Even now, as we lie here, heartbeats like a metronome for the coming storm, I write songs in my head for you. And though my voice will never sing them, they are the soundtrack of your kiss. Each record scratch on my heart like a pressed vinyl love letter. Shaping my sinking chest into drum skins that my pulse beats against.

If I were covered in magic dust, you would be my happy thought. And all my childish notions of what it means to be romantic would be written down the sides of Chianti bottles in melted wax, like an oak. And in that bottle we would keep our hungry mouths.

And still I find my heart adrift. Ripped sails and ropes leading skyward like veins. Split and tattered and stitched haphazardly together, waiting for the lightning to strike twice and bring it to life. My throat a bricked flue, leading to an open mouth, spitting smoke from the torches my heart fears but always seems to carry.

And I stretch my spine skyward. Trying to wedge my head back into the clouds but manage only to cast the shadow of an orchid that has begun to lose its color and wilt at the edges of its wingspan. Coming to terms with the idea that it may never be picked. Not even its petals, even numbered like a deck stacked against it that it might lose in a game of being loved and loved not.

We want for a little more time. Arm wrestling clock hands into submission with god like fury. Ticking tongues to dampen the prophecy of false mediums. We practice fighting so we may fight for each other. Fight for the greener grass on the other side of the pavement walls we draw our chalk hearts on.

The clock tower is a lighthouse. The lighthouse is a windmill. The windmill is a giant. The stories never end.

Even now as we lie here, heartbeats like a metronome for the coming storm, I write bed time stories in my head for you.

Maybe, before this, I was wood smoke.
And maybe even then, I stung your eyes.

And though the bells may ring their last,
And the dark of night is coming fast,

I'll sing the song of every kiss
and make the most of the things we'll miss.

Until this present becomes our past.

Schrodinger's Haiku
Everything exists at once
While our eyes are closed.

And these things that we speak of shall be written on walls in our minds. Our graffiti. Terms that only we understand. For it is prophecy. A prediction of what is to come and a promise that it will be good. Good like revolution. And leaflets. And protest signs. Good like fires and flags. Good like anthems and marches. Good like songs on our palms. The sheet music on mine. The lyrics on yours. And music when they touch. So, shall we go? Hand in hand into the subway tunnels to the rest of this? We'll have the truth to keep us busy as we fumble for the next word and step. Awkward like children, dancing around fires. Foot before foot, until we match rhythm and run from it all. Because running away is as much my blood as poetry and red wine. And you are not only the journey but, sometimes, the destination as well. Listen to my hand on yours as I pray for peace while you sleep. The walls of the tunnel passing behind us as we forget who we are for what we will become. This will evolve. This will evolve.

The clock on the wall is God. His hands, sweeping by, reminding us that time is running out. So get to it, boy. The window is my eye. Looking to possibility as a green horizon. And the path is the new vein, running down my arm. Saying, "Blood is compulsory".

These shoes. I have always known I walk around at the expense of my sole. Wearing thin. But my feet feel so much better there.

I breathe in. I am told it is holiday nuts. Cinnamon. And air that is just a little to clean. But I like it just the same.

We let ourselves move the puzzle pieces into place, one by one, knowing what the picture was going to be already. We squeezed the last bit of it out with our hands until the juice ran down our arms and we held the pulp out like offerings to strange gods. We fought and fought to meet at the center and then promptly forgot why we were there.

And I am taken back to my nephews. The smiles. The reminder that blades of grass split our toes and somewhere in that is childhood. And I roll the ball to him and say, "Kick it." and he doesn't. And I say, "Not yet? Okay. I'll roll it slower." And he doesn't. And I smile and say "We'll wait". And he smiles and says, "It's okay. You'll figure it out." And I will.

Our strange adventure will be pushed into one point. Carried away like jasper. And the images of the Apache Dinae, the ears, the cloud we rode through, the ocean, and each of the little things will yellow and crack until it is nostalgic and sweet. Honey. Wine. Thyme and thyme again. Rolling down and creating a glow in the bottom of my stomach. Stoking my fire. Using my ennui as kindling.

Listen. Listen to each click. Listen to it saying, "It.. is.. never... too.. late."

My hands are sticky with possibility. The strange gods have begun to lap at my fingers. And I can see the look on the face of my nephew when he finally kicks the ball.

The clock on my wall is God. His hands are still. My hands are covered in hope. And I have begun to remember something I'd forgotten.

String Theory. A theoretical framework in which the point-like particles of particle physics are replaced by one dimensional objects called strings. In string theory, the multiverse is an idea in which our universe is not the only one; many universes exist parallel to each other where all possibility has potential as the universes are theorized to be infinite.

When I heard this for the first time, I imagined us all on this giant carousel, spinning in the infinite, to the ***** music of fate.

And the possibility was sweet, like cotton candy. And the potential seemed to rise like tidal waves and I was filled with joy for the other versions of myself doing great things out there somewhere.

Writing lullabies to star children. Kissing ink blotches on to skin like paper. Replacing the light bulb in the moon. Dreaming love into reality.

And I began to imagine the strings stretched and rotating, propeller like, in a theoretical game of double dutch. Fighting back my desire to move too quickly.  Feeling my body sway and rushing in too soon.

And I was sad for all of the versions of me that are struggling. Failing to see the beauty in the gutter. Walking alone in the rain... still. Writing quarky signs on information superhighway off ramps, like:

Quantum Mechanic.
Will tune your Hadron Collider
for food.

And I began to remember the geometrical string patterns we would draw on graph paper in math class. And knowing somehow, even then, that they stood like a veve for infinite possibility. And I began to wonder what would happen if I'd chosen differently at key moments in my life. The infinite outcomes circling like ashes falling down.

Would I be bigger? Smarter? Stronger? Easier to Love?

And the web began to stretch until it was bigger than my simple mind.

And I began to wonder at the insignificant moments. The moments overlooked. And I began to toy with the possibility that our fate is truly ******* in these moments. It was these choices that determine how easy we are to love. And how it would unfold into a chess match of a million different decisions until it was so far out of reach that it was painful to consider.

And these strings, interwoven and bundled “bigger than the sky”. Marionette strings to just as many possibilities as stars. Or more.

A universe where these strings are ropes binding sails to boats and time is the ocean.
A universe where music is medicine and I could sing your broken heart back to hope.
A universe where we could leap from place to place so I could find my young self and say,
“Listen. Don't try so hard. It gets better. And you become so much cooler. And though it seems so important now, it isn't. And guard your heart a little more than you do. And a little less.”

A universe where touch is talk. And to dare is normal. And our hearts are fluent in every language.

And then the notion of the strings as veins. Veins that form a complex system in a beautiful body of flesh and possibility and star dust so much greater than ours. With limbs and hands and heart and eyes and tongue and soul. And this body of possibility is not the only one. Other possibilities are forming other bodies. And this greater celestial body is interacting with other bodies comprised of infinite possibility all making decisions at light speed which will cause it all to reverse or go round again.

And in this framework.

We are you.
And he and I are we.
And once is always.
And never is nothing.
And I am everything.

And we are all the same celestial body.
Made from the same strings.
The same gift of possibility.

We are the carousel.
And anything, anything is possible.

And through it all. All I can do is wonder how...

How do I get back to the version of me where you didn't leave.

It seems
that the moon is
blushing.

Mars must have
whispered something
sweet.

And when the eternal optimist finds himself lapping wine from the bottom of the barrel, who then shall crush his sour grapes?


Who will be the vine he holds onto?


Who will be the cup to hold the out pouring of his soul?


And will it be too late?

For the winter is setting in and the frost has begun to steal the summers color already.

And when the bottle is empty.


And the boards of the barrel ****** dry, we will raise our glasses to the eternal optimist.

Who once was drunk on love.


But now is drunk on time.

Where ya been hiding, lightning bug? Screen doors and porches at dusk are just not the same without you. I heard that song that plays when the wind blows through your tree tops again, a Cyprus chorus, the other night. Just a verse. This one:

"And woman. This is where it all begins. Kissing the door **** before the next turn. And woman. It may be where it ends. Letting the bridge smolder, and smoke, and then burn. Shine on. Shine on. Again."

I love it when your wings sing.

The sign said "Danger".
I only saw the river.
I would gladly drown.

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

I am rain streaked windows that cake with dirt, showing time veins from beneath itself, in rivulets on it's surface.

I am screaming. I am screaming. I have no voice louder than the ones in my head.

I am a stutter step tap dance down long streets that I would like to walk again because I think, but don’t know for sure, that they will lead me home.

I am dancing. I am dancing. I keep time to the rain, like millions of heartbeats on the tin roof, ticking away the days until I hang in the air.

And then we find the little cracks that let light through the dark parts of who we are and we press our mouths to them and drink the light like air. We are drowned sailors who believed what the sirens promised. We believed we could drink enough light in, to make us holy.

She is keyholes to peek through at the woman *******. My sight is the skeleton key that will open new worlds when I see that she can be more beautiful when she is uncovered. And more beautiful for not being afraid to be uncovered, because she doesn’t know I am watching. But I am. And she is more beautiful for not knowing.

And her face is a tear streaked looking glass, with make up showing the time lines from beneath the lies on it’s surface.

She is crying. She is crying. I have no way to calm her anymore.

Then is the promise of midnight love making and forever kisses that burn onto your soul and will never go away. And some will cover themselves like a tattooed man on a carnival pier, right between the fire eater and the fortune teller. There will not be room left for true kisses soon and no way to make room for them.

He is coloring book scribbles that stray from the lines with bad choices and noble intentions, autographed on it’s surface.

He is lonely. He is lonely. I have no way to teach him to trust.

Then the white sheets. Bleached and boiled in copper pots. Starched and straight and folded. She is the pillow case at the bottom of a constantly growing pile of untouched linens. And save for the closets occasional open and close, there is no light.

The pile dwindles, top down, but those at the bottom will never make it on to the bed, it seems. Just locked away in the linen closet. White and pure. And unseen. But the bottom side is darkened and settled in dust. And afraid.

And she is thread barren, white cotton that wishes to be held to the sun and seen through for all of it’s darkest stains.

She is trapped. She is trapped. And I lay my head on sheet less mattresses unable to make her my own.

I thought you should know. I thought you should know.

I am a magnet for surrendered breath and wasted youth. I am open arms that wrap you in and hold you as fanciful clothes to shield my nakedness. I am whispers of comfort that nuzzle your fears that are really just harpsichord bleats to silence my own.

I thought you should know that I am lying. I am lying.
But never about my intentions.
Just about what they become.

There was no storm I couldn't weather.
Until you removed a single letter.
And yet again, you removed another.
And in the place of them, you see, you set the letter h and e.
And now that storm I couldn't weather,
became a game of whether or not that storm was me.

I no longer wish to create.
I no longer wish to write.
I don't want song, or word.
I have no need for art.

I am sounding out my request to any God that will listen.

Give me a foreign beach.
Give me a sunset.
Give me a hand to hold on to.

I wish my life to be poetry.
Every action a song.

I want my days to be the paper I spread my ink upon.
I want 'lost' to mean 'home'.

I want the salt water on my cheeks to be the sea.

Give me mountain tops.
Give me blistered feet.
Give me a mouth that knows my own, like voice.

Make me a villager.
Make me a vagabond.
I no longer wish to be a warrior.

I am sounding my request out to the universe, like a lighthouse.
Come to me.

Make me forget.
Make me forgotten.
Make me to be overlooked.
Make my days count.

Make my days count.

Let this life be poetry.

Give me someone to read it.
Give me someone to understand.

Give me someone to add a verse.

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.

We began bigger than this. Like sun warmed sand and waves. Tidal and furious.

We began like crashing stars into a horizon that thought it could hold us captive.

We began with simple letters forming big complex words and then sentences. Destined for stories.



A call.



And now we stare at ruins. Wondering if we can rebuild.

Wondering whether we can weather the weather.



And through it all, I reclaim my former glory.

Punching at the glass ceiling and shaking my fists at the passers by above.

Warrior. Skin your tattoos from your back and bind them into picture books for children.

Rid your teeth. Give them to the wise man to dangle from his throat.

Turn your shield into a soup bowl and feed the hungry mouths you see.

Make your bow into a cradle and let your youth rest for once.



My fists are polished stone. Monuments to days past.



I am a relic.



This. This is what men of the world fight for.



Bright smiling eyes. And matched heartbeats, linking rhythm until it threatens to burst from our chests.



Playing heart strings in minor chords. Making lyrics out of the words stuck in our throats.

Trusting touch to explain the things we can’t.



And making love like prayer.



We began like laughing children. Laughing in the face of the future.

Reading the great stories on our lips by placing our finger beneath them and moving slowly.. to.. the.. right.



And the hole on the other side of the world can’t be filled.



Just avoided.



Our hands are held to our own mouths now.  Some covering. Some cupped to shout.



And I will bellow. Bellow to stoke the fire.



Warrior. Make your armor into a home. Cover the heads of those dearest to you.

Bring fire to match the one in your heart. And cut your tongue from your mouth before it learns to form the word surrender.



Ask the mountain for faith.

Ask the rock for healing.

Ask the lady for peace.



We began bigger than this.



We can end the same.

The water had fallen. And then it rose. And finally, it was green again.

And it was as I descended into the river bed,
through the streams and bramble,
beneath the lush green canopy,
that my peace came back.

It was wild and alive.
And it would fill my soul to be there.

The rich smell of the soil, like something primordial and sweet,
set my memories into motion.
With each step I followed my history backwards,
eager for the lessons that the rain and wind would bring.
And I thought about what was and what is now.
And I recalled so many who had once wandered these wild ways with me before.
Those that have begun to tend their own gradens.
Rows of flowers, orchards, roses, and ivy (trained to grow along ivory latice, like castle walls).
Each thing in its place.

Watered. Nurtured.
Painstakingly cared for and thriving.

But not you.

You are still the winding creek, filled with life and lined with secrets. Ready to rush with fury and beauty at a moments notice.

You are the tall cane and alder making a canopy thick enough to halt the light.

You are the seep willow and the cottonwoods drinking the river bottom directly in to your soul.

You are the raven caw. The calling falcon. The cooing dove. The scream of the hawk. The sound of the sky in every brush stroke note of your voice.

You are the thick brush that touches each bank, powerful and unruly, like bookends to sacred wisdom.

You are the mighty things. The ring of mountians encapsulating the horizon. The clouds that lay with silent fury. The crashing lighting and the echoing thunder. The deep and silent woods.

You are not the garden.

And I prefer you wild.

We are big.
Like mountains.
If I am the mountain side, you were the wild fire.
Hot. Piercing.
Rendering my solid flesh to molten liquid and then to dust.
But only that I might grow again.
And more beautiful than before.

We face our compulsion. Spinning like mad children, in a ring of rosies, dangling dolls in the infinite black of space.
My binary star. My coupled light spinning my opposite.
Twice as bright.
Twice as beautiful.
But from a distance, we seem as one.

Perhaps this soft light I imagine surrounding you are our gods. Mouths open. Shamed by your beauty, that they could not have created you. Only dreamed you into being. They seem like fate, don't they?

And I am consumed with the constant reminder
of your absence. It plays on my tongue like bitter wine.
Leaving me drunk with want and yearning.
And so much more.

And this madness. Like a force undefined. Hurling our bodies. Like freight trains destined to collide. We can be bigger than mountains. We can be the trees and the sky and the pulse and the moon. All lit by twin stars spinning.

Your lack of light is desperate. A quiet void.
If I were a black-hole. You would be the event horizon
of my unmaking.
A voiceless abyss.
Incomplete.
And slowly growing.


If my eyes were moons. You would be my eclipse.

And this pulse. This landscape caught by rhythm. This thump. Like beating bodies. In carnal rhythm. Remembering each caress like history.

You are my legend. Your touch has written confession on my body, that I read like litany. Cuneiform.
Your fingerprint, an ancient code, written on my eyelids. Spoken on the tip of my tongue that I eat like Eucharist. That I drink like communion.

And my morning prayer is a mourning dirge.
Sung like a sailor for your return.
That you might find the wind of my breathlessness
And return to me
once more.
For I am motionless without you.

Yet.
I am mighty. Like wild beasts. I am stronger then before. I grow wise. I expand my eyes to encompass the horizon, that I may see every curve of your landscape. That I may feel every burn of your wild fire.

My longing is armor, that I wear. To conceal my beast. Like desire. Hungry. Waiting.

Tame me.

I miss your mane.
I miss your smell.
I miss your pulse, beating opposite mine.
I miss your light.

My shadow was massive. Stretching to the corner of maps.
My arms, a wingspan, that crossed time. Waiting to encircle you to me.

I have no light to cast a shadow.
I have no reason to fly.
My heart is barren.
Kept vacant for your return.
If not for you then always.
A singular place that once held your step.
A precious palace that you once danced in.

Spin.
Spin, Wildfire.
Devour my skin again with your hungry touch with your wanting kiss.
I wish to be reborn as yours.
Again.

Circle me that we may light the sky again.
And grow our horizons to outstretch the corner of our eyes.
Until we are blind.

Give me sight.
Let me see.
Let me see you.

That we might see our own light.

As one.

As yours.

Burn brighter than before.

Turn the wheel into the sun. Forget the stars. Forget the wind. Forget the way the waves are weeping. I am not coming home.

We are never again what we once were. And I am not sorry for it.

Some of them end before the music can even start. And we are left somehow, like monks, pinching book spines like vertebrae. Seeing if we can find our ability to
Stand.
Up.
In words.

Most days.

I am only words.

But some days, I am more.

Some days, the thought of those ivory temples run me up masts..

I am stretched out. Arms wide. Accepting the storm. Ragged.
(Stronger for it. Unafraid to unravel more.)
Inventing time. Investing it back.
Some days. I am yards of cloth, fighting history.

And when my sea is calm:
Puff your cheeks and blow on my spine.
For motion.

I am still.

I am calm.

I am still calm.

I am still calmly waiting.

It's worth mentioning that we never made love.

Now. Everything is different.

I am listening to an ***** grinder, playing my heart on his sleeve. Taking light from my future and shedding it on my past. Saying, "What happened? Where did you go?"

And I try to answer back but find my throat dry and only able to mutter, "I can't feel you, Lord. I can't feel you."

Some days I am lost.

Is it fair, when asked what happened, to say, "She did. Calliope happened to me."?

Start the music. Let the carousel turn. I am not coming home.

Is it fair to say that I am better now. But not always better for it.

I am walking a tightrope of strength and..

Something else. Something else entirely.

Now, I am tired. I am at a loss for words. I am sinking into the oldest crimes in the oldest ways and creating my own wooden chest. You are on it. Carved. Etched. Playing in my mind like laughter on the really cold days. Your fingerprints matching the grain. A petal for each flower I picked trying to fix it.

And this is how it will end. It was this way before it even began. When we found our faults on the back of each others lips with our tongues.

Thank you for teaching me the opposite side of love.

And this is how I will end it.

I will be words. And action. And learn to touch with passion. Learn to make love, like sounds strung together. Masterful. Seamless. As to seem less important. like lyrics. Like an aria. Rising and falling like tides to my mast. Lips pressed and cheeks puffed. And arms outstretched like a horizon to sail into.

And all wonderful happy lies.

I will be more. In hopes of forgetting that briefly.. I once more allowed myself to be less.

And found my self wondering, If it was me who slipped through your fingers... or you who slipped through mine...

I once allowed myself to seem less.

I guess...

I just needed to get you off my chest.

Yes. And Forever.

We have not yet given ourselves a chance to miss each other.

These days. It smells like bliss.
These days the nights are so perfect they feel like pumpkin pie.
These days I am dumbstruck at the phantom in my bed.

Her voice is a paintbrush.
I will make this love my masterpiece.

I love her laugh.
Because it is the sound her smile makes.

She is a shining star. A heavenly body.
I am a mongrel dog, howling at her light.

I have these old grey mitts.
I want to use them to hold your heart.
The are worn and scratchy. But they are warm.
I can’t promise that my care of it won’t leave marks. But they will all be made from a loving touch.
My hands have callouses that run deep. They are cracked like stone.
Your heart deserves a softer touch.
But I only have these old grey mitts.
You heart deserves a birds nest. A place to wait and dream of flying.
Your heart deserves a silk cocoon to rest in until it is fully transformed.
Your heart deserves a heart to sleep in. A beat to match in time.
But I only have these old grey mitts.
I’d like to hold your heart. And if you’d let me, I’d protect it like my own.
For when I saw your heart, I spun my own into yarn of blood and bone and wove it into something soft.
I’d like to hold your heart.
But I have no heart.
I only have these old grey mitts.