other girls say they want to be tall
they don't really
they want to be 5'8" or 5'9"
so that they can be skinnier or a better basketball player
or just so they can reach the top shelf
it doesn't work that way
because that isn't actually very tall
and even if you are that tall
or taller than that
your dreams won't come true
because when you are slightly above 6'0"
you can still be fat
like me
you can still be bad at basketball
like me
and even though you can reach the top shelf
you'll get hit in the head with tree branches more often
like me
but I can pick from the top of the bush
and I can change a light bulb without a ladder
and I can hold onto the ceiling while trying to do yoga
it has it's ups of course
but the downs hit harder
because it's farther to the ground

I am not a sentimental man but
I remember the tallness of some relatives ceiling and the lights around the table where they sat.
I remember the other, squat ceiling where we lined up and my grandmother cried and in the next room there was body laid out.

It is 7pm and my uncle is giving me birthday money.
It is 3am and he's screaming, pepper spraying a man in handcuffs.
In the same way I'll walk home and see them waving their nightsticks and the boy on the corner with his head leaking.
I'll take a different route home and forget it by that evening. Later I'll suddenly remember it forever.
But I am not a sentimental man.

I know the flowers are alive
because I have witnessed them gossiping.

They only do it when they think
no one is watching.
The truth is that
they are never alone.

Like praying monks,
they bow their heads to the ground
and whisper about
the sunflower’s exceeding tallness
and the rose’s self-adoration.

I think, if even the flowers
look down
when speaking their minds,
what hope do we have?

I. nope.



II.
long-windedness verbosity
diffuseness prolixity
wordiness rambli­ng
circuity discursiveness
redundancy tautology
tediousness verbi­age
verboseness length
longevity permanence
garrulity windiness
v­olubility circumlocution
expansiveness babbling
periphrasis gushi­ng
blathering protractedness
waffling lengthiness
iteration repet­ition
prating prattling
jabbering digressiveness
dreariness tediu­m
deadliness wandering
repetitiousness repetitiveness
pleonasm co­nvolution
logorrhoea boringness
maundering superfluity
duplicatio­n tiresomeness
monotony reiteration
gabbiness informality
mouthin­ess diffusion
logorrhea wordage
blah-blah dryness
dullness boredo­m
sameness loquaciousness
talkativeness loquacity
freeness orotun­dity
roundaboutness breadth
gobbledegook gassiness
wittering mult­iloquence
perissology big mouth
gift of the gab garrulousness
staleness tallness

We talked about ghosts at work
There are slaves in the attic
Where the floorboards creak
We have seen glasses and plates
break, untouched, Our house was built on Southern ground
in 1861

We talked about premonitions
There were brothers dead in train crashes
Where the steam boiled and metal buckled
And sisters finding body parts in their sleep

When I dream
I see my mother
Are you real? I ask
I can't be asleep again
Just more so now...

She takes my hand with cold soft
fingers she smells like her
hand cream her eyes make little 'm'
bird wing creases her face is smiling
the way it always has she does not
bother with mascara she sits bright
and hunched in tallness

Are you real? I ask
I'm real. She says

I wonder if tonight I'll dream of slaves
The floorboards creaking
Or of brothers
And their hands thrown in train crashes
Landing under metal somewhere
In the woods nearby
Of wholeness,
Whatever being haunted means

I am scared that nothing I do makes a difference I am scared I feel all of history pounding in my head I am happy to see her even being less real, sleeping
**even if she is *more so now

He pieces her together: eggshells
She pulls him apart: saltwater
And outside it is always rose-light
And paper boats and some sweet breeze that nobody asked for
Outside it's all honeysuckle vining up the pasture fence

She falls asleep small against his tallness
He sleeps like a dog in the sun
If the truck keeps running
It's a metaphor for their relationship
If the truck stops it's foreboding

She loves him: pins and needles
He loves her: turquoise jewelry
And they're forever burning like
Matches on fingertips
Forever noticing new wrinkles in their reflections
As the mirror stays the same with age

"Do you still think you're going to marry me?"

"I won't let you get away again," he says,
Knowing she's young and she's fast

She smiles like pawn shop diamonds
Knowing he's lucky to have her
And having never felt so stupid
In her wicked wayward life

too focused on the falling of leaves
the grass growing and I miss them
heights of tallness grows without me
straight up pines
forests
apple bloom sweetness
pearls in shells diamonds treasures
grow faster
than sunrises
leaving amazed me
to catch glimpses
when day goes
into nights

tallness of order
and tall chaotic
we hate because we have loved
and we love
like we have no other choice

Oh cat,
I've never witnessed innocence
Before, how you howl to protect
Your kittens,

How scary
Must my tallness frighten
You, all curled around
Your young.

And the breezes
cold, threatening death
To such beauty unfolding
how, life is told

I want to think,
In the eyes of a mother
teats swolled and young
depending so
Much upon

Those fierce eyes tell
Me so, wild as the winds cold
You have soul
chilled by aloneness
You are touched now.

So brave me this glance,
Mom. I chance to
Make a life somehow
As well as you have
And be true to it.

To the death

a lot more knowing how it turns out decades later
maybe been a bit bolder instead of hoping
been Brasher wore tighter pants sent out longing stares with
all the confidence  Elvis would'a
I would have instead of walking by the Jackson sister's house
stayed and threw pebbles into their bedroom windows
or  boldly walked up knocked on their door and faced their dad
his six five tallness and said I think I love your daughters
and stood toe to toe and face to belt buckle with
confidence knowing you have to try to shine
have to light a fire to burn
have to live to die
instead of just fading away
the decades it took me to wisen up
I thought I was trying
it was so timid
I'd a bent the rules more
had I just known

There is an edge that exists right before giving up.  Whether from a distance of either time or space it appears as a gradual slide, it does not feel that way.  Each morning is truly the beginning of a new day until it isn’t.  

I feel at home in the streets.  I need all that noise to block out the other voices and focus.  I can’t seem to swallow unless there is a coating of dust in my throat.   No matter how many people crowd into these streets there is always space between us.  I never become them.  With my head pointed toward the earth I begin to feel the tallness of buildings; in this position I can’t tell whether or not they truly scrape the sky.  

There is a girl in my life; sort of.  She wears designer skin; labels charting the paths of her life.  There have been many starts and stops in her life as well as between us, or it might be another form of continuity, I don’t really know.  I spend most of my days in the streets contemplating the questions she asks.  Mostly they are not directed at me, they are just general questions that ignite within my mind a labyrinth of flames I follow until I cannot find my way out.

Before she leaves for work each morning I make her breakfast and watch as she covers her colors as if they are her numbers from her prison days.  She always feels alone in the design office where she works, it is filled with the sculptures of “creativity” unmoved by her words; they create a vacuum out of whispers removing the air so that she cannot breathe.

Each night she arrives home to find me sitting in a fetal position, clutching my legs to my chest as if I am waiting for the glue to dry.  When I re-recognize her she smiles at me, I gently remove the crust of tears from the corner of her eyes, blow it into the air and make a wish; she removes her caterpillar skin exposing the butterfly of light emanating from inside her.  I spend the rest of the night reading the story of her life.

I try to decipher her markings, the symbols of all the things she felt before she was able to speak, before she met me.  She chooses not speak to me; she wants to be an open book that someone passionately holds to their chest as if to remember each detail.   I am trying to be that person, the one who she chooses for me to be.

The colors of her skin seem to convey something more than the ink injected into her; revealing more about who she is.  They change each day so that her story changes each day and I must read her all over again.

I want to be part of her story, so I have myself branded into her skin; one part of me is colorless, just a black outline of something that once was or has yet to be fully formed, the other part of me has no lines just shades that touch each other at various places eventually blending into each other.  

The next day I am back in my streets, staring at the blades of grass, contemplating the question she once asked, whether she is a particle or a wave, the answer is still uncertain.

you have taught me love
in the flourescence of adulthood,
but that can be dark and you can be dark,  
all of it in and out of body.

you teach me how to long for a season
and hate it at the same time.

teach me a forgiveness whose holiness is
captured by memories of you kneeling and my not,
didn't care if I couldn't, let the tallness of the everything
wrap around me, protecting me,
and you're on the floor, kneeling.

eucharist in your hand and you're crying.

you have taught me how to release.
I am hanging onto sunken words, a promise,
that maybe not today or tonight or on Christmas
whenever
you're in town and I'm in town
or I'm astral even,
that the story is real.

many stories had ended long ago
and ours will eventually,
untold if ever
and if told,
will evaporate with the two of us,
separated by panes of glass.