It was a hot day when we departed,
A fuming day in the land of Ashes,
Hazy from the smoke of a fire three towns over.
All day felt like sunset.
Beautiful.
Inescapable.
A thick air and a thick knot in my stomach that began to unweave itself as we let go of each other.
Years of twisting and intertwining fibers
wrenching and writhing away from their shared center.

Warm, overwhelming, I'm-going-to-be-sick feeling.

Breathing deep lungfuls of haze and hot air.
Filling up the painful places in my body.
Exhaling all the life you breathed into me over so long.
Nothing to do but embrace a slow and sweetly inevitable
death and rebirth process.
My god it hurts.
Nothing to be done besides hurt.
Cry a little. Just to cool down my flustered cheeks.
Nothing to be done besides
feel the emptiness that has formed between us,
and gaze into the abyss beneath the burning bridge.
Feel the knots unformed in the safety rope round our waists.
Orbiting without a tether.
Lovely little dreams of freedom.
Infinite frictionless momentum.
Eventually.

I'd like to enjoy the feeling of freedom.
Of release.
Of forgiveness.
But death is always painful, even as it frees us from suffering.

There is a terrible storm raging outside
and I am here, and I am alive.

My skin is dry and cracked and bleeds from the smallest friction
and I am here, and my body works to replace the forsaken flakes,
and I am alive, and feelings the pain of touch.

I have valued myself, yet again, dependent upon the reception of another who I cannot speak to, or speak of, for no one quite understands obsession and self-love as two suits of the same card.
and I am here. and I suffer. and I quell screams. And I stew a soup deep inside that could feed millions of children whose parents didn't want them, who weren't ready, or who wanted them too much for selfish reasons. I bring a ladle to my lips every few weeks to test the seasoning. I burn the taste buds off my tongue every time. I keep the fire going.

and I am alive, underneath all of this callous and scar tissue, pointing out the stars that still our myths depend on for direction, ******* in sugar like a hummingbird whose body has grown too fat for its wings, the energy needs to move this bloated body growing ever higher.

i still sing to myself, for comfort and joy.
i still listen for familiar sounds to remind me of the stories I've told.
i still dream.
I'm still me.
screaming inside
hoping to be heard
lonely from being inside myself so long.
waiting for the lock to rust and break.

I felt trapped in an endless single moment of time.
Nothing was real except the deafening silence of the dynamic between my mother and father and the lie of a white picket fence we had been gritting and grinning our teeth to trick the world into building for us.
Every thing slipped slowly backward, as in a dream of falling down hill, not quite real enough to feel the fall, but not grounded enough to move away.
If it were not for daily walks in the nearby almond orchard, I would Not have known that the grass still grew in the spring. I forgot that the spiders still built webs that were taken down each new rain. I forgot that the bees were kept, and that people were fighting addiction in order to make it home to see their nephews.
I found freedom in the silence at some point. A sandbox world for me to wander in, no real consequences to my actions. It was a loneliness like the womb. Eventually I tried to escape. Many escape attempts. How many miles put between me and that room? How many cars busted down on the side of the road, running away from home. I discovered new worlds I never knew could exist. I watched the leaves turn in different biomes. I made love to other lonely people, unhappy and afraid of the world and their place in it,
not when we were together though.
together we were infinite, real, in awe of the fact that we could be so
unmasked.
naked and unafraid.

I watched the masks of my parents relationship deteriorate with
the advent of disease and age.
I watched the pain and patterns of abandoning I had felt my whole life play out in their pantomime before me, day after wretched day.

I stared at a wall.
I slept with my guitar.
I slept with more lonely people with perfect hearts.
I invested in the means to transmute all these...feelings...into art, audiovisual storytelling, and physical creativity.
And once I had built a temple to my pain,
I boarded the doors and windows. I never went inside.
I just sat on the stoop, obsessively trying to work out all of the world's problems- my problems as an inextricable part of the world- by thinking.
If I could just strategize a way to never get hurt,
Then I wouldn't need to deal with the inconvenience of pain.
If I could concoct a cocktail of constant cope,
I could cruise forever without feeling the ocean
of space
between us
all.

If it were not for the orchard, I would have forgotten that frost formed on the ground. Even with the endlessly straight rows of trees, the square grid of houses, and the box-like hospital next door...a tiny twig out of place or a clover, remembered me that there is wild growth, that I am wild growth, unfettered and untethered by the paltry attempts at geoscaping.

Inland, I remember how vast the ocean is.



how vast




the space







between






us











all









and







­
still









still













still











Inland, I yearn for the ocean.
Remembering that I have always felt most free in the water.

This is an ever-refreshing circle of
long for-love-attach-suffer for

and when I eat food
they are the blandest meals
for I must avoid any taste of salt
because salt tastes like you...
and when I recall
how sweet
you are
I hurt


and I should not hurt.

if I don't hurt, i will not be deserted, and then i will not hurt.
circle logic.

at least it has a shape.
Otherwise, what form does a life take?
What sense does this world make?
And so, i stay, inside the circuit,
because I have not learned to lead myself away
and if I were to learn that I love myself,
and that I cause this hurt to myself,
I don't know how I could ever forgive me.

There's a hole in my stomach(heart)
Dear Eliza
Dear Eliza
There's a hole in my stomach(heart)
Where I never got enough love.

There's a storm in my city(psyche)
Dear Eliza
Dear Eliza
There's a storm in my city(psyche)
and the streets(thoughts) tend to flood.

Can you weather this weather?
Dear Eliza
Dear Eliza
Can you weather this weather
If your head stays above?


How long can you tread water?
I know you swim better than I.
Point of pride.
Pride of endurance.
Enduring exhaustion.
Exhausted and lost and
honestly just
broke
at the wishing well
dreaming of the deluge
the healing water that will wash away the wounds
and make us whole again.
if only I had a penny...

You said to me
I can weather your storm
but not if it drowns me

or maybe
I can weather your storm
but not if it drowns out mine.

I don't remember exactly the phrasing.
Maybe because the water was already drowning you out.

You don't have to shout.

No matter how loud my insides are screaming
I will always open ears like basins
larger than mouths like calderas
to find a way back to listening.
I will open heart like valleys
bigger than hurt like dams
To hold for you a space that's safe for swimming.

heart(stomach)
stays open
because
the hole  
is too big
to close

when you pass through the other side
every time
a new piece of you stays
for a while
my new favorite chapter
in endless
series

You don't have to shout
but
you may scream as loud as you need,
and
I will hear every furious decibel
and
understand it as music.

Fish
in a pond

in a room in the sky

pond is beginning to dry.


Squirrel in a
Tree
in a park

in a town that is old

after dark
the city is cold.


pond .
**** .
little
lights
in
her eyes
teach me to hum

darkest nights
coldest lungs
barely hearing
what is sung

i have become
wretched and numb

abhorrent to face
incredibly small, insignificant
unremembered
a discarded cassette

sometimes, i can laugh at it
how silly to be
powerless
and wrong
worse than *** sandwich, **** flan switch

"giggle"
<spoken in an empty room repeatedly
   <for forty two days
     <with no bathroom breaks and
       <no bathroom humor

words may pass so fast they become
bee *** and glass
                       breaks
a loving body falls fifty six stories to the ground
                              telling sixty two stories of how i met you
                              to seven closest companions
                                                          concretizing
every
little
metafloor

koi meets squirrel
head over hurl
floored.

floor 56 look out at the skyline isn't it beautiful? look at the lights!
not as beautiful as you dear.
oh stop.
no really, they make your eyes look all shiny. it's amazing.
well we're in the Center of the city after all.

I wouldn't Trade this for the World.


in the sea
there are
plenty
of fishes
and one
gasping
gilled
breath
not of the earth
but someday

to feel the hard ground underneath,
walk among
                     the bright lights                 and
                            cold stares                    of
                            calloused lovers
steps upon cold concrete
in tempo allegro
holding on
to a hum
from very good
one

the song about            
when you remembered
to come back for me
and i remembered
          how to breathe...

When you wake up
do you feel good?
do you feel rested?

do you remember what it felt like
to wake up
contented?
with peace in mind?

or do you
Rise
stand in the rain
let it soak you to the bone
and wonder why
your skeleton shakes

Run
to every adjacent address
asking direction to where you live
please can I borrow a reminder
of a time when
i remembered to rest

Fall
asleep
to the chirping chorus of lost birds
flashing emergency lights through the window
as your neighbor whose name you can't recall
is rushed to a holding cell hospital
until a room opens up in the great river
and they return home

what would happen if you rested?
would you forget,
everyone
whose name you can't recall
who receive your thoughts and prayers
who look up at you with fearful eyes wishing
you had the power
to stop
and say hello?