I'm not good at closing doors quietly.
So much so that my father made a sign to remind me.
It says:  

Shh!
Quiet Please!

in blue magic marker.
It's not that he's trying to stifle me, he's just sleeping.

My mother told me that she had to realign the door frames after I moved out, as they had grown used to my proclivity for slamming.

standing at the top of the ridge
i am looking down
into the crashing waves
wondering if they would hurt me
                              were i to fall
the grass is green up here
     mossy
and soft as puppies fur
i curl my toes into it
and open my arms wide to the sky
   "i am alive!"
i shout
for every natural thing to hear
   poppies bow their heads
   in understanding
and the clouds take my words away
   to spread with the rainfall
   in some distant land
     not too far from my mind
always within reach
for times when i'm feeling...
                                        not...just...r­ight
then that rain will wash over me
covering me with the pure reality
   that yes, i am here
     i am alive
    and i am blessed.

I think I loved you most the winter your heating was broken
And we’d stay inside all morning
Pretending to complain that we couldn’t get out of bed
Our clothes becoming little islands on the floor,
Ones that we could not quite find the courage to visit

Your hand stayed glued to my hip,
Your breath warming my shoulder
Like a long drag of whiskey
That kind that had a home so far away,
In a glass bottle on top of your refrigerator.
The one that would not be opened
Until that fateful day in February,
When everything went wrong

And on that unbearable night
When you joked that you’d freeze to death if I left you
There was a long silence
Like it might be true.

Now it’s warm enough
That I show too much skin when sitting in bars
And you avoid me like the plague,
Whispering in any girl’s ear that’s near to you
Every time you see me watching out of the corner of your eye

We should have stayed inside when the ice began to melt
Because I think
When those doors opened and we finally ventured outside
The world had changed,
And so had you and I.

The garden grows in all directions
Amidst the influence of interfering hands
The waterfall in motion is ceaseless,
Whether asked kindly or implored

Made powerless by that which cannot be changed
Yet, made powerful by knowing that which cannot be changed

The garden grows in all directions
Gardened by our hands
The water falls around us
In the spaces that we created

They say to have a writer
Fall in love with you
So you will never die.
But I say
Seize the love of a musician.
Someone to write you
Into colors in the air
And star-****** behind the eyelids
Of any who will listen
To the tale of you that they wrote.

Musicians, like writers,
Bring light through a fog
With their love-speak and poems.
But music-makers
Can create flowers in winter
And warmth without fire.
Their melodies dance
Over the swish of grass blades
And between the tooth-gaps of children
Whose fingers are sticky
With sweet popsicle juice
While an oil-painted scene
Is painted in your mind.

So be cherished my a musician
And hear yourself forever;
Be sung by a hundred different voices,
Danced by fairies and pretty young girls,
Costumed in dissonance,
Etched into souls.
For you can never really die
When you echo forever in the cavern
Of a good song.

from the ether i sweat
which burns
and evaporates
on my glowing heat.

rises and collects.


                           im passing clouds.


raining down
to the disjointed
skeleton of my tree
from which
the heads of humanity hang
hungry eyed
open mouthed
filled with the sound
of the mcabre

..singing

to feed the
fruit of my flesh
which they eat.

im the
dried up seed
next to me
on the ground
waiting
to grow
poppies
from
my soul.