You can’t really picture the place.  
You don’t recall who was there.

But you remember surprise
That human ashes are not powdery dust,
Apt to disintegrate like snow,
Or soft like bread cast upon the waters.

Dad’s ashes chafed your palms like jagged seeds
As you clutched fistfuls from a plastic purple box
And flung them down a hillside
Somewhere in Little Cottonwood Canyon.

And you remember the feeling of urgency
As you retreated up the hill.
You had motions to go through,
Space to occupy,
A black and white landscape to walk
Among small figures filing along a dirt track
In the airless September heat.

You are an attic that my thoughts are still lost in.
Your mind is cluttered with ideas, kindness, secrets and confessions,
all covered under thick dusty blankets of bland conversations.
Every time the sun hit a part of your mind,
you revealed a memory and I like a child
oohed and ahhed at this over told story.

Despite the floorboards creaking “baby you don’t mean a thing” and dust lingering with the goodbye that will never be said,
it was my favorite place.

I would try bringing up my own newspaper clippings and photo albums but there never was enough room in this attic I suppose.

I remember one night I spotted poetry painted on the wall
hidden behind a pile of blankets and your record player voice cracked with the words ‘you're beautiful’ and ‘you're perfect’.
But maybe the words were already painted for somebody else
and You’re voice caught on the vinyl of the moment.

Darling they told me that a family from Utah is
moving in next week,
I hope they treat you well.

Darling the door has been locked and boarded without a warning

i would drive to salt lake
just to taste the sodium on your shaky knees
to lick the inside of your eyeballs as they hover above me
for you to kiss where my arm bends and where your dimples are craters
for you to spin me over, ask me to take a shower
twist my neck into yours and say i don’t want to get my hair wet
a motel six won't know much about love like this
but i'll drop a few twenty dollar bills
so i can move into your body and whisper your name until you wake up
for you to reach across my spine and listen to our temporary neighbors
they'll scream out of love, don’t hit me, don’t hit me
and you hold your hand over my ear, and i'll fall back asleep
wake up early to make love, then drive to my job
so i can get paid minimum wage, enough to buy you a drink on a sunday night

Upon the worn trails of down trodden souls,
The fool, the sinner and the hopeful leave their woes.

On the path of salvation when many lost their way,
Other paths start to branch away.

A conestoga lays abandoned on the trail,
Where many idealists withered and failed.

The industrial city left behind in the dust filled wake,
No turning back from the journey,
You already chose your fate.

Where would you go in the months and weeks ahead?
Possibly to new Zion or make your own land to think that you'll be well on.

Beware of the adventure who is a fool to travel along,
So always journey together or die without a throne.

Candle flicker

Keeps mosquitos away

The wind is picking up

No sound to be heard but paper crumpling rustle of aspens

A **** seagull squaks; only here 

This is desert living

Desert loving

We have a porch

It kind of feels like heaven

Just the moon and lamplights

And pajamas with no undergarments 
Citronella smell

Dry breeze

Skin no longer chapped

Weathered from my initiation 

During the apex of summer when I read outside at midnight