I sever cement
crack crust
and launch magma
into China.

Stride slices air
sending eddies
like hurricanes
into cities.

I flood my wake
with sweat,
and you will know my presence
by the stink of mortality.

Only giants left breathing,
titans, gods and heroes.
As I run past the unlit horizon
I whisper to the slumbering sun,
and bid him kiss you good morning.

I think I am
therefore I am
in love. You say
you only think you're in love,
I say, therefore I am.

I'd like to pluck you from the speck of a hot Colorado summer,
sprinkle you with ambrosia until you've grown enormous,
then together we could stomp through the cities
laughing, "Let's make that catawampus."

I'd like to tug at one of your shoelaces in the kitchen,
crawl up your arm and then climb into your ear,
shrink you down with a spell's whisper
and together, just disappear.

I'd like to say goodbye to our titanic ways
then goodbye again to the microscopic,
find our regular size in the fall
once all is well.

Your legs on top of mine,
sticky, you recline--
eyes wide on a book,
mine droop low
with the wine in our glasses.
The summer heat
hangs in the drone
of a struggling refrigerator

while accompanied by purr
and the cat’s warm fur,
together a symphony
sounding my lullaby.

a funny feeling it’s
all just fantasy
can’t shake the facts before you
until the
pockets empty
to sort through the change
you have to
trust that it’s there
which isn’t hard
really
you hear the jingle
observe the bulge
but
you still can’t believe
a million dollars’ worth of
quarters
could fit into those
size double zero
jeans

Eyes open too early
taking in only street light
and midnight travelers
through an open window,

so shoulders dig
back into mattress
trying to bury cheeks
into pillow, and pillow into dream.

As I fall softly through feathers
into a dimly lit reality
I am reading perfect word
after perfect word

rolling gently into sentences
stacked into stanzas
traveled by footprints, set
in the slowly falling snow.

At the end of every poem,
I am sitting before a fireplace,
flame dancing on your face
smile hidden by wineglass,
eyes lost in my voice,
hands—mine—
warming every page I turn.

The moonlit snowmen outside
wave as I begin to sweat,
waking finally to early joggers
beating the heat, through my window.

I dawn thoughts of you
like a gossamer robe
when you're gone.

Coffee in one hand, boxers
and a stained white T-shirt
underneath. A scraggly beard.

At least I have the robe.

It protects me
as I venture out
for the newspaper

from the sirocco
of absence, worry
and loneliness.

I hug my robe close.

Black clouds hurl
tiny shards of glass
when you're gone.

Paper tears under armpit,
concerned coffee sloshes,
hair blows and grease escapes

even after I'm back inside.

At least I have my robe.

Your
Fire Gobi eyes,
ethereal portals
to lucid dreaming

in the deep ocean,
now lakes of light
through which

I can walk,
never needing to fly

When my day,
like a flask
is empty
Chances are
you're absent,
like the salt and pepper.

On that day
like the green
leaf turned ash
my mind is missing--
run off with the salt
and the pepper

Somewhere
with a sunset,
margaritas,
potatoes
for dinner, and maybe
cottage cheese
for breakfast,

The shakers,
waiting for you
to notice my
stainless steel finish
and how perfectly
it compliments
your eyes.

I wish my bones were paper, my marrow
pens; my veins were words, and blood
their ink; my skin
was leather—tattoos their titles;
air was inspiration— the oxygen
soluble.  I wish
the publisher was a block away,
but all I have to do,
is click file,
new,
create.

She has cooties,
that taste like
candy cake, bad breath
that smells like
caramelized honey.
She has mono,
that gives you
superpowers, ******
would be a blessing,
but that’s just a cut
she got from climbing.
If I said, “Is that a fungus?”
She’d say nope, fungi
and I’d say “****
I got the fungeries”
If I kissed you
it wasn’t from lack of trying
not to, but because
your lips looked tasty
and I had the munchies.

"I miss you like the sun misses the flower
in the dead of winter."* -- A Knight's Tale

If you should weep
in the absence of flowers,
I would craft you one
from whatever material winter has left
and lift it high, toward the heat on your face.

While your smile melts away the snow
I’ll lie the flower down, and plant it
in the warming ground
to grow into fields
of bright reminders.

If you should hide
from me during night,
I would wait for Earth
to make her way around the wobble
on the tips of my toes—arms stretched east.

When you splash my face with light overflowing
the horizon, smiling I’ll turn to you and say,
“I’m really glad you
got me up early, I am
not a morning person”

Four feet
from a flooded river’s
fierce flow, my toes
numbed by snow passed on—
and ****** about it—
numbed by the roar,
rushing, fighting,
at civil war with
everything you know
a raging river should be,
it got so caught up in its fuss
it challenged the fusion of the sun:

you stand so far away
yellow dot, why not come
and burn this boy, my
ragdoll toy? Stop scratching
at the surface of his skin, coward
come closer, come stay.
I’m only inches from sweeping
him to oblivion

Unaware was the sun to come
and play, she would melt away
a second time, then mist, the boy
as well; both to boil, until their bits,
indistinguishable,  joined the sun
in oblivion.

Baffled this was a question you’d have to ask, I sat tremulous.  I’m insular; I’d be enamored with even the most amorphous love, but I’m not inept, and won’t preclude that answering the question is salient.  And although I’m not taciturn, I’m rarely extemporaneous, so please excuse my need for verbose prose in answering said question.
You’re attractive.  Your strong jaw, small chin and cheekbones were sculpted to make your own eyes glow and an artist’s eyes expostulate dreaming of anything else. Don’t dismiss this as delirium, but rather relish this recondite fact—my first crush came in the fifth grade.  It was on a diminutive, outspoken girl, and I was enormous and timid, which developed into a village girl vs. Mowgli, me Tarzan you Jane, King-Kong-Ann Darrow complex.  And although I believe with zealous fervor in your strength, your size still incites the young jungle boy inside me.  And I hope I can say, without being terse, I’m afflicted with a mysterious affinity for red-hair.  
Although I could dwell in the obvious all day, I’ll redirect from the blasé.

Abandon
beats within us both
like hearts to the same pulse,
we don’t coax smiles, we let them slip,
we aspire to happiness like falling of a log.
I have to pry open time’s lockbox and plunder
the night just to relegate the dawn.  Bliss becomes
a tangible ****** making even the most existentially
exasperated docile.  Knowledge that every other thought
is dominated by one another without it attenuating the magic.
Knowing that if all I have to say is it’s raining outside, you
want to hear it.  Twenty-one years of my life I thought
I’d have to hunt love with a knife but you showed me
roaming where you like to wander can wake
the irreverent gods.  It’s your superlative
honesty that’s only for me; that virile
smile in your eyes that bid
doubt vacate my mind

Knowing that if I went catatonic, one reproving look from you would cause my heart to break and force my hands to put the pieces back before I stopped breathing.  If I could, I’d dawn you like a blanket before every dinner, dusk and dream.  And most importantly, we both like crowns.

It’s almost gone, but you
don’t even know what it is.
Its capacity— degrees of freedom,
vibrational
rotational
translational,
its essence— energy
measured absolutely,
first by Kelvin.

So know when I say
I’m losing heat, I’m dropping
Kelvins, quantized packets
that could raise my voice
to jovial screaming, flail my arms
bobble my legs and work my tongue
around my lips, eyes lit like dynamite.

Temperature comes and goes
be careful not to lose your bonds,
double
triple
bonds building bridges
to your childhood,
your capacity to love.

We forget how to laugh
so hard we hurt our bellies
deafen our friends
and scare our lovers. We
forget that the public
is just full of people
and find our tongues
are slaves to only tasting.

So I just make sure I’m waiting
for that mechanical motion,
that disturbance to ride
through my every bond
that won’t be breaking
because I’m not rigid.
I’m making sure I’m ready
to vibrate, rotate
and *******
I’ll translate too.
I’m losing heat,
not degrees of freedom.

I’ll wake up to your
dead bunny breath
allergic to sunrise eyes
pillow plowed hair
and say darling—
because I know
you hate that word—
did you know it’s true
that I still love you?

You’ll turn to me and say,
you just rhymed true and you
using the word love
in between, and I’ll say
that’s true, but only
because I love you.

I’ll spend the morning
finding more words
to play with, because
I’ll never get sick of the way
your head and shoulders sway
dancing your happy dance.
You’ll turn to me and say,
you’re using repetition
like those sad jazzy blues,
and I’ll say that’s true,
but only because I love you.

By midday your eyes will have rolled
right out of their sockets, because
I made up the word sockettes
to make fun of your
size five feet. You’ll say
I love your words,
and I’ll say you love me—
the words just come for free.

By this time
we’ve agitated our ears
into the afternoon.  They look over
to our cheeks and eyes, and down to our lips
and complain: for the love of god
contain yourselves, but we only laugh harder
by this time
you, even before me.

We’ll keep on smiling—
ignoring our faces—
using phrases like
long into the night,
then lay down to
tasty tic-tac flavored tongues
waning crescent moon eyes
and pink frosting flavored hair

and just before drifting off
we’ll say,
did you know it’s true—
despite the day—
that I still love you?

Still winds catch silent and intent
sun beaten faces.
Dusty fingers effortlessly stretch
and find broken bits of sandstone.
Rapt eyes
never leave the primordial pool of sand
before gentle hands bestow return.
Like the two year old tosses pebbles
into the flush of a creek,
and the fifty year old throws
horseshoes to the metal marker,
we meditate.

An arm around you
fingers     laced in your hair
and hands     Tangled
    glances stick
  through     silence
Don’t look
  away    or the other
      will catch     Leg muscles
tense       from memory
  wrapped tightly
        calves   meld shins.  
     Souls
welded before
     first    greetings
and naked minds
                              meeting
I’ll  never      let you go
        echoes through
speaker’s     mesh
            audio to  my visual
and still you think
      you can        clean
this         mess?

God got bored
with blue,
and started stabbing
with white,
but forgot to stop,

the desert blue canvas
starved of brush
swallows paint.

Faded tan dunes
freckle orange
before flooding

Rust and blue
mix brown drowning
below grey sky smeared solid

green flecks
with lightning’s
silent flash.

I turn to the artist, and ask
will you paint thunder?

Surround me with luck,
because the cranes just flew in
and I want them to stay.

Save me some jawbreakers,
because I want to remember
being a kid in a candy store.

Collect my Popsicle sticks,
rock candy rods and bottle caps,
because I want to remember

every wine dipped evening,
flower grown morning
and poetry painted night

because, I only have five
seconds for the future,
but goldfish can remember

forever,
if you just decorate their bowl.

Oh  eager member,
                                       how you make a mess of things,
                                        turning long hugs into lawsuits,
                                        adding inches of distance
                                       between closer moments.
                                     You make getting up to leave
                                    a dance between the couch and door.
                                   Stealing what I’m sure is precious blood
                                 flow from my brain, you grow without
                               regards to your destination.  I’ll call you
                             rube, scrub, and newbie, ****** *****,
                           because you can make a mess
                        of even holding hands,
                     but most often,
                  just my pants.
              Sincerely,
          What should be blushing cheeks.

You,
girl who's starved of passion:
I disappear into you like
a drop of sweat in a sea of desert sand
finding the well beneath.

Buried river,
one drop from the surface boils you
turning artesian spring bringing
flowers to the desert missed longer
than forever could fathom.

New oasis,
let me bathe in your pools,
lounge in your shady breeze,
and muse over your every petal.
Bring me home in the growing seeds
I’ve sweat for you.

Dawning goddess,
don’t vanish or melt away,
and I’ll never let you dry,
forever sweating the water
I drink from your springs,
to find you again and again.

I'm going to run tonight.  
After the sun is down, the moon
has dipped into the starry sky's darkness
and the weekend fire pits are dancing with my shadow.
I'm going to breathe tonight,
deeply of the budding greens and mulching blacks
until my nostrils are painted with earth.  I'll let the sprinklers
drench every inch of my body until
I can flick the water from my hair
and all the world soaks through my chest
so my heart can beat against it.
I'm going to howl tonight,
from the very bottom of my breast with a smile on my face
legs never stopping to catch the air my lungs are surely missing
because tonight, the little boy, the lover, the beast—
tonight— they are the poet.

Sunrise between leaves
ignites neon green glowing—
exploding the sky

the graffiti sleeps
yellow waiting for their disk
of light like mixed paint

coffee ambrosia
wakes us with eggs and sausage
to reality

Clear Creek washes us
clean of sin or innocence
blank slates for a day

Beer, tears and smiles
meant for you, me, meant for us
fleck public places

laced hands and sweet talk
interrupt clever timers
launching adventure

Margaritas drown
studying sailors at sea,
setting new courses.

lamp light turns moon glow,
wet metal bench, a warm bed,
flip-flop footsteps, dance

I pray to goddess
the divine will sleep in peace
forgetting our sins

It tastes like the Sun’s warm syrup
dripping off dew glazed Marigolds
an hour after morning’s dawn.  

Rolling green plains toasted to perfection
smell sweet on the evanescent breeze
blowing over bakery fresh bread.

The new leaves in the trees quake
with noon’s convection, where
we’re sheltered by the shade

while we eat on our blanket
all day and never get full.

**** imagery.
What have the faded stars
ever done for me?

**** metaphor.
The cave that’s black
without my torch.

**** simile,
like ****** timing
and mistresses.

**** rhyming.
I’ll say to you,
just keep climbing.

**** alliteration.
I’ll illustrate irritability
inked in inevitability.

**** me, because
I love the stars
painted on the cavern walls,
mysterious midnight rendezvous,
digging my fingers into rock and dirt
like fish love to flirt with waterfalls,
but most of all I love to set
your sails atop my sea,
who pirates named,
our poetry.

Hollowed out so you could float,
but girl, I’m an ocean, never
believe your safe in a boat,
because your tiny raft
is empty, but could be filled
with the endless sea
of my humanity.

Sink into me.

What you think you need—
what you’ve cultivated into
flowers— I have as seeds,
can I not give you these things?
Surely they are yours to grow.
And I already know which flower
you’d find your favorite.

Sink into me.

Do you have a plan to find dry land?
Surely I will never take you there,
every wave cast from wind—
blown from your own lips—
waters the seeds you
spread yourself.

Sink into me.

Think your lover can paddle
you through my swells,
whirlpools and storms?
I will send my triangle,
her name Bermuda,
and girl, Three
is a Magic
Number

Silly girl, to think you’d float
across an ocean who dreams
of breaking dams, flooding
plains, drowning cities
and civilizations.  You will sink into me,
and be the ancient unforgettable beauty
of the sunken ship, lost at sea,
filled with gold, aging wine
and still currents,
never running cold.

Today you saved an earthworm
stranded by the rain.
You picked banana strings
from my soggy cereal,
and told the ducks by a frozen lake
not to worry, Spring’s sun
was dawning soon.

Today you were a hero.
You smiled upon waking,
worried I let my limbs go
numb and tingly, knowing
I wanted you to sleep,
and I just smiled—
I wouldn’t wake you
for the world.

Today, you are a hero,
because you buried love.
Today I’ll be a hero too
digging right beside you.
So today we are heroes,
fighting for our hearts
bracing for the hurt
barely breathing
passed the dirt.
Heroes.

I never even thought how hard
it’d be, to watch you with him.  
Silently observe him sip coffee
you might have made,
while he sits close enough to whisper
the lines I love through your hair
that’d catch on his lips,
if they weren’t silent.

It hadn’t occurred to me
that seeing your left hand,
dangle there next to his, empty,
could hurt more than if your
head was buried in his chest
which a week ago
stung like watching a bee
eviscerate itself in my palm.

I hadn’t realized I had no idea
how this would end.  Could I even
see myself sitting next to you in class,
holding your hand, whispering the words
just to taste your hair? I can dream
these things, like I’m dreaming now
but it’s just as hard to know this
as it was to know we
existed.

Time stirring in a sermon
stiffens slowly.  The Sun
slips through the window’s edges,
softly shaping foreign faces, peacefully
broken away from the world by birds playing
tag in greening trees, draped with skirts
sewn from the Sun’s golden glow.

Images black
without the back of eyelids
dreaming beyond our benches.

Time set and solid, I get up
and leave 100 closed eyes behind
and walk into a church to see
the same Sun’s beams trapped
inside stain-glass.  Frozen shards,
holding dust, warm each red pew.

I lay down in the emptiness
of the seats, the silence of the hymns,
absence of a pulpit,
and sleep.

Wake up ten times too early
thinking about you
like that’s what I
was born to do.
River island picnic,
sun on your face,
water in my toes.
Walking to class
with fiery eyes,
waiting an hour
to see them again.
Downing midday drinks,
walking home again—
with you— waiting
in a lobby to see
your smile rise
over the banister,
reading passed microphones,
just to you. Hands
not breaking contact
through snow or traffic,
head on my chest, safe
and simply warm.  I invite you
stay forever.

Then a tapping on the window.
Steel blue eyes turn to mercury  
and freeze with reality.

Surrealism knocks on the door
and walks in, drunk
and clueless.

Never have I held back
so much anger with a smile
and a handshake.

Drive home.
Lose reality.
Burn my own flesh

from the inside out with the torch
I swallowed, instead of trying
to melt mercury,
destroy a demon,
or reveal the truth.

It tends to be an awful mess.
I play with the glue, tape, staples
sutures, stitches, rivets, screws.
Bolts, nails, Band-Aids, string and
chewing gum
for as long as I can.

That’s why when you broke my fingers,
I didn’t say a word, I didn’t want you
to notice I hadn’t any fingers left—
when I was done
with my makeshift med kit.

That’s why when you bruised my ribs,
I only winced once, when you hammered
my toes, there were only two tears, when
you cracked my skull I stayed conscious to say
I’d be okay, but when you were done reshaping
everything, replacing every part of me and finally
turned on my heart, I let you take it, stitching only
what was left
of my lips together so I couldn’t scream.

Which was a mistake.  Of all the holes left
I wouldn’t repair, leaving my core hollow
was sure to collapse every single
*****-trapped, ghetto-rigged,
and half-*** bandaged
contraption I used
to replace
myself.

I wish I had a reason
to throw it in your face
          stab you to death with it
and put you in your place.

I wish you were filled with reason.
                         I would disembowel your thoughts,
            tear them to ******
                        oozing pieces,
but they’re already mush.

                      I wish there was a reason
you bashed me so with Nonsense,

             **** it— like cheating on your wife—
                                                           and say
                                                           by The Word,
that’s how I live my life.


I wish you’d see reason
             so I wouldn’t have to hack,
                                   smash and splatter,
cackle

rip and tear to get you back


to reality
waiting in the lobby.
A nice one, with magazines and plastic plants,
a fish tank filled with generous grants. A receptionist
with bleach blonde hair, a friend or two
who wouldn’t care that you’d gone crazy
and play it off, like you were joking.

I flew by a greening bush
hiding a bouquet of birds
and scared them all away,
save one,

her eyes— cool blue steel—
stared from the shade.
She fluttered out, falling
under my brooding wings,

her pupils—exposed
to the sun— burned away,
revealing flames hidden inside

which danced to the same orange
tune as her feathers, like the black hearts
of her eyes were meant to be eclipsed in fire

consuming every shadow of doubt
shrouding my thoughts

Will I wait and watch? Will I
hurt and hope? Brave bird, I whisper,
yes.

We are wine with cake
without calories, not
like icing or drunkenness,
but being frosted with intoxication.

We are stain glass caked
with sunbeams, holding light
suspended in time, like if right now,
just this once, it was standing still.

We are fragile but delicious,
like little Eiffel Tower replicas
made from buttery sugar— not hardened—
but the soft store bought kind without directions.

But I’m pretty sure we aren’t
a car window's fracture pattern
caked with cracks,
or shards of a beer bottle
in splattered birthday cake,
or even a recycling plant’s office celebration with catering.
Unless it was really good catering.

So to clarify…
you glass
me cake

I wanted to name her Kathryn,
because I knew the nickname Kat
was soon to follow.
Kat put kittens in my wife’s head
so she suggested we call her Kit.
Before long, there was a Kit-Kat
in my wife’s belly.

We painted kittens in the room,
cats cute and fearsome accompanied
the cradle, changing table and toys.

We took classes, and told our friends
we’d raise a fiery feline with the heart
of a lion, body of a cougar and head of a fox.

But a fox isn’t a cat they’d say, but we’d just laugh.
Kathryn will redefine feline, female, fiery, and fantastic.  

But Kit-Kat turned into candy.
We always said she’d be sweet,
like Halloween’s first treat
before you were filled to bursting,

into tears

over chocolate,

when it was gone.

trees twisted and tore with their branches
attempting to rip their roots away from the frigid wind
that whipped them and my wore-torn jacket
against my once warm chest.

i saw mid-march christmas-lights
waving on a  mailbox slowly change
from poorly timed holiday decorations,
to faded heart shaped bulbs— barely pink—
******* over choked filaments.

i didn’t look up at the stars
or down at my sneakers,
but stared into a dim lamp-lit alley
hiding dangerous characters,
who probably just needed  a light,
a smile, a fix.

But if this night
was read from a storybook’s pages
the wind would’ve wait for me
to wade through warm air,
faded hearts would breathe
their deepest red,
the stars would pulse to the rhythm
of crickets chirping who danced along
with my heartbeat’s thumping,
and the alley’s unlit cigarettes,

would glow before grins
painted on orange faces.

Your face, the moon
not unlike craters,
the mark
the scar
the fierce reminder
that there was impact
and after the fact,
a surge of dust
that left me.  Clean and free,
feeling better, like I could survive
another meteor shot to **** my heart’s desire.

It was raining on us, like a cartoon,
just us, and it was hard to hide
when we got outside, as it dumped.

Yet still, no one noticed— which was nice—
when we were sitting
soaking wet in class.

Clear the little storm cloud from your head.
The world doesn’t work that way,
but as sure as water— vapor or droplet—
falls from the laws of physics,
the pilot of a helicopter
could park his firefighting *** right on top of us.

I couldn’t blame him, we burned like wildfire,
but I can still hate him for shouting,

“Told ya it wouldn’t work out!”

stolen, sealed away
in hard stone walls
soft tissue pushes
with every pulse
for freedom

passion stains

drifting through darkness
suffocating
even the earthen prison

passion weeps.

A sun rises
a thousand lifetimes away

purple dawns
the caged heart’s crown.
Blackness retreats through cracks
that grow with every heartbeat’s pound

passion never sleeps,
it beats harder
bleeding while breaking
stone walls
carved from emptiness

after William the ******’s love poem to Ceslie*

like unfolding the sun. like
leaking lava-lamps. like
******* stars. like

ancient language lit
by flashlight.  like
candles warming
keyboards. like

whiskey soaked
eyes weeping.  like
emptiness that keeps
on hoping. like
sick of smiling

when it doesn’t make sense

Two hundred and forty pounds, and not an ounce of confidence.
I’ve got weight enough for two women, and a heart heavy enough for three,
but I’m still waiting for the one.

Not a single date to my name, with Senior Prom a week away.  
What happened next, the blind man who walked into The *** of Gold
called miraculous.

It was five feet, four inches, one hundred and twenty pounds of she’s too
good for me.  Miss Horizon High School: the past star of my silent affections.
I cue my minstrels as the fairy tale begins:  

First it was the ‘yes’, followed by a date that ended with a fuzzy crown.
Then it was a quiet love that lived in awkward poems, freed from text
by her appreciation.

Graduation came, the two of us on stage, Valedictorians bringing in the future,
helping turn the page.  Life was like a book, and I the people’s king, the
man who’d conquered everything.

I knew this more than I knew myself, I knew it better than anything
I’d  learned from life.  I was surer than any man had ever been
that this was God.  He exists, and He loves me.

When I’d fall God would catch me, just so I could keep on jumping from
the tree to see if I could fly.  This feeling was His gift, and as a humble man,
I thanked him, instead of her.

Amputated human beings, only
gears, nuts and bolts that make up
the machine.  Oh woe, who are we
post industrialization

but the first positive proton
to survive its opposite, the first
fiery bursts of fusion
to breathe light into blackness.
The first hydrogen atom
to find its partner, the first
galaxies to swirl and dance
to gravity’s tune.   We are
the Earth’s first rain, mud puddle
and microbe. The first furry mammal
and the last dinosaur.

We are the last breath of humanity,
the Sun’s last ray of visible light,
the first collision of galaxies
and the last supernova.

We are the last breath of the universe
the silent second before heat death.

We— not humanity, not Americans, or any nationality, not **** sapiens but we, the consciousness that exists to say the universe knows itself— are the widest rings in a ripple, riding waves set into motion over 13 billion years ago.

I don’t need you,
last time I checked,
there were two lungs
     in my thoracic cavity,
a heart that pumps fluid
     at 2.13 psig,
eyes that guide fingers
with forks to my mouth,
     and feet that parked me
     in front of the food
     in the first place…

…So I started popping
one of your lungs—with that fork—
so I could help you breath,
clamping arteries
and ventricles, poking out
an eye and cutting off
your feet, but
that’s a lot of work

breathing, pumping,
seeing and walking
for two.
You know what,
     I’m gonna go try the dip.

I wanted to cry
but couldn't—22 year old American male—
so I laced up running shoes
no jacket
just shorts
12 degree punishment.

I needed to get away
from a silent phone,
an empty inbox
so I could scream out my coward

sprinting over hills
in the full moon's
telling light.
I try to curdle blood
but choke

on vocal cords
bolted in place
by modern modesty

too scared
to sound my barbaric yawp
I yelp
like a coyote

the size of a wolf pup
that only has breath enough
for half a call.

I stop to catch the wind
and with it
howl over and over

again and again
until I scream,
freezing every heartbeat
within earshot.
A single tear
drops on the fire.

Breathing heavier now
in the moon's empty landscape
I begin dragging my feet
slowly toward the agony of a silent phone
and an empty inbox, trying to calm myself
because one tear is not enough.