My body is broken
But doesn't really matter
How badly beat up I get
My soul still wants
To pick a fight

I guess us fighters
Are just made like that
We never really know
When and how to quit
We're too **** tough
For our own good

We just want that fire
So we keep pushing
On and forward
Forward and on

I cut the wheel out in gravel,
I shaped a navel for the tadpoles.
Firmly, but gentle;
I dug out the furrows,
I made lush the fields,
I caused the showers.
And in that safe place, I deposited them.
So that they might grow.
But now they're adults!

Will they burn out all life
In their self-contained terrarium?
That is of their own making,
Their own doing.

For how high they have climbed up
Yet, how little they have grown!
Like Babel, like beanstalk,
Like Galileo's experiment at Pisa!

All things that go up must come down,
Right?

An unexpected
Crater

Can devastate
Places

Once
Called home.

We can shape
A new life

Right in
The center.

on a stage, guitars strumming a tune that
can only be hummed, for it has no verses
the songwriters, their tongues entwined,
joined as one, they can speak no words

but the crowd roars its favor,, sheds its de light, stomping and whooping it up, making
all the necessary noises, of two tongues, yes’m, entwining

kinda like a kissing, a little of hissing too,,
got its own rhythm, even the noises rhyming,
a rock n roll ballad with country western
mixed in, some say it sounds like Joan Baez
singing **** Jagger, or an Avett Brothers
serenade

words need tongues for formaytion,
tongues needed to speak, but absent
a common language,tongues do what
tongues do best,
intertwining, combining, licking,
making love noises that requires
two to be
heard
fulfilling
taste of two
blending
and we
though
silent
pronounce
ourselves
as one,
the loveliest
unspoken
vocabulary

on the edge
of this ravine, I’ve stood
so long that the grass has grown
between my toes, moss hanging off
my fingers in tendrils,
wildflowers in my hair,
but today it is time to move.

the darkness yawns wide, though
it wasn’t always this way.
once, it was a child—
like all grown-ups once were.
once, it was just a crack in the dirt,
the product of a thousand tiny
earthquakes.

when i was a child, running
free as the wind,
i stumbled to a stop at its cusp.

i became afraid like a
fawn turns to a deer with
wide, wide, wide eyes
darting around as the fish
in a crystal sea.
i spent all my years, frozen
there until the chasm grew and so
did i.

but today, i take the leap.

i shake off the dust and replace
it with steel, steel drum for a heart with
a beat for every step,
one foot in front of the other picking
up speed, until suddenly i am
f l y i n g.

fear?
in another life, perhaps.

You dim the light of others,
just so you can shine.

Does it make you feel good smirking
when you hear them cry?

You take our kindness for granted
and we’d help you every time.

One day you might fall over
as we won’t be your shoulder to cry on this time.

Wake like a Rose of Jericho,
Bringing fortune to your lips.
Swinging life forth, green
And delicate, to a desolate day.

There was something about the dreamer.
Paint in her hair, no care,
The world vast and empty but she fills
Voids with pastel static, words drip
From matte lipstick. Panic
Never takes air from her lungs,
She knows she belongs. A firefly in
A pillowed fog, not smog, but subtle
With tea latte sweetness, kept warm on
The mosaic countertop filled with
Broken glass, no longer shattered, together,
Making beauty out of severed past.
She will last through creation, motion
Lunging to brightened staircases.
She faces dilemmas by the dozen,
And will never be forgotten.