby crew.

Move back.
Watch lonesome blues whittled away,
and whispering softly,
“it’s not you, it’s not you, it’s not you.”

A blonde from the most expensive public institution
separated keef into sweet, firm rows.
Upon entering the wood-panneled house, you were under the allusion
that none of the go-ers would be doing blow.

Young males huddled against university brick walls
let their fluids go on a-flowing.
Expectation bound phonies make time-consuming calls
to prove there's elsewhere to be going.

And the toilet on the left side, remained fluffily clogged,
the mirrors all gazed into by the dozens.
The cell-phones kept the moments sufficiently blogged
about hazy ladies gyrating on cousins.

Crowds inadvertently bumping and grinding
in their pilgrimage to thee sacred keg.
Four fights broke out, because frat oaths are binding
and their forward almost broke his golden leg.

All dripping with the sour scent of the *****;
Make-outs, misogyny, and brawls.
Those in attendance were all said to have perused
the meaningless, the free, and the foul.

Tales of coming and going, movement on the insides
and the outsides
of the bodies.

The amateur beauty of the harmonica child,
Harmonies, surprisingly crafty,
polk along with the crack-pop of chicken being tendered
and fries not too salty at-all.

The line for New York City, Zanesville, and Philly;
a young man softly sifting through lady hair.  
And the shoes on this bunch all surprisingly thrifty.
Do not stare, echo mothers of the past.  

All pragmatics aside, I eavesdropped intently
to earnest voices of men, touch on topics of race.  
Gruff solitude, paired with fluorescent hung-lights
and a retrospective friend pacing endlessly.

Only the words that flow out seamlessly now,
can tell toward which mood I'll be leaning.

Not even twenty-four hour catharsis;
where at first rumination bred ruination.

The thirty-four degree one o' clock wind whispered "turn around, go back where you started."
The cloth of used, slightly misused sweater and unsanitary khakis counseled with the slogan,
"buy me, feel better."  
Dreary glimpses, averting eyes on community paths spoke most loudly, and most fluently, and quite simply said: alone.  

Mistrust and misuse and isolation undone quickly by steady river, parted clouds, and miscommunication.
The wispy whites of blind clouds says don't spread too thin, don't spread so sparse.
The screech of a gaggle of geese; the urge to speed through discomfort.  

Ruminate instead on steady sediment structures,
and the stranger's closed mouth smile and whole-hearted "hello."
All earthly and nudging and prodding to speak up again in class.

Week old tincture
tinted with lemon-grass
and snod-grass
and grease from black beer-spilled book-bag.

Weak old tincture
couldn't sustain relationships that envelop
circadian rhythms that clash and grate against bunk-bed guards and bone hanging ceilings.

Play bill:
swam in the shallows, metamorphosed, gender bended
unwavering and unending personal development through catharsis.

Pushy beliefs pushed on people who don't believe,
who won't believe in the "serenity of a clear blue mountain lake."
Science, and logic, and classical hodge-podge of ideas,
no,
of theories;
that makes sense.

The non-sensical is the warm.
The un, understood is the energy.
The sun shines in hard, unforgiving through the frosted window, blinding me and I trust my instincts suddenly.

Too tired to understand, or too much understanding
making it simpler to punish, and push.
**** virtues,
and most importantly,
**** patience.  
Flying back south and walking to and fro and waking up all on my own
and sitting by the window and biking or strolling with music
to the ears.
Self-inflicated solitariness feeling un-repressive, and un-defensive
and happily alone.

Never let self-inflicated solitary boredom be brought upon by another.
Indeed, cheers to alone-li-ness, when it is discretionary, and free.
Lying through my corroding teeth, I breath,
out mercy and breath in shame.
Over-dramatizing,
the wrong person is changing.

I am different;
You are the same.

Heart beat mad into chest.
Introduction to one-gloved hand,
soft as silk and
hectic as twenty-first century sunlight shining on 1942 stone architecture.

Terrible stench upon entering,
dripping from the bag
tossed into the metal disposable bin.
Echoes; dins.  

Flint carved sharp into shears
plagiarism down to the wire.
Preposition, search the list for antonyms  
and synonyms
and cannibalism dream that wakes a man up
at an hour, two hours too early.

Eye problems from staring at the computer screen.
And leaning, fast and forward into the face
of a full grown, beard.
A laugh, much too much like the written down
pronunciation.
False, endearingly false.

Contaminated.
Surely more Macbeth than Banquo.
Level two: Lust.

****, ****, ****, knock and bang
at the door, for more.
Of what?
What of skin?
What about blood-shot eyes, coated tongue, sore back, bad-breath,
harsh light, pants too tight,
legs itch.
Fidget, twitch;
unnatural movements.

Unlike waking up,
joking, smoking on the porch.
Fancy coffee, cinnamon cakes.
Nothing black or heavy on my face.
Purity, hung-over purity.  
----------------------------------------------------
Roamin­g the streets, alone.
Constantly, consistently, alone.
Dancing to my own accordion tune.

"Oh, I thought you had some kind of throat disease"
Remarks directed toward the inch wide puddle,
of brown, runny spits next to my boot.
No, no, not exactly.  

Sand-pit puts them out quite nicely.
Don't have to rub the leaves out of the ****,
because that's an "ordeal."
Auburn hair, almost quite naturally, has influenced me a great deal.
The meals eaten, and passed through, disgust me.
She reminds me that I am human.

"Acid reflex?" Another gal, knowledgeably inquires.  
"My sister has it."
Your sister, well her and I could be great friends, then.
Deficiencies ****** me.  

Coffee spits, at 11:30 a.m., by the white-washed concrete fortress;
my new back porch.

Is it rude to lean my boots, that which touches the ground, without any kind of discretion or watchfulness, up against the toilet seat and tie them up neat, into little bows?
I'll never know, I suppose, whose bottom will sit, and ****, where I thought it appropriate to mend my un-laced foot.

Is it non-sensical and insensible to stare off into space, breath heavily, and pause in mid edit, while a handsome chap, inside and out, walks past with a stranger? "Call out his name," No, heavens no, do not call out his name.

Are our engagements forever fleeting? Am I to arrange the next meeting? "It's the 21st century," he retorts one day, "I gave you the wrong idea," the next.  Wrong idea? Just because we woke up and smoked a **** together and discussed the pros and cons of city life versus country life doesn't mean you gave me any ideas, I just thought you liked me.  

Wrong idea? Idea, the conception, misconception, that your touching my naked body, meant that from there on out, we were going steady, and I was to call.  

The 21st century, is all that it is cracked up to be.
And I am cracking up, outwardly, while I muse.
Inwardly, I am cracking.  
Needless to say, Athens county should most surely stop fracking.

Turning all of the lights off and pretending like there's nothing due.
Conditionals, conjuncts, and disjuncts to name a few.

The condition is that my naked body has been revealed to you,
uncomfortably in the light
and confidently in the dark.  

The conjunct is musky, old-timey undertones
of Sam Beam's voice.
Dr. Pepper, eventually, convinced me to be reckless
and rot my teeth, and give myself a stomach ache
for the sake of making out upstairs,
in a chair,
next to home-ade sound absorbers, made of fiber glass.  

The disjunct:
deciding between two and a half hours of utter hell,
driving a broken down dust buster van in the middle of
hell's ******* half acre, chugging up frosty hills and into a town,
a foreign town,
to be greeted with, "Hel-low,"
Versus, not having to do that.

The biconditional is that I will be with you if and only if I can be with myself first.

Counting young women in black leggings
and baseball caps, with ancient letters inscribed on the tops of them.
One-thousand, three-hundred, thirty-five dollars
and fifty-four cents,
for half a year
of friendship.

The damp sidewalk is the stage,
the crushed orange leaves a platform.
Rubber rain boots have only existed for three or four decades.
Holes in an umbrella, holes in mother's boots;
Whatever that man said last night,
whatever that was,
it wasn't an oxymoron.

Leafing leaves, neon green with orangish tips
shake subtly with a light breeze,
and madly with a heavy breeze.
Or is that a squirrel?
Foreground, background, juxsta-
positions;
And I,
just in the right position.

Honey sweet passions mixed with a dab
of citrus and spice and yellow, fragrant sweat.
Crinkled up foreheads, ugly and unforgiving
presented with a chortle of self-regret.
Possibly, possibly--
We can be friends.
Reticent, regal, wondering young women
bat eyelashes at a tree.
Forward, flexible, fickle females
can't stand to bat anything away.
The line, the analogous line is so faded--
it is unrecognizable.

Who lives in that house?
That house which so determines
Our do's and our don'ts--
Our will's and our won'ts.
Why, it is divine Majority.
We thank you, Emily.

Four stories higher than at least thirty-seven people below.
Walking, one foot in front of the other,
Eyes, aimed straight ahead for duty's sake;
For the sake
Of avoiding
eye contact.

Infant crow's feet well up upon hearing biblical friendships:
Best friendships.
Hood covers eyes; hood covers everything
except heavy breathing and fast-pace swaggering.
The thought
Of you
suffering,
is dagger-ing.

To be brown, and free, and un-connected!
To be without bias, to be without mate.
To comfort and to sidle up next to
in the most innocent kind of way.
To approach, and to be responded to.
To be noticed, all of the time.
To be hidden, most of the time.

I am deeply, deeply sorry.
The mountains humble,
the news crushes me.
Watching discordant relationships on the street,
the extent of self-help.