sore eyes
and sore everything else
looked at

they said you were enchanting and I could see your smile from a thousand miles away. that's what kept me going. that smile of a thousand miles. enchanted I rode across the spaces never stopping to look backwards. that smile of a thousand miles kept me focussed. and when close enough to stop travelling I sat and contemplated you forever.

I walked and walked, until I was nearly running;
As if I could match the pace inside my head
And as if I could leave these racing thoughts
Behind me; that calm would come and that,
As I raced frantically on, they would shed
As the pounds dropping from my waist.

I let my hands turn to ice, and I prayed
That the cold chill would creep inside,
And numb my heart as before; that I could
Freeze all these dark desires, and the ache
In my limbs would comfort me; and once
Again I'd find freedom in the empty air.

within me and through me
around above and below me
I no longer wish to escape
to a life of non-existence
To run and hide in the
city or suburbia
where you would find me out
and lead me back to the desert

We sailed counter-clockwise
Through black water and pumpkin sprees,
Dangling footnotes of bookend conversations
The closest thing to clarity in speech--
But we understood the solar flares and the sunspots
And when our bodies sank into dank swampy muck,
There we were in cold moonlight
Naked and shivering and sweet, the whole balance
Of cosmic radiation flung skyward, like
It was all right then, it was all right now, everything is
Like in that movie we watched apart but
Somehow also didn’t, like how the time I tripped
On that drug you were on, my friends and I burnt our fingers
Making stupid fortune cookies
All so contrived, but the morning before the pumpkin sprees
I found a fortune on the ground that didn’t even come from my cookie
So, like it asked me to, I took a chance
And discovered that it wasn’t just my chance to take, cuz
There we were scrubbing our legs in bathroom sinks and showers
Trying to clear the muck away from skin and hair but the dirt
Was so persistent, and the persistence
Was so telling… Regardless
Of how many green globules of antibacterial soap
We squirted onto our legs, the world just wasn’t going to get clean, I mean
The world just lends itself to filth, and sometimes
You have to set the soap down and cry, or walk outside
To see the sunrise
Over the distant hazy hills,
The sunspots and solar flares
All suddenly laughable
Despite their previous profundity.
And even if it wasn’t just my chance to take,
Still,
I’m glad I picked that fortune up off the street and
Read it quietly to myself, standing there with countless
People passing by.

Maybe that is why
I don't cry
when to my dear ones
I bid goodbye

when the sponge gets too heavy
squeeze out a poem