Desert air
dry and lonely, but not
without a desperation,
blows down tired throats
with kisses, which come
rushing in,
the heat of universal grasping.

It isn’t strange
given common speeches
on hearts eaten
and hearts desired,
recounted with a coldness
born of the same places
as the heat.


But it is strange
the inability to swallow the chafing devils
making sandbags out lungs.
These will not choke the fools
who walk upon them,
even as the one eyed hermit,
whose sand scorched feet
belie his travels, cackles
“Well, at least for now."

Midnight falls in sandbags on my chest,
piano covers of old favorites reverberating
past the old grandfather clock as it chimes:

Open your eyes.

I am sleepless on the living room carpet,
knees held against ribs once broken, healed
wrong--bones bent too close around a heart
prevented from growing the way dandelions
spring again and again from beneath mower
blades spinning, cutting the lawn once a week,

sunshine blooms stubborn as my stifling ribs.
And my persisting heart. Emily Dickinson once
claimed: “hope is the thing with feathers,” yet
my chest aches with the weight of it’s elephant
existence bearing down as the moon travels
slow across an expanse of flickering stars

too endless for small minds to comprehend--
and it’s all so much and so present that I can’t
help biting my nails at the importance of hopes,
wondering how they’d fare on a scale,
countered against infinity itself.

"When I can't sleep at night
I stare at the empty side of my bed,
and wonder about the things
I would tell you
if you were laying right
Next to me"
          -Unknown

He didn't know where he stood
I'm walking backwards on a tightrope
Upside down and around
I asked
Can I stand with you?
I'll be your
Strength
Home
Bravery
We could stand with the stars and the moon
I knew where he was all along

There is an alien who watches me sleep

He was from the moon
He said he wanted to see the ocean
               to me in my dreams
Sometime between time, Somewhere
Like 2 or 5 in the morning
             Sea Bound
                                     We took his spaceship

We settled in the ocean
Waves from home
Tide like a telephone
Just how they say hello

I think he just wanted to
             be human
I think he was
                  more than most

sometimes i watch
the way that smoke curls up
from a lighted cigarette
and i want to hold it in my hands and
curl my lips around it
like the indie rocker boy
who’s been staring at my friend from the corner.
but the tar burns my lungs
and i am too vain for yellow teeth and yellow fingertips
and yellow eyes and black organs.
i miss the way that you paid attention to me.
you would be humming and
pretending to be working and
i would say one word and
you would stop pretending and listen.
unless you had your guitar out.
nothing could come between you and your music
and i could never come between you and her
so i never even tried.
coming in second was never really my style,
you know that.
so i watched you watch me watch you feeling the music
until you gave up trying to read my mind and
told me yours with the chords you played
and i miss that.
i miss the organized chaos that erupted from your fingertips
that were not yellow like indie rocker’s
who is now hitting on my friend
because you always said that
smoking was for losers,
which is probably right
if indie rocker is anything to go by.
he’s nodding my friend away to a corner
and we all know how the night will end.
i will have to interject and bring her home
and he will scowl at me
because she is the prettiest girl in the room
and no one can take their eyes off of her.
she’s lovely in the way i always wanted to be
but never could attain
and i guess that i’ll just wait
for another heartbroken punk kid who
needs a shoulder to cry on.
he’s usually indie rocker’s friend
and he always wants to smoke.
and it’s going to be two in the morning soon
and i am sitting here in this place
thinking about someone who already left me.

Thin music played as we danced uneven
circles around tempermental light flickering,
a bonfire built lopsided in the metal bowl--

you handed me a glow-stick then broke yours,
shaking the torn end so the liquid spattered
your hair, head, shoulders, and the grass,

dew-wet around your mud-stained sneakers.
You reflected the constellations overhead--
mirrored as they were in your backyard pond

when we went night-swimming with silver
fish ******* on our toes. We spent the night
discussing first impressions and each other--

you admitted I was your kind of person
even though I thought you were weird,
too short a boy with too high a voice.

I soon learned you were a hurricane tied down,
and you convinced me I had not once been less
than spilled starlight--that’s why my skin

glowed beneath fluorescent lighting, untouched
by the sun’s aggression burning freckles,
cosmic dust dappling my nose and cheeks.

You said: “It’s always been the way of man,
born as living mirrors for nature to see itself.”

and maybe this is the way
i’ll learn to love again
through fogged-up glasses,
the secrets the wind tell.

when it’s raining outside
(this month, it has been)
when i’m camped out
on my bedroom floor,
i want to be found, but not now.

not by you.
not when i don’t know what i want to do,
yet.

the secrets the wind carries away.
the lifting of the
weight.

I like the dark. My scars are hidden and the stars don't judge my flaws.