If today,
To grow
We must destroy
If to feast
We must parasite
Or to plant seeds
We must plow down

I'll gladly sit a moment
In sweet sunlight
And soak her up sat still,
For once.

2:00am
***** sheets
A locked up jaw
And dread-dried-joy

I miss you from the future
As in, the time ahead bleeds into now
As in, the space apart balloons from here
As in, these minutes will soon be weeks and maybe someday years.

Someday will I see you and not know who you are?
Your bearded face, your grown-up heart?
Once we were Gemini but then we could be strangers.
For years we blossomed side by side,
Now your fern and my oak have been planted far apart.
And I fear we'll forget
we were saplings in the same ***.
For just a moment,
Family.

That soil
From which we grew.
And to which we will return.
To stardust.
To twinkle.
And tidal pool soup.

That soil
Our always mother
who will take us back
to bark.
To worms.
And stars.

Such dusty wings,
Crackling spines.
Such musty smells
Just as I remember.
Though perhaps a little older,
As I am older.
Perhaps left behind,
As I left them there.

It's always here,
In the loud, long nothings.
Always in the cramped quarters
With my legs woven,
All stiff and wound up like some morose marionette.
I guess that's where the words grow.

I like to imagine cars are horses
Running free, wind spirits of the open plains
Not machines.
I like to imagine I'm some great poet,
Inky pleasures flowing from mind to parchment.
Not just me.

I'm always imagining.
Especially here.
Imagining myself,
Imagining people notice me.
I don't much care how.
I imagine because it's harmless
And mine alone to taste and to have.
And I don't wish my imaginings were real.
For I cannot own experiences,
Only fantasies.

It's always here that I find myself tangled tight,
Sewn and enshrouded in words and thoughts and imaginings.
Maybe it's the dark or the late or the loud or the long
Or the routine
Or the nothing,
But it's always here that I find myself somewhere else.
Always here that I tie it all together, somehow.

It's just a moment
A crinkly smile
An innocent thought,
About babies or ambitions,
And suddenly I'm old,
Suddenly I crinkle.
I watch myself crack slowly,
No wait--all too fast.
Suddenly it's empty, as it was before
But I can't remember
It must have slipped my mind.
What does nothing feel like?
Like sleep or pointless thought?
Is it rice cakes or white or black,
Or all those words unsaid?
I'll never know what nothing is.
Not even when I'm dead.
Nothing comes and nothing leaves
The nothingness again.

It isn't names that brings me there,
Or tombs or words or history,
It's when I blink and see before me,
Me, but crinkly.
Me, but looking back on the supple face of now,
Looking back and seeing the story from the other end,
And standing in the epilogue
All in a single blink.

I see so much, and hear so much
I smell, touch, I taste and fear
And love and hate and joke so much
It should have killed me
Made my hardware overheat,
Made me want the nothing.

But even when I see her,
(Me, but crinkly)
I know she's laughed and cried much more,
And I'm glad I gave her the chance