No one else was there with us;
so I don't care what any of them think.
They don't know how sweet that wine tasted
on hot summer days up in the cool clouds.

God knows I wish I was better than I am,
good enough to make you stay.
The city lights  burned so extravagantly
I had to know they'd burn out.

The love pulsed out of you that summer,
and I couldn't find the wound
as the life bled out of us
through the fingers of our intertwined hands -
- yet still -
in that moment,
there was a gentleness to you, lady -
- like a deer in mourning fog

I hope that someday
you find an old letter from me,
and that when you brush it off
you miss me

Everyone rejoiced over the Humbolt Park gator being caught
but I wept alone
in my office
under the slightly angry glow of fluorescent lighting.

We don't know much about Chance's life,
but... we can assume a lot:
we can assume he lived in a basement
dark and dank
in a kiddie pool
with ***** water.
We can assume that he had a uv light,
but that he was a stranger to the sun,
to other animals,
to the feel of fresh water, and yet...

For six days he became Godzilla.
Imagine the triumph!
Crocodilians have been around since the Triassic,
but never in all those millions of years,
did one dream that it would go from a ***** basement
to being the apex predator
in an ecosystem where no one knew his name.

People complained that
he must have been confused,
scared
terrified for his tiny reptilian life,
but I never thought that.  
- I imagined him enjoying his triumph
as he paddled through the lagoon,
the sun on his back.

Torrential rain turned the river to rage in July,
the bottom a swirling attack of mud and anger.
The water flooding the valley awoke the men.
To be unwashed no more they watch the water.
Destroy destroy destroy the works of men.
As tides drew back behold! Rise again.
To be inspired, insisting to dream
Return to home, yet past cannot be again,
and thus the men employ the ground up high
delay not here, for waters may again arise.
Inscribe the stone, beginning's need nothing
more than... belonging. Summer ahead now soft.
From immortality two roads spring like sleep
tomorrow is not today, arise fair sun.

She awoke in the clouds
bright, light, and ethereal.
her cheeks the color of...

The April breaking dawn -

To chase the sun through the desert
one must follow the wild horses,
but the dust gets in your eyes.

It's hard to truly see that land;
the barren plains are the other -
they are not the absence of life.

I thought it easier to find-
her in the city amongst
the soulless testimony there.

One could see her in the darkness,
her love gentle like a lone doe
in the vagueness of the morning.

Her name boomed wise like thunder
reverberating sublimely
all around the rain scent lingered.

I wander through the irreplaceable night
waiting for the grey vagueness of dawn.

It isn't always so complicated;
the deepest things are simple at their root.

When the wolf wanders into the valley
does she hesitate at the fork?
Does she wonder about the untrod path,
or just stick to the banal evil of normal?
She prods at my kidneys with her nose,
hesitates, smells the remnants of Florida,
and trots onward, not looking back.

It's second nature to love you,
but first to see my wrongs.
It's easy to miss things
in the new darkness of night.

I watch you rise
out of the foggy banks
of Lake Michigan;
I can see the love
running right
out of you.

It's late winter now,
and the sun isn't shining,
but soon...  

You returned the diamonds;
they weren't precious
at all,
just shards of glass,

This is me at 11.
Scared.
Alone.

The ice is breaking.
I caught a fish yesterday...
Well, almost;
she slipped through my hands.

This is me at 34.
I can still see that boy
or...
at least the idea of him
he's hidden in the fog.