Add a little pressure
To the edges of my vision
And watch how I keep onto the sharp images even if they become awry
I've got a story in my heart and today I'm leaving for the weekend
Going on a roadtrip except it's in my head and I can't drive even though I could if I wanted to
And tomorrow I’ll be so socially and emotionally intelligent you’ll be so impressed
My mother will smile again
So slightly will her lips part and their edges face toward the sun
Face toward her son
A little boy with no place to choose
I’ll show you all
I’m not alone and I’m not afraid to lose
I’m a dog and a bandit
I miss you in the sandbox
I miss the bucket you would bring because I never had my own
But also
I miss you

The clock was running and the hour was late
my mind was racing at a crazy rate
the traffic on the road was oh so dense
big trucks roared by, their drivers were tense.

My troubled mind was blue but I looked up
and saw a sprinkled wealth of buttercup.

And then I knew that even in delay
the fate awaiting later in the day
would not be something that I had to fight
for I’d remember then this splendid sight .

Along the way bluebonnets were ablaze
swaying in the wind and giving praise.

If on my path misfortune should I cross
when I encounter pain and suffer loss
I hope I can recall the glory of this drive
give thanks and praise that I too am alive.

I hope that on my journey I’ll look up
and see the sprinkled wealth of buttercup.

This is my body.
You know it. You touch my teeth with your fingers, my imperfect teeth. The teeth I brought home from the Czech Republic after pulling off my braces with pliers, after not having a toothbrush or fluoridated water for half of a year, you tell me that you love me and my teeth. You know they make me so uncomfortable.

You lay beside me in bed. You put your right hand in my left hand, your right leg over my left leg, and you tell me that your boyfriend is only your boyfriend because he was the opposite of your ex. He's not the one you want to be with, he's the one you just happen to be with.

I tell you we shouldn't kiss until it's over between the two of you.

This is my body, it's driving the car you're in. I fill up the gas tank and ask you where you'd like to go. You say you'd like to go anywhere. I drive us through Chicago, we go up one street and then down the next. I drive us downtown on Lake Shore Drive, across the city on Grand Avenue and over to Ohio, then I put us on the highway and then I take us off. We take North Avenue from I-94 to Wells to Lincoln and then North again until the car runs out of gas again. I fill up the car with gas, again.

I look at your face, your hair, your hands and your legs, I love your legs, your face, your lips, and the words coming out of your mouth.

I didn't know I could be happy like this again. I didn't know I could be so attracted to someone's body and so attracted to someone's mind- at the same time. I tell you that you should break up with him before we kiss, even though I just want to kiss you now. I want to kiss you now and now and now and now, and we start making promises, we start telling each other that there are rules for how to live life by understanding it. You understand your life and you understand me in it. I understand you and trust everything you say. You're right, brave, brilliant, and beautiful. I love the sound of your voice and the words you choose to use.

I'm sure we've known each other for over a decade. This is my body. This is your body. We are perfect and animated towards one another, and I like it, I love it. And I'm so ******* lucky.

I never have been as brave nor as bold as you've shown me I can be. I could be so brave and full of grace and excitement, and enchanted immensely by every gesture and breath that comes from you. I had previously been riddled with immense insanity before we met. I was sworn towards unmistakeable insanity, and doomed to a life of solitude and sadness, I had lived in a wash of thick melancholy, and I knew, and my friends agreed that my body and I would  never know happiness, pleasure, or awesomeness anymore.

You're driving me happily crazy. Fueled by unmistakeable excitement, and on the way towards a future of wildly enticing momentus togetherness.

You and your little dog too.

I'm paid to paste this smile on my face
Though it's rarely ever there
Because money doesn't motivate the clinically depressed
As much as we all would like it to

No, I won't make it easy on you
It sure is hell isn't easy on me
Driving through town with my music loud
And a pain so heavy I can barely breathe
Trying to drown out the hurt in endless caffeine
That only makes my heart race faster
And my breath more shallow

And most nights it seems I'm fading
Into the hell that is this life
Because I feel almost nothing
Except the shame and guilt that comes with existing

And my counselor says that
dissociation occurs most
with having done something awful
But how can I explain that
Simply living my life
Feels like an awful thing
And my heart tells me that
Death is my destiny

These lonely, driving nights
A teal blue sky fades to black
A dinner plate moon
Hanging crazed in the sky
I feel strangely full
Like I can go anywhere
On the fuel in my heart

Street lights shift in tandem,
Flickering rhythmically
Sputtering small halos of safety

Bleached, cracking pavement
devoid of fellow travelers,
and subsequent passengers

I devour dotted lines,
The speed of light
no longer constant.

I allow heavy lids to fall
without much hesitation.
Feel the road sway beneath

I above, disconnected,
yet grounded still. Oil atop water;
Disharmonious cohabitants

Consistency is lost. I pretend
time moves as I please
With or without me

I begin to count


One
Testing preservation,
Instinctual construction of survival.

Two
How long can I trust
touch to keep the course

Three
Can distance be anticipated
without visual stimuli?

Four
I feel the whir of the engine,
obediently churning

Five
hear the wind whipping
defying my wish for silence
slipping through the back window

Six
This is bliss.
I swim envisioned oblivion

Seven
I should open my eyes

Eight
Reality in motion -
time makes me queasy.

Nine
Sight returns.

I stop counting.
Safe, trundling on
I slide silently down 48.

December 12, 2016

******
Won't this radio go
up any louder?

I can still
hear myself
                      think.