Talk to me about flowers and fires.
The orchids
of our collected youths
are bleeding into rose water
and being smashed into books.
For a little look
like a picture stretched under a slide
hiding, elfin to run back away from us.

In the hearth of us we wonder
what the charcoal will draw next.
Sticks on the banks of the styx
In it’s flicking midst
I can almost see
the little beat-less heart
in the center of the cherry.
It’s like it’s still held still in pursed lips.

In a falling little flame
accidently spilling it.

Out in Saturday mornings.
Out of school
so sliding in our nose rings.
Skiving by lying
with fist rubbed eyeballs.
The swell,
Then the classic sweetness
of the re-sleep.

Marker pen graffiti.
Feeling like elitists
because we don’t like elitists.
Defeatist is in right now, love's yet a fable.
(Planets are *****) on physics tables,
and writings on my hands,
but **** it man,
I won’t remember them, anyway.

Blurry nameless kisses
tasting like French lager,
or is that me?
Bellybutton shots.
Love at a coin toss
or against a brick wall was at it's best.
But there’s room for two
in this tent full of burn-holes.

Iron maiden.
never paid but
in microphone coldness
on the lips.
Lifted on the fix.
Giving the week in a night
and taking the night for a week,
with velocity.

Headbanger’s neck on
the pen-bottle ****, being used,
being used up.
Swimming against the river.
Golden Virginia,
Sobranies in the bus shelter.
And as the day's screen goes over
we still kept the bonfire
running in the rain.

That's what talks to me.
I'm laying back,
but moving forwards,
involuntarily.

oh, how
we have
grown.

we have left
that lifestyle of
hair in our faces
and scarred skin
worn like a
battleshield.
we have quit
cowering beneath
it all. we have
escaped the smell
of hospital beds and
the taste of pills
dissolving
under our tongues.

we have grown,
and although we are
a little grayer, a little
less alive,
we made it out of those
years, and that is
all that matters to
me.

come what may,
so long as the mountains
are carrying us.

summer is nearing its end and I find myself mourning its loss
never have I considered myself one suited for the heat--
the sharp flames of raging arguments are enough to burn me to a crisp

but I smell the heady scent of smoke, thick with ash and cooking food
and I hear the birds sing to each other as if it were their last time
and the sky is blue and clear and it stretches onwards to the sun, which is setting in shades of coral and ocean brine

I feel the loss keenly in my chest, a bittersweet longing for the summers in which I lit up the sky with how brightly I shone
scorched and forged, my heart of hearts was unyielding and flooded my body with luminosity that rivaled the stars themselves
invulnerable and filled with a relentless energy that could not be stopped
until it burned out alone

I miss those days where I felt as if I were controlling the sea itself,
pulling and pushing like a brand new moon
the days where I flew so high on swings and sand dunes I thought I may never come down
where everything fit in the center of my palm and I held on tightly because no one could shatter my world

but these days, I sit and watch as the real star settles down to sleep beneath the ocean waves
and feel my skin become painted by the swathes of color in the sky
the sounds of motors and sirens remind me that I am no longer floating above it all
my brief flash long since faded, just as any other firework lit at dusk

A million leaves rotate in a slow spiral to the ground already littered with the colors of autumn
the creek, frigid even in summer, flows as quickly, quietly as possible down to a creek larger in size, to a river, to the ocean eventually taking every laugh and tear with it
every summer from since ages before I was born i have been there generations laughed and cried and fell in love upon that creek, next to the campsite
Lot 47 was just a lot, it was wider, had bigger trees but it is just a site
a site where my grandparents loved each other more than life itself, where my dad laughed harder than he ever did at home, where mom learned to cook, where i got the scar on my ankle, where our names are illegally carved in the trees

where i learned to build a fire, hiked for miles, saw baby elk up close, fawns and bears.
Smokemont is just a place, a place of happiness and love and nostalgia of family and friends and a sense of forever
it is a place i will never go again but whenever i close my eyes and reach for peace it is the place i end up
with the smell of nanny's chili at dusk and coffee early in the cold humid mornings where mist rises off the creek like a magical fog seducing us in solitude and a quiet joy. The marshmallows roasted to a golden-y perfection every single night with Poppy telling stories and nanny squeezing into my chair wearing a navy blue hoodie and telling me to put on something warmer

Where i sit and read harry potter for hours, where we are all one again and when i open my eyes...poppy has sold the camper, nanny is buried with river rocks from lot 47, and we swear we won't go back without her

He forgot his soap
What a dope
No one here can cope
He's worse than campfire smoke

He could of brought it on a rope
So he wouldn't have to *****
Instead he'll mope
For friends he's got no hope

They run when they scope
The boy without his soap
Rolling down the *****
Singing baroque
Like the pope

He tried a bath in coke
Oh what a joke
Because the sugars provoke
Mosquitoes to bite and poke.

Still he stinks like BO and oak
Smells like a singer of folk
Whose hair is matted into rope
Cause he won't use soap
What a dope!

there is a camping trip planned and preserved
on the reservation of our hopes and dreams and summer sweet nothings. we
retreat upon an open-toed weekend, cooler gemmed
& ready.

there is a place in the mountains
& on that wooded ridge it is waiting to be seen and witnessed. lived
upon, lit upon,
seedling.

sure, i love you.
& sure, i’ll die. and that is forever.
& forever is -
no worry. no bluffs. no sweat.
because this life is right, and right now is everything.
yolk.
to become a bloom of love more than just words and digits and plays of
time. this time
is ours.

is good beer. great beer. &
the heat. the her. her soothes and sovereigns
on this land in which we live with the whole tribe and fun days.
we are our own dreams.
good dreams.

meet her on the shore of a river.
& she is listening and speaking and sung.
with an urge
to love and let begin.
take precedent. take my nettled little heart
and crackle like fire from it the nutrient of lonesome ode.
& from the strum of that
we begin.

we end.
we cog back into the existence of small time
small town nobodies. worked little we.
service and cinema.

thus
busting gut toward town and more weekends and more movement.
there is motion to this curve of time, kids.
curve of pages expressed
& exposed here in wayward traveled poems.
truths of some sort or hallucination. here
we daydream.

Underneath the window to the galaxy we sat,
Basking in the warm red glow of the fire that burned brightly before us.
Swarms of Mosquitos nipping at whatever piece of skin they could sink their spouts into.
The wind roared, causing hot flare ups of the firewood sending us swinging backward batting away embers which had taken flight.
Sipping our drinks, smiling too widely, laughing with our friends.
Sharing unforgettable moments and making priceless memories;
All while the sky unfolded it's beauty above,
Holding each of us in our little places in the universe, so completely.
Pondering the vastness of it all.
Sitting under the Milky Way,
Making new friends and growing closer to the ones you've always known.
This is the magic of Hecla;
Hecla is part of us, forever.