My mother raised me under the belief that monotony was a worse state than death and she lived her life accordingly. She taught me to do the same. About five years ago, my mother died. Her death steered my course from any sort of seated, settled life and into a spiral of new experiences.
For months after she left, I skulked about each day feeling slumped and cynical and finding everything and everyone coated in the sickly metallic taste of loss. I noticed that without her I had allowed myself to settle into a routine of mourning. I pitied myself, knowing what she would have thought.  Life was already so different without her there and I couldn’t continue with life as if nothing had happened, so I jumped from my stagnancy in attempts to forget my mother’s name and to destroy the mundane just like she had taught me to. I had to learn how to live again, and I wanted to find something that would always be there if she wouldn’t. I had a purpose. I tried to start anew and drown myself in change by throwing all that I knew to the wind and leaving my life behind.

I was running away from the fact that she had died for a long time. When I first picked up and left, I befriended the ocean and for many months I soaked my sorrows in salt water and *****, hoping to forget. I repressed my thoughts. Mom’s Gone would paint the inside of my mind and I would cover it up with parties and Polynesian women.
I was the sand on the shores of Tahiti, living on the waves of my own freedom. A freedom I had borrowed from nature. A gift that had been given to me by my birth, by my mother. I tried to lose myself in those waves and they treated me with limited respect. More often than not, they kicked me up against their black walls of water. They were made of such immense freedom that many times made me scream and **** my pants in fear, but they shoved loads that fear into my arms and forced me to eventually overcome the burden.
As time slipped by unnoticed, I created routine around the unpredictability of the tides and the cycle of developing alcoholism. One night after a full day of making love to the Tahitian waters, my buddies and I celebrated the big waves by filling our aching bodies with a good bit of Bourbon. By morning time, a good bit of Bourbon had become a fog of drink after drink of not-so-good *****? Gin maybe? I awoke to the sight of the godly sunrise glinting off of the wet beach around me, pitying my trouser-less hungover self. With sand in every orifice, I took a swim to wash me of the night before. I floated on my back in silence while the birds taunted me. I felt the ocean fill every nook and cranny of my body, each pulse of my heartbeat sending ripples through it. My heart was the moon that pressed the waves of my freedom onward and it was sore for different waters. The ache for elsewhere was coming back, and the hole she left in my gut that was once filled with Tahiti was now almost gaping. It had been a beautiful ride in Tahiti but I had not found solace, only distraction. The currents were shifting towards something new.
She had always said that the mountains brought her a solace that she never felt in church. They were her place to pray and they were the gods that fulfilled her. She told me this under the sheets at bedtime as if it were her biggest secret. I had delusional hope that she might be somewhere, she might not be gone. I thought if I would find her anywhere it would be there, up in the clouds on the highest peaks.
The next day, I was on the plane back to the States where I would gather gear. The mountains had called and left a needy voicemail, so I told them I was on my way.

In Bozeman, the home I had run from when I left, every street and friend was a reminder of my childhood and of her. I was only there to trade out my dive mask for my goggles. I had sold most of my stuff and had no house, apartment, or any place of residence to return to except for a small public storage unit where I’d stashed the rest of my goods. Almost everything I owned was kept in a roomy 25 square foot space, the rest was in my duffel. I’d left my pick-up in the hands of my good man, Max, and he returned her to me *****, gleaming, and with the tank full. I took her down to the storage yard and opened my unit to see that everything remained untouched. Beautifully, gracefully, precariously piled just as it was when I left. I transitioned what I carried in my duffel from surf to snow. I made my trades: flip flops for boots, bare chest for base layers, board shorts for snow pants, and of course, board for skis. Ah, my skis… sweet and tender pieces of soulful engineering, how I missed them. They still suffered core-shots and scratches from last season. I embraced them like the old friends they were.
I loaded up the pick-up with all the necessities and hit the road before anyone could give me condolences for a loss I didn’t want to believe. I could not stray from my path to forget her or find her or figure out how to live again. I did not know exactly what I wanted but I could not let myself hear my mother’s name. She was not a constant; that was now true.  

My truck made it half way there and across the Canadian border before I had to set her free. She had been my stallion for some time, but her miles got the best of her. It was only another loss, another betrayal of constancy. I walked with everything on my back until I eventually thumbed my way to the edge of the wild forest beneath the mountains that I had dreamt of. They were looming ahead but I swore I caught a whiff of hope in their cool breeze.
With skis and skins strapped to my feet, I took off into the wilderness. My eyes were peeled looking for something more than myself, and I found some things. There were icy streams and a few fattened birds and hidden rocks and tracks from wolves and barks of their pups off in the distance. But what I found within all of these things was just the constant reminder of my own loneliness.
I spent the days pushing on towards some unknown relief from the pain. On good days there fresh snow to carry me and on most days storms came and pounded me further into my seclusion. The trees bowed heavy to me as I inched forward on my skis, my only loyal companions; I only hoped they would not betray me on this journey. I could not afford to lose any more, I was alone enough. My mother was no where to be found. The snow seemed to miss her too and sometimes I think it sympathized with me.
I spent the nights warmed with a whimpy fire lying on my back in wait hoping that from out of the darkness she would speak to me, give me some guidance or explanation on how I could live happily and wildly without her. Where was this solace she had spoken of? Where was she? She was not with me, yet everything told me about her. The sun sparkled with her laughter, the air was as crisp as her wit, the cold carried her scent. I could feel her embrace around me in her hand-me-downs that I wore. They were family heirlooms that had been passed to her through generations, and then to me. The lives that had been lived in these jackets and sweaters were lived on through me. Though the stories hidden in the seams of these Greats had long been forgotten, died off with their original masters, I could feel the warmth of their memories cradle me whenever I wore them. I cringed to think about what was lost from their lives that did not live on. I was the only one left of my family to tell the world of the things they had done. I was all that was left of my mother. She had left her mark on the world, that was clear. It was a mark that stained my existence.
These forested mountain hills held a tragic beauty that I wish I could have appreciated more, but I felt heavy with heartache. Nature was not always sweet to me. For days storms surged without end and I coughed up crystals, feeling the snowflake’s dendrites tickle at my throat. I had gotten a cold. Snot oozed from my nostrils, my eyes itched, my schnoz glowed pink, my voice was hoarse, and I wanted nothing but to go home to a home that no longer existed. But I chose to go it alone on this quest and I knew the dangers in the freedom of going solo. The winds were strong and the snow was sharp. New ice glazed once powdery fields and the storms of yesterday came again and there was nothing I could do except cower at the magnificence of Nature’s sword: a thing so grand and powerful that it has slayed armies of men with merely a windy slash. I was nature’s *****. I felt no promise in pressing on, but I did so only to keep the snow from burying me alive in my tent.
And I am so glad that I did, because when the great storm finally passed I looked up to see the sky so hopeful and blue bordering the mountains I knew to be the ones I was searching for. I recognized them from the bedtime stories. She had said that when she saw them for the first time that she felt a sudden understanding that all the many hundred miles she’d ever walked were supposed to take her here. She said that the mere sight of them gave her purpose. These were those mountains. I knew because the purpose I had lost sight of came bubbling back out of my aching heart, just as it had for her.

These peaks as barren as plucked pelicans and peacocks, but as beautiful as the feathers taken from them, were beacons in the night for those in search of a world of dreams in which to create a new reality. From them I heard laughter jiggle and echo, hefty and deep in the stomachs of the only people truly living it seemed. When I was scouring the vastness of this wilderness for a sign or a purpose, I followed the scent of their delicious living and I guess my nose led me well.
A glide and a hop further on my skis, there the trees parted and powder deepened and sun shone just a bit brighter. Behind the blinding glare of the snow, faces gleamed from tents and huts and igloos and hammocks. Shrieks of children swinging from branches tickled my ears, which had grown accustomed to the silence of winter. As I approached this camp, I saw they were not kids but grown men and women. It seemed I had stumbled down a rabbit hole while following the tracks of a white jackalope. I had found my world of dreams. I had found them. I had found a home.
I was escaping my lonely, wintery existence into a shared haven perfectly placed beneath the peaks that had plagued my dreams. A place where the only directions that existed were up and down the slopes and forwards to the future. Never Eat Soggy Waffles did not matter anymore. By the end of my time there, I had even forgotten my lefts and rights. The camp had been assembled with the leftovers of the modern world and looked like a puzzle with mismatched pieces from fifty different pictures. At first glance, it could have been a snow covered trash heap, but there was a sentimental glow on each broken appliance that told me otherwise. Everything had a use, though it was not usually what was intended. The homes of these families and friends were made of tarp or blankets or animal hides and had smelly socks or utensils or boots or bones hanging from their openings. There were homemade hot springs made of bathtubs placed above fires with water bubbling. Unplugged ovens buried in snow and ice kept the beer cooled. Trees doubled as diving boards for jumping into the deep pits of powder around them. The masterminds behind this camp were geniuses of invention and creation. Their most impressive creation was their lifestyle; it was one that had been deemed impossible by society. This place promised the solace I had been searching for.
A hefty mass of man and dogs galumphed its way through the snow. Rosy cheeks and big hands came to greet me. This was Angus. His face grew a beard that scratched the skies; it was a doppelganger to the mossy branches above us. But his smile shone through the hairs like the moon. There are people in this world whose presence alone is magic, an anomaly among existence. Angus was one of them. Not an ounce of his being made sense. The gut that hung from his broad-shouldered bodice was its own entity and it swung with rhythms unknown to any man; it was known only to the laughter that shook it. Gently perched atop this, was his shaggy white head that flew backwards and into the clouds each time he laughed, which was often. Angus fathered and fed the folks who’d found their way to this wintery oasis, none of which were of the ordinary. There was a lady with snakes tattooed to her temples, parents who’d birthed their babies here beneath the full moon, couples who went bankrupt and eloped to Canada, men and women who felt the itch just as me and my mother had. The itch for something beyond the mundane that left us unsatisfied with life out in the real world. All of them came out of their lives’ hardships with hilarious belligerence and wit, each with their own story to tell. The common thread sewn between all these dangerous minds was an undeniable lust for life.
The man who represented this lust more than any other was Wiley and wily he was. He’d seen near-death countless times and every time he saw the light at the end of the tunnel, he would run like a fool in the other direction. He lived on borrowed time. You could see that restlessness driving him in each step he took. Each step was a leap from the edges of what you thought possible. Wiley was a man of serious grit, skill, and intelligence and never did he let his mortality shake him from living like the animal he was. He’d surely forgotten where and whence he came from and, until finding his way here, had made homes out of any place that offered him beer and some good eatin’. Within moments of shaking hands, he and I created instant brotherhood.
The next few days turned into months and I eventually lost track of time all together. I could have stayed there forever and no day would have been the same. I played with these people in the mountains and pretended it was childhood again. We lived with the wind and the wildness the way my mother had once shown me how to live. I had forgotten how to live this way without her and I was learning it all over again. We awoke when we pleased and trekked about when weather permitted, and sometimes when it didn’t. Each day the sun rose ripe with opportunities for new lines to ski and new peaks to explore. The backcountry was ours and only ours to explore. We were its residents just like the moose and the wolves. My body grew stinky and hairy with joy and pushed limits. Hair that stank of musk and days of labor was washed only with painful whitewashes courtesy of Wiley. Generally after a nice run, we’d exchange them, shoving each other’s faces deep into the icy layers of snow, which would be followed with some hardy wrestling. By the end of each day, if we didn’t have blood coming out of at least two holes in our faces then it wasn’t a good day.
I never could wait to get my life’s adventures in and here I was having them, recalling the unsatisfied ache I had before I left. Life was lost to me before. I had forgotten how to live it after she had died. Modern monotony had taken control until my life became starved of genuine purity and all that was left then was mimicry. But the hair grown long on these men and smiles grown large on these woman showed no remembrance of such an earth I had come from. They had long ago cast themselves away from such a society to relish in all they knew to be right, all their guts told them to pursue: the truth that nature supplies. Still I worried I would not remember these people and these moments, knowing how they would be ****** into the abyss of loss and time like all the others. But we lived too loud and the sounds of my worries were often drowned in fun.
     We spent the nights beside the fire and listened to Wiley softly plucking strings, that was when I always liked to look at Yona. Her curls endlessly waterfalled down her chest and the fire made her hair shimmer gold in its glow. She was the spark among us, and if we weren’t careful she could light up the whole forest.  She was a drum, beating fast and strong. Never did she lose track of herself in the clashing rhythms of the world. She had ripped herself from the hands of the education system at a young age and had learned from the ways of the changing seasons f

I recall being tucked in under sheets of snow
And dozing off with aches from icy bums bruised on hidden rocks beneath supposedly cushioned pillows of powder.
I recall climbing high up onto roofs and the tops of waterfalls out of confident impulse and curiosity for a different view of the world...a new perspective.
I recall the same men and boys inspiring me, teaching me, beating me, and becoming less than what I would become; I then sought out those who saw me as an equal but were indeed much better than I. They helped me to know the importance of being challenged and being humble.
I recall the sheer joy and anxiousness that came with the winter breeze leading up the mountains, where everything had a different tint or filter depending on the company you shared the moments with.
I recall following pure instinct and having full trust in intuition, hoping only to make this life my own and to inspire in the process.
I recall being told to trust no one, and rebelling because I treasured a secret friendship with a stranger more than cautiousness.
I recall surfing on rocks, snow, grass, rain, roofs, people, anything but the ocean.
I recall forgetting to look for love because I had too much in my own heart to care all that much what I received.
I recall getting older and maintaining innocence despite many's attempts at peeling at my corners.
I recall reaching adulthood legally and becoming a child illegally, embracing the breaking of that law for the rest of my life to come.
I recall making my own home, and being let into the world, and flourishing in that freedom.

She stood a few meters to the west, a strikingly close distance that would usually be much too close for comfort, with what I expected to be thoughts of danger and malice floating around in her head. But here I was stone-still in my long johns with a lovely tea in hand (I had gathered mint and bark earlier in the day just for it) and I was not afraid. I had a head and a stomach full of sisterhood and peace to offer her. We stared deep into each other eyes for what seemed to be a long while. She tested the waters, moved with unease, smelled around my camp. She was a shaggy silhouette backlit by a lush sunset of purples and reds.
I observed her and she me. As the stars began to peek out at us here down below, she seemed to grow comfortable in my company. A true creature of the night. Both pairs of our eyeballs hung bodiless now through the curtain of nightfall, reflecting only the small fire I sat near. Her eyes were glazed in a funny kind of yellow, and I’d bet mine looked just as eerie to the wide-eyed wolf floating in nothingness. She wandered and sniffed out into the trees and sat for a moment watching me drink my tea. With that, I never saw her again. One moment, one blink, and her eyes were gone from the shadows. I was alone again. I appreciated her company and was glad to have shared this evening with her.

The coals burned for a while with the dying dusk but eventually bled into the blackness just like everything else. Everything had its day but now it was night.

Most nights were expected to be lonely. I braced myself for the sorrow. Tonight it did not come. Though shivers shook my spine, rattling my bones, I felt no desire for any arms other than mine to warm me. Instead there was ecstasy and freedom in my solitude that flooded my dreams. I was alone and I could do absolutely anything that I pleased. So I slept and slept long and slept deep and woke with the sun as my only companion and was very glad that it was so.

The next few moons were peaceful, as the skies were preparing for the birth of the next blood moon. I too prepared myself for the next leg of my journey.

You know where you're going.
So when it comes,
Acknowledge and appreciate
The day that I come home late at night
for the 113th night in a row
and there are bumps and bruises kissing my bones,
there are dirt and grass stains painting my knees and clothes,
there are patches on the gear, on the pants, on the skin
from rips of rad that stroke my discomfort and
grant me a fight to win against fear.
and there are eye wrinkles forming around
bags of forgotten sleep and sexytimes
that make me feel worthy of nothing more,
yet everything more still comes.
And I clamor in the doorway hand in hand
riding giggles with an innate and undying flirtatious hilarity
into a house that radiates warm simplistic comfort
but has no locks
so I may come and go
to and fro
from everyday new adventures and
new states and new sights and new lives
but always back to the dog-fur lined rug
that tickles my circletoes as I ****** a tasty beer
to wash away the dust that coats my guzzling esophagus
filling my belly with the mountain’s leftovers
and satisfying my hunger for another day
but not until the sun rises and it is morning and I must be alive
to smooch the lips of the most important creatures
puppies, kittens, boys with fingertoes,
whose love is constant as
the beating of my wild and beefy heart
and the breathing of my battered and blessed breath
with the silence and rest within it
,between each passionate burst,
as understood yet persevering as
any will we have to live our lives beyond the mundane.
They are Nature’s gifts that make me owe her
something greater that gratitude,
so I go out at morning light each day and play with the winds
and babysit the plants and learn from the birds
who send me off with homework about listening
and about singing songs out of selfless selfishness
not for other people
but with the intent to make people listen and
make it change them for better
whether they want it to or not.
and sometimes the lessons are tough,
harder than rocks that teach them.
Sometimes the work goes untouched on my desktop
and I get lost in Milky Way patterns
made by the Sun’s best friends on a drunk getaway
but then I find my way back by a road of traced constellations
on the moley chest of the ultimate mountain man,
who flips back open my books and
points to nirvana among the pages of life’s endless studies,
emphasizing and underlining key points with
pens of self-awareness and highlighters of supportive independence.
Then bookmarks important parts with reminders of the first time
he licked his lips to savor the sweet taste of a tough cookie
he had tasted only once months before.
A recipe that had been fine tuned away in a hell he left behind
for new homes to be found.
A place he confronted again
to lead a lost soul out and into the world of living and loving.
And loving is what is done
when bears romp beside our sleeping heads and puke garbage belly
but make less of a mess than I do when giddied by that silverlining
that was merely a stormy cloud to those who predicted rain,
And I will not seek to tempt fate nor die unsure of it
but I was jigging in the right place at the right time and
the river of his rain has flooded me with forward momentum,
I will rescue those who cannot stand stronger than the current,
my quads are toned for they've fought the waves until I stood.
And after a hard day of nothing less than that and more,
Zzzztown will welcome me with
joyful snoozing, lekker slaaping, and the tightest dreaming.
And I will wave 'See You Soon' to B-town not alone, finally together
with batted eyelashes and heavy eyelids and sore bodies.

and one day years down the road she told me:

I once met a wolfman
with big hands, sullen eyes, and canyons carved into his cheeks
down deep in the caverns of the forest’s snow-sunken branches
A man more wolf than any wolf or dog I’d encountered before
I met a wolfman hungry with lust for the danger that seeped from everything
with fear being a forgotten foe of his past
I met a wolfman who taught me to kiss the jewels on the hands of challenges
and how to live with gratitude for mortality
This wild wolfman knew that the lips of death are glossed with sweet cherry-flavored balm and are worth every smooch as long as you make sure to breath in between
He knew that a well-lived life makes death’s embrace that of an old friend
Whose arms will seem like home
This wolfman showed me the ways of the beasts and the burdens they carried
showed me that I’m no different  
that I’ve got hairs on my back and a growl in my throat just like them

and one day years down the road he told me:

I once met a lady
with strong hands, sunrise eyes, and valleys painted across her face
far beyond where most explorers often lose themselves,
in terrain only told in legend
A young pup with a river’s blood in her veins, disguised as a woman
I met a lady crazy to close her eyes and capture the sights she’d seen
only to find them running away with tears that she cried through her tight shut lids
I met a lady who taught me to look for sunken treasure in the depths of my mind
and how to share the wealth and welcome visitors with a doormat and a smile
This little lady knew that togetherness was found within the distance between our solitude and silence was as well a told myth as time and Bigfoot
She knew that no matter how far a man could run his footprints would never stop chasing him
unless he stopped in his tracks and let the wind erase his past
This lady showed me more than one way to make a home out of weakened hearts that still pump
showed me how to repair instead of replace
how something can be damaged and still work, maybe even better than before.

The many who separately and personally christened themselves
Kings of New York
and Kings of summer
      and Queens of nothing except for England, and jadedness, and hearts.
wear crowns made of whichever substance seems most characteristic
made of paint or graffiti or blood or trap rap
made from a mix of loneliness, Kool-aid powder, and youthful idealism.
New York is allowed to be ruled by the masses,
New York is royalty to itself
I can call myself a King
when I dangle my feet and swing rhythms out of ashy windows
and demand that your pessimism shut the hell up..
But most kings get their heads cut off.
I can call myself Honorary Royalty.
Because when I leave the pigeons and the pigeon-toed
and I leave the Kingdom's bubblegum streets and romp no longer,
I stop feeling cramped by superfluous freedom and
I appreciate the bars of my bed and my self-inflicted prisons..
Inner struggle and whatnot.
I appreciate them tripping me and trapping me and ******* on my face
Because of them, New York's air tastes a lot cleaner
Especially when coming from the exhale of your exhausted but prevailing breath as it sighs one last pun about seafood into our clammy embrace.

I come from a place somewhat far away from you,
Where the sky is bountiful and framed with elevated rock
And every girl of a certain social standing has been stabbed in the nose at least once
Where the when’s are dubbed by days you’ve yet to shower
Or how many rocks you’ve jumped from into raunchy radical pools of the drip drip of glacier waters, when which I swam in I felt cleaner than you did when bathing in the blasphemous bath water that will have you buried.
Far away from here, where commonplace drugs are not always used only as cushions to soften life’s blows and then throw you back into a spiral of rehabilitation,
but where I know people who use them as a part of a search, part of a curiosity about pushing the limitations of the mind deliberately, seeking a new perspective, initiating change.
Where a person is not a person but an infinity of ideas combined into the imagination and
kindness is not an effort nor a chore but a habitual benefit to both parties
where I was taught to forget the meaning of a label, because it is limiting
I denounce the generalized title 'hippy' because of lack of identification.
I am participating in the act of growth and presence. Doing me.
Where I think with genuine elation and association to the happiness I have found and collected from the bottoms of riverbeds and the insides of my parental unit’s palms.
Palm oil, lip balm, ****** brand names, brandy is a **** name, cow utters, chopstick to pizza, pizza to chopstick, sore ******* from nibbles of baby teeth, and degrading nostalgia.
I denounce my obsession with nostalgia.
Where the fields are wider than the waists of the fat men that sit on porches drinking pint after pint of the local dark ales,
no matter how cool they may seem, they are just senile.
Where I made juice. where I sold juice. where I had the juice. where juice was naturally acidic. where juice was not in a box. where juice was inside a lemon. where juice became a different concept than it used to be.
Where there are fifty people I don’t know, conozco the rest of them, but that number is getting bigger as people are being born and I am not a midwife.
Where I only ever actually hated this one kid, Chase, who was in my 5th grade class,
I loved everyone always, i still do. I want to apologize to Chase for being a total *****.
Where I’m not a kamikaze as much as you think I am, just another breeze among the bigger clouds.
Where there is a culture of a different time or place and I think I made it all up. I could be wrong but I don’t know if you’ll have anyone who says the same things about it as I do .
I come from a place where I conform to the culture kindly consciously willingly but I am not dedicated to it.

Acknowledge
The day that I come home late at night
for the 113th night in a row
and there are bumps and bruises kissing my bones,
there are dirt and grass stains painting my knees and clothes,
there are patches on the gear, on the pants, on the skin
from rips of rad that stroke my discomfort and
grant me a fight to win against fear.
and there are eye wrinkles made of fun times
forming around bags of forgotten sleep.

Say thanks for the day that comes
when I clamor in the doorway, hand in hand with selflessness
riding a wave of giggles on a board of undying flirtatious hilarity
into a house that radiates warm simplistic comfort
but has no locks
so I may come and go
to and fro
from every day a new adventure and
new states and new sights and new lives.
Always coming back to the dog-fur lined rug
that tickles my circular toes as I drag them over
on my way to fill a thermos with the tastiest brew
that will wash away the dust that coats my guzzling esophagus
and fill my belly with the mountain’s leftovers, satisfying my hunger.
But not for long, only until the sun rises again and it is morning

And it will be another day that needs appreciating,
for when it gets here I will be alive and called forth
to smooch the lips of the land and its most important creatures
puppies, kittens, bees and bugs
whose love is as constant as
the beating of my wild and hefty heart
and the breathing of my battered and blessed breath
with silence and rest  
between each passionate pulse.
Pauses that will be treated with understanding
by those who love with a kind of love
that keeps persevering
that does not fear dormancy
that is as determined as
our intention to live our lives beyond what is expected.
This type of love and those who share it with me
will be Nature’s gifts that make me owe her
something greater that gratitude,
And at morning light on each day that comes, I will go out
and play with the winds
and babysit the plants
and learn from the birds
who will send me off with homework about listening
and about singing songs out of selfless selfishness:
songs not written for the audience or the demand
but with the intent to make people listen and
make it change them for better
whether they want it to or not.
And sometimes the lessons will be tough,
harder than the rocks and cliffs that provide me a playground between classes.
Sometimes the work will go untouched on my desktop because I know
I will get distracted by the Milky Way patterns splattered around me
made from creative bursts of the Sun’s best friends.
But eventually I will find my way back on a road of traced constellations
on the moley face of the ultimate mountain man,
who will flip back open my books and
point to nirvana among the pages of life’s endless studies,
emphasizing and underlining key points with
pens of self-awareness and highlighters of supportive independence.
And he will bookmark the important parts
with reminders of the first time
that I licked my lips
and loved the salt I tasted
and realized that it is just the right amount for the recipe
that makes the tough cookie that I have turned out to be.
A recipe that has been fine-tuned by role models with a taste for bravery
and better baking skills than Martha Stewart, Rachael Ray, and Paula Deen
Combined.
And these cherished bookmarks will litter life
with humble self-love and prideful love for everything else in the world.

And hopefully a satisfactory love for these days that will come,
The days when loving is precisely what is done at all times,
even while bears nap beside our sleeping heads and puke garbage belly.
I will forgive them because I shouldn't have let them get into the trash
in the first place.
Anyways, it will be impossible to be mad while giddied by the silver lining
that shines around all the bad things that just look like storm clouds
to those who predict rain.
The rain is not under our control, so why fight it?
I will not seek to tempt fate nor die unsure of its reasoning
But rain often seems pretty purposeful
and I know where I am going so I will go with purpose
and I know I will be finding good people
in the right place at the right time
whose importance I will never second guess.

But Never forget to thank them for existing
and recognize that the rain and storms that have flooded me
have also made me a river of forward momentum,
and it will be my duty to rescue those who cannot stand stronger than the current.
My quads are toned for they've fought the waves until I stood.

It will be a long, hard day of nothing less than living fully
and watching plans perpetually come to fruition
and giving all of myself to the earth and others
and lovingly recognizing that I have the life that I have worked so hard to live.
When it is finally time for rest and
the universe, with its royal authority, has knighted me
with all of these gifts and responsibilities,
I will get onto the snoozetrain to ZzzzzTown,
curl up in a beam of moonshine then tuck myself in.
With batted eyelashes, heavy eyelids, sore body,
I will sleep so deeply and dream precisely my reality.
And have not a single dream to tell in the morning,
Except for the occasional one about dragons.

There is only one instant in life
You'll feel it like a punch in the face
You'll feel it like an insect punching you in the face
You'll feel it like a subtlety in the subconscious
It will be an itch, a slight expansion of your mental boundaries
And it will tickle you with a delight you can't fathom.
It is the passing of a moment
It is the the only moment that we are always part of,
and in it there are no limitations.
You will compare it to a kiss on the cheek from an elderly relative.
You will compare it to the sniffles and scratches of chickenpox.
It will ask of you everything,
nothing the past or the future would dare to request.
It will put anxiousness in your core
It will put laziness in your bones.
But you must hold it in your arms
And shift your cap sideways
And hold its face between both hands, just
Have your way with it.

Sometimes the stars ***** me with their changes
A frightened tickle brushes my toes and a cry will bubble
A well-anticipated annual sob that will flush me with endorphins and
dump the weight of
ego and age and time and living
from my shoulders.
The world turns fast and I can feel my gut getting motion-sick
A puke-covered nostalgia strangles my fading past
and I hold on.
A heart is a muscle, it can never break
Luckily my mind can still go to bits
and I can live happily under a shield of insanity.

the bar fights between paradoxes that erupt within our thoughts shatter
the walls to closed off spaces
and like this, unexpected things keep us on our toes.
These are the things that strike the match and light the stove.
Divine inspiration still sprouts from the cracks in our skulls,
yet we still fight to fill them with manure and *******
out of fear of what we could create,
that it could be something of Frankenstein’s creation.
But somehow we forget that the creation often takes the blame,
Not Frankenstein.

My destiny is not what I desire but it is what I need. More than anything, I want you. A life of stoke and steeze and stars and streams shared with you. And I may get that. Someday. But that day isn’t today and it won’t be tomorrow because we both know that we’ve both got mountains to move, to climb, to see, to love. Someday, I think, we’ll find ourselves standing at the bottom of the same one, ready to move it and that first one we move together will be so easy. Because we’ll have the other, and for the first time. So the load will be shared and it will not seem so big. I’ve got a feeling that there is a range of mountains awaiting our eager hands and each night it tickles my dreams to think that maybe we’ll see them tomorrow, maybe I’ll see you tomorrow. But I’m starting to forget about them and you, and forgetting deliberately. Because going about each day with a mind so caught up in what will be or what was or what is but isn’t here, is a destructive delight. I need to be here, whether you are with me or not. And you need to be there, whether I am with you or not. I hope soon again we’ll be in the right place and that right time because I miss you because you’re special and you’re special because you are far beyond my imagination. My imagination’s got no limits except somehow I can’t dream up anything more about you than what your eyes looked like when you first realized you loved me and what a long ******* haul we were in for. Those eyes came 3 minutes after I met you and my eyes did the same about a week before I even knew what your eyes looked like. I don’t know. I can’t imagine, but that’s how I know you’re something worth fighting for. I know you all too often only see a grey cloud, but you are only silverlining to me, bub.

I'm sorry, darling, but you're my second love.
I cannot lie to y­ou, I love you less than one other.
The mountains have my heart,­
But you can have it secondhand.
Those rocks and trees were the­ first to caress my curves
And you were second.
That is a compe­tition you will never win, my sweet.
My kisses belong to the gro­und below my feet,
While you will get soil in your mouth
When w­e smooch.
The animals of Mother Earth cuddled me
Before your a­rms ever warmed me on cold nights.
So when we embrace,
Leave r­oom for my bunny to curl between us in bed.
The fields of powder­ were my home,
Before your heart,
And what was first my home is­ always.
So I hope this won't break your heart
...the fact that ­you are second in mine.
I'm sorry for the muddy kisses
And the ­fur on all your clothes,
But I'm doing my best to love you both.­
On nights I lie beneath the stars,
Don't yearn for the attenti­on of my eyes
But lie beside me and hold my hand.
...Only one h­and though,
I'm petting the dog with the other.

There was a hovering delight that hummed within the clouds
And it caressed the fears that were held in the eyes of youth
But in its deceitful hands there was sleet and ice and sorrow
that had kidnapped the snow
and like daggers it pierced the illusion
That tomorrow was just as far away as yesterday
yet could promise you new lollipop flavors and less lightning.

But its promises still consoled the tired eyes of bedtime,
whispering lullabies and stories
that held this all encompassing knowledge that somehow
no matter how bad tonight's nightmares may be,
tomorrow's nap time and warm milk would always bring rest.

A year had passed since, and so far a little one’s freshly-birthed body had only ever been cradled by the hands of the mountains. A plane brought them back to the motherland and for the first time, the sandy shore of the Netherlands embraced the lightness of the little one’s footsteps with a surreal familiarity as if her toes were raindrops coming home to the ocean. A mother smiled with stupid instinct plastered on her face by the little one’s mirrored expression.
Expecting no response from the little one but laughter, she asked, “You like it, liefje? Me too.”
Irrational joy erupted from the little one’s babbling mouth at the sight of an infinite horizon, but a fearful hand clutched a mother’s pointer finger.
Timid hesitancy shook the little one’s head at the suggestion of entering such a moving, living mass. In only a second, impulsive curiosity drove her little feet forward into the wet. A mother inched forward to shin-deep as the little one waddled, still clutching, until chilled up to her chin.
The little one spoke with a laugh, asking for a few things: to go forward, to never leave, to know how to express herself. Words weren’t familiar and could not have captured her feelings anyhow. Her good spirits were not interrupted by these limitations, only by the currents. A wave that was thought to be a new friend threw a punch to the little one’s unsuspecting face. A punch that was only a splash to a motherly shin. The little one crumbled and retreated from the fight. She was wounded with salt water stinging her nose. Surprised and enthused, the little one let out a cry. The dominating singe of salt in her mouth and nostrils overthrew her sense of smell. It seemed to be a betrayal of the sea, so she fled to steady and supportive arms that watched from the trustworthy shore, only steps away. The little one’s fear and strife was addressed with loving but casual sympathy.
A mother’s chuckles implied a lack of severity to the situation. “Does it hurt, Sofietje? No need to cry, you’ll be fine.” The little one felt relieved but still the worst pain of her short life was not being attended to. For just a moment the world ****** and a lesson was learned and an understanding of the pain began establishing itself.
When the breeze blessed her with relief and the familiar scent of a mother’s skin returned, there seemed nothing more important then to also return to the water. The little one was smarter now; she knew it could make her cry loud, but she also knew it made her laugh louder.
To have a child let a mother be a child and share in the freshness of perspective. A mother cringed with nostalgia as her last and littlest one now inherited the waves of her childhood. And they were received with nothing but the proper response: incoherent elation.

Light told the time
the sunset rang the dinner bell.
the living was simple
the living was kind
with flames lapping at logs,
with dogs lapping at the glacier stream,
with heads cozy with each other's company,
with their mittens cozy on their fingers,
they cuddled tight together and
they would stay there together
till her **** sagged
till his beard grew long and grey
till wrinkles replaced pus pimples.
borrowed from the earth:
a body was not hers, let alone his
a body was not his, let alone hers
but they shared them
nourished them from the same cup
used them to climb to the same heights
allowed them to protect the other's
and when the time came
they gave back what they had borrowed
with grace and appreciation

I have buildings growing in my bones
red bricks staggered stacking high
with blue tile and brown stone
the paint is already cracking but it is still fresh with life
beds are laid with quilt and skin of animals
the plants grow tall wall to wall
and on the walls
so much of me
I must paint and paint and paint

There was chatter reflecting off the water just like the moon. Th­e Milky Way was swimming with us, wrapped in algae and moss. We h­ad no swimsuits, only spontaneity and laughter. We were far away from trivialities where there was no light pollution, you could see so far outward into everything. We­ were not looking up, we were looking out at what we are part of.­ Light, so much light. When our thoughts were finally chilled lik­e iced lemonade, we ran through bushes and flailed in the mud to the car. We drove. Once sitting on our bed, a delic­ious thought bubbled into reality.
We discussed it, unanimously deciding on this nights adventure...we'­d enjoy the first rays of the morning while seated comfortably at the top­ of Sacajawea Peak.
Eager legs kicked and finally­ slept…too soon later, a buzz of a telephone awoke us, then another. I bounced out of the covers and to the ki­tchen to prepare a hurried breakfast of peanut butter and fruit roll ups. Nutrition was priority. The clock blinked 3 AM.
Whines squeaked from tired mouths, but excitement­ prevailed. We packed into our seats and struggled to keep our eyes open, but the drive­ was bumpy and our sore butts kept us from forgetting the purpose­ of our trip. We were there to make our lives radical, and you can’t sleep in moments like these­. 4 AM screamed at me, we had to hurry. I plowed my way up the five miles of that mo­untain as the sun painted the tops of the mountains red. We crossed streams, trippe­d on rocks, marveled at climate change and the disappearance of the snow we h­ad skied on just a week before. As the incline increased to nearl­y vertical, we met up with the mountain goats. Their tiny hooves danced on the faces of cliffs a­nd I stood on the trail not more than a meter away. They smiled at us, said good mo­rning, and we went on our way, huffing it up the face. As the sun’s light began­ to engulf the sky, we watched as the snowcapped ridgeline shined pink and gold. A mountain shaded us but as we reached the peak, the sun splashed our face, I felt god­ly. The sun had risen, and so had we. This is why we are alive; this is why we are happy. The valley below us still dozed, and we sat atop a mountain wide-awake. There is no item I could ask for that could ever give me this happiness. I do not climb mountains so that the world can see me, but so I can see the world and it is so beautiful.

You are my darling,
You are my sweetheart.
You're my love and y­our father's just jealous.
I can swoon and I can flatter you.

­You're the reason the moon hides behind shadows,
Cause it sees ­you and gets self-conscious about its figure.

When you summit those mountains,
you're the reason those fish swim upstream.

You pick those guitar strings better than your brother picks his nose,
And, boy, does he do that well.

Rug makers idolize you because of how you­ weave those words.

And the ebbing of the ocean is in constant competition
with how you swim the tides.

With all of ­your multitalented genius,
I wouldn't be surprised if you could calculate the coord­inates of the sun while sprinting a marathon.
But I know that you'd just find
That you are the source of the sunshine.

Watch ­out for those boys, chica,
because the line for you is longer t­han Gamestop's.

If you never understand how well you recited yo­ur ABCs
that 1st day of elementary school,
I just hope you kn­ow...

You make the bees jealous, honey.

My independence is a self-diagnosed mental illness that is the root of my ego. I cannot begin to list the variability of how necessary others are to my existence. Sometimes I still need a mother or a father. Sometimes I still need you, but do not spoil me with anything but my freedom and your love. I would like to be spoiled, but in spoiling me you must tell me to scream in rebellion at you. Spoil me with freedom to pursue what you may think silly. Spoil me with a lack of a leash to let me continue imagining my independence. But please do not let my imagined independence be contagious. Understand that I am no more independent from you than my cells are from mitochondria, all of which you have given to me. The breath in my lungs that allows my yells to echo in the canyons and the lungs that hold it belong to you, and there is gratefulness to you that I fear is ineffable. But the thoughts in my head belong to me and I cannot apologize for this, but I can say that I will give you my feelings of unconditional love, those are yours. You gave me those at birth and I will return them like borrowed sweaters. My emotions, my strife, my capability to learn and grow and reach the tops of literal and hypothetical mountains: I owe these things to you. The farther my distance from your doorstep and more people I have seen give themselves, I have never seen one give as much as you without expectation for reward. There is a world established and grown purely from the lines on your fingertips. Each thought in your head that you trivialized was responsible for the creation of millions of lives to come. Even if your saliva tastes bitter from years of ******* on the pits of the regrets you have swallowed, do not forget that you have grown flowers in your stomach from nothing but stomach acid. You are capable of everything. You are ineffable, I do not fear this. To describe my mother would be to see the eye of the storm wink at my destructive worries. To describe my mother would be to describe the universe taking the shape of bird whose clipped wings could not stop its flight. Impossible. I have a bone to pick with language, it cannot capture the most important things…But, Mother, I will not pick your bones. Your lips may be chapped and your eyes may be tired, but your legs are still capable of dancing. Let the rhythm move your aching bones and grow happier as you grow older. It should not be any other way.

Change pumps through my veins
and seeps from my pores and my picked-at pimples of the mundane.
I'm told it'll leave scars in noticeable places.
I'm told to leave them be and let them pass.
No, sir, I tell them.
The risk is the reward
and the pain is the gain, I say to their perfect and pimpled faces.
Their cover-up can trick a few with a deceiving view,
But monotony will fester beneath artificial sweetness.
A broke-*** life will get tiring when it is only made up of
humdrum and dumdums,
And I will forget those who told me to settle as I run with a pulsing heart full of change toward a life and a love that is stronger than drugs,
I am an addict.
What will I have to remember if I always stay the same?
Not much.

I think all I've got left to do
is all very realistic and will happen eventually.
I think I would be happy if I could finish just a couple things
before i leave.
Maybe for me
to be enlighteningly in love,
sip a nice thermos of coffee,
do something exhilarating
do another something and maybe one more
and then keep that blood rushing
would make me quite ready to die.
Death would be the next thing on the bucket list,
and I would be so happy to delight in its adventure.
Be enthused, be in love, be adventurous, be inspiring, and then be dead.
That will be the best.
That will be the life.

My wildness is the same wildness of the wolves and bears.
The wild outdoors harbors the hound inside me
that has not hesitated to bark
at you who tell me to be quieter.
There is a man whose mountain I moved
like prophecy told
and whose compass points me onward to
greater, but less important peaks of mountains awaiting my hands.
He plugged my voice box into an amplifier
and said be louder.
Since then I've found no leash for my hound,
so with bite marks on its collar
I've quickly become it.
I will howl as long as
each solo lobo has a home
somewhere between their K9s
that smile at setbacks.

Peaks as barren as plucked pelicans and peacocks,
but as beautiful as the feathers taken from them, were beacons in the night for those in search for a world of dreams in which to create a new reality. From them I heard laughter jiggle and echo, hefty and deep in the stomachs of the only people truly living, it seemed. I was escaping a lonely, wintery existence into a shared haven in the mountains where the only directions that existed were North and outwards.

I sat with the old and no matter how aged I'd become, I was still among the young. I heard their grey and bearded stories that had only ever been touched before by nostalgia and that glowed warm with the same tenderness I felt for my own memories. I felt within me sparks lighting fires and burning with the inner realization that I have my own storms and stories to look forward to, that have yet to surprise me and envelope me and change me. Despite any number of years, I could still spy a child full of awe and newness within the smile-lined eyes of those who had surely and would surely out-live me.
But if I took nothing from their stories, I held within my heart the rawest piece of advice: I allowed the mountains and the wilderness to guide me forward through their ever-wise and correcting cycles and opened my eyes much wider to the grander of the world around me.

The unknown presses its callused fingers to my temples
A headache pulses its way into existence
I don't have fear,
but a painful curiosity that reeks and grips my core.
I sought out nothing
I sought out relief within my own belly and brain
and in it I found a mutual belligerence with a head not attached to me.
Whether the universe was conspired against me or otherwise,
These shenanigans felt like something to chew on
And I'd been grinding my teeth in my sleep for years.
Its temptation was enough for me to risk eating gluten for just a taste.
N it tasted better than a milkshake on a rainy day in paradise.

If you say that you love the wilderness then do not forget to love the parts that are truly wild. The parts that are terribly so. do not forget to love the storms and winds that whip the weak and make you whine, the aching cold that crushes hopes of continuing, the haunting heat that held your mind captive. They are the unforgiving wild. Beautiful days beautiful views are beautiful delusion. They are not hard to love. The bruises and bites are the reality. They are hard to love. But if you keep coming back, as many do for reasons unknown to them, you will learn after a number of years to love the wild for what is really is,
harsh
terrifying
difficult
unapologetic
and unbelievably flirtatious

I woke up on a perfect winter morning while the sun slumbered behind snowing skies. My crusty eyes opened without any dark circles of obligation for once and my breath filled me with a flourishing freedom. I lied there for a moment and merely existed, before the pounding of my heart and rushing of my blood pulled me forth to take on the world once again. This restlessness of the ocean inside me guided me as I transitioned from who I was towards a me more capable of grander and love. On this morning I felt a freshness of mind that set me forth with strong strides in the winding direction of a future so enlightening and so ideal in its flaws, and what could I do with myself but seek out a sweet adrenaline to satisfy a piece of my wandering soul? I decided to go. I, with a deep intuition and knowing, left my doorstep with oatmeal on my lip, skis on my back, and the intent to make decisions and create the life that is genuine to me and to this world that I have found worth being part of. My mind was waiting for me in the mountains and my soul was with me in the snow. So, in good company, I bounded forward on the road. My brothers sat beside me and we shared the bumps of the potholes that put hiccups in our laughter. These memories in making were tinted through golden filters of familiarity and understanding. Onward and ahead, we saw the mountains looming with a million-year-old confidence that I sought to adopt. While I held slight fear in my heart for what was to come, I also held my own sweaty hand as comfort. I was full of vulnerability and courage and I still sat giddy in the car because I knew I was living and nothing could be greater.
Soon it was midday and the clouds loitered around the edges of the sky as if they were suspicious of the sun. Beams of light ricocheted off of goggles and snow and beads of sweat that were caught in my oldest brother's beard. The hard work and constant determination of the hike up was a way of earning our run and it made the view taste so much sweeter. Finally able to rest, I planted a granola bar in my mouth and squinted through a frame of icy eyelashes to see a sight I had seen before, every day for the past week, but still punched the air out of my lungs. The powder was up to my thighs and the snow lovingly seeped its way into my boots just to kiss my toes with painful numbing. I wiggled them to try tickling some sanity and warmth into them. I only hoped that my now purple toenails would not fall off. I pulled up my balaclava to dodge the lunges of frostbite's ravenous teeth. Each nip of cold, the company of my brothers, the view, and the raw interaction with the mountain created a moment that reeked of a dream: a seemingly perfect balance between pain and pleasure, just the right mixture to allow for maximum appreciation.  
The hype of the day kept us from settling our thoughts and quickly my siblings were bounding down the mountain. I felt freedom in the love I had for the mountain and for my four brothers whose elated screams echoed off of the mountain ranges. I joined their chorus of mountain yodelling and embraced the carefree mindset of Mother Nature. My skis led the way and found fresh tracks. The lines of the songs that blasted through my headphones were translated into the lines that I skied. The music shuffled with an abrupt change of pace that did not hinder my happiness. The random shuffling of songs only fed my innate addiction to change and let my enthusiasm multiply and blossom. With a knack for going with the flow, I knew that what the universe hands me is often what I need, and today I needed to listen to the soothing tones of The Tibetan Monks of Gaden Sharste & Corciolli as I sped down the slopes.
Although childish in our hearts and in our unpracticed aerials, we were not childish in our perspective. We had a shared understanding of the bigger picture, an open-mindedness that comes with being a small, overrated mammal sliding on some sticks down the biggest thing it could get its hands on. Each of us took our fair share of tumbles and we accompanied each with cacophonous laughter muffled by mouthfuls of snow. To be atop a mountain, and to feel its indifference to you, really teaches the skill of not taking things too seriously. I grabbed some air and crashed into a disorganized pile of all my gear. But my commitment to the bettering of my skills, my world, and myself, let me rise from even my most deadly of wrecks not unscathed but changed and always for the better. With such a brutal fall, I gained the experience necessary for landing it next time...and I did.
     After reaching the bottom, without hesitancy, we followed our spontaneous urges to pursue more. Every moment spent on that mountain came from a drive to experience and learn. It was based off of my ceaseless search for something new... or for learning or for the rad or for the gnar or for swagger or for living a life that could inspire. The seed of this search was planted in me by my five older siblings who all held within their bellies a fire of the same breed. And we sewed that common thread together on ridge lines and in powdered fields where nature is in perfect harmony with man and my head is in perfect harmony with my heart...where my intelligence and ambition trust one another and I trust them because they have gotten me this far and I know they are not tired yet.

Summer died,
fall is not far behind,
Let us bring out the horns and announce the birth of another Lady Winter.
This is a time of celebration!
Let her rise to power and potential.
Take her hand in a royal courtship.
Escort her to the high celestial kingdoms in the mountains above us
where they will honor her nobility.
Let her be showered with gifts of poetry and love letters.
Dance with her the great dance that will take you all the way to the edge of April
and drink in honor of this favorite lady of ours.
******* the sticks of freedom that will draw lines and paint her perfectly.
Let her bless you with her beauty and good fortune.
She will wrap her white shawl around all and kiss their cheeks,
leaving everyone blushing and rosy.
Love her, that elegant Lady Winter.
She will come to your land and rule
Regardless.

Let me reassure you on some facts:
This little **** we call ‘lif­e’
Will *** on your carpet and
Have a weird obsession with try­ing to bite your boyfriend’s **** off.
But you will love it anyways,
Because it sometimes does ­nice things like
Cuddle up to you
when you’re sad that your boyfriend doesn’t have a ***** anymore.

This life will stalk you on a seemingly pleasant nig­ht
And this life will hit you.
Hard.
When you’re least expecti­ng it.
Then as it is flashing in front of your eyes,
Your life­ will mug you
And take all of your money.
After it all, you ma­y be scarred, you may be hurt, you may be bankrupt…
But that pai­n may get you thinking, learning, questioning
And someday you ma­y realize that
In life,
The kisses last much longer than the br­uises do.
The laughter is much louder than the cries.
And the ­boyfriend is much better than the *****.

Head stuck under the sand
I only see tunnels made by moles
and in their foreign land
I found myself stuck for thirty years.
So I made hell into a home
and married the devil
had his children and
Raised hell.
But heaven was still heaven
and I was burnt black but his loving touches
So I made my way out in search of bandaids and aloe.

We're trekking and we're getting there
Soon the doldrums will be days behind me
I may be taking my time, but you are taking me back
I'll see you when I spit out the other side, I'm sure.
Don't let the sour summer swelter of the mundane tear at your hopes.
We're on our way,
Whichever way that is, maybe North maybe West maybe Both
We're running with the currents,
I can see your cheery little head bobbing in the tides, but
I won't take its false promises,
I'll just be looking for your wet feet when they'll trample the dunes.
I'm not one for waiting
I'll live and maybe anticipate the days
When us ******* no longer need the rock and roll
because we'll be suckling its lovely teet
and it will be our time to cruise
and be rad dudes in the ****
And coffee will shampoo our gnarled hair
that will be curled with salt and sun and *****.
See you then.

The three of us sat with music playing and the tires rolling and
unplanned adventures in front of us on the road.
With a few bucks in the bank and a bunch of ideas floating in our skulls,
our aches and pains to escape the mundane were finally being treated.
My best buddies and I spoke only out of true stoke and excitement over our lives.
Laughter carried the weight in all of our conversations.
Our words were hardly coherent because they were beaten through
giggles, coughs, and mumbles.
Nothing was to be taken seriously and
nothing was to be judged.
We were free to mumble whatever words we pleased, so long as we laughed.
The car muffled its own contribution to our discussions about cats, rebellion,
pounding ­**** beer, and jumping off of ****.
Those things are our only cure f­rom monotony,
so we spoke of them often.
But we also shared t­houghts on intellect, society, passion, and time;
however, we t­ook them out of their limitations.
To be friends means to leave­ the judgment to the strangers,
and to help each other grow.
­We followed these guidelines as an unspoken constitution.
We un­derstand that there is much more to a person than can be
express­ed in words,
so words take the short end and we do not care muc­h for their maintenance.

My age is just the continuity of my words that trail down the page, never ending with complicated and falsely-applied metaphors about going home and being young. My age is just the words that drip constantly from my lips and from my limbs, never developing a valid thesis to argue and swathed in vagueness. My age is not much else. My age seems to be everything but anything that really has any substance or purpose. My age has never been a defining characteristic to me but to everyone else that is all they know me by. I have alluded to my many experiences always exaggerating their length, purposely never correcting those who assumed that I was telling the truth. Were I not to have been reminded annually of my physical growth instead of my mental then I would surely have grown much more.

The North Country calls to those few who search for each other.

They’ve trekked far and long through poverty, apathy, tireless addictions
to find a place that takes their hands and holds them softly and coaxes the needles from their arms and bandages old wounds now infected and
kisses their lips like the first time again and says that there are better things to be had than heartache and misery.

They have found their home in the North high above all things where they were lead by a hunch that told them that they would find each other there.

The others.

Those few who feel the meat of life in their flesh, flavorful and juicy with humanity, emotion, and healthy discontentment.

They smell the scent of existence and experience in their nerves, tingling with peppermint sensations and awareness.

And in their bones is a thing or two more: A strength that houses their curious souls and replenishes dignities before sending them onto their next spiritual expedition.

They have skeletons that rattle with the purest rhythms of an entity, bones that drum a beat more constant than heart.

There are parties waiting for them in their marrow where they will find the river of unlimited knowledge and friendship and ***** that was truly always coursing through their veins.

I cannot wait to ride that beautiful river and be so full and so satisfied.

It is important to remember
That the canyons were not carved by ­impatience.
And that everyone who has contributed to anything gr­eat
In the areas of invention and creation
Had the same energ­y boiling in their veins as you do.
They were the movers, the makers, the breakers, the chasers,
And they were not stationary.
Go, if you can do ­anything, go.
And do not return
until you’re burning bright with rebellion and passion.
When you have burst into flames because of life,
I wil­l hide anything that will extinguish you.
Because it may hurt so­metimes,
But you will be the sun,
And you will bring life
From­ the love that you have for your own.

Samuel Carson, something like that.
He climbed a mountain, not sure which one but it was pretty big.
He forgot basic arithmetic, forgot to accli­matize.
Broke a rib or two, might have lost a lung.
Couldn’t t­ell you exactly.
He came down from the top with a padding of dead brain cells.
But he was still pretty witty.
You might say the mountain took the worst of him
and sent him off at his best.
He’s got not a worry in the world these days. ­
I’d like to say I was just as lucky, but I can’t seem to recall.
All I know is I’m still high on the altitude, ­
I am still feeling the breeze in my bones.
Hope to see him up ­there again someday,
If only I could remember what color his beard was
And whether or no­t he lost that limb.

I want to feel like a woman,

I want my femininity to exude sexuality

And I want each stroke of the air to sigh against my skin.

I want my bones to be sought-after secrets that will only be found by the greatest of explorers

I want my whispers to bring melodies from memories and erase the meaning of vocabulary

Forget the language and let me let you touch me.

Let my smile not be off-putting, I want my reason for smiling to give you reason to see.

Curiosity.
Have curiosity.
Let it be mutual.

Don’t see me. Feel me, be blinded by how much of me there is.

Forget what I look like
Only to remember one day that your knowledge of what i look like wouldn’t matter.
Make it matter.
Decide not to listen to me.
Rebel.

I want to ascend a spiritual channel that rips open my gut and pours pureness from my pores.

I see too much but in you there is enough.

Your supporting beams are not necessary but so appreciated.

Relax and reset,

And never speak the word love.
Just feel me.
And be curious.
I am a woman.

Your hollow bones make the most killer tunes and tones
Please don't fill them with lonely independence
I have sugar and adventure that I will lend you
I am your neighbor
I am your person
If you must, we will fill them with what I have for you,
We will make them into rainsticks
and play them
till the sun turns to rain,
till the rain turns to ice,
and till you climb the droplets to the clouds
Where you will find your head
And finally forget all the things they have said
That have made you settle and waste the day in bed.
We will let you breathe
You can sigh into my skeleton
And my bones will sing to you a song only your voice could inspire.

The ocean's powerful dark waves
Spit into the billowing winds
S­plash onto our already tearful faces
The ocean is big
We went f­or a dip
But found ourselves out of land's sight
I feel these p­inches
and bites
of the world's stammering mouth
surrounding t­he waves and
preventing us from resurfacing
shaded by the sai­ls of the sinking boats
the drowning economy
the flailing polit­ical states that forgot how to swim
the last breathes of human r­ights
and the Earth is frightened as a child
as the disease of­ humanity
quickly devours her
and we race her to our own death­s
As if it was a friendly game of Marco Polo
We can see blots o­f our trivial goals
as we come up for air
But oxygen doesn't vi­sit us so frequently anymore
Maybe because we didn't invite him to o­ur dinner party and took him for granted
My dreams of being part of things that happen on­ a big scale
Are realized
We are in the center of the whirlpool­
and our toxic boats are pulling us down with them
No matter **­w small we are
what we have built was too big
To avoid
I trie­d to climb the trees
take my loved ones to the tops
but any att­empts to salvage were useless
The trees were not on our side
ev­en if we were on theirs
I would prefer to drown in water
Than t­his.

You planted the impossible in my heart and told me to make it grow
I cant tell you how many nights I've spend down in the dirt on my knees begging pleading fighting for those dreams to flourish and bloom falling in love with the breeze that blessed them with hope and courage but fear still clenches my capability and i worry and wash my face with tears thinking that my debts will go unpaid my death will go unmourned my life will go unfulfilled
But you you strong unmovable mass you only move when you want to oh you only move on your own accord and when you do the earth shakes you remind me that i spilled from the womb the way your rivers spilled from your white and like you i too will take time to weather and wane but when my time comes they will wish they had seen me coming
I refuse to die before I've made myself yours and if i do die by your hand do not let it be any other way
To you i owe my life and with you i will spend it
I would and will **** to be yours
Just you wait i wont stop til i get there

There was a drought and it lit the fire that grew so high it singed God's beard. The fire that crossed oceans and dried the tears of babies and was so bright that it inspired the writing of hundreds of poems comparing love to its light. That was days ago, weeks ago, months ago, now the news channels are all onto better stories about a bear that ate a 5-year-old's birthdaycake. All I've heard of the fire since then is the sizzle and crackle of its coals hiding away in my gut. There was a storm, and then a monsoon, and then a flood,  and the people fled the warmth of the fire. I managed to salvage its flame and it has lit the way of my darkening path since its birth. But its glow was once so bright that it blinded the weak and now when it is only a hum and a memory. They cannot see it. But I can and it will be back.

Borrowed from the earth:
A body was not hers, let alone his
A body was not his, let alone hers
they shared them
nourished them from the same cup
used them to climb to the same heights
allowed them to protect the other's
Two of the same mind intermingled across distances, oceans, space
Holding hands like never having parted
The flesh caressed fingers and skulls
aware of death
delighted with life
We won't always have these guts, these *****,
use them now.

Determination grabs me by the neck and kisses
firmly
flaming and passionate
Angst wakes me up on a the most ideal of winter morning
My eyes crusted sandwiches
and circled in black by stress n responsibility
And my heart ticks louder than the grandfather clock
Alarms ringing loudly with hope for a ragged, rushing dream to be fulfilled
My childish thoughts tug at my toes to pull me from bed
Though I feel as old as the mountains
In action there is only youth and enthusiasm growing from the top of my head
I have a place to be and it is a headspace shared with the adventurers and impossible, magnificent souls that have an addiction to the adrenaline they smoke from life's pipe.
When I wake from this life, I'll have to tell you my stories
But for now, let me live it.

don't be afraid you're already dead

for he was not lucky enoug­h for the train to take the other track
the pills were not vitam­in C
the gun did not shoot water
and it was not, instead of him­, me

we are no longer the kids
with capes crinkled in knots a­round our necks
but in their place are the rope burns of our regrets

only attempting to rid myself of the crus­hing weight of confused sorrow
the dreams in my head have fallen­ to the floor
he placed his in patterns there

searching for a­djectives inside a dictionary
where only nouns are found
lonely­, the adjective is
the one word to describe this
is trapped in ­the moldy basement of a frat house

he taps at the window
slid­ing through its confinements
back where he was days ago
a silh­ouette of the clock

plucking at your hairs
chickens clucking ­that their scared

walking into the abyss
singing his cares aw­ay
thinking himself sick
will we feel like this for the rest of­ our lives?

who owns this beating heart,
it seems to have bee­n misplaced

you'd written horror stories on the sides of elementary schools
superfluous thoughts were rays of sunshine­
that only cast shadows in your head

don't be afraid you're s­till alive

The North Country calls to the few who search for each other
In their flesh they feel the meat of life
Flavorful and juicy with humanity, emotion, and discontentment.
In their nerves they smell the scent of existence and experience.
But in their bones is a thing or two more
that houses their curious souls and
nourishes them before taking on their next spiritual expedition.
Skeletons rattle with the purest rhythms of an entity.
They drum a beat more constant than heart
that guides the lost onward
to the party waiting for them in the marrow
where they will find a river of unlimited beer and friendship
that was truly always coursing through their veins.
I cannot wait to be drunk off of these beautiful rivers
and so full and so satisfied.