Today, clouds were like oases
filled with unoriginal metaphors;
cliche dreams of falling through
endless sky, building puzzles
on top of skyscrapers, but
never really getting enough shade
because the sun is just too **** bright.
Today, the mind wore shoes
without socks, and walked up
and down the same tired hallway
again and again
not sure what
to say
or if saying anything is
what really matters.
Saying seems to beget
assumed meanings in between
white, vacant, empty lines.
And so today is a happy day
because, like the sky,
it is empty;
free from bad things
and good things.
I think I'll sit here awhile
and forget any of this ever happened.

Today felt like a clandestine speakeasy,
smoke in the air warmed spirits
as we pour glasses of burgundy wine
and dance with our arms around each other,
our noses touch occasionally to celebrate
the occasion.
Today, emotions trickled up to the eyes
like a fountain of some sort
wondering if it’s love
or if it’s pain. And instead of tears I hear
laughter and sad jokes.
Tinges of red and brown around the edges;
coffee stains that remind me
of a me that never will be.

Today, I hesitate, nothing new,
to write, but I write anyway because then,
I'm doing something. Or rather, looking
like I'm doing something. All
caught up in the identity because it feels
better to have one around these people.
Today, the sun sifts through layers of
silky haze built by pleasant laughter,
over-told stories, and aged brick-work.
I feel like choking on its thickness.
Moving through these thoughts feels more
like swimming blind.
Today, I remember when I thought poetry
ought to be funny.

Today, tired eyes floated across light blue
college-ruled lines and down heavily waxed
floors. Rooms smelled like paper and plastic
as the dew dripped from the leaves in
the golden sunrise.
Today emerged into cold ankles and warm feet
on the carpet; learning how to dance a
mental waltz, from poetry to metaphorical
symmetry. Finding the strings and searching
for their ends, I pull one to see what I will
discover, but they are just strings
and I am just tired.

Today, I avoid yet another poem because
the hours have vanished and waking felt
more like dreaming, like a leaf, a burst of color,
floating slowly to the ground
and it wasn’t until I sensed the cold,
dark earth beneath me that I arose from
my slumber and entered into one more
of these lonely, forgotten days.
Today was as oblivious as a sea turtle
when I awoke,
groggy and sore, standing in the chilly
eastern breeze. I turned away from the
window as the sun sank
into the thin, shaky trees.
And today, I approached inspiration but found
myself falling, again, into an endless pit
of dreams without endings, and hopes without
grounding. I stumbled through a swamp
of doubt and lack of faith. All around me
inspiration appeared like a phantasm;
only visible from out of the
edge of my vision.
All until I fell face-down in the mud
and gave up
again.

Today asked open-ended questions
but I didn’t answer, I was wearing
yellow sunglasses,
and I couldn’t see
the unalterable reality of the situation.
Today, truth was not analyzed, it was
deflected
to the other side of the net
and I spent minutes
precious minutes, wondering:
Which way am I going?
Do I have enough time?
How long will it take?
Until I felt like I was spinning in circles
stepping on poetry
like rotten apples,
decomposing at my feet.
Today, tall grass laughed
as I moved further into the
dark, unsettling tunnel;
not looking back.

Today, the sun felt like warm aluminum
pressing against my skin, as I inhaled
the glare off his sunglasses, and the tsk
as she smirked. And as I took that overly
metaphorical ride home, I felt
the crunch under foot as I
stepped into a navy-blue forest,
where the birds sing as often as the sun shines
and I realize that I never really left this place
because even when I return I am
still trying to find the exit.
And I am
tired of being lost, even if I’m not going
in circles. Tired of reflecting on the nature
of reality, when I can’t even see the sky.
Tired, but not tired enough to quit moving;
not tired enough to give up the feeling of
sap on my fingers, and dew drops on my legs.
Not tired enough, even though I wonder,
when I secretly know the answer,
who planted these seeds that gave birth to
all these trees. And if they will fall
before I find my way out.

Today I continued through the forest, unaware
that I wasn’t breathing right. And so I stopped
at a large, thick tree, and leaned up
against the wet, moss-covered trunk
thirsty for a glass of awareness. I knelt
and pressed my face into the mulch and dirt
so I could breath in the earth,
but all I smelled was dust.
Today, the navy-blue forest felt colder
but I felt warmer. I saw a crow, perched high
up on a branch, and I called out to him.
And as he flew
down to meet me, I opened my eyes.
I had tripped on a wire made of disturbing
disheartening, dismaying feelings.
But I was too tired, too vacant, to cry.
I stood up, brushed off my jeans,
and continued onward.

Today, moss felt like felt on my fingers
as I stretched my hands on the nearest tree
and watched as the clouds formed and vanished
over the small, swampy lake. I sat at the edge,
just beyond the edge of the water, and stared
without focus. The crow landed on the
branch above me and cawed deliberately and I
silently wished I could echo his sentiment.
Today turned into a respite from the forest
that I had entered to rest;
an escape from an escape.
And as I smell the breeze off the lake, I
hide my recognition of the anesthesia in the air
because I like the sun on my face,
the wood-chips pressing into my palms, the
dirt in between my toes.
And as my head drifts back down to the ground
my eyes rolling back
I smile momentarily, wondering
but not bothering to care, because
I can’t.

Today crawled like a spider on a web with
thin, pointed legs like needles
in my skin, administered by a bad acupuncturist.
I find myself continually
continuing on an unmarked road
with headphones on my ears buzzing to the noise
of soft tin and electrical Umph and Ah; messin
with the thin little hairs on my scratchy head.
Today, I see the world spinning, replacing that
familiar light blue above me, a panorama of all
that I don’t reach out for, that I tell myself has
been stripped out of arm’s reach.
I sit by the tall tree and mope again and again,
hoping someone will pass by. Maybe I wish
someone would join me in this lonely forest,
more than I wish
I could leave.
Today, I end a poem like my eyelids,
with forceful and unconditional determination
and I wonder how heavy they will be when I rise
the next morning, weighed down by the force
of pain that has emerged, anthropomorphized,
from the depths of my body, my mind, my soul.
Weakness scares me more than death, because
it consumes me like a chill running through my bones
and suddenly I lose that all powerful
separation between you
and me.
Today, that separation sits as a knife in my chest.
Today, is not much different than many days.

Today, I learn about shadows as I pass
underneath the mammoth highways, flying over
fields of tall grass and bumbly weeds;
walls don’t hold them back because they
didn’t build them.
Today, I sit and listen carefully
as future moments begin to whisper
stories of their arrival, but still
too many questions begging to be asked
and too many answers begging to be kept
secret. I whisper in a strangers ear, and she
becomes a fellow rabbit in the enchanted forest
where we play gin and talk business,
while the young couple playing chess a few
tables down, go cross-eyed from the concentration.
Today I reflect on an idea,
that playing chess with someone you’re afraid to love
has nothing to do with the pieces on the board.

Today a dense fog drifted over my mind and
behind my pupils, my breath
swam through it as I passed blindly over the
moist cracks in the sidewalk. And
no matter how hard I focused, my
lungs still felt heavy and my heart
still raced, and my legs
couldn’t keep themselves
from stumbling on the thoughts that
flickered uncontrollably through my mind.
Today, I threw my hands at the
gates of never-never land
desperate to escape, even if I cannot see
the other side, even if these gates
are made of nothing but my own
fear.
I want to scream, ”I AM AN EMOTIONAL MAN,”
but there would be no one to hear me but
the squirrel, confusing the utility pole for a tree as I pass by.
Today, snippets of joy and confusion and
longing slip in front of my retinas like
water particles suspended in air.
I can feel the emptiness burn
like a fire within my core,
the void that I confuse for hunger.
Today, my eyes see nothing
but the tenderness that lays softly upon my heart,
the longing for
inner-peace that laces my every breath, and the
yes, maybe, someday, love, that
echoes in my every footstep.

Among the graces of orchard kings,
we sit like moonlight on a field of grain.

In violet beams of
sky-burst
bright
in the evening,
the warriors dance to beats of lives saved and lives lost,
to beats of
foot on
    foot on,
pounding the ground rock soil.

Again they dance,
waving hands through swarms of fire,
    light,
fire;
flying home to forest swamps in the no-light.

Child's laughter bursts as smoke from a pine cone,
    frizz-pop,
and they alight,
from guilty blamelessnesses
to a painfully relieving smolder of the
    seh-
the sel-

        ego-self.

Still they dance with eyes closed,
their raised elbows bent, rotating their bodies like planets
as we revolve around this great giant beast of,
    monster of,
deliverance and,
compassion and,
movement and,
all things in this universe that could ever be so bright and fruitful.

You are my morning,
you are my evening,
you are my night-time dreaming
     reflection in the mirage on the horizon.

Sleep now,
as your heroes dance silently around your sibling star,
beat,
    beat
the foot on,
    foot on;

pounding the ground where you sleep.

Today, warm radiator days said goodbye
to tired prickly feet in the morning.
The sun rose, like a flowering reminder
of the passing of time, the endings of
sentences, lives, worlds.
Today, meaning
came to mortality as sun rays penetrated
concrete ceilings and fluorescent
over-exposure.
Mortality drank life from
a goblet, wine for the eternal spirit.
More, more wine.
And in it all, grapes, the artist's finest oil paints
laid out as a cornucopia of
hope, and faith, and vigor.
Today, the future is bright, as I squint walking
into the sun, while silent rage rests on the
glistening misty droplets in my footsteps. Thinking,
brooding, the rage dissolves in the light, new roads
replace old ones as passing cars brush the
dirt of the past into the street gutters.

Miniature storms rolled by today
as trees, like dry forks,
stood in shock, frozen
by the universal constant.
Changing winds like hands at
a poker table asked the green
beneath to rise up once again,
like a steam awakening from a
dream, so that it may return
to mud footprints,
and shell-less beaches.
Questions, like red-pepper,
stung the opportunities
for hopeful promises and confident,
nonchalant retorts, the real poisons,
to arise; drawing the eye astray,
into doubt, regret, distrust,
truth.
Today, stories, drifting in and out of meaning,
wondered if meaning has meaning, if
meaning
is important.
Today
it isn't.
Today, the story is a memory,
an assumption, a supposition. It is
in fact, a misty vapor that compels the
heart forward, and the mind backward
until the body has become a storm.
Today, I laid in the grass as
the raindrops of my own personal
spring drenched me in green
and suddenly,
I felt change
rising beneath me.

Today, heels dug in to dirt like cleats,
while hands, blistered from tension, pulled
and fought, in a tug
of war.
A tug of absolute, insurmountable certainty
that only the future could possess.
A tug, like the final pull of the starter
cord before the engine bursts forth
with new life; animating lost spirits
like breath to dying coals.
Today, the cold wind beckoned sharp-edged shadows
and splintered lumber
to meet like secret lovers,
toes squishing in soft, frosty soil,
knocking dead limbs off trees, while
white curtains
dancing in the shade of the north-east
in the afternoon
looked out at the bland horizon
and saw birds coming home.

tulips rise early
wind, like ice-shards to nose-hairs
future could be bleak

Marian took her heel, flushed with
the sense as dice thrown out of the
cup. She was proud to sell it to
capitalist bull snakes in their own insane
beliefs. There was a bright flash

    Day and night
    Decent and well-educated

Girls and women into existence beyond
dispute, a unique inalienable individual
but in spite of the newness of these. Marian
took her heel. Took her heel into a very deep
capacity to emerge from narcissism, to where
additional facts can be found.

The day after every recorded European
exploration, bullsnakes made nice pets.

Today, tempers rose like the winds
before a storm, but the birds got real quiet and
hushed the squirrels. The leaves shuttered
as if deep in a terrifying dream. Meanwhile,
all around, the world went along peacefully.
Never mind leaf-dreams,
they cannot see the future, only the present.
A storm passes without note; strike three and
I’m out in the fresh cut-lawn air, feeling
like there is nothing else to do, but there is.
Today, I feel like an insect, greedy
for the nectar, even when I smell the insecticide.
I resurrect myself in the goodbyes, the subtle
painless endings, like saying goodbye to the wind.
Today, I tried and tried to make sense
of something I wasn’t meant to understand, and when
I started writing it all down, all I got was black
lines in pasty silicon soup. Insight existed,
but I rushed by too quickly to pay
attention to the weight of the matter.
Today, I passed a tree and a giant branch fell,
while the air stood still. A girl passed on her bike,
the branch hit the ground as I fell into the wind.

Today, poetry means nothing
as the sun sets, the day
ends, metaphors pass on
the meaning of nothing, and the
meaninglessness of grasping, of
reaching, and trying to get one’s
fingers around it.
Today, the universe is
elusive, hard to put my
finger on, like trying to find
the significance of an old
story; it disappears and
reappears like a mirage even
though, all the while, my heart is
fluttering and aching, passion
dripping from it like saliva, as
I sit, calmly perplexed by this
inner turbulence.

Today, I am a cyborg attached
to a computer by a thick cord
that comes out of my wrist.
I can feel the metal in my arm,
the little divots
that allow it to bend freely
as I twist and move. Inside the cord,
wires spiral into me, around my spine
and into my stomach.
I feel like a rebellious zombie, in
the way I smile whole-heartedly
at the kids in the stroller, and the old lady
reaching for two pennies in her purse.
Soup, they all seem to be making,
but I’m just standing here
punching in numbers and
asking the same questions, wondering
whether the universe needs the receipt
or if I should recycle it.

Today I rose from bed and
looked out of my ***** window and
saw a tiny slice of the moon,
drifting towards the horizon as the sun,
as if stretching its tired arms, opened its
eyes to the achy, cold trees, and weary
night-folk. And quietly, peacefully, I
entered the day with the same brightness
I had seen in the sky from my window,
as I filled my cup with tea.
Minutes passed like grains of dirt on the ground
as I flew over them on two rubber wheels,
accomplishment was taken as it came, one pebble
at a time.
And today, for once, when I saw the smile
on that beautiful face and my heart filled,
I held the joy I despised so much
in acceptance and joy for the moment,
instead of crushing it.
One day, the dreams I conjure in the
light of noon will be reality,
memories to be forgotten
because they haven't the opportunity
to exist yet.

Today shrugged
in total acceptance
for the arising,
never ending process
of confusion
and bewilderment
and awe.
Leaves tossed
their bright orange bodies
over the blacktop,
and warm, blue sky,
as I took a sip of tea
warming my chest to the idea
of openness;
to the prospect
of a present that is
entirely out of my control.

Today opened like a fresh wound.
And as fleas and spiders of malaise and
listlessness slinked near the ****,
I could feel
their tiny legs tickling my skin.
And even though
the wound was as temporary as a mirage,
it was still equally as debilitating.
And so I tripped feebly
through the day,
biding my time with an inner calm
that was really something more like
exhaustion.
But today, something a little,
tiny bit,
like love
stood like poles keeping me on my feet,
but it was more like longing,
like dreaming of winter
when the heat of summer
remains a solid, unwavering truth.
Today, I was a lost leaf tossing in the wind
to the whims of my heart's
incomprehensible, but easily repressible,
ache. And when it all came to a stop,
I could almost taste
the metal of the grate, as cold water
rushed against me,
and into the storm drain below.

Today, the hot sun baked the orange leaves
like toast on the lush over-grown grass while
I meditated on indifference,
apathy amalgamated with acceptance, filling
my heart and chest with a confusion
about whether I should even care
whether it's worth my time
whether I even have the courage.
And as the ground beneath me rose and fell
cars passing me like stars, as I weaved my way
back into the darkness, I remembered
that more often than I ever admit
I was the peahen in Darwin's
big book, admiring those feathers;
the soft, light skin, the blue eyes,
the beautiful smile;
all hauntingly forbidden.
Because, when you've gone
so many days without water,
and the desert isn't getting any smaller,
perhaps it's just easier to lie down
and remember the orange leaves
on the green grass
beneath the empty trees.
Today, I remember, and die;
unable to forget how long
I've been dehydrated.

Poetry appears as thin threads of smoke
off the tip of a candle's burnt wik, as
hot wax sticks to the hairs on
the back of my hand while the blood
of my pen is drawn across the page and
my irritation is hidden
behind a screen of fog; rain pounds,
trying to break down these walls
and today,
I grab a lock of hair and pull
but I don't wince,
my mind has dissolved into absence for
a moment and though I smile,
the smoke in my eyes
makes it impossible to hear.

Today was like clean paper, void of marks;
of productivity waiting to happen.

I decided to write a poem a day, but
why write poetry when it becomes mediocre, unless
that's like asking, "You know, why live today?
Because I just woke up to another ordinary,
uninspired day, and I am feeling mighty trite,
in a conventional, hackneyed and tired kind of way."
I say to myself, "****,
the air smells like moistness and rotting leaves;
but it wouldn't be the first time."
No, see, this wouldn't be the first time
that I sit to the tune of spinning discs inside of
high-tech boxes, while the windows are
so dark they reflect my white t-shirt and pink skin.
I write poetry tonight, today, for no apparent
reason. Ooh. Maybe I'll inspire somebody; maybe
someone else feels like this; maybe I'm just feeling
sorry for myself, but this is the poem I've written.
And so, today I must sit, irritated, at my desk
and look at these useless words and decide
that today, I have written one more.
Today, I have lived one more
day.

Today, I am finally free
of what used to be
dead vine around my ankles.
I remember
how I would walk
into the vision ahead,
hazy and blurry, like
the cold autum breeze
after the sun has set, like
the few damp leaves
melting as I step on them, softening
the edges of a dream, this dream
that is the present moment.
Today, I watch the eastern
horizon fade as the sun sets,
calmly, at my back. And I breath,
without hesitation, the air of peace,
the air of openness, the
air of someday-real-love. Today, I
smell the fireplaces
as the dog plants two
kisses on my cheek. And I look
up at the dark blue sky and, today;
Today, it's alright.

Today, the sun sits at ease
while the clouds
play like children suspended in time,
carefree and visceral; the thought lifts
my feet as I step over the deadened grass.
Poetry and downtempo rhythms
carve into me as if I were
wood, and I melt into awe, transported
back in time a thousand years, where
wherefore is the question,
as it has always been, for millennia, and
To Be is wiped away like a fresh smudge.
Today, I meet a man with so much
hatred, he looks like any other
man on the street. And Today,
when I see him die, not ten minutes
later, when neon lights the streets
and women walk cross-legged in
the arms of their partners. I see him
walk off the stage and smile. Today,
I salute him as I glance briefly
at the newly darkened
sky. The times to come
may his likeness, his
visage, become the expression of
my own dreams, expanding like
a flowers last bloom
before the cold winter's night.

Today, I got sick of asking all these questions and
so I sat down on a grey cushioned hotel chair
among a group of bodies filled, like mugs to the top,
with honesty and sadness and loudness. Still, I was sick
of wondering the answers because all
that I seem to want anymore is oblivion. I think
therefore I am forced to suffer with the idea
of a self, floating continuously like the
fog on a stage as it drifts between the heads of
the audience members and into the ventilation.
Today, I shiver in the Autumn air, acting out
a withdrawal from
satisfying similes for codependence,
when I know that
salmon swimming up stream are bigger men
than I am.
And when the blades of grass quiver and freeze
in the cold blue morning dew,
I will think about poetry and sigh.
Even though my soul's silver blood runs and dances
into the arms of camaraderie, I fear, the way a
squirrel fears winter, as I shake the hands
connected to new faces that I am not opening doors
but climbing a ladder to a diving-board.
Today, I look out at the dark sky through
the antique glass and I dream of dancing;
I watch as a car passes, swishing on the wet streets,
and I return to my question-asking.

This poem goes out to all of the deleted words,
the millions of ideas quickly erased, obliterated
because they just didn't quite fit in with
the rest of the ideas. Today, I honor them briefly,
but sometimes, life moves by too quickly
to mourn, even when life, true life, is lost.
Today, I sniff the cold, stiff air
and the breeze feels like shivers, covered
in warm, futile sunlight. The short hairs on
my adam's apple scrape on my collar like
road-gravel on newly built freeways, but
I don't drive.
Today, momentary friendship is held up
by our busy hands, and even as we leave
we hope that our hope will keep it airborne,
but at least I know that this fellowship
will not break if it hits the ground,
it will always be there to pick back up
at a later date.

Today, I woke up to spearmint soaked vegetation,
where I communed and warred with
jagged-edged thistle, and needle-nosed insects
filling their large bellies with the space between
the stitching of my shirt. I pounded
my foot on metal and the ground beneath opened.
I lifted and the tender roots of those things I call
weeds snapped and popped as they were torn from
their sphere, like fish from a pond.
Today, I walk as though
I were in a giant corn-field where
a thick fog floats through shortly after
the sun has fallen below the ragged trees off
in the distance. But I cannot see those trees,
I see only the grey around me,
and I hear it ask me the same question
again and again and again and
I know it is me asking the question. While the answer,
like the horizon, is something I already know.
The problem is, I don't want to leave the fog.
I want
the sun to set so that I can leave and never have
to look
or think about the horizon ever again.
A deer passes, he is on his way out of the corn-field,
I stare at him jealously, wanting to follow him or
hoping time will stop
so I can have a little more time to think about it.

Today I heard the sparrows chirp like
cheap labor as I stepped over cotton and polyester
to grip my hands around the flimsy neck of
consciousness. My thoughts fly to the future
where success and goals completed linger
like clouds that refuse to rain.
Today, I pulled on my socks and shoes with
my emotions as calm as a lake without wind.
My mind scattered, but focused, I met another
sparrow on my path and I stopped, prepared to meet
a lion. The sparrow explained, and flew off with the
promise of an answer. I watched
it disappear behind a tree as the clouds blotted out
the certainty and confidence. Today,
the winds filled the trees like balloons as
storms loomed in the distance while I laid
on flowery cushions filling my mind with attempts
at distraction from more and more inevitability.
And though I spoke aloud
my misgivings, they kept their form.
Unlike the world beyond my skin, today
there was no thunder to my lightning.

Today sat,
perched lazily on the warm
electrical wire, filling the body with heat like
warm soup on a cold,
blustery day. The sparrows
ate pebbles on the driveway as
I sat parked for
a moment,
staring off at the rolling clouds.
I walked down
the broken concrete path and
looked up to see three sparrows looking down
investigatively.
And today, I enjoyed the cold air,
as my nose dripped
and my ribs shook,
because I loved the way the sun
never stayed in one place,
and the way beginnings
followed endings.

Today, missiles and bombs fall
before my closed
eyes, exploding into stories of
politics and economics,
corruption and destruction, and
the ringing in my ears
doesn't go away
after I open my eyes
to the morning sun.
I sit on the floor;
my face soaking up the bright
blue light and I think about
beauty because
why not.
Today, as my sweat drips
down my rough, porous nose,
and touching my
chapped lips,
it tastes like surrender; like,
relinquishing myself
to the "okayness" of life,
and remembering
that it is.

Today, as the crickets moan,
I recant a song built from soft
white, drift-wood and clean,
polished steel.
I dance down the broken street
while black
bird-silhouettes
screen-print the magenta-blue sky
like spray-paint cans full of
energy and power strength that
my little fingers envy from a distance,
but for a moment my toes
bounce with the pebbles to the beat;
a pleasure from letting go
for a moment.
Drunk on the dance floor, the release
is effortless, but it ends like the sun
popping below the horizon,
until tomorrow comes,
all the while asking
how do I know
this is the same sun.

I
In a garden, full of grace,
bouncing in the sunlight,
reflecting our human spirit.

II
It smells like this:
My mom tells me
that it keeps the bugs away.
And the bunnies will stay away from the tomatos.

III
Put into corners of 4 like
a box, a prison.

IV
Orange and yellow are colors,
the next, says the spectrum,
is green.

V
The springtime brings me raindrops
and warm soup by the window,
where I watch
and the snow melts

VI
I live in the city, a place of men and cars.
I do not get to see the leaves and the flowers.

VII
There are people that live in
Forests. They live off of wood smoke
and rain smells

VIII
Friends hold close to eachother
in cold water.

IX
Almost, by the end, it falls apart
into particles and black dust.

X
Each of us is held together by a tiny ribbon,
we stay in a circle.

XI
Fallen in mud and forgotten, dark
black sky, grey air from the streetlight
across the chain-link fence.

XII
The stop sign one block before I am home,
almost there,
close enough to practically be there,
but not enough to feel it

XIII
Regret,
an ending that lasts infinity.
The smile you can never really reach,
at the end of the long tunnel.

Flea --
When it happens,
just like that,
life means everything
and without it,
nothing means nothing.
Don’t expect.
Don’t predict.
Just do
and you are done.

Human --
Build on empires,
towers, and masterpieces.
Build until you cannot see
and then destroy your new beauty.
Stomp on your own dreams;
make them ruins.
Don’t create the tangible
Don’t build on something.
Simply move forward
and you will get there soon.

Tortoise --
You must lift your feet
and set them down gently
on solid ground.
Breath from lungs
that have inhaled the dirt from before your time.
Open your eyes
and see the time pass in peace.
Don’t blink.
Don’t stop.
But learn
and you will know.

Tree --
Open your arms
and ask the world to believe you.
Live so that you can live more.
Expand into everything
and listen to your neighbors
they will tell you your secrets.
Don’t move.
Don’t speak.
Instead, rise up
And you will grow forever.

Rock --
You sit on my bed
and spoke to the universe.
Bring your blessings of a hopeful future.
Speak out with your silent voice,
allow yourself to be budged about by our words;
and never hold on to anything.
Don’t remain.
Don’t fall apart.
All you have to do is be
And you will become.

I don't know
I
I have all of these
words
so many of them
and I just can't stop
speaking them
all of these words
like
a bad cough
I don't know
these words
they're so empty,
they're like
popcorn
so full
of nothing.
I hear myself,
a lot,
speaking
all of these words
and I see people's eyes
and I get a bad taste in my mouth
it’s like
I have all of these things to say
but really
I don't
I don't have anything to say
it's like
I'm testing how much people want to listen to me
no
these words are like bubbles
soap suds
and they keep foaming up in my mouth
gross

          she laughs

but something is wrong
it's like
I don't understand
that if I let some water come in
and wash it all out
I wont need those words anymore
I don't know

          she says,
          you're beautiful, and like beauty, words for it
          come and go,
          keep them while you can

          words

well
these are the talking words
and as much as I talk them
they never seem to go away
it's like
there's more of them everyday

          she says,
          so what?

they're annoying, that's what
mostly because I think they are
and I can’t stop thinking
about how annoying they are
I am unchanging
unmoving
I am like a leaf in a stream
But I am stuck on a twig
And I seem to move
no more than a rock

          she says,
          well then, I can be of no service.

i know
and that's why I hate these words
look at ‘em
look at how pitiful they are.

          she says,
          words are only what you make of them darling.

I guess.
it’s
these winters
they put me in a bind

          she says,
          why so?

I'm not sure
it's hard to say
but it's pretty clear
something does.

your happy remembers you
i left the letter on your pillow so that you could read it
you don’t want to read it
you throw it away
you tell it that you are done with it
especially when the cat doesn’t come home
even a cat  remembers your happy

     and i remember your happy
when it came home in your smile
when it held your hand as you laughed
when it whispered in your dance
when it snuck into your room at night

    sometimes
your happy calls your celular phone
it will buzz on the kitchen counter
and i will remember how it helped you smell the grass
and how ants used to crawl up your nose
like pioneers
in search of new places
new territory
to divide and conquer

    your happy left a note on the front door
it used the clear tape from your desk
it must have stopped by while you were gone
wondering
when will you return?
and you say that you will never

    your happy is still looking for you
it sent a telegram to your car radio
it wants to sing in your breath
it wants to dance in your feet
it wants to tell you that it missed you

    i stopped at the home of your happy the other day
to tell it you were gone

    your happy remembers you
it remembers the smell of your hands
it remembers the feeling of your head on its chest
it remembers the sound of your hair in the wind
it remembers your toes on the pavement and your hand in the cats hair

    your happy will never say goodbye
even after you are gone
it will leave a message in your shoulders
it will tell you

    your happy remembers you
    your happy remembers you