I once stood in the hallowed halls
Of my own hope,
My soul aspiring to reunite with the blood red brick.

One year passed,
And I stand, dwarfed,
Beneath the walls built upon the passion of the accomplished.  

Now: Two duffels and two backpacks – more than I would need.
Monochromatic gray clouds block the sunlight I know is mine.
When last did your ribs expand with freedom?
When last did your blood flow with clarity?
Dormant soul: restless sleep, awake but never conscious.
My ambition has been annihilated, but my heart quietly demands:
Find your light.
My shaking hands turn the key into the ignition.

The kind waitress asks where I am from, her voice sweet as a sun-ripened berry.
Do I tell her I came from from Delaware?
Do I say to her, I am from New Jersey?
Or do I tell her the truth – that my soul has found peace in the mountains,
I can breathe easily now.
I hear now only the fresh water rushing over boulders
I have found my path
And it begins here.
My heart is from here.

When last did the birds’ song charge my soul,
Flood it with the energy of lemons,
Electrified!
I know not when last,
But I know it is here.

Swimming, as if through God’s good graces,
Living the river water rushing around me,
I am engulfed.
I am engulfed in life.

My bones rejoice.

Fog indistinguishable from smoke,
Smoke, indistinguishable from breath.
The mountains stare into me,
And I into them.

I continue forward.

Some may ask,
Why?
And to them, I can say only,
It was my soul’s demand.

The mist settles heavy over the Smokies,
Weighing down the weariness of my heart.
I want to scream –
I must beseech of them –
How may I live like you?

As the sunlight lazily cascades over the peaks of this secret, conspicuous place
It casts shadows and hope alike.
Bees sing, dutifully fulfilling their job,
And I, the same.

Days melt into one another
And my paradise fades behind the mountains growing ever smaller.

But my soul rejoices with this place,
And I know that I am found.

My legs tell a story I do not want to know
Scars and muscles in conflict
And each stride is a reminder:
You used to be different.
And each inhalation a reminder:
This used to be you.
But now
My legs bring me to a place I don’t understand.

I once wore an invisible medallion
It was mine, you see.
A promise I would die for
A promise that I would get there.

I never did.

But then,
Then, my coach would yell, scream,
Screaming insults
And I couldn’t retaliate.
I thought I’d let my legs speak for me
But they never did.

Too fast for me,
But never fast enough.
The finish line was only ever the promise of *****,
Disappointment, loathing.
I thought I would break that time
But I never did.

And years later
Years after the screaming has ceased in my ears
It reverberates in my mind.
You’re not good enough.
I’ll never be good enough.
I never was.

Most of my life
My legs have been my saviors
A pair of angels lifting me to my destination.
But now
They are two swords
Stabbing the ground
With each step
And I want to say,
Stop.
Stop it!
But even if I did
Would they notice?
Or would they continue to strike the ground?
That’s all they know.

Each scar
A memory I wish I didn’t have
Some from poison oak –
Even now, I lose myself
In the repetitive motion
Of scratching, scratching
Scratching.
I promised myself I would stop
But I never did.
The prospect of evils beneath the surface
Tore up my sanity as I tore open my skin.
Again
And again
And again.

And some from me,
Desperately seeking proof of existence;
Some sort of biological clarity.
I never found it.

And this morning,
As I ran,
I once more met the open arms of disappointment.
Tomorrow, I will run again
Into her familiar embrace.
I suppose
I’ll never stop.

And the same ******* song
Again and again
And the melancholy violin
And a gravelly voice
And each note assaults me
And I would change the song
But to what?

I don’t know, Carrie, I don’t know
And each step
I don’t know!
Where are you going?
Why are you going?
I don’t know.
I suppose I never will.

I will drive this pen
Through my still-beating heart
And into yours
If it’s still there.

You said to me,
Leaned up against that scarlet brick
With cigarette smoke trailing from your course fingers –
“If you clamber down the river to
Pin yourself under a boulder,
I’ll be there
To lift it from you and onto me.”
You said my eyes bore radiance into your heart
The moment we met, in the dead of night,
Before our eyes could see.

Appreciation does not equal affection;
This I know.

How I wish my words mattered!
I wish they rushed beneath you
Like the river waters which infuse you with life.
And yet I know they cannot.

I wonder if you’re the reason why
Four a.m. jolts me awake
In the cornflower blue between night and day
As I desperately try to shake my consciousness back to life.

I cannot take this to bed,
These crevices, my wellness poor.
The hard wooden planks grinding into my ribs
Offers a reality I better understand.

I had hoped that the deep red hue of my anatomy
Would shock me back to reality;
Would silence the thousand hungry mouths
Murmuring fervently to heavens empty.

These eyes you once declared to be full of radiance
Are held in my skull,
Two cracked marbled strangely swirled with ribbons blue and black.
By declaring them vivacious,
You have deprived them of life.
My eyes are tired, now,
And pale purple vales begin to bloom under my skin
Flourishing and multiplying each day
Like a disease, they thrive, navigate, conquer
Until I cannot see through myself,
See only the plum colored crevices.

I don’t know when I first noticed this burden.
It could have been over the hours and days
I hiked with my backpack weighing heavy down on me.
Still, it is not as heavy as the lack you have left within me.

So I take to the forest floor:
I am enough for the muck of the leaves and rot
Concealing a proliferation of unborn life below.

Despite my weakened body –
Flesh encasing whispers and wind and broken promises –
I am not sorry.
These are the consequences, I know –
But I won’t stop.
I’ll do it all again
In the time it takes your heart to beat.
I’ll be waiting.

Dead beat (5 cents).
Dead pan (10 cents).
Dead dead Franklin head

Early deaths –
Casualties of the war of the changing seasons
Brings me back to a time without reason
When all I knew were the leaves and the road and my family –
My family  -
We, us, together, now!
Quick, gather in front of the tree with too many decorations,
Too many forced memories –
Do you remember?
Of course I do, Momma,
I know it.

Of returning fearful from a night of supervised sneaking
Uniform series of street lamps keeping us safe
But we did not know,
Knew only the fear and the fun and the one night a year they broke the laws of all that we know and mixed against the will of the world like oil and water
Together now

“Deformed Discourse” –
The body monstrous,
Explains my professor.
But where is my body?
Monstrous – of course I know –
But the body monstrous –
The body –
I think I’m better off without.
I’ve spent two years without a body
And I only miss it when a new one begins to creep on my bones
And I want to run, run away from
The settling, the thousand sufferings manifesting themselves in the forms of slopes, rivers, valleys
Etched deeply with the urgency of the years.

Oh yes – it’s a long way back to the Garden of Eden.
Even then,
Did hurricanes shake the foundations of the earth?
Did they ever cease?

We cannot see where we are going
Hurtling through the abstract of billions of collective souls
That’s a star, we say, that’s a conglomeration of gas reacting to give us heat.
There’s a planet,
We say,
Aggregations of solid matter drawn into itself –
Drawn to circling its parent material, again and again.
For years,
For ever.

Does the tree feel growing pains as its Cambrian layer holds its breath and expands?
Does it take into account the thousand other entities which drain its life blood?
The rabbit doesn’t know,
Shivering in the snow beneath the drooping needles of the conifer.
The sapsucker doesn’t know,
Drinking it all,
And leaving the rest to weep down the bleeding tree.
We don’t know,
The sounds of our saws retching back and forth drown out our inhibitions.

I wonder if the last lynx
To sneak through Wisconsin
Knew it was the last,
Knew its loneliness
Knew the trail it left through the snow
Would forever haunt its disciples.

I wonder if
The swooping hawks crying out
The streamlined white tail leaping through brambles
The silent oaks painting the sky with their fingers stretched upwards –
Do they know what we have done to life, to ourselves?
Do we?

Pennies clang in their cage
1,2,3,4,5
It hurts my head
6,7,8,9,10
To count every single
11,12,13,14,15
Moment of time wasted
Again and again
They, them, together now!

We will roll them together

And promise to promise ourselves

That it was all worth it


As they transfer from sweaty palm to shaking hand

I am confused -
Where are we?
A jungle, my dear, one most complex.
Take my hand, and I’ll show you the way.
Quickly, now -
Duck under that tree, and -
See over there – the petals glistening in the sun!
Oh, how beautiful!
Sit with me and see.
Have caution – the slopes are steep –
Grassy green mounds of the earth.
Your gait is a dance, celebrating the earth!
But don’t go too far, my dear
And wait for me!
See how awe inspiring the land.
Thank you, darling.

I don’t know what this is, this thought of mine
It flosses through like wind between tree leaves
Tickling their surfaces before dancing away.
Yes, and let this ribbon of words trickle through your head;
Perhaps the effect is not such that is mine;
To me it is mauve sky glowing behind a cracked liberty bell;
Is the effect the same to you? Alas, I cannot tell.

And the light on her face
And did you ever know
What I would do for her?
It slapped my flesh one morning as I rolled out of bed and collided with the cold linoleum floor.

That any moment spent in the direction of her honest gaze
Is  honey to my spirit.

Her every breath declares,
I am still here.
But does your breath speak like hers?

Warm autumnal breezes catch the air in her throat
And I know, my darling, I know what you are thinking.
But time does not exist in space anymore -
The earth has circled the sun nearly thrice.

And that night -
Do you remember?
A plastic bowl filled with steaming quinoa and black beans
Stood on your desk for hours, slowly growing cool
When our glassy eyes shattered and burst forth a flood to break the drought that the thousand trees of our suffering had long endured.

I wasn’t there, almost three years ago now
And every atom comprising molecular compounds comprising cells comprising specialized tissues and organs and this thing we call “ourselves” –
Every atom howls in despair that I did not know you, three years ago.

Three years –
Enough time for a blue moon to disappear and slowly rise once more.
But I so desperately hope it is not as solemn and shadowed as the last.
Three years –
Enough time for a soul to be conceived, gestated, born, and begin to open itself to the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to
But also the joys
The unprecedented bliss
And the beauty of a life unfolding exactly as it will be.


If even one tenth of this burden you carry, my dear,
I could lighten with the ultimate sacrifice –
In just one moment
I would.

Your hair is the thick, tangled stuff on moonlight flowing down vertebrae built of pure grace.
You watch as crisp grey snow
Floats gently
Through thick air;
Rides each supple breeze to its fullest extent,
Eventually resting on your strands of liberation
You breath deeply
And you welcome it.

But like the journey of this crisp, gray ash, nestled lightly atop your crown,
I shall become boundless
I shall transcend all natural limits
So that you may find your peace.
Every single part of me
Promises every single part of you
That we will break these shackles
And you shall know freedom entirely.