Push harder.

It’s the cork that keeps us from negotiating.
It is the hip lashes that are bound to the wall we are trying to move.
Like rippling beasts.

This will evolve.

Each revolution around a pixilated world are just metaphoric steps, aren’t they?
Because no one really moans like that unless they know someone is listening.

I was listening.

My body is foreign to me now. I am in a new birth.
I am fascinated with the way my stomach dips in on itself when I lay on my back.
Come. Let me show you how new my fingers have learned to see.

I am a pool. I am a spring. I am a bowl.  I offer milk on my skin.

Come drink at me.

Then we can run hands on foreign bodies and make sense of the new curves and make new the old ones.

It would be new to see the tragic swash of red smeared high up your lip and on to your cheek. It would be new to see strange eyes and strange hair framed below my strange body in the half dark.

Strange pieces with rough to smooth edges making shapes with precise intention on a thousand count canvas. Milk. And Spice. And sweat.

The only thing that is the same would be the knowing. Maybe the desire. Maybe the sound. And the scents.

I was listening.

But was it real? Can you summon your talent at will?

This will evolve.
It will evolve.

Maybe. Maybe I said it. Maybe.
Maybe I said, “I love you.”
And maybe. Maybe. It was too soon.
And maybe you panicked or I panicked or we panicked.
And maybe we should have waited longer.
For a lunar eclipse to kiss and whisper it under.
Or at least at the top of a Ferris Wheel.
Even soft neon lights of a gas station before a road trip to say… Disneyland would do.
But maybe.
I didn’t wait. And I said it the first time it bubbled out of my chest like mercury and tried to force itself out of the corners of my eyes, shining like mirrors.
And  maybe we panicked.
And maybe you’ll decide to take some time.
And I’ll think it’s a good idea.
And you’ll get around to painting your bedroom walls blue.
And I’ll finally finish that replica of… Big Ben.. made from… toothpicks.. or some ****..
And you’ll get that job for that network.
And I’ll decide to be a carnie, because my feet have always felt so much better on the road.
And you’ll laugh.
Just maybe less…
Or not as hard..

And I’ll learn to roll cigarettes and run the Ferris wheel. And wind up with an eye patch from a freak dart accident in a pub in Scotland. And get sun leathered skin. And road earned muscles.

And I’ll master all the rigged midway games.

And you’ll have a better time in France than the last time and make it back to Greece to see the oracle. And learn to play the violin.

And I’ll develop a keen sense of when to pause the Ferris Wheel to leave the couple at the top just.. one.. moment.. longer..

Or at least secretly teach him how to throw the dime to win her the really big ******* Snoopy.

And I’ll wonder if you ever wake up and look for me.
And you’ll wake up sometimes and look for me.
And I for you.

And maybe I’ll get self absorbed and write the rest of this poem from my perspective.
But probably not.
And maybe one day I’ll go to the fortune teller to find out how you are. And where you are. And you won’t be far away. But I won’t want to intrude.

And then the fortune teller will tell me not to play the game where you knock the milk bottles over anymore because fortune tellers say weird **** like that sometimes..

And maybe I’ll listen..

And maybe I won’t.

Maybe one day, I’ll forget and teach the nerdy highschool kid how to beat the milk bottle game so he can get the frosted mirror with the cheesy rose and the word ‘LOVE’ in cursive for his girlfriend, because *******, sometimes you have to help the underdog  get the girl.

And maybe the gypsy will be right..

And those bottles.
At that moment.
Were some kind of cosmic key.

And as they topple over, all hell bust loose and pours violently out of the mouth of the bottles.

And demons flood into our world in waves.

(And if she kisses him at the top of the Ferris Wheel? Totally worth it.)

And in time, the world would have to notice.

What with the Leviathan coming out of the ocean and the dead rising from their graves and the four guys on horses and all the pesky locusts.

And did I mention the Zombies? And the vampires? And the Vampire Zombies?

And who would have thought that the adorable little fairies would be carnivorous and cannibals and just plain mean?

And maybe it would attract the attention of Aliens. And that U.F.O. you saw that one time in Texas. And maybe the U.F.O’s would attack and fight the Leviathan, which would be kind of bad ***.

And the zombies would fight the vampires and the vampires would fight the zombies and the Vampire Zombies would fight themselves and the Zombie Vampire survivors would find that they had a distinct taste for Soy.

And maybe us carnies would have enough experience with sledgehammers and haunted houses that we’d be rather good at fighting zombies. And I’d be particularly bad *** because of the eye patch and leathery skin and hand rolled cigarettes that I chew on more than smoke. And maybe I’d go lone wolf and ride a motorcycle. Which is also kind of bad *** and I’d do okay considering the apocalypse and all because honestly?

I’ve never been all that scared of ghosts and devils. And the UFOS are busy with the Leviathan and their really is only four of the horseman and we keep a professional distance just the same and the locusts and the fairies are at war, besides locusts don’t bother me, save for the noise.

And look..

I guess what I am really saying is this:

I think maybe I could survive.

And I think maybe I could rescue you.

And maybe we could fall in love.

And what do I do/
With the fact that I only/
Wanted to love you?

Please don't run away.
Because I won't chase again.
It's my turn to run.

This was written for Tim Burris. My best friend.

Happy Birthday, Warchief.*



The sky will break open.

Meeting shades of red, black, and white, as the sun settles into the void.

This is his brow.



Anvil hands. He marks the moving beneath, like earthen plates in shift.

Affecting change. Symphonic strokes.



War is on his breath. Hidden behind a smile that shines like pax.

Don't dare him or he'll ask you to look down.



Heed the drums.

The warchief comes.



Your victory is written in the fabric of his kilt.

Gilded in the golden thread of kith and kin.

He was watching. He is always watching.



And though the black steed has gone gray,

He snorts storm clouds into the valley he looks down upon.

The tides ripple beneath his skin.

His chest swells in pride and laughter.



Alpha. Hands curled in furious fists of might and mirth,

Trained for love and war and so much more.



Heed the drums.

The warchief comes.



His hug a phalanx.

His word, unbroken steel.

His hands. Anvils.

His history, legendary.



Mighty.



He is the spirit horse.

He is the edgewalker.

He is the vibration playing across the drum skin.

Carrying outward on wind.

Settling peace in the hearts of his own.



Heed the drums.

The warchief comes.



We will stand beside him.

For we are mighty too.

We that tie our spines together, like coursing veins.

We that are family, not of blood.

But spirit.

We that match our heart beats as one powerful rhythm.

Pounding off canyon walls.

Ringing in ears.

Shaking the fabric of the never forgotten.



We that are woven together.

A tartan of our own.

We that stand as one to love.

And laugh.

And revel.

And fight.



We that never run.

But run like blood.



We that are bound with him.

Storm clouds.

A phalanx.

A fabric.

A family.

A drum beat.



We are the drums.

We are the drums.



Look to the horizon.



The warchief comes.

Standing in the pool of light. Moving in small circles. Smiling. Glancing. Talking in brief phrases, punctuated by laughter. And all the while aware that things had shifted. The planes of our potential, meeting, and pushing, and forming a snowy mountain between us. And each wrapped in skins marching up the face, between the tall pines, to crest the top and over, if need be. Me, crashing into you and you in to me. In my head the mantra goes on. Verse by verse. Each one with it's own meaning but the words not varying a jot. As easily constant as, "She loves me. She loves me not."

Don't go.
Stay with me.
Don't go.
Stay with me.

Over and over. Hoping that something in the way the light from the stars catching my eye would convey these words so powerfully to you., that it would stop you from continuing on, into the world, away from me, and gone.
And I am left with coyote to howl at the moon. He and I in harmony, singing a woeful tune, with words paraphrased from the tongues of Gods. Longing for you to come back soon. And each page of each poem I write for you will be drawn upon. Little margin Picasso's of letters trying desperately to gather into an order that holds some merit or worth. My pen, racing along the line, trying to capture the feel of the goosebumped skin of your thigh. Trying to find a rhythm of rhyme that beats in time to the quickened pace of my heart when you kiss me with an unrelenting ferocity that pushes my bleeding lip against my teeth and settles my mind into a moment of peace. But frees my hands to their own devices.

The kiss, feeling less like an affection and more like a crisis.

And this ink rolls off my pen like saliva off of my tongue as I race along it's lines in an attempt to scribble down something that will make you understand. I'd sacrifice every even numbered breath for the ghost of Byron to lend me a hand. As his sword/pen slashes through and through until the only letters that remain, when put together, cascade into a new mantra of:

I love you.
I love you.
I love you.

And once again I stare at you. As the earth, the moon, the sun, and the ring around the outer-edge of my eye move in perfect circles, and hope that the way the reflection of that look, that breath, that way that you touch me, is caught in my pupil and you see it. And it stops your step, as well as your breath. And you understand, somehow, that as desperately as I want to...

I, sometimes, don't have the words for you.

Shut the Windows.

Turn off the lights.

Lock the doors.

Make no sound.



Cover your eyes.

Cup your ears.

Until the only sound that remains is the steady beating of your heart.



This is where we will begin.



If you were the only thing this town had to offer,

It'd be enough for me to stay.

Or go.

Or try.

Or talk.

Or tear the roots of a sequoia from the earth and mend it together into a spine,

That I would wear for you.

Earthen.

Beautiful.

Strong.



It is like being shown how to breathe and then asked not to.



And these cycles keep forming on my chest like a bulls-eye.

Making me a target, once again, for beauty just out of reach.

And how we seem to perpetuate patterns. Circling uselessly through our transgressions.

Like a broken record.

All grooves and needled and cracks.

Skipping like heart beats.



Seems I am always chasing some sunset or another.

They just have different names.



And we believe the promises. Inscribed on the back of dewy eyes at dawn.



Not me.

Not this time.

Babies in skins.

Mountain tops.

Running away.

Steaming trains.

Landscapes and bedrooms and windows and moonlight.



But then they are always just warning labels.

Fine print.



We have already made promises.

Pastries and the smell of fresh coffee.

Rain on green hillsides.

Mountain tops.



Mountain tops.



But my hands only seem to fold into prayer or failure anymore.



My wolf heart smells familiar scents.

Like endings.



Once again, my branded heart is folly.

And the river of doubt snakes through our canyons, making our mountain tops further away, and settling about our necks like guilt.

Guiding us parallel.



But not yet as one.

I have already lost what I had won.



And my trap has been set and released.

Golden teeth like shackles, clamped to my leg.

Victory on it's grin like plague.

Plating your outstretched wings.



I can see beyond these words of breath and know you are poised to fly.

And finally I understand what it is to stand on this side of the ocean.



It is cold here.



My shoreline is my prison.



Let. Me. Be. Something.



Or just let me be.



And I have held my heart out. Netted together by cast iron plates, rivets, bolts, violin string, and wishes.



Again and again.



And each time, I am told, yes..



yes..



I will take it as it is.



Yes



I will take it into me.



Yes.



I will walk the path. First to make the prints and then to walk in yours that walked in mine.



I believe in how you love.



I will hold your heart in mine.



Just





Not





Yet.



Or ever it seems.



It used to shine.



Running down my arms as I held it aloft on mountain tops.



A beacon.



A light house.



A fool on a tower.



Now it hardly glows at all.



But it smolders madly.



And it could burn.



For you.



Or burn out.



Forever.



Just



Not



Yet.