linger, you
/ spin my breath like fire, I
/ burn dreaming, form
/ your name, a shimmering coal

even at distance, I
/ trust its glow

at times the /
weight of this /
world drops like a /
guillotine between bits /
of rational thought and soft /
unassuming despair (the quiet /
sort that wants to skip to the end)

I have reduced my life
to voices and pictures

hard to see what
comes next

Yesterday I forgot where I was
edges blurred and then
rushing back like blood

I won't let on, but
I'm pleased to have
remembered the
old me

The problem with our planet
(at least what we currently face)
is one of ceaseless travel,
indifference to space

Do trees protest their rootings?
Do ants fall out of line?
Yet our minds tend to wander, it
happens all the time

If only we could focus, but
our energies disperse
how easily we trail off into
arguably worse

It's not globalization
or the fault of the night news
it's all the me's forgetting
the importance of the you's

Strike up a conversation, and
acknowledge what's around
how else will your new neighbor
learn to bake that lovely pound

cake?

Given the crowded
state of our world, you'd
think we would have figured
out a way for one half to find its
other by now

/ seems we choose to
chase after money

/ can't buy me
love

Time is a patient collector

/ eyeing its prize behind a
flawless tapestry of
insignificant celebration /

to whom we'll all
one day belong

Every so often, we
/ become fish out of
/ water on a dock

flailing about for a
/ bit, then right back where
/ we ought to be

a young man
/ lost

and then a voice
/ do not tire of me

for I will bring many things to delight and
/ astound you

//

grown now
/ cynical with age

the promise fallen
/ flat like fresh
/ paper

all the while
/ a nearby smile steadily
/ moving closer

There is a certain fragility to kindness, an
impatient expectation of a return on
your investment

Expecting summer, I
choke down terror that
walks alongside convention

"oh, I'm just here for a
little while, saving
a bit of money so
I can do what
makes me feel
alive"

everyone stuttering,
gilded cages pieced
out of garbage

the irony settles like a cloud

to escape this world, I
need to save a bit more
money

I'm slightly out of
practice, a bit bent
out of shape like a
paper clip faced with
Rhode Island's taxes

at first glance, it might
seem as though I have
forgotten all I
once knew

first glances are rarely
accurate

what I do know is the
things that make you
you in your own
words, things like
cooking or
poetry or
smiles

these things don't die, they
hibernate until you're
smart enough to
wake them up

every few years, look
back on your prior
hopes with
disdain

how naive you were
then, but surely
you know
better now

your future self laughs.

the real world, the world of business and
coffee and hurried hallway "how are you"s is
brown and gray and
stuffy

so I sit in my corner
and silently explode
into color

you kept to yourself

and that makes everyone wonder, now
that you're gone

and I tried to explain that sometimes there's
nothing you can do to change
someone's mind, no sense
wondering whether a
simple good morning
would have kept
you around

hindsight is 20/20, but
nobody saw that coming

Loads of people
milling about

like ants

food, water, money

do ants stop to consider each other?

maybe we should

tell me about
                     you

not that
hum drum shell like
fake western tourist traps

let me in

sing me a song, prove
to me what I can't quite put my finger on
(after these tired feet come from their shells)
face to the sky like a flame

Takes a while to sink in, this
new place, the smell of cleaning
products and wood, leather and
old books

This is my home—how did I get here?

I work maniacally, rearranging as a signature,
desperate approval for this change

So much space
"you'll be comfortable"

living apart, what
life should I lead?

I had grown tall,                                                         distant
                                                                                       and lost

(Within a cacophony of voices, a spectrum of choices)

Now,

                an awakening

Silent roots—grown tired of relative safety—leap
into the foreground

And spill color across my
blank canvas

tough love, coarse like
gritty asphalt, torn knees

makes me ache for unscripted
cheer, for a single bulb in an
otherwise dark room

unremarkable and
significant

expository fiction, written
coals for eyes burning

watch where you build your
fires, we wouldn't want to

burn these trees

at times, the
  urge to give in, to
possess the incendiary second wind
          
erupts like a vice

we need more simple things
   the kind that quietly persuade
   us full of earth and sky

reciprocal patter, the rain and window
     gather resolve, together birth a drop

to swell down and
join the others

I remember when life was all about
    soft edges and incandescence

        ( subtle timbres that echo )
         (                                          )
           (                                      )

until that stillness shattered with the
      blunt force of
            thirty thousand wandering souls
                              scurrying back to safety in their
                              respective books

it's not often my thoughts stop
     whispering like hummingbird wings
     flitting in and around and out to you

only for a moment and I am once again reminded
             why you continue to impress me
              
         (it's the way you know so much
         and use that to learn more)

Lonely stars, glance up from your
pitted earth and marvel at the
humans of empty space

"how many are there?"

"trillions."

Humble whisper caught in
lazy waters, free yourself

that you may pass by tomorrow
from peace into motion

I crafted a painting to
hang on that wall of yours

Someday you'll take it down
and think of me

They smoke, somber around us
    cooking phrases in our daily newspaper

dancers in their own right

     While I'm just trying to figure out how to
             breathe you in long enough that
                   I can float forever when you're gone

You'll take to the grave of their question
What did I win?

(do not follow your heart)

do not follow the resolved feeling, the
         benefit of the doubt a hundred times over and
                        bent over backwards and hollow

do not forget numbers, multiples of being alone
         prime and so easily covered with the foam that
                 washes away, worthless
    
                  do not follow.
                  do not forget.

take these foundations you insist upon dispersing like
ashen arms, gritty sand wiped into an eye by mistake

        take these.

                take these compounded days and
                take these dug out pits of stomach and
                take these falls and

    get the hell out.

where musical notes spill over into fine
tequila, crowded dancing, conversation

they remember the night.

every raincloud a challenge, a
puddly smile

Magnolia leaves, the
thick wax coating

(this was always meant to be sweeping, the kind that
rips apart continents, scrounges
mountains from crumbs)

always meant to borrow your breath, stolen away like
fingerprints on eager skin and then brought back,
wondering where hearts fell in, the
luster of warmth

meant to learn the
magnetism from colors and
preserve proximity, stretch
away solitude

(and I have found none of this to be
anything short of a miracle)

dreams as validation for smooth
     rhythmic notions cascading like
              fingers, waterfalls slipped from
          tongues laced with crisp sheets
  
  (the ivory ladders fallen sideways and
    forgotten in the wake of racing hearts)

            slow down, reconvene behind mirrored
          aspiration, compose stars that pulse with each
             ache for your company, flicker to the pace of
                   water running, an escapee from the space of
                 world around you conformed, blanketed
                        sleep like a waterwheel

I believe that
           no one really means it when they
         say it's time to go

gentle awareness as though you've
framed my heart in roses while I
slept atop the pellows

Massive hearts gently
shading our sleep, dreams of
long afternoons cooking curry in
naked freedom, rain as a tell-tale
reminder, the flowers we bloom in
this time without time

Somewhere in the middle of a ceaseless rain's drum
That led to your forehead smoothed under my thumb
And shivering stopped by a single warm hug
I felt (for an instant) the depth of our love

Shot in the
    light of achieve-
         (meant all the world)

filibuster then, fill your heart until you've
     busted, down and rusted and
            caked with regret
  
  never stand between yourself and
        falling, or love will grow hot like
   shower-heads turned too far, like
       grainy distorted sight streaming out our
                  smiling ears, ceaseless cerulean

    (I'm dull gold, and you
       said you liked polishing)

I do not have
time for the
   harvest moon
   tonight

You used to laugh (and
    pretend my spiny sweet-gum
       words would cringe at the very
  brush of a lifetime), but
                     our seasons are changing
                (everything is all at once an
                  unwavering green), adopting
                      breadth of iceberg proportions
  
    (we dance around forever.)

No frame can hold this hope
   not a line,
                a touch,
                        a song

please help me carry it
        (I have faith in your strength.)

Warm water softly rinsed away all fragility

  a future, open, a fresh scent
    
       You were there when I awoke
             and I always remember

               the shades of light this world allows
                   only when we're together

What if the closest I get
to that moment is now?

And what if I told
      you the world was on
           fire like a burning man,
        absorbed in his work,
              painfully turning to
                     productive ash

could this truth light
       the words from your
         lips, warm my
      sentiment as if
                  ignition is perpetually
                       within the scope of
               time like a teacup
           slipped under the table

You have to believe
    otherwise, there's
            nothing to be done

Razor-tipped pencils that surgically
               slice patterned pages
Soft brushes from fingertips like afterthoughts
                    puddling atop pillows

As if sunshine and rain got
together to play a trick on poor
cloud