Before the thaw, my feet will be rooted
Into this nation’s primordial freeze
My muscles and bones will be acquainted with malaise
The sun’s altruism will be refuted

Before the thaw, I will struggle to find consciousness
The frost will leak through the bedroom window
And don the facade of a blanket
The door will prove to be bottomless

Possibilities will seem unachievable
The brain will itch for what it can not have
Buses will limp through congestion
And the blizzards may feast on the feeble

You may want to write of your misery
But your automation will halt in cataclysm
Because someone held a door open
For the gust that billows bitterly

Gastric emissions will become tangible
As smouldering wastes contrast against the sky with rancour
The wispy whites, marginalized into *****
And the world remains infallible

I will lack the tools of incision
To enact my life’s revisions
I will weep for my unguided millions
While I saunter into oblivion

After the thaw, I will smile
My expatriate soul will run in the whimsical wind
Of the morning dayspring that will march unto me
I will stand over a kingdom of honey-filled tiles

After the thaw, the arks will converge
Into the straits of the Bermudian Sea and the
Elusive Caspian Forest, where I will learn to love again
While bidding farewell to winter’s dirge

In the waking world, I will ***** a limestone castle
Where entropy will rule and the mind’s domain
Is left susceptible to perennial reverence
The sea, coloured true, nesting a fairgrounds vessel

In this Great Revision, gargantuan skyways
Will show the world how exiguous we are
That we must not wait for exodus to come
Should we fear to waste away
Into icebergs

With groggy eyes

I glanced outside my window.

It was early morning

and the street was deserted below.

Sleep had somehow evaded me

the night before.

The desire to mould my future

forces my mind to work overtime.

I have forgotten how to relax

and switch off at night.

Unknown fears drown my mind

all the time.

Below, I saw a vagabond,

unaware of where he was lying.

He slept more peacefully than me.

His needs were probably less than mine.

He was like a rolling stone

who gathered no stress.

Whereas my expectations offered resistance.

Preventing me from going with the flow, in acceptance.

Though our needs are few,

our expectations can become too many.

As I looked away, I wondered whether

I should pity him or me.

Vagabond heart;
Destined to roam.
Cursed and forsaken.
Forever alone.

Loving never mattered to someone so tired of it.
In that quiet town where the sun rarely showed itself,
and with roads puddled by the never-ending rain,
she found herself swearing
promising
that what broke her could never reach her again.
Nobody could put a finger on where she came from.
All traces would only lead back
to the old inn’s waitress
who saw her arrive with a look so barren,
and fed her for free, as she always did to vagabonds.
This town full of compassion wasn’t for someone who wanted to avoid it.
And so, after a few days and nights,
she left for nowhere.

Just a mere vagabond I call myself
Every stream I reside into changes current in my fall
There are no parts to me
I'm just around, everywhere 
And someone to me somewhere
Often I wonder when I'll flow in the same stream again?
And as I get lost in the one I'm in 
I'll be running to another creek yet again
Cloistered I am yet I choose where I move
Oh such a *******!
Who laments but seldom improves
Strongest they call me 
For they know one day I'll swallow them too
Wise I call myself too 
Though I know I'm a fool
Who feigns death under the thunderstorm 
But saves the selfish believing no blade of theirs can dare cut me.

Forget Portland and Austin and Santa Cruz.
Those famously strange places,
where the tourists gawk at local weirdos.
Here is not there.

Here is the place of advice such as:
“When life gives you meatballs put a wig on a dog.”
—True story.

Here is the place where:
“With all good things in life you just have to wipe the bird **** off.”  

The place where steel and marble Confederate ghosts,
watch the wealthy renovate their westward homes along a cobblestone road.

Where paintings are propped to rot up in alleys,
and buzzing twenty-somethings on their way back from a show,
shake it and tilt it and carry it home.
—Gilded frame and all.

This is the place of painted concrete where walls are canvases,
and red bricks pop out of the ground,
the tree roots poking through to trip you.

Here’s where the People’s Beer comes from Milwaukee,
but we replaced the R in ribbon with here,
and sell it by the caseload when it rains and when it’s Tuesday.

Where young people go to find themselves getting lost becoming someone else,
remixing history to not admit naivety,
before they’ve been sandpapered through experience.
        —To a core.

This is an ink-stained but not splattered place.
Where lines are careful, permanent and abundant,
and on Fridays can cost 13 bucks.

Here is the place where people roam like that restaurant rabbit:
listless and nomadic and stuck.

Where there’s a wild streak in its heart that follows the tracks,
and cuts the city in half.

This is the place that Carvers itself out into cultures,
and you can be from the Bottom,
or proud to be a Rat.  

Here is where you night-drive over the bridge,
see the skyline and feel restlessly content.

Here is home.
—For now.