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c rogan Jun 2020
good night, sweet dreams, Love
a kiss on both cheeks
trying to appreciate
what i have before its gone

if forever existed
would we understand
how precious it is
to love and be loved
right here and right now
c rogan Aug 2022
breakfast oranges
breakfast at golden hour
breakfast at 5:30 pm
in bed **** with legs
stretched in sunlight
feeling the shadows of curtains
breakfast oranges and sunlight for dinner

february waits
thinking of me
when they are normal again
and the doors will be off
off off off
and the sun will be on
sun sun sun
and the sun will be gold
in the soul
and my oranges
rest on the bed
in the sun
c rogan Aug 2022
There is a ladder in the woods,
A tall V pointing up, four trees connected  
Unwound DNA of our bodies  
dreams of intertwining above the sun.

Two sisters climb down either side,
Metal feet spear painted leaves.

There is a forest between the ladder,
And beyond, a glassless window of autumn.
Fallen leaves like angels’ slender bodies
Reading in the dirt; old wine and stale memories rinsing their mouths.
c rogan Aug 2022
Waiting as the leaves float above us  
Delicate joints forgive gravity
As the ground shifts beneath  
Bed of grass

Are you happy?  The wind is blowing north.  You are not a burden.

Warm sassafras earthen outlines
Wispy milkweed nebula within the path
Leaping into further fields,
Splendid happenings in our house of clay,
Sculptures of pure weightlessness.

The rain will come at 4, so we watch the field.
Like the early morning,
The first night,
The windows down, the hills, the trees, feeling safe, feeling missing, feeling music  
Shimmer down the back of my neck.  
Feeling isolation, too little, too much, nothing, everything.  
Meanings are alienated: her ideas connected to mine.
Ambient colors blend in swatches of light.  
The artist stands up, spills the paint, smears the light.
Art is for souls written in silhouettes.



We run barefoot in grass,
Towards the approaching gray
Blades cling to glistening legs like strikethrough text.
Self and ego unite
Thoughts drift as leaves suspended in the rising stream
This rain is an unfinished thought.

The pressure change comes like a broken bone.  
Trillium wildflowers parallel the ravine
Delicate white bodies bend
As warmth is pushed higher,
Water condenses and falls:

Time is places and places are time
Sleeping in old beds,  
Scents of warmth,  
Snow collected over antique film
A garden buried in hibernation,
Sleeping yet seeing
Withering velvet songs underground
Echo in pastel church bell skies.
They taste of light,  
They dream of dawn.
I am not in the garden, it is myself.  It is him.
The cathedral glass swells,
Growing and shrinking like the stars.


Memories  
of dancing in the  
kitchen, steam from boiling pots  
of water hanging on  
windows open to  
pine trees,  
muffled songs.  


Memories of falls petrified in ice.  We climbed a fire tower, slipping between steep planks of lumber to the top of the fall sunset, the moonrise, a red disk on the open horizon.  
He is playing chess.  My mind is quiet.  I have made my bed.
The colors stretch into a fine line- white light permeates the new home.
c rogan Jan 19
first was I was naked at night in the woods stepping into a cool little pond that was glowing & misty & then moss started growing up my legs & covering my body

second the moon was on earth the size of a beach ball & neon electric blue color - it was outside my bedroom window looking at me & radiating blue wavy ripples and covered the ground around me & went all over my body
c rogan Apr 2019
ive kissed him more times in this room than my own, on made beds and drunk on floors, outside in the hallway
Clean sinks and washing dishes, these pristine undergrounds.  Sterile lighting, talking through window screens.  
I get insecure, loving you.  And I give myself up too easily.  Before I speak, the only thing I fear is myself, not now but in another time, losing you to my own accord.  
Je ne demande jamais d’aide, et je ne suis pas sur, avant de t’aimer.  Lentement les saisons changent, nous les regardons reorganiser.  Garde moi pres, a l’abri, laisse toi a code de moi.  Les jours vieillissent, avoir mon coeur.  Prends ton temps. . .
Only
kisses became black and blue,
the softness replaced hands around my neck
im carrying this weight with me,
I want to disappear
Into open pages, closed palettes
Quitting teams,
Games on hills on corners of campus
Stories running through the woods, falling down hills
Language of color, language of silence
Speak in actions of the unseen

Shift the scales
It’s like your ghost is still haunting torn down renevations
Tunnel vision triangulating geometric form
I know you don't know
In these hours of golden illuminated spaces
Houses of trees without leaves
L’heure d’or, la lavende dans l’aire
paint my words in open air
Donc je ne peux pas resister
Leave your ghost,
You are gold to me
Empty fluorescent lines illuminate blank fabric
Writing on projection glass walls
Numbers and letters and baggy clothes and I don’t deserve to be writing any of this
Im writing in front of you
but can't bring the words to my lips
c rogan Jan 19
I thank the moon
sensuality and scrying in black clear pool
what veils keep
full disk brightens sheer membrane
lilies open
snowdrops retrace delicate steps
pull back fresh white sheets
morning arrival stretching growing resonating closing
departure shrinking suffocating apology
taken off in navy blue clouds
outline rainbow hallows
midnight clouds lift
sunset pollen constellations scatter
golden handmade paper
cut and torn seams
repurposed cloth covering
calm enough to fall asleep with
curled against her sweet face
I’ve never dreamt until a deer
casts a shadow on my shadow in dim blue light

I thank the moon
c rogan Dec 2018
the depths of the sky
cannot contain my thoughts
in your absence

light quavers behind stars
beyond The Expanse

the meadow outside your house
surrounds in fog
sleepless nights pass through hallways
like a ghost looking for their body
brouillard dans la crepescule

lay your body next to mine
with only the sound of breathing
this is holy

and tell me softly
what colors you taste
behind your eyelids
when you lay in the arms of your lover

turn off the lights
and whisper to me sweetly
what you saw burning
when you felt the warmth of suns
and centers of worlds
in a forgotten memory
away from here
c rogan Aug 2022
Small video collages of opening eyes
Neurons firing and  
Right times in right places.
Homes painted after hospital beds.

What else?

Every minute of the dream was the brightest orange sunrise
We were camping in the middle of the field
I looked at you inverted,
Accepting what we already knew.



My heart is split in different places.
c rogan Aug 2022
The sun is setting and I’m not alone—
We hiked to the middle of the Appalachian trail,
I don’t know who I am  
But the colors are moving
Nothing has felt so pristine.

On top of white rocks,
This is not a dream.  
A ridgeline where we lay our coats on the diagonal granite
Hands lightly touch on cold stone
Over pristine valleys of moving trees
Stretching from the blue ridge mountains.

My heart is not falling—it is ascending  
Like the summit,
Like the valley below
Floating in space
On the spirit of boulders, we scramble up with open hands.
Covered in delicate bonsai roots
Connecting the longest trail in the world,
Two thousand miles between us but we’ve never been closer
   In a warm car, floral turtlenecks, squares of paper
  I close my eyes because it’s too much
And the sun is gone.
c rogan Aug 2022
Painted leaves sway above us like cathedral glass

They categorize memories of light
Illuminating ripe windfall on forest floor

She walks South from the setting sun,
Blonde hair bathed in colors of heaven
A boy follows her path with an orange cat

Where is the wilderness of childhood?  
The time spent where you and I were together,  
trapped, open yet closed?

The canvas glows fervently  
Wandering between blind contours of trees
Arms outstretched; feet bare
Toes drift on warm earth.

What did I say to him?
c rogan Aug 2022
Small movements lift white sheer curtains,
As I sit at kitchen tables in silence,

Rain touches the window like a morning kiss,
Pulling me from a dream, or a seance by a string.
The breeze navigates the house like a breath or a flood:
Silk falling from silk,  
Words falling from bridges,
This air is a pleasant dream.

Choose what is real or not,
Resurrect lingering memories like  
Transparent negatives overlaid in your hands:
There is a light and dark,
But an inverse of each.
Sewn together in a warm mess,
Liquid and melting light in time
Habitually, it drips from your fingers
Like rituals of burying artifacts
Far beneath the sun.








Before the leaves fell and the frost protected thoughts in a numb glaze,
I fell into the steam of chamomile tea,  
Pervasive yellow sweetened air
Swimming through medicated words like a needle before surgery,
A silence that amputates and eradicates
Hauntings of resurrection.

Two candles on a mirror.
Lighter clicks, sparks, reflects.
Dual realities.
Two sisters, burning from
Separated souls.


A gold coin widens slowly with heat,  
the room bathes in energy, clear and warm.  


Heartbeats flicker over white canvas sonograms.  
Evening light spills from the horizon,
An overturned glass of iridescent breath.  
Clouds hover like a ghost, a new melody of space.  

I blow candles out.  
Their love remains.





Under the mirror, the memory of light unfolds, a mitosis of energy.  I regard the extinguished flame, tranquil smoke running through the room like a prayer.  Under the wooden table, a carving with the initials of his name.


The love wanders to your open hands.  They move and smear with oil paint, mixing the sage green tablecloth, kinetic orange heats a canvas.


Nothing is the same
Relaxing, water replaces air
Everything is different now.
Nothing is the same.

Sunlight still leaks from the window like  
Dripping faucets against a clogged drain.  Her hair was turning blonde again, like when they were younger.
Humming, she was
Remembering his hands



















An emotional limbo where forgiveness waits
Intermediate neglect in oblivion
Lapsing into another’s life,
What’s inside you is not like anyone else
Every instant, a new reflection

More than sinking, less than swimming

Float on,  float on,  float on,  float away
c rogan Oct 2019
winding roads pull wind from lungs
green blossoms decay summer sun
ignorance and bliss unravel wordless memory
forbidden touch forgives absence of leaves
dividing sky like flashback film souvenirs
i breathe blades of grass
drink sweet constellation cobwebs of morning dew
wanderings deep inside a sleepless dream
you know you love him
so let him go, the riverbed buried warming sun
into soft dirt we dug our toes
garden trails, empty minds
gently killing time


//
Keep the score, ever widening and chasing circles
Capitulate false aggression,
Vibrations in flowering emptiness
Rapids sweet and clean
Glass-smooth rocks
Cut and sewn in fabric of water
Buoyant bodies shift in waves
Memory shaped on skin
Widening irises illuminate you in the dark,
Your bedsheets, ambient lights above bed
Surrender to aching pull
I’ve been walking a familiar line, painted fingers
I’ve been thinking in murmuring heartbeats
And painting you sleeping
It’s more trouble than you think it is
Up all night, pushing my body across the line
Unfamiliar horizons, how do you know you really ****** up
Trees on the sky, wind in the earth
Fire in bones, the magnetism of you
Suckle colors from hands
Delicate honey nectar
Draws breath from my chest
Jetstream fog hangs lucid in your room
After a fresh rain,
Leaves fall and stain the ground,
Imprints of your hands
Streams trickle down the walls
and pool in between our bodies, still in the night

***
c rogan Sep 2022
skin, so
carry all meadows
lingering, souls grow
reluctant to sweetness
wayward hauntings
age for it all
astray, longing
to untitle your name
c rogan Aug 2022
We have been silent for the whole time I’ve been awake
Since the stars slowly faded
And we drove to the park
Under a white construction paper moon
Harmonies of watercolor hills,
Turning pages of blanket clouds
Panorama lover skies.

While her spirit still lingers in the forest,
Her and I will reunite
Under a ladder,
A constellation,
A renewed childhood
Another two years from now.

Magnolia and dogwood flowers
Say our names over and over
As they delicately pause time  
Their petals run and play
Catch in the field.

Golden light leaks through lace
And touches his sleeping eyes
Dreaming of early morning
Bird singing like a newborn.


The leaves of the painting slow their ecologic song,
Rendering the negative cool blue a cohesive orange yellow sky.
The hills unhinge themselves from the borders of the frame,
As the rabbits return to their burrows,
Brushes washed; the homage of colors slip down the drain.


All that remains is the sketch of her ghost, a hazy white anatomy of corners, planes, indications of form:
A spine, her hands, quietly strong features.


To ghosts, what is a forest?  A canvas?  A feeling other than the wind?
A memory or reality?


I regard the painting, the forest, the woman.
She becomes younger as I do.

— The End —