It's 2 o'clock in the morning now.
I'm on a late night drive to the Acme pit mines.
With muddy thoughts in a midnight mind,
a mound of gravel in my guts,
I'm churning up
                  The last 4 years
and knocking back a cocktail
                   of wins and losses.
Wyoming night in the early Autumn.
Do you wanna come for a drive?

Take me back to that Winter night
when we walked outside
and filled cold air with our voices.
We set the icy, empty streets to rights,
and just talked all night
until our frozen throats thawed out.

3:10 a.m. It's still warm outside.
The gravel speaks, with each step, under my feet.
Tally up the feet and miles I've gone,
the feet and miles we have lived.
A memory walk
                  is vignette stops:
Those nights we spent drinking wine
                  on your rooftop.
Wyoming night in the heat of Summer.
Do you wanna come for a drive?

Thinking back on that April night
when we stayed inside
and hid from rain in the Springtime.
We let our favorite records spin all night
while it soaked outside
until the red wine sky dried out.

An empty ghost town. 3:45.
Imprints of gravel on my legs are a star map
I'll follow back to the times we had
through mounting years and empty space.
A distant place
                 I'm dredging up.
The one laid down; woven thick
                 in our fibers.
The map is laid out but I know my way.
So do you wanna come for a drive?

i stay awake late
contempleting the possibility of decoding the illustrative lyrics
      spoken between my head and my heart

my wheels keep turnin' circles

     still
it's a start

if looks could ****
     i'd be slaughtering the masses
and if these walls could talk
     they'd probably never stop laughing
but if that ***** of a mattress should crack
and leak the secrets of mine that she keeps in her chest-
like tightly bound metallic coils-
     so help me lillith

i'll burn this house to the ground

     i'd rather see all that i've built turn into ashes
than to hear her voice rehasing all the whispers i'm slinging whilst fast asleep
     or how i cry in bed for weeks
     or the way i flinch when the sun crosses my face
like a shadow i can't name

     i'm a mess
a natural disaster with whirlwind hair and a lightning strike pulse
     in a second-hand dress that doesn't fit right
          i'm fine
     i'll survive

but should you be the boy i find
     and i bring you home tonight
just know that i'm better than alright
          know how very much i feel alive
regardless of the subconscious soliloquies you unleash in your half-silence
     divulging secrets whilst you slumber

          i wake like the waves lapping at a fallen empire's shoreline
     and quest to test your lyrical limitations and the possible personification of your breath
     and your chest
          heaving like the sea himself

You’d think she really was
Mud sticking and stiffening to the Loud Lady’s toes,
And her sigh sticks in mine.
Don’t let them do this to me and I didn’t

But I did. God’s great pillar carried us west.
They dragged her like a fog.
The men who cried **** spit and grinned
and the smoke grew sorrowed with girth.

How I long to breathe in Black Hill breath
to drown in the Belle Fourche
and swallow the palest Crook ashes that float,
Chewing the body that I left and let-

But there is no redemption in the tops of towers.
No spiral of justice. No figment
of grace in these sooty species.
No Bear Lodge witches that the Loud Lady cried

So surely that
You’d think she really was

I know the contours of your face
just like the streets of my hometown
          you'd squint your eyes
                 when laughing
     at the corner of Main and Dow.

Blacktooth Brewery
               on frigid Friday nights
frosted glasses, fogging breaths
and laughs caught up
               in tightening chests.
Kendrick Park can keep its towering trees
                                   and midnight charms
if I can keep your laughter with me
                       when I sail for newer shores

Something in familiar signs,
          buzzing blackened Bighorn skies,
keeps us just above the water line--
          afloat for one more night.

Sheridan Iron Works
Red, rigid lettering a raised, distant hand
Watch it wave from on the hill
above the Kendrick boardwalk,
soak December in our smiles
choking back our April cries.

Snake's head yawning
          from the I-90 exit
slithers down Coffeen and tails
          our icy footsteps
     Rattle. Rattle. Rattle.
Shake this town to its bones
with our Thurmond Street jokes
and our glowing Gould Street hearts.
I hope
          this is enough
          to buoy our ***** up
          against the weighty ballast
          of this tiny, yawning town.

Settlers of Catan
played on a windy Wednesday night
over another drowning round
of clinking Wagon Box pints.

The contours of your face,
icy streets of our hometown,
our squinting, gasping laughter
on the corner of Main and Dow.

Blacktooth Brewery.
               Frigid Friday nights.
Fogged up glasses. Frosting breaths
and laughing, clutching tightening chests.
               This freezing town
               will test your mettle.
               Settle up and bring your friends.

back to the days of dandelion dreaming
     tasting the sweetness at the center
     and squeezing the sap from the stems
onto our dirt dusted hands
          frantic finger-painting on the cement dance floor that we bloomed from

back to the sage-dressed lake bed
     she laughs
and boasts silently to the sky of her emerald depths
     i laugh
and boast ineloquently to the bottle's neck of my mermadic swimming
          always got my head beneath the surface
     but this isn't suffocation
               no
          just transformation

i am on the rise

back to the nights of meteor showers at the top of the world
from the hood of my car
     sharing candy bars and over-ripe secrets
it's the browning fruit that tastes the sweetest
          so freedom must be the color of garden soil
     or maybe just the same shade as your eyes

back to the laughter
erupting from our child-like bellies
like hot water
     from granite springs themselves
remember?

back to the tents
     and firepits
     and unmapped road trips with no end in sight

back to the chapter
with the "happily-ever-after"
     and the monsters under the bed packing up for a holiday in spain

back to the light
that's how i'll survive