Fill your heart, fill it as full as you can.
Fill it with memories most warmly hued
and remember them well
in all their glorious, sweaty,
kindly brutal
minutiae.

Remember each drop,
each bite,
each individual dust
mote dancing
the still, hot, sunlit
February
Thursday.
Remember how different
places all have their own
unique elusive
smell and how
it is impossible to describe this to anyone
who has never lived
anywhere else.

Fill your heart with all those memories
of the best kind
of home grown hell.

Fill it until its tears are forced out.
Fill it against the long, cold dark of parking lost.
Fill it against mysterious hate.
Fill it against misery and mud and hard
frozen
bottle
glass
lies.

Fill it so full it can't ever sink far down.
Burden it with buoyant stories
and weigh it with
hypnotic winter flame.
These are the things of which
the cold terror to
victory apocalyptic will be born.
There are no second prizes here.

Fill it with the certainty of the worn places
where the chairs met
the table
each night.

Fill it with the truth of
the gnarled and sun-warm roots and
the indisputability of a Beetle motor accelerating and
the violent pirouette of each spring
and the ozone smell and
the way wet wood screams at the sky and
the way the sound
hits all ears the same
regardless of
their color or
what side of Line Avenue they’re from.

Remember what line you’re from
and to hell with the rest.
You must mind your own.
There’ll be water
if God wills it.

You are never too far lost if you still know
your father’s face and can still remember
getting milk from the tubes
in the
silver metal cooler
and the red cookie jar
lid as the
adults smoked at the green kids’ table
and everyone mostly had blue eyes
and red hair and there was always a phantom killer
lurking  
right beyond the only hope door
before you were ****** into the mirror
world and
*******, but
kids sure do have to make some
rough choices
before nine o’clock.

Keep remembering and when you remember,
remember even deeper
remember in yet greater detail and
practice that remembering until
you
ARE
the dust motes
the milk tube
Thursday
roots
sun
until you ARE each drop of sweat
until you ARE the phantom killer
and the red cookie jar lid
the straight line of smoke rising out
of the ashtray and
the motor and the
scream and the
ears and
you ARE all these things
and you ARE
and you can’t really say where these things begin or where
you end because you’re not sure that
anything really does end or
begin
anymore.

Beginnings and endings
haven’t much meaning after
everyone has
shown their cards and the worn places on the chairs have
met the table
one
last
time.

Arduous late Winter
woes amplify in February
false hope

We’re all sick
of constrictive clothes
and cold climes conducive to staying in

Cabin fever running rampant
45° t-shirts & sunglasses
everyone driving with their windows down  

Hoping Vernal rituals
performed early will
hasten Spring’s arrival

I’m done
fed up
ready to move on

Going crazy in the cold
writhing to get moving unimpeded
by frigidness and snow

I’m ready for Spring
for Summer
for Fall

I’m ready for the scent
of thawing soil in the air
biking in the Sun, verdance, and flowers in bloom

I’m ready for grass between my toes
Fireflies, crickets, peepers
and warm night stars


I’m sick of frost reddened runny raw noses
sick of numb fingers and toes
and having precious few daylight hours

I’m sick of combatting glacial winds with layers,
of treacherous icy apathy,
and dreary bleak boredom

I’m sick of not being able to sit on the ground
sick of long pants, long socks, long sleeves,
and silent stagnant long nights

So, despite the fact
that I’ll pine for January
every day over 90°

Despite the fact
that when mosquitoes swarm
I’ll wish a frost would **** the little *******

and despite the fact
I’ll get just as fed up
with temperate seasons

I still want Spring
and then Summer
and then Fall

But February brings false hope
and despite the lengthening cheery sun
months still stand

between us and t-shirt weather
mild nights, grassy hills,
  and emancipation from an inclement icebox atmosphere

February is brighter.
It's pale blue
aura juxtaposes
the deep purple
of January.

It stutters
in, reminding us
that the adamant doors
of winter have been closed
to ajar.

Only the thin confetti
of snow now lines
the streets in
it's final celebration.

Blue smoke from the slates
thaw the crystals
and the bluebirds
have returned
to the sycamore tree.