When all it took
For me to erupt in flames
was just a tap of sound
escaping his lips

It took the whole world
to keep this heart from stripping
down in all it's glory
and swallow him with bare temptations
to make him mine

And mine alone.

The cascading rhythm of rain
Pelting at the pavement under
The guise of the cool Saturday night
Orange glow radiating from posts
And sneakers wade through puddles
And up ahead, in the dead of the night
With lightening forking the swirling sky
A single silhouette of another chirp
Picking it's way across the humming pour
Nestled in the bushes, aloft leafy trees
Hidden from the dazzling lights
Dancer of heavens yearn for dawn
Where they can reclaim their thrones
Basking in the warmth of morning glow

I want to re-invent
my life.

Break every rule, defy
every expectation

Gather all the professionals
with their long to to lists and

give them a collective ***** YOU.

Throw out all un-purple clothes.
Pack every notebook ever written in

then hit the bricks and who wouldn't?
I am tired and who wouldn't be?

I take out the lists, try again, again

This is a way to re-invent
my life.

When I was younger
I refused to sleep
with the windows open.

I denied myself
the relief of fresh summer night air,
preferring instead
the stuffy silence
of a closed window.

I refused to allow
the sounds of faraway trains and cars
to permeate my sonic solitude.

The absence of sound and
of movement cloaked my bedroom,
with the blankness of a blizzard
and the density of a rainforest canopy.

I felt safe
in the silence,
content even though,
only sometimes,
I lay awake in the silent warmth
for hours,
in various contortions or
prone on the carpeted floor,
in a desperate plea for
the planets of my mind and body
to align so that I could sleep.

These days,
my window remains open,
environment permitting,
so that the crickets and the sounds of passing cars
sing me to sleep,
a suburban symphony of mundane sounds.

Some nights, a wind
creeps in and I become wistful
as I drift away,
for days that have been,
might be,
and will never come.

Fitzgerald wrote
of a faint green light
(and so many other things too)
"So we beat on, boats against the current, ceaselessly into the past."

Am I beating on, now? Face pressed
against the cold window,
I feel the wheels beneath me
rolling and rolling
slapping against the pavement,
but that's not me.
That's just the minivan- at most
the person
holding the wheel and pressing the pedal.

They beat on,
petals of a different sort,
elephantine limbs
rotating
rolling like the wheels of the car,
but moving in
a different fashion entirely.

The red lights
      blink
in unison
on
            and off
as each massive
wing crests
and then descends again.

You can't see them
but I know they're there
from the fraction of a shadow
that falls over each
red light.

We're moving too, though
maybe not like Fitzgerald wrote.
This minivan, this minivan
is moving forward
with the current
and the longer I spend
thinking about it,
face against this cold window,
I know I'm
moving forward too.