From the kitchen window
I watched a broken tailed pigeon
hopping uneasily from shade patch to shade patch in my backyard.
The mundanity of irreversible pain.

The dogs stood perplexed at the door
since it wasn't fleeing,
or exhibiting any self-preservation for that matter,
as the others typically did.

He was rather plump,
suggesting some manner of avian royalty,
as the desert doesn’t typically afford strong nutrient sources
for most species.

Water was unnecessary.
But to not provide
even a small dish, seemed
a taciturn snuffing of a long stale flame.

There was no further assistance to offer
beyond keeping the dogs at a wide berth
while I finished wiping down
the peeling linoleum.

When I returned for the dish,
he was entirely gone.
Without so much
as a tuft of flight feather left behind.

On 28 March 1941, Virginia Woolf filled her pockets with stones
and walked into the River Ouse,
which together with its main tributary,
the River Uck,
drain over 250 square miles of Sussex
via streams,
rivers
and various other dendritic tributaries.

While the water temperatures were surely harsh,
historical weather patterns suggest
relatively calm surface tension,
and relaxed yet steady currents,
allowing for swift submersion

Taking into account,
the chilled morning winds,
her quickened, shivering breaths
likely led to hyperventilation.

In turn delaying the breath-hold
break point, and allowing blackout to occur
without warning
due to hypocapnia.
While unconscious, water can more easily enter the lungs
to induce a wet drowning,
as it is no longer inhibited by laryngospasm
or coughing.

The Missouri River,
by contrast,
rises in western Montana,
flows east and south for 2,341 miles
before entering the Mississippi River north of St. Louis, Missouri
taking drainage from parts of ten U.S. states
and two Canadian provinces
to form the fourth largest river
system on Earth.

At some locations throughout its course
the current surges so fiercely
that old-growth trees are felled,
steam ships are consumed beneath white caps,
and swaths have continued to go undeveloped well into the 21st century.

When lowered into water cooler than about 70 °F,
the diving reflex is triggered and protects the body
by putting it into energy saving mode
to maximize the possible time spent under water.

This reflex action is automatic
occurs in all humans,
and is likely a result of brain cooling similar
to the protective effects
of deep hypothermia.

Of those who die after submersion in freezing waters,
around 20% die within 2 minutes from cold shock.
Uncontrolled rapid breathing and gasping causing
water inhalation, panic,
massive increase in blood pressure and cardiac
strain leading to cardiac arrest.

As this occurs while submerged
rather than the hyperventilation seen in panic attacks,
crying, or shivering on land
any additional survivability that may be gained,
becomes almost immediately fatal.

In order to combat the effects of
instinctual survival mechanisms
once bare skin breaks iced surfaces
such as panicked clawing back to shore,
rescue attempts from passersby,
and even simple reconsideration,
cold water drownings,
despite representing only 2 percent of suicides,
reveal a visible trend regarding near mandatory use
of bricks,
stones,
or other weights,
in order to overcome
buoyancy,
the names of pets,
canceled brunch dates,
birthdays,
and the forced finality
of questions left unanswered
or perhaps answered too clearly.

Note: Due to formatting issues, I'm unable to provide the correct version of this poem. It was created using text messages, then striking information in the manner of redacted documents. However, that option is not able to be shown on this site. In order to get around this, I'm providing the non-redacted messages for reference. This is not so much a poem, as it is an experimentation with the dissection of language. As a result, part 2 (and That's Worth The Way We Are) has had the post-redaction words removed and placed in a more traditional structure. For the real version, feel free to reach out to me.  - Rollie

“If you ever make your way to Chicago I would love to be your tour guide.”
“I’m sure a tour or something will land there soon enough, so maybe we can go. Also, I stopped at Bell Rd. Dutch and it gave me flashbacks to first driving way out here to hang out with you. So thanks for still knowing me.”
“Thank you for still knowing me. It still shocks me that you’ve managed to stick around with me being how I am.”

“I’ve been thinking a lot.”
“About what?”
“Why you care about me. But you don’t have to go into it.”
“That’s actually something I don’t ever mind talking about. I suppose if you want me to be succinct, then it’s because deep down I don’t think I ever had a choice in the matter.”

“I was worried this one for sure was the time you had decided you hated me. I suppose it still could be ha.”
“I don’t hate you. I’m just stupid and need to stop getting into depressive episodes and stop talking to everyone I know.”
“What caused the depressive episodes? If it’s ok that I ask that is.”
“Living where I do and having things I cared for in this dismal place go to ****. I hate where I’m at now, but at least have my dogs and Fajita.”

“I dreamt about this last night, so I figured I should do it in real life too. I just wanted to tell you I’m sorry for whatever I did that made you leave again most recently. I hope you stay back this time, and if I’m ******* up please tell me so I can remedy it.”
“It’s nothing you did. It’s 100% me.”

“Want to know what I think about when I’m stressed at work?”
“What’s that?”
“When I came back to Arizona, and you knocked on the door. I was so nervous to open it. But then when I did, you were there. And you just hugged me. And I felt safe.”

“Want to know something?”
“Yes I do.”

“Seeing your name pop up on my social media and text alerts. It really makes me smile.”

“I really have missed you.”
“I didn’t think you’d come back to my life this time. You have no idea how scared I was.”
“I’m sorry I put you through that dear. You are always good to me. I’m the one who is bad.”
“I don’t like it when you call yourself bad or say mean things toward yourself.”
“Well in this case it’s true.”
“Well you were worth the wait. I really hope we can see each other in person at some point soon.”
“I’m hoping March. I like spending my birthday with you.”

“I have a question.”
“What’s that?"
“What made you come back to my life?”

“I never wanted to leave, I just felt I should.”
“Why though? Like what made it happen? It’s got to be more than just the logistics of distance.

“It’s all on me and the way my brain works. I don’t know what happened. I just know I went to a dark place. I haven’t been actually happy here in a long time.”
“Well then I’ll make sure you’ve always got a happy place to return to here.”

“I’d have liked to talk about some things in person instead, but on the off chance I don’t wake up some day, I just wanted to say that I really do miss you and I love you as well. Sorry for everything.”
“I love you and miss you too. I always will.”
“I hope so.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for. I ruined everything.”
“You didn’t ruin a thing. You exist and I somehow met you. That alone is a miracle I’ll be forever thankful for.”

“I’m really really thankful that when things were at their worst, it never went too far and I didn’t have to bury you. I couldn’t have done it. So thank you for being so strong.”


“You don’t need to thank me for that. I need to thank you for being there for me and helping me through it so I didn’t get to that point.”
“Do me a favor and please outlive me.”
“I can’t promise you that.”
“Then promise to never forget me.”
“I couldn’t do that even if I wanted to.”

“I always tell my friends how much I want to go back to Arizona because it feels like Home and it’s where I’m happiest.”

“Can I ask something?”
“Of course.”
“What happened? Like with everything? I’m ready to hear it and think it would help me sleep.”
“I got in my own head and started feeling extremely depressed so I isolated myself and when I started getting attention locally, I went with it because I was weak and stupid. I was ****** to you and you didn’t deserve it.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? Or at least talk about it? We could have talked through things.”
“I don’t know. I’m sorry.”
“Do you know how hard it is to watch from afar?”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Did you forget me? Why did you come back?“
"I didn’t forget you. Not once. I was selfish and gave in to the easier option.”
“Then that means you had to have done everything you did while still thinking about me. That’s dark to look at.”
“I was thinking about myself because I’m selfish and awful.”
“Do you understand why it’s hard for me to believe you loved me?”
“I do understand why you feel that way. I’m so sorry. But I did love you. I still do. It was problems with myself. Nothing you did.”
“What problems were those?”
“I’m dodgy and afraid of commitment and make problems for myself. Like things are going amazingly well, so some part of my brain is like
“Hey **** this up.”.”
“It doesn’t seem like you’re afraid of it though.”
“I think I’m not, but when it gets too real I run. I honestly don’t know why I’m like this and I know me saying that doesn’t give you answers and I’m so sorry. I think I’m just a weak human. I’m not strong like you. If you need me to stay away just tell me.”
“No. That’s not what I wanted. Even in my darkest hell, I never stopped loving you.”
“I don’t care how bad it seems. I never stopped loving you either.”

“I wish I could make food for you.”
“I’d cook for you too babe. I make a mean fajita. I miss you a lot.”
"ARE YOU SAYING YOU’RE GOING TO COOK MY CAT?!”
“I would never do such a thing! That’s out of context!”
“Haha, But really I’d love to cook for you or have you cook for me. I miss you too. So much.”
“Come home.”
“I will. I promise babe.”

Last night I chanted your name into darkened
bathroom glass.
3 times, 9 times, 12.

Hearing nothing, I pressed heart and hands into the drywall,
scraped across rough timber studs
broken off nailheads
felt plaster cake across the backside of my eyelids
as the tops of feet slid over the faucet spigot.

In this manner it is laid visible that words only measure their
weight in context of observable actions.
How much skin are three words worth?
When does lack of sleep meet a limit when laid parallel to “best friend”
, and the connotations seeming safest?
What combination of variables finally bludgeons a heart
until it caves from overpopulated one way streets?

During showers, I understand that I don’t know how to be a friend.
I am an attic where things are stored. If you look
closely her face will appear in my windows,
safe amongst the cardboard and baby photos.

I woke up after midnight on three separate occasions
not from sleep. A sort
of dreaming. Your voice pulled taut against my pier.
So I build fires to shine your way back ashore.

Where we linger, smitten and unhurried.

While capable of achieving abstract thought of the highest order, the human brain tends to function best when compartmentalizing data into manageable pieces. For example, the state in which one resides is useful in a macro view of geolocation, but largely useless when it comes to ordering a pizza. As such, our species developed streets, postal codes, cardinal directions, and a whole host of determining factors to describe your home with enough clarity to ensure your disc of cheesy goodness arrives safe and sound.

By this same token, we break down and discuss music. For the most part, all humans can say that they enjoy music to some degree or another.  But for those whose passion extends beyond using the radio for background noise, there’s a point where the specificities of what we absorb aurally merges with part of our socio-cultural identity. Whether this is reflected in your sudden urge to wear strapped sandals and listen to Grateful Dead live bootlegs while slack-lining or constantly refreshing a subreddit so you know which warehouse space is hosting a tech-house set until dawn, the most passionate amongst us eventually become that which we absorb. These things become fractalized versions of ourselves. After all, someone who has never had their heart broken probably won’t appreciate Elliot Smith as much as the rest of us.

It is on the fringes of these musical personalities that we find *******. Combining the most aggressive tendencies of metal with the politics and personality of street punk, ******* is an amalgam of all things angry. Exhibiting a neb-tribalism not often seen in other subsets of music, ******* “kids” (Kids can be used to define ages ranging from 13 to 45 depending on context) understand that a sweaty basement filled with people pummeling one another will never become a societal norm. And they revel in the misanthropy.

However, this is not to say that ******* kids are fueled only by rage. From it’s inception in punk scene during the late 1970’s, the entire point of ******* has been to create a community dedicated to supporting one another during our darkest times. Sure that occasionally means punching your friend in the head, but that’s only because we haven’t figured out how to punch the geo-political turmoil of Earth in the head just yet.

Whether extolling the virtues of veganism, Straight Edge, ecocriticism, economic inequality, anti-racist and anti-racist movements, or simply just talking about how alone we can feel inside of our own heads, ******* at it’s best seeks to improve the space husk we’re all floating around on. By virtue of these lofty goals, ******* swiftly takes on a communal nature due to the common belief that we are all united against an existence which does not reflect us. Rob Lind said it best: “*******’s not much. But for some of us, it’s all we’ve got.”

Then one clear morning in December, my father died. And suddenly ******* was all I had left.

Obviously, I still had my siblings and friends. But after all, the ethos of ******* always managed to echo everything my father taught me to believe. Whether that be standing up for someone getting picked on because they’re different, refusing to place trust in authority, or rallying all the other lost souls and building your own society two steps to the left of the mainstream.

So, as an autopsy was being performed to ensure the skin, organs, and long bones of Robert Rathburn’s arms were harvested for donors, I stood in the alleyway of the Nile Theater listening to the bass reverberate through the asphalt as Iniquity, Beg For Life, Troubled, No Altars, and Iron Curtain played to a packed basement below.

Admittedly, this was a show I was supposed to be reviewing, and this piece was also due months ago. However, my time was instead spent shaking hands and hugging people I’ve spent the better part of 20 years building a small, fractured, but loving community with. At the end of the day, I suppose that’s all ******* has ever and should ever be about. Communally channeling the hurt and anger into fists and screams until it stings a little less and the emptiness of the world wanes ever so slightly.

When a crow dies,
they have been observed to
summon members of their species
and gather around the carcass
as well as cease eating for sometime
following the death.

These effects are most evident
in birds who spend their lives with
a single partner - like
geese or songbirds.
This can sometimes extend
to the remaining partner stopping eating,
then dying itself.

While easy to dismiss
as simply projecting
human consciousness,
and existential dread,
to the grim realities of nature,
there appears to be merit to ideas regarding mourning in wild animals.

As with similar behavior in
human families,
all mammals appear to have internal bonds
to some degree.

For example,
mother chimpanzees have been seen
to carry their dead children around
for weeks on their backs.
Refusing to eat,
or let anything touch their child.
Even as they become mummified by sunlight.

After death, our families
will wash us, just as
we did for the deceased before us.
Then let us lie for awhile, with the house
breathing around our stillness.
Houses are known to take some time
getting used to the idea of our not being around any longer.

It's been postulated,
that which we love lives inside us,
and vice-versa
until there is no longer a vessel
and all pair-bonds are forcibly ended.

It's summertime down here,
wind rippling through livestock
and laundry hung air.
Though the evenings have been
particularly heavy
with flash flooding
this past week or so.

Each morning I rise earlier and
earlier. Mending fallen fenceline
and digging drainage for the chicken coops
until the horizon light inevitably fades
to a dusted nothingness.
Without street lamps
anything past dusk is too rigidly dark
for much else beyond the campfire's edge.

This is likely the most at home
I’ll feel anywhere
since I gave up
pretending you're ok.

So I spend the evenings listening
to the frogs dancing
in the creosote scented rain,
hoping you'll find a way
to get ahold of me
if you change your mind
about me
letting go
of you.

By the time you receive this
we’ll be gone
several dozen times over.
Destroying more than just ourselves
warping the light
and air
with a single turn of the world.

My body is already breaking.
aching jaw leaking flame,
like an angel suddenly forced to live
the incredible loneliness
of being human.

An endless hallway
where nothing stares back,
save a whimpering rope
dangling from a support beam
burning boundless in the sun.

Gasp back awake
for even in your dreams
we all share a single name.

Ears flatten
at the primal cries
howl across dark water.
For a moment his eyes peer beyond
the warmth of the doorway,
almost catching focus of
their sharply glowing eyes.

Hair flattening back,
he looks back to his well worn mattress
and steps sharply away from the night
wet muzzle still bristling
from the riverside smoke
and windswept oak.

Beaches are created when currents force sand
and various other sediments
across offshore rock formations,
resulting in erosion
and slumping along the edge of the landmass.

When monitoring the shoreline from an elevated point
at the correct angle,
one can readily observe the land rolling
back out beneath the waves
each evening.

In the mornings when the waves recoil,
strangers are generated with a frequency
of intermediate
to large cities.

Alive.
Human.
Could end up one,
and not the other.
Work cut out
to keep from abandoning both.
No point in making it if there’s nothing left
when you get there.

When survivors get caught smiling
we don’t believe them.
For they had something, now gone.
No matter how much loved, hated, or bickered.
All that’s left now is blood,
and sand.

Each day does not hurt the same,
but then not every day hurts different either.

The gruesome ballet continues on
and the weight really starts to drop off.
There’s all the makings for it to rain.
But it won’t.

I cradled you in my arms
as you wept
Not just for your loss
but for the all encompassing miasma of it all.
There was nothing to listen to
between clipped
wet
gasps.
So I felt it all,
absorbed as best I could
to temper the weight on your tiny
bowed shoulders
while the dogs paced confused circles
unsure how to best offer support.
Tried to provide condolences
for which past, present,
future you
had so desperately yearned.

Maybe you were doing the same.
Processing all the tears I was never allowed,
never knew how to purge.
Pulling the screams stuck inside me
out with hands so small
I was always amazed at how
they could ever hold
so much.

Perhaps we've always been right there
since time's beginning
and will remain so
at the end
wrapped tight in thick hair
and saline
unsure of the next epoch's dawning.

I met her in an alley
behind an alley
a sub-alley if you will
down the street from my apartment on Westwood
and 6th street. Unusually cool for spring, asphalt glowing green
beneath lamplights.

She was digging through piles of broken bottles,
discarded kitchenware, and palm fronds.
Her attention shifted suddenly, as if I were the prize.
Grasped my hand
her skin drawn taut exposing raw bone beneath
“Why? Why is it so far away?
truck drivers, the bed where I watched my father die
report cards, Here. why?”

“Sometimes things just aren’t as beautiful as they should be.”

We sat down on the curb,
amongst the grasshoppers
and did not speak for quite some time.

You gesture gently
to soothe the birds
and amazingly
you do.

Beyond the shadow you settle for,
there is a miracle illuminated.
Brutally elegant,
nestled in communal catastrophe.
A dark star
of rapt silence and intimacy.
The kind that can quiet a room.

Every word is an edge.
Textures, traits, shapes,
gestures left smoldering in the air.
An incandescent slice of fat
hanging on a glint of enamel
after breaking up a fight
between stray dogs.

I don’t miss it.
it lives on my nightstand
with the other pieces
I’ll never be ready to let go.
After all, very little
can mean a lot
to the right people.

It’s not superstition if it works.
Maybe I’ll never understand.
Maybe I don’t need to.
Because right now you’re looking up at me
like you’re remembering who I am.

For the tirelessly articulate
a loss for words
is the greatest freedom of all.

I want to eat your hair
until it pools thick in my gut,
barreling black through my intestines.
Inhale your elbows, shoulders
every movement, noise,
the face you makes when calculating a tip. Moments laughter
comes so hard your face doesn't make a sound at all

Smoke still lingers in grocery store parking lots,
your puffy eyes hunting caffeine in the noonday sun.
No more a blunder on your part.
Simply a life of difficult days.

Half memories lie within these things.
A little girl who spent summers indoors
, for reasons I don’t recall.
Where her parents were, God only knows.
Venturing out beyond the sunset to drop
bottled notes into puddles and storm drains.

Staring with an amplitude that is making your organs rattle against each other.
I can feel you going on with your day.
It's the salute that hurts, a handshake you don't want to return
graves you planted yourself.

pick the wrong adventure in a conversation,
words move outside of time, today and yesterday
nostalgic for moments still happening,
as if looking back on it from a great distance

The uneventfulness of true struggle is quietly grotesque.
Like the death of a dog I know I should have loved better,
forgetting to witness anything save for the aftermath.

You can’t make fire feel afraid.
We were younger, and we are, and we will be again.

When I was smaller
I used a short ledge
in my closet
as a secret library
and on rainy nights
slept beneath my coats
and unused dress shirts
as the lamp slowly
dimmed to nothing.

Your face broke like glass that night.
I held it together for you,
skin trickling through my fingers.
The sum of all your
hopes, errors, and ever-will-be’s

Birthday cakes, lease signings, Halloweens,
the man who will one day silence the noise.
These moments deserve you, like so many
others not yet ready to cry for you.  

Listen and come back
to me. You can’t have
her. We need her.
Come back. Come
back. I won’t let you have her.

I never wanted your love,
just the taste of sinew and skin.
Anything to replace my mouth full of failure.

Losing confidence is more violent
than losing Love.
It was just good to have a place.

Time goes slow,
stands still,
then lies undetectable.

Becomes the stuttering child
who won't stop volunteering
to read first.

We missed the good parts,
and now there’s no Good left.

We laid there without words
reminding ourselves there is no such thing as nothing.
Laying there we clawed for sounds,
waited for them to crawl from our heads. Useless mouths open and sagging.

I don’t want excuses.
You don’t want apologetics.
Stifle your excuses.
I’ll smother my apologetics.

Tiny, dark room didn’t have a window
neither of us could see a trail
on which to tiptoe
away. Congealed air packed into our lungs, we struggled to exhale.

Distant beats, stumbling all the more closer
Your heart distant and coming closer.

Old things have strange hungers.
An ache that smells like apricots,
but comforts like laughter ricocheting
off falling snow.
Everything once familiar
appearing strange and unseen.
A half forgotten childhood afternoon
finally occurring right now,
stinging vibrant and tender
in the light of a wild pale yonder

The limbed machine of pain is taking form again,
waking from a sleep more glass than velvet.
It wants to walk in the desert. To hurt.
To long.
Dance light and low
to fading Disco music.

Something is on its way.
A wink shaped sound from the northwest,
laceworked with cold spring air and poplar blossoms
colliding to and fro
haphazarding the visage of a man.

When your life is forever defined
by a single action
it changes time.
Everything has something
to do with everything.
Even a sigh shakes like the hand of a normal man,
an idiot
but a brave one,
sending a long-way-home postcard from 3 am
to a first name he’s unsure
ever lived there to begin with.

They are someone's memories.
What difference does it make
if they’re mine
or not?
They're beautiful
true,
and will sing deftly
on the cold-eyed breeze.
That is all that matters.

And then one day you weren’t
at least not like before,
but I still was.

When you bury a scream amidst
the shattering of things, it
scabs over
festers.
It is and
always will be.

But you’re not was.
I saw you sift through smiling hands tossed
towards a sea where you never
could be,
were,
but now are. So you must be is.
And you must be my was.

I’m still that same black hole
accelerating so fiercely nothing can escape.
An event horizon propelled by physical fear
until every time I look away,
each new face turns into was.

The antithesis of each are,
is was,
but still can’t remove is. So was
must be are.

We are centuries of darkness
turned to a thousand trips down the hall
while the silence adjusts
slowly
to us.

Even as the photo fades
I would not forget
the brilliant seasons
where from your side
for a moment
there was but a single silhouette
for the three of us.

Each night
the sun goes down,
starts a fresh set of
coercion,
to return again
and let the birds scream
sharply, from spindly branches
at the squirrels somersaulting beneath.

No moment is free from little negotiations.
When you buy a house
or vehicle
it could be the one you die in.
So we agree
to avoid bridge abutments
and unmonitored open flame.
Dig a peace deep and
wide enough to maximize
the amount of breakfasts we see.

Once we understand people
can actually be gone,
wrap our head around the idea
there must always be
a never again, nothing
tastes that permanent
anymore.
A resting locust in the back of our minds.

We can see the ridges of handwriting
left on the backside of blank pages,
peer through the seams
until the ink
muddles
and merges.

Still, the moon hangs too splendid
to never see again.
Forcing a primal expertise at plain-sight
hiding. Burrowed in the desolation
pyre. Palms outstretched
as if cradling a child,
skin blistering in the shade.

You’re going to wake up before your alarm most mornings,
and sit in the quiet
looking at the mess of dark hair beside you
feeling the same way every World War II pet owner did
standing in line for culling.

Cling to the skin whose name you know best,
breathing intertwined in the same area code for a moment.
Heavy and spare
like an ear bound to the melody of a song
you never got a chance to share.

There was never enough time
to learn
what to feel
seeing all those records
dusted down and illuminated.
Each in their own space
amongst the butterflies and jazz.

You know you’re weary. Nothing more.
Maybe that’s why you still shave against the grain
despite long ago having learned better,
and wonder if anyone else in the coffee line
can tell you’re suffering an unstoppable
irreversible fear.

Everything is always an amalgamation
unbound by chronological order.
The moments of light so real your brain starts seeing
raw symbolism in every breath.
Those are the parts worth keeping.
The things that never quite make it to past tense.

But right now your ears sound like the ocean,
roaring with blood. There’s an apocalypse outside
and you’re the first to hear it.
But you’re not dead yet,
because there’s no afterlife where she’d be here
or you there.

Stay awake.
Feel the air rushing out of the world,
peeling back time itself
to it’s barest final slice of silence.

Your parachute never opened.
You’re hanging like ribbons
in the trees.
Staring at her face
still framed by starshine,
and high desert green.

A crisp spring afternoon,
curled face down on the kitchen floor
oxygen struggling to exit ribcage,
remind yourself to breathe,
to perform.

Find your phone,
tell him you think about killing yourself
a lot.
He tells you he has a weekend to plan.

I still think about how wrong it is
to expect language to work like TV.
To exist as something you have to see.

The more literal you are,
the more metaphorical people will think you are being.

When the identity of another
depends on an extension
of your own invisibility,
every minute is spent
catastrophizing. Counting the steps to an exit.
Knowing to find quiet and dark
when breaths begin to quicken,
but before vision goes cloudy clear.

The order of this sequence is subtle
but profound.

Involuntary entering of fight-
or-flight mode indicates
some type of trauma. An
inability to talk yourself down
from ledges placed beneath you,
independent of will.

Lungs, larynx,
and tongue corrode,
claiming aphonia as sanctuary.
While a darkened frame lies atop you,
as if you were everything.
But not to him.

There is no safe passage
through primitive worlds
something sacred inside you changes
the moment you realize other silhouettes
are crashing
detached and filthy
through the moonbeams
bursting indifferently
from high heavens

Suffering
the chronic kind
does not idle long
in it's codeine lurch.
It wages
sustained
low-level constant assault
with a mercilessness no other can hear
until the mind adapts
or hemorrhages entirely.

Bodies are temples we burn to the ground
wrists lashed
to time lapsed flowers
fingers still grasping
blankly for an out.
Claiming to
feel nothing except
the feeling
of nothing.
Saying that we don't, when
we do
rolling it between tongue and tooth
until it tastes almost true.

Wind flailing heavy
in the midday heat
shimmers like outstretched hands
lining immemorial hills
not seeing you through,
but cascading through tree limbs
as the mortars fall short,
greeted first with silence
and ringing
before the screaming begins.

Human beings are capable of connecting their mouths, taking in
one another’s breaths for up to seventeen minutes
before they lose consciousness from depleting all available oxygen,
filling their lungs with carbon dioxide.

Lately, days have been without sound.
If love isn’t permanent
neither is its absence.
Movement in either direction tastes haunted

I’d have loved you best in reverse.
Led the black tar from your lungs, climbed back up that waterline to massage
the hate from your kidney. Sewn your clothes back on and
glided through that abandoned doorway to a living room
chair that would forever stay white.

Language is a peculiar thing,
when I say the word “tomorrow”, I have always meant you.
A wrinkle slinking across the carpet
when I’m strung out on caffeine and hope,
kitchen knife dotted with who knows whose skins.

Love means something different when all you want
is a bed to die in
and enough change to love a cold plastic cup
dancing through tattooed fingers,
like stained glass in a war zone.

There will be times
you need to go across black waters
heal at your own pace. So I will build the most beautiful boats,
launch you from the docks myself. Strew campfires across the shoreline.
A reminder there will always be a boat
and land to return to.

I spent all night
on the dock of the man-made lake
turning my lucky
yellow stone
over and over
like words that died too early in the lungs.

I remembered waking to you crying
telling me how you felt trapped
and didn't mean to lash out
but were stuck between
not imagining a world
where I didn't exist,
and the feeling of extra air pouring
through an unoccupied passenger window.

Even the hardest love
can't outfight the infinite,
and my echoing voice will collapse
like young frost,
long before it reaches your cheek.

When you one day wake shouting,
at a shadow no longer mine
I hope you never forgive me.

Only a certain type of person
can not feel
the obligation of a previous impulse.
Empathy unable to project,
so the knowledge just cools and settles.
Tightly filed away
with strangers
and ghosts.

Instead,
those reassuring idiosyncrasies
come together,
fill out a single consciousness.
Little pieces of oneself
left behind in others.
Like being informed of fresh snow
only by it’s passing.

The most ordinary
can be given extraordinary weight
if you're willing to go there,
dissolve into another space with a stranger.

Saying I love you goodnight
as a farewell.
Exchanging fragments of a finite existence for
objects holding just a fraction of how long
someone spends in the back of our mind.
Using a thumb to draw shapes
on the hand we’re holding.

Picking up the phone when someone
who used to love you calls.
Neither one lying
next to a reason
not to answer.

Construction of everyday moments
as monuments
to a time more boreal.
A calmness you can’t help
but immediately notice.

Starting down a path with someone,
who will never tell you where to go.
It’s your choice to move forward
amongst the brittle nettles
and grey
cloaked and mysterious in the weight of birdsong
and footsteps.

Soon the time will get away
you will no longer recognize her
or yourself
or us or
them.

Dreams thrive fervently
in the middleground
between
raw gossamer shores and
sullen building
cramped days.
Hushed pleas of belonging
lingering in humid air
nourished yet disoriented
never quite calibrating
to fleeting happenstance
faltering gently across years.

Small mercies creasing
long hellos
short goodbyes
and bathwater moans.
Dice refusing to roll
twice by the time
minds can be made.

The quickening pulse
of a world ending
not just here
but everywhere.

"I don't know what the words
he speaks to the walls
in hushed impatience mean.
A perimeter of experience
perfectly seamed
between the real
and unreal.
A portrait of the forest
with no leaves."

It goes like this:

Our noise
The wreckage of being alive
Will eventually grass over into something natural
and unadorned.

Taking our self-interest away.
Emptying decades of ego
drip by
drip.

Forgetting the birds in the trees,
how vast a neighborhood felt passing by school bus windows,
and the way dew beaded
in front the hospital when they said
“We’re out of options.”

Sorrow,
however human,
has always staunched itself just beyond each hallway’s end.

A vastness terrifying and grim.
Like the inedible gristle
from a cheap steak
forever rolling between gapped molars.

Eventually the coping mechanisms fade,
and we accept the bristling fact
it’s never going
to get better.

Bide time ruminating,
how our bodies careened off one another.
Something primally magical
about the curve of bones
concussed by freckles bloomed in desert sun.

And how time has left each appendage
standing suddenly disconsolate
and devoid of humanity.
The odd one out,
picked neither for shirts
nor skins.

You gradually get worse at self-preservation.
Faltering when remembering words
or what side of the bathroom door the handle is on.
Movement eventually follows, leaving you bed-bound.
Taking note, your immune system quietly packs it’s bags
and slinks out the back door slow
so you can wither to an unencumbered close.

I want my sloughed tissue brain
to struggle against a thin strand of humanity,
fighting the fade of your presence
harder than the fact I can no longer spell my sibling’s names.

Will yours remember me?
Or will it stay tied down elsewhere,
bruises being choked into it’s pliable facade.
A miasma of crop tops and denim skirts.

It will arrive,
certain
but unannounced.
The culmination of a life well-lived.
Feedback, white-noise, static,
silence.
Peace as stark as a womb.

Yet when I close my eyes now,
all I see is the gnashing of teeth.

Your name still hums,
shimmering
magenta bright forever
in a glorious world
of tourmaline
and glass.

"That one body may act upon another at a distance
through a vacuum without the mediation of anything else,
is to me so great an absurdity that,
I believe,

Every massive particle in the universe
attracts every other massive particle.
Force directly proportional to the product of their masses,
inversely proportional to the square of the
distance
between them.

Spherically-symmetrical masses attract and
are attracted as if all
their mass were concentrated
at their centers

There is no immediate prospect of identifying the mediator of gravity.
Attempts by physicists to identify the relationship between
gravitational force
and other known fundamental forces are not yet resolved.
Many attempts were made to understand the phenomena,
but there was nothing more that scientists could do at the time.

no man who has in philosophic matters
a competent faculty of thinking
could ever fall into it."

I’ve been angry so
so long
despite the cost,
it’s familiar warm
consistency
keeps biting back
each time letting go
crosses my mind.

Maybe it’s a worse version of myself
grotesquely missed
in those mornings I wake
free from fear.
Secure knowing
somebody can still
my rattling body
when I'm too bleary eyed
to spend another moment in the carpool lane.

Miracles,
no matter how well laid
slough back
toward a haze more binding
than comfortable.

Just close the door
when there's nothing left to be.

Lightning bugs laid dead all over the island.
There had been an unseasonable snap of cold
previously unheard of in the area.
Blurred thoraxes coagulated near the cattails out back
in dark masses,
the length of a baby or so.

Unraveling your fingers across their dark husks,
I watched them ripen
like black bibles.
Tattered forewings wincing
in the half-
morning rain.

Fireflies produce a "cold light",
devoid of infrared or ultraviolet frequencies.
This chemically produced light is uninhibited by logic
or necessity,
occupying a lithe minnow pool
between science and beauty.

At night along certain river banks
fireflies exhibit near perfect phase synchronization of their light emissions,
exposing the framework behind every living thing.
This is the nature of our midnights
when no one else is left.

Having never done it before
body and mind do not know
how to die gracefully.

A process marked by desperation and awkwardness.
Half conscious,
hobbled by oxygen depletion
and an sinister incredulity
that the end is actually happening.

If the dueling forces of unease
and temptation
in dust left unstirred could still save you,
I’d dredge you from the creeping harsh stillness.
Lay you out on a soft wooden surface
weathered to graceful perfection by time
and divine a map
between the concrete troubles
around us
and the turmoil within.

But bark don’t make a wound
or ease the path of our farewells,
for a choice
without the presence
of another
only exercises
the power of reclusivity.

Go ahead,
resolve our plot
pick anything.
Something more intimate
than a secret.
Unafraid
to be around
a little less often.

Anything other
than stepping over newspapers
and knocking on the door,
to no answer.

So I keep knocking,
while you keep
not
answering.

Growing up I used to watch the neighbor girl
as she sat silently in her backyard
once the evening air cooled down.
We used to be about the same age,
but she’s older now.
Mama said she was ill.
Thought she heard ghosts in the FM radio static
like conversations made of crushed metal
echoing throughout her house for years.

Perhaps out of cowardice
more so than fear,
I kept secret
the fact I could hear it too.

It would start slow with a feeling
that I tried to shape into sound
until I could feel the words
aching like a phantom limb,
not motivated by promise of meaning
or destination,
but by an impulse to simply hear fragments
of the vast expansive despair
dripping on the other side of our world.

Before moving to the part of town
with better schools
I saw her one last time
sitting on that old picnic table
letting the sprinkler mist draw her outline
on the splintery wood planks.

She turned suddenly
faced me in the dark,
her hands cupped gently around a mysterious glow,
something ineffable,
a grief too big to be named.
Without a word
she sang a bellow to the parapet pines.
Not so much terrifying,
as hopeful,
bending the world between us
until it simmered and groaned.

Later, eating pizza amidst the moving boxes
I asked Mama what the neighbor girl’s name was
and if she was homeschooled.
Mama looked through the door screen,
with a slow acceptance.
There’s no one
here.
Now go wash up.
We’re leaving before morning.

Eggs crack where truths
must emerge
like a nameless sound
resonating in your home
just soft enough to avoid
being named.

You want to listen
dream
smile
hurt.
Not stuck
in the photo of you
holding the same photo
of you

One copy as proof
you were ever here.
The second, a reminder you've
always been
every new
you.

I wish you wouldn’t picture me so cruelly.
Or at least do so quietly,
if you must.
Pull close the curtains
when using my image to self-flagellate,
feign disposability,
fester contempt,
and recoil at every name
I never once thought to call you.

Words miles
from loving, words
not truly about me.
Never tragic
poignant,
or even any of my business.
Rotating quietly amongst the broken dishes
slammed doors
and cracked disposable razors
growing in every doorframe.

Every action leading to those moments;
specific
incidental
and unique
could never quite be traced back to conception
for the weathervane has turned
and cannot be undone.

In so many words
I’m still thinking
softly of you
and know better
than to ask why.
But right now,
my hands don’t feel
any less empty
in the morning quiet and
I wish I could be there with you
right now
to give you one more solid kiss
before I can’t anymore.

For one reason or another
the Sun seems to still move
compact and deliberate
with clear trajectories of melody and
form in purposeful
motion until it’s just a few
feet from the horizon,
landing on my neck
with the soft
expansive warmth
of loneliness.
Like chewing on dirt
in the soft bed of infinity.

Somewhere,
not here,
a gallery of mislaid futures lie abandoned
on lonely highways of America.
An epic laceration to the very
heart of the world
from a day all the wheels slid loose
and the stars dropped away
leaving the moon to throb
it’s dusty pale light
and unmask the world
revealing dim fragments of lovely forms
hidden like burning black oak trees.

Nobody saw the accident.
One day everyone just woke up
and started breathing in road.
Watching lines of nearly broken men
marching ever onward from the wound.
The unsteady
steadying
the unsteady
in a paperclip labyrinth
where reality
gets in the way of dreaming

It’s late
and will only get later,
but I will still wake up
with things to
tell you.

Considering the concept of getting ready
is to appreciate
mundane as ritual.
A prima appliqué of mud and essential oils
in a 6 inch
by 8 inch
circular backlit mirror.

Piece by piece
assemblage by both brush and
blade, moving intimacy beneath the
surface. Planting highlighted foot forward.

Astringent, cotton swabs, dissolving wipes, Naked 2 palette, tweezers, contact solution, foundation, liquid liner, pencil, pen, powder, and brush.

Trying,
trying to be an old self
and do the things you used to love,
Not just sitting in a big
pile of failures,
every day on that couch.

The ache of hurt. We idolize it,
twist it,
build it into something less ugly.
See love where there is none.
Worship the air and ask it to do the same.

After the highlight blend is complete,
there follows a pause of about a thousand years.
By the time you say what you mean,
I will be long gone.

“You should write about it.”

or

I Learned to Smile at Mirrors: A Demonstration


The city was oddly near barren.
Strides hit the dimming sidewalk in two-to-one ratio.
Money looming tall above our covered heads.

When cornered into the shade
humans are unable to cast shadows.
Our path was laid clear by store closings,
locked doors ushering us down toward neon outlined water
to stare across gleaming black
while the shadowed lions bray.

Cloth turns to quarters turns
to pink fortune turns
to bright reflections across irises
while years of the same story vibrate
across our fingers.

Gears paid in hope spin warm with the smiles of
those  come before.
Lamps once bright now flicker and crack,
and the ballroom dancers
don’t quite turn with the fervor of before.
Sometimes what seems a flaw is what makes the object most itself;
inconsistencies or strange logics
from somewhere different than where you wanted.

Certain hands grasped against throats are
comfort blankets to soothe the burning,
forcing skin and bones to remember that with selflessness
and love
the past will no longer obfuscate
paths where feet need to fall most.

No sparing rejoinders for improvements,
or constant encouragement in what is already done well.
Every mile and hour leading to those sea salted boards totally rearranged me.

Fought 11 hours and 771 miles of asphalt
to press my face in where I was worst.
The greatest gift one can receive:
not encouragement,
but total excoriation of the places
where I was once only limping.

Let the train cars tilt with our backs due West,
shoulders sagging with knowledge half-learned,
thrice remembered.

Two deer stand in the rearview
as my tires turn heatward.
Smiling as I realize your Country
grew to reflect your worth.
Not the other way around.