The sticky grogginess of the morning
often wanes as the day lengthens.
Your body begins to crave entertainment,
nourishment,
all sorts of things that are unrelated to sleep.
But after exerting oneself,
you are reminded again of the luxurious feel
of your mattress.
You drag yourself home,
leaving your belongings at the door,
shedding the garb of work and monotony,
and scrub away the grittiness
of the thin film you develop
from a day of human interaction.
Perhaps there is a delicious refreshment
awaiting your empty, tumbling stomach.
You soothe the anxiety rolling in your insides
with each sweet, pillow-y bite
of a chewy sugar cookie,
quenching your thirst with fresh, cold milk,
or a perfect, steaming cup of hot tea.
Finally,
clean,
warm,
and satisfied,
you seek reprieve
in the cool, crisp sheets,
freshly turned down.
The pillows are perfectly placed,
cradling your head,
and the mattress beneath you
is like a cloud
gently lifting you,
carrying you high and rocking you,
as you lay beneath the pleasantly slight weight
of your sheets.
There is a specific moment,
just before you succumb to sleep,
when your body is in such a state of peace and comfort
that you can think of nothing
but giving in to it.
Such a satisfaction can only be described as
bliss.
Your body has no complaints
for the first time all day.
It is perfect,
delectable,
almost guilt-inducing,
like your tea, right between too hot and too cold,
or a bite of chocolate that's neither too bitter nor too sweet.
That moment,
were I to capture it,
and bottle the feeling,
is precisely what it feels like,
to embrace you.

How do I put this
For the hearing folk?
A shout in the ear,
A jab, or a poke.
What once was a whisper,
A tame, gentle brush,
Distant and soft,
And ever so hush,
Now it’s a SHOUT
From whisper to bang,
From dull, mild thud,
To a clamouring clang.
And it’s not just the volume,
God, if only…
I’d go back to the confusion,
Go back to the lonely…
But there’s the little noises,
Things that I’ve missed,
Like tinkling bells,
A click, or a hiss.
Now there’s more,
A whole colony of sound,
Like an anthill, you see,
From a hole to a mound.
A hell of an acquisition,
As my eardrums burn,
I must accept that I have
A new language to learn.
But in the privacy of solitude,
I switch off the pain,
And retreat into peace,
My silent domain.

Late fifties, early sixties,
Maybe somewhere in between,
I died.
Can’t explain how it happened,
I don’t think it was a big deal,
It certainly didn’t feel like it.
Besides, if it was a tragedy, shouldn’t I remember it?
It doesn’t matter anyhow,
It’s all over. The point is that I lived,
And now I can’t remember enough to sustain myself on memories.
I’m left with that itch you can’t scratch until you put your finger on that word,
That face you forgot,
The name of that restaurant,
Figure out what it is you’re hungry for,
Bring that specific thought to the front of your mind and picture it,
Feel it,
Recall what you need to…
Instead I’m left with half-thoughts,
Words and figures I can’t finish
Because it was long ago,
Looking with a different set of eyes.
Here I am now,
Out of place,
Uncomfortable in my own skin,
People noticing that I’m not quite right,
I don’t quite fit into the landscape,
And there’s nowhere for me to be.
Because it’s not a where,
It’s a when,
And you can’t take a plane to a when.
You can’t drive your car or bike or even take the bus
To 1958,
Because wherever you go,
It’s still going to be a place in Now.
Everything Now is a bitter reminder that I’m a foreigner,
An intruder on a new place that deserves new souls that love new things.
Even the good things are a slap in the face,
A kick to the shin,
A bright light in my old eyes,
That bring my attention to the calendar,
The clock,
The dress on the streets,
The technology in the hands of every man, woman, and child with two thumbs and a pocket to stow it away.
I want late nights listening to those smooth notes pouring off the stage like mist on a cool morning,
Everyone on the dancefloor losing themselves in it,
Instead of losing themselves in brightly lit screens in their laps,
Fingers shaking with anticipation for the next tap and scroll.
Where’s the addiction to long drives and the yearning for a simple joy?
It’s disappeared into an addiction to little black boxes and all the noises they make and information they stole from books and brains and the tongues of real, live people that died with less attendees to their funerals than attendees to the opening of the new Apple store.
No one listens to the old folks,
Too busy resenting the things they left behind for us,
Even though they couldn’t control it either.
Good things that last take more effort to destroy
Than the flimsy new things take to create,
But we destroy them anyway,
Instead of honoring the way they earned their place in our world.
Artists with the ability to remember and record are distracted by politics and ugly things,
And forget their responsibility.
Fifty years from now,
We won’t have anything beautiful to offer our children and their’s.
Is it too late for me?
Am I destined for misery?
I’m an old thing, too, does that mean I’m fated for a dusty closet or decaying garbage bin?
I couldn’t have been made alone.
I couldn’t have been left on my own in this new place,
There has to be someone else,
Maybe even more than one someone,
Because anything less is too cruel.
And if there is,
Where do we go?
Can we make a new place out of Then?
Or is it too late?
Is it impossible…
Impossible to make a where out of a when?

Tip tap, tip tap
Tapping, tapping, tapping
With that incessant sound,
That pleasurable pressure on the nail beds as the fingernails press down,
Down on the keys until the words come out,
Lifting momentarily to snap, pop, and crack those knuckles
To relieve that stiffness
Loosen them up enough to lift the bottle,
Fingers grasped tightly around the slender, delicate neck,
Swing it up,
Get enough leverage to do it with one hand,
Because you can't spare the other,
It's typing,
Still typing,
Typing nothing,
Nothing Important.
Bottle up, up in the air,
Hard swallows of that sweet, sweet poison that tastes better when there's more,
Dim lamplight casting dark green from the bottle onto the walls,
Like a mockery of a dappling light through tree branches in a forest.
The jagged thoughts that don't make sentences,
Only angry snarling,
Smooth over as the poison drips down,
Sinks in,
Melts those granite thoughts down to a rich,
Decadent
Oil
That slips off the fingertips into the keys,
And bedews each word,
Dripping that life into them,
Satisfying, satiating, saturating,
Until they are plump and vital,
And fingers are falling on the keys like knees to the floor in prayer,
And those words are being worshiped,
Exalted and revered,
And instead of the words being creations,
The words are the gods of the fingers,
The fingers the creations,
Throwing themselves down in ritual,
The raw, chafing flesh of the tips pounding against the keyboard like the mutilated backs of the self-flagellating worshipers of other gods,
And they go down and down and down
Until they can't do it anymore and the poison is gone and the words are dried up again,
And the gods don't seem real anymore
And the hands fall dead in the lap
Only stirring to lift that last swig of the poison
One last sip
And that's it
Death to the hands.

Take me,
Human,
Take me where I am,
Or take me home.
Have me on your couch,
On your bed,
At the table,
Do it with your elbows on the counter,
Or sitting in a chair.
Take me,
Human,
Like you’ve never had another before.
Hidden behind the shelves in the library,
Parked in your car,
Somewhere in the dark,
In the bathroom,
In a closet,
Anywhere,
Everywhere,
Open me,
Take me,
Have me,
Read me,
You deserve,
The company
Of a good book.

Tap, tap, tap,
Go the keys,
Tap, tap, tap,
Furiously nailing the letters to the page,
Like nails to wood,
One at a time.
Tap, tap, tap,
Words about heartbreak and love,
His eyes and her eyes,
The way his coat smells,
The way flowers grow,
The way music touches your soul.
Tap, tap, tap,
Spinning sugar-sweet rhymes about “womanly” things,
While my womanly thoughts lie burning in the deep,
Dark,
Cavities of my chest.
Tap, tap, tap,
Deep down,
Beneath a waterfall of Earl Grey,
Beneath the flutter of a feminine heart,
My womanly words crackle like a fire suppressed.
Tap, tap, tap
I can hear them rumble like thunder,
So close to being spoke,
Being written,
Being typed,
Tap, tap, tap,
Tap, tap, tap,
The fire and the thunder stay in my chest,
Rolling and seething,
Tap, tap, tap,
I continue to write,
Tap, tap, tap,
Someone else’s words.

One can almost hear the operatic chorus
Cry out in emotion,
As they ascend the marbled stairs,
Hands shaking so in excitement,
That the ornate metal railing cannot be felt beneath them.
Down a hall, feet gliding on the polished floors,
Around the corner,
And there it is,
On the wall like an altar,
Mountain range of colors,
Geometric patterns,
Like gilded windows into other worlds,
And a resting place of alabaster skin,
The calm prairie
Amidst a festival of shimmering lights,
Celebrating with vigor
The peace
The eye of the storm
In her expression,
The Woman in Gold.
Her figure rising from the extravagance
Like the simple and graceful tendrils of steam
From a cup of tea.
Amiable and tender,
In the middle of a bustling cafe.
At once, you are spun onto a dancefloor,
Crafted by Midas,
Twirling and dipping and dancing,
With explosions of royal sunlight,
Before the gentle partner takes you by the hand,
And leads you into a steady, yet balletic waltz.
Say her name,
This secret woman,
She deserves more than anonimity,
Say her name,
In a whisper as quiet as her poised hands,
Or in a glorious cry of admiration,
As cacophonous as the color of the robes
She is swathed in.
Say her name,
Like a prayer,
Or a pledge,
Or a dutiful anthem,
With your hand to your heart,
Say her name,
And never let the memory of the sound slipping off of your tongue.
Say her name,
Like you survived the war in her honor,
Say her name,
She is not just a woman,
Say her name,
No matter her religion,
Say her name,
Because she was forgotten,
But no longer,
Never again,
For you, we’ll remember,
Adele.

Without books,
There would not be love,
Without poems,
There would not be love,
Without art, and literature, and music,
There would not be love.
Humans like magic and fairies and giants,
But science is a terrible sound,
And it wakes us from such fantastic dreams.
But there’s something close to magic,
The closest thing we have-
Love.
We can still dream about wild,
Unconditional love.
We can dream that there’s only one, true soul,
A perfect fit,
Two people designed for one another.
We can still dream,
About love.
It’s in every written word,
Sung note and brushstroke,
And every artist breathes it in through a mask,
Refusing the oxygen of reality.
We reject the uncertainty of our world in favor,
of the mysticism of that near-magic, love.
It’s a masochistic affair,
Worshipping that feeling that lives in our art,
Just out of reach.
I do not accept deceit.
I do not yearn for fiction to enter the tangible world.
But I do long for love,
For I do love,
I love art itself.

That still silence
Like everything has been dead,
But the real life still thriving,
That sterile scent,
That chilled air,
That dimming light
Shining right- right
On them...
Oh, you are all so beautiful, so beautiful,
And I eat you up like red meat,
Swallow you down like red wine,
I consume you more and more because I can't get enough,
I'm insatiable.
I taste that hot, coppery light on the tip of my tongue,
Adele, The Kiss, Medicine...
Like heat, joy, tangible joy like metal in my mouth, but I swallow it,
And there it is some more, some hazy, intoxicating impressionism
With that feeling of decadence, like icing on a wedding cake,
And there they go, the Water Lilies,
Still I swallow and swallow some more,
REMBRANDT, your pallet be ******,
Dark liquor, washing away the empty eyes of the sad, real people you make,
But I consume and I consume, because
I want to feel the colors run down my throat,
I want to feel the burn like whiskey,
I want to taste and taste and taste,
I want to taste the culture,
I want to taste the talent,
I want to know the hands that made them,
I want to feel the strokes the way they felt them,
I want to feel those oils rubbing between my hands,
I want to spend hours staring, making, drinking it in,
And I want to sit and stare and stare and stare and drink and drink and drink
In my wicker chair I want to stay
In an empty room
Just with you
Just tasting how you look,
Inhaling how you feel,
In an empty room
Just you and me
Bouguereau,
Just you and me.

White walls,
No windows,
Perfect square,
Rough carpet,
Same chairs in every room,
That trademark color,
Not green,
Not grey,
But some unfortunate color in between,
Like someone ate grey,
Then washed it down with green,
And someone else opened them up,
And that’s the partially digested color that they found.
Everything gilded in dull alluminum,
Like a poor man’s Klimt,
Cold table legs
And chalkboard trays
And door handles,
Door handles all day long,
I touch the door handles sixteen times a day here,
And I can feel the hands of every sweaty, unwashed  drone
That has touched it before me,
That unpolished texture grating against the tips of my fingernails,
The cold,
The vibrations of the grinding hinges,
And the herds of zombies on the other side,
Anyone touching the door,
Making that loud, resonating sound
That moves through to the ******, monotonous handles
And into me.
Linoleum,
All day, every day,
That God forsaken color,
Checkered with white tiles,
Something like white,
But not quite white,
Not nearly as white as the walls,
Speckled with another color,
Like something that would burst out of a caterpillar if you stepped on it,
In an infinite mosaic from hall to hall.
The mood is set on this liminal stage,
By a series of florescent spotlights.
The same light by which we watch the dreary, surreal dreams play in our heads,
It is this light that illuminates my waking nightmare,
The knocks on the nerves behind my eyeballs,
And I hide,
And pretend that no one’s home.

The world used to be so quiet
Way back before there were so many people,
The far past,
And when I had a young body,
And my ears didn’t work,
The recent past,
It was so quiet.
But I can’t hide under covers and behind drawn curtains for the rest of my life.
I want to be in the outside,
I want miles to explore,
For things to be far,
So they have to be worth it,
To get them.
And for there to be enough silence
That when a single thing happens,
I can hear it from far away.
I’m tired of running away from the noise all the time,
Being chased into corners,
Locking the doors behind me quickly,
Earplugs,
Earbuds,
Sunglasses after sundown,
Anything to create a barrier.
I’m not a person who likes walls,
But they’ve been my friends and family,
For twenty-one years now.
If it weren’t for the people,
I would embrace a world without walls,
Without buffers and veils and masks,
But the people are loud,
So loud,
That even when I feel a small,
Pebble-sized
Sense of peace,
I must tuck it away,
It’s not to be enjoyed,
Because it’ll be shattered by the people
And their voices
And their cars
And their phones
And their computers
And their people toys
And their people games
And even in the quietest corner
Of the most isolated, abandoned building,
I can still hear
The people noise.

Let’s be happy,
Real happy,
Get happy,
One after another,
Let’s just line up,
And take some happy,
Get it in a little plastic cup
Wash it down with some water,
Wait for the happy to kick in,
Hope the happy doesn’t have any side effects,
Go see a professional
And talk about how to get happy,
Spending time with friends,
Only pay attention to each other
When we can give each other happy,
But no one wants to see the stuff behind the curtain,
Because we don’t know what to do with anything
That isn’t cookie-cutter,
Perfect form,
Follow-all-the-rules,
Make your mama proud,
Textbook,
Poster-worthy
Happy.

“Go to the doctor, sit in a dim room, take a pill,
Take a test,
Map your progress on a chart-
Get better.”
“What did Dr. Doctor say?”
“How much longer will it take?”
“When will you
Get better?”
Write in a journal,
Make sure that you record
Every day
Until you
get better.
Because we care about you,
We love you,
And we just want you to
“Get better”.
But what is better?
What if I’m the best?
What if this is as
Better
As it gets?
I don’t want to spend this life
In waiting rooms
Waking up to alarms
“Take 2 @ 7 am”,
Why do I have to live this way?
No one told me this before,
When I made up my face with a smile,
And cowered in the closet,
While my doppleganger danced and performed,
And if that’s what you call better,
Hiding
Or residing
In a haze of medication,
Doped up,
Sobered down,
Nothing to hang onto,
I don’t need to lock the doors three times,
Because I don’t care if they’re locked at all.
Is this it?
Is this
Better,
Is this what they’ve been asking for?
Tell me,
Friends,
Loved ones,
Professionals,
Is that what I must do to
Get better?
Hide?
Live in an underwater world,
Where everything is slow,
And the music is muted,
And you can’t feel down,
Because you can’t feel anything at all?
Is that how I can do it?
Is that how I can
Get better?

Tick, tock,
Thump, thump,
As the minutes go by,
The heartbeats seem to grow more strained.
Up at night,
Pacing,
Moving,
Weary from the constant movement,
Never resting,
I sit,
A temporary reprieve,
And then up again.
Walking,
Waiting,
Listening,
Terrified,
That at any point,
I could stop and wait to hear what I always hear,
And it will be silent.
Hushed is the house,
Creaking in slumber,
Like a great breath in the foundation,
And all else is silent to my broken ears,
Save the ringing when I strain to hear,
The inhale,
Exhale,
Of my loves ones.
I go to each door and stand,
As still as can be,
Watching for the rise of the chest,
A stirring hand,
A fluttering eyelid,
To remind me-
They are here,
They breathe,
Their hearts beat.
Every night,
I cannot rest,
Haunting the hallways,
Peering around doors,
And I wait,
Impatiently,
For dawn,
For the time when life is clear,
And the nightmare of death can be put to rest,
And only when the sun rises
And my beloved speak
And laugh
And move,
Can my restless limbs,
And shallow breath,
Be put to rest,
With the moon.

The days drag out,
Unbroken by sleepless nights,
And a bone-deep,
Brain-deep,
Gut-deep
Weariness.
Restless,
Uncomfortable,
But too tired
And too spent
To give to where I am and what I’m doing.
After the sun goes down,
I pace, despite the fatigue,
And let my imagination run in the dark,
To satiate that squirm beneath my skin,
Even if only briefly.
I gently place the needle on the record,
And strip down to a slip,
The sound of vinyl humming over my bare skin,
In a caress as intimate as the satin I wear,
And there it is-
Apparent,
Immobilizing,
And I know-
I have to satisfy it.
At first, just a sway,
Side to side,
Left to right,
Rocking front and back,
One foot,
Then another,
And spinning,
I’m swinging,
Rolling,
Working muscles that hadn’t moved
In what felt like years.
From my bare toes,
To my stiff neck,
To my tingling fingers,
I unravel that itch,
And dance.
Leaping
Twisting
Grinning from ear to ear,
I move like it’s the first time anyone has ever moved,
And I shake off the whole day,
The whole week,
Every worry,
Every word that weighs on me,
I dance,
Until my shoulders feel no burden,
And the ache is thrown from me,
In the shake, rattle, and roll of dance.
My feet don’t stop until the soles blister,
And my arms don’t still until the sockets are weak,
Until my fatigue is true,
And not the creeping,
Crawling
Drain on my bones,
On my soul,
On my everything.
Until the tired makes me smile with gratifying exhaustion,
And my sheets are a reprieve
And not a ritual,
And my body can rest,
Now that the itch is gone.

The world from here looks like an endless landfill of human trash,
Crime, pollution, hate, and death,
Fill our ears and eyes and noses from the moment we wake,
Till the moment we medicate ourselves to sleep.
The air is too hot,
The people are too many,
And when I walk down the street,
I feel like an ugly alien,
But there’s a little place,
Nestled in the veins of the city,
And at night, when the air is heavy,
And the sky is quiet with darkness,
The doors open to this little place,
And the people go inside.
In this little place, everything is so lovely,
Even when the beer grows warm,
And the rain floods in through the poorly sealed garage doors,
Even when the powder on the floor is spread too thin,
And there’s not enough seats,
And the old curtains haven’t been dusted,
It’s perfect in every way.
Here, in this place,
The bar is unevenly lit, but it’s got what you need.
The old, black chandelier gives you just enough light to see what you need to see,
And the stage always has instruments,
Playing away your blues.
The curtains and tapestries swallow up the sound of the outside,
And when the music starts, you can pretend that you’re somewhere old.
A time with saxophones and an upright bass
That cry out an ode to the dancefloor.
It calls to people,
In trousers and Mary Janes,
As they swing, ****, and lindy across the concrete to the sound of their anthem.
Skirts swing,
Shoes slide,
And the people close their eyes when the notes are especially smooth.
Glasses of watered down scotch and lipsticked martinis are left at the tables
And inhibitions are left at the door.
Low, sultry tones resonate through the creaking wooden platforms beneath the tables,
So no matter who you are,
The cat swinging his gal on the floor,
Or the one nodding from the booth,
You can feel it.
But everyone,
Everyone down to the big man at the door,
Has to get on their feet.
The music is too sweet,
Too good and too smooth,
Not to try it on.
Gotta try a little taste of that jazz,
That old swing,
That smoky blues,
Whoever you are,
Oh, you’ve gotta try a little bit of that.
Someone takes someone else,
And off the people go.
One foot, two feet, three feet, four feet,
And on the floor, they slide, swing, and ****,
To the excited fluttering of everyone’s collective heartbeat
Beat,
Beat,
Beat,
Into the microphone,
You can’t resist,
Whether you’re “good” or “bad”,
If you dance, you dance,
In jeans, in a dress,
Suspenders or sweats,
If you dance,
You dance,
That’s all there is.
Someone sings out your deepest woes from the stage,
And you shake, rattle, and roll,
Until your feelings are all over the floor,
You don’t need love here,
You don’t need any of it.
There’s no husband and wife,
You can’t go steady,
Romance is a faintly remembered legend,
All you need here is dance.
Rhythmic pounding of feet against the ground.
That bass starts to strum,
And everything you thought you felt is replaced,
Replaced by air moving through you.
If you thought you missed someone,
Think again,
If you thought you had unrequited love for someone,
Think again.
Here, the people hop, skip, and glide from wall to wall,
And whatever they felt before,
Flies off of them like dust.
Because we’re the dancefloor people,
And we can’t feel a thing.
By the end of the night,
You’re lucky to breathe,
Feet red and sore,
Body wrung out like a rag,
There’s nothing left to feel but your mattress and a gratifying ache in your limbs.
The dancefloor people can’t see the kingdom of trash,
We can’t see it from here.
Spinning, wild and hot,
Just trying to stay on our feet,
Grins splitting weary faces,
No, we don’t see that bad, bad,
Ugly, ugly,
Earth.
We’re the dancefloor people,
We’re aliens, we’re characters in a story,
And when you come looking for us,
We’ll swallow you up,
And you’ll be dancefloor people, too.

I miss people I can’t name,
I lament events I have not seen,
I have memories of things I did not experience.
And I do not know why.
Everyone is like a child to me,
Experiencing life for the first time,
And I watch with nostalgia
And wish for such blissful days of naivete,
Which I cannot remember.
I am robbed of my memories,
Wholly and completely.
I was given a false life,
To trudge about and complete,
Stuck in a green skin,
With faux potential,
And a trim of ink black resentment,
Made to live in solitude while I wish for my old life,
Mourn my friends,
And live in spite,
Watching the world grow old with detest as I grow with it.
I know that our species has a soul,
Some of which is so beautiful,
But I cannot bear to watch it’s endless pattern,
Time and time again.
It weakens me.
It wears me thin.
It makes me hate.
I am not angry with them,
The children,
The newcomers,
The unawakened,
I am simply old.
I have been old for so long,
That I cannot remember being young.
But that is our way, isn’t it?
We age every day,
And forget every morning,
And we pray every night that the next life will be different,
That we’ll wake up to a skin that’s all our own,
To people who remember us for who we are,
Entirely.
I have few wishes,
Because I have learned that nothing you can imagine,
Could be quite as beautiful,
As God’s gentle plan,
But I have always wished, despite this,
For a time all my own.
Where I can be born, live, and die,
With everyone else,
And feel whole, and vital, and real,
Instead of like a phantom in a foreign land.
Perhaps the future will bring a piece of paradise,
And God will say,
“Come home.”
I dearly long
For my final nightfall.
I dearly long,
To go home.

So strange,
That a window this small,
No bigger than my notebook,
Shows the vast sea of clouds,
Far above a rolling storm,
Lightning flashing beneath us
Like electric eels that live in the sky,
And endless galaxies beyond,
A little rocket ship,
Braving the horizon.
And as we descend,
Another smattering of lights appears,
Like a reflection of space on the surface of the earth,
And I know we’re here.

I miss you,
West Texas,
You more than most.
I miss people
And things
But I’ve never missed more,
Than I’ve missed you.
One day, I’ll return to you,
And we’ll be together until I die,
My dear West Texas.
Some say your deserts are unbearably hot,
And I say,
It’s easier to make shade
Than a fire.
Picturesque cacti,
Blooming in the spring,
Sunsets that put oil paintings to shame,
And wild mustangs escaping man’s unyielding possession,
Just like me.
I can see them running along the dusty banks
Of a wide river in canyon carved by the Great Artist Himself,
West Texas,
I want to drive a rusty old truck through hot afternoons till frigid nights,
Miles and miles of sweet loneliness,
Until it’s just you and I,
And I can watch your brilliant display of stars move
Across the endless horizon.
Desert owls,
A serpent’s rattling warning,
Creatures that crave solitude,
As I do,
Emerge in the night,
Like the neon lights of lonely bars in the middle of nowhere,
Sweet prickly pear in perfect harmony with Jose Cuervo in my glass,
A tribute to my lonely West Texas,
Singing me a tune of cicada chirps and desert winds,
And the jingle of spurs on concrete floors,
As the men,
As old and covered in sand as the bar itself,
Make their way in from isolated jobs miles away,
To listen to Tejano,
And sip on that cactus nectar,
Distilled by the Great Bartender
For a night like this,
In my West Texas,
Perfectly lonely,
Perfectly perfect.
I just want it to be me and you
And your hot red sand,
I want to see those yellow blossoms bursting from the deceptively spiny hands of desert life,
I want to hang a dusty, wide brimmed hat above dusty leather boots when I come home,
I want the sky to explode with color,
As a reward for enduring a long day of the heat,
And when the rare jewels from heaven fall, and nourish your cracked ground,
And peace is sworn between all animals,
Predators and prey,
For that moment,
So that all may celebrate the loving dew sent by our Great Caretaker,
I want to dance on your planes,
Twirl in the rain,
And let the drops fall between my lips like the crevices of your canyons,
Brought to life when you are,
Slumber when you do,
Live each day as you live,
My sweet West Texas.

My grace,
My love,
My soulmate.
She drapes her majesty in mountains, oceans, rivers, plains, canyons, swamps, rivers, and rocky shores, big cities and small towns, deserts that bleed into forests, and anything and everything that the world could offer.
She extends her arms so far, you couldn’t reach the fingertips of one hand to another,
Not in a single day,
Not without ignoring her beauty.
I love her from her masterpiece sunsets
Down to her rusted shack tin roofs,
From her lush green fields,
To her sizzling sands,
I love you,
Texas,
My Texas,
From the freezing floods of January,
To the hot, dry death of July,
And I’ll never let her go,
Even in death,
I’ll be buried in the sandy loam,
Under the sticker burs,
And wild flowers,
And let my love nestle me in her embrace,
Long after I’m a pile of chalky, white bones and ancient cowboy boots,
I’ll lover her until the ocean cuts away her shores,
And the wind wears down her hills,
And the parasites drill holes in her ground,
And build streets on her fields,
I’ll love you,
Texas,
Until the end.

“Don’t you want a life with someone you love?”
“Don’t you want a ring on that finger?”
“Do you want to die alone?!”
I can’t get married,
You see.
Married life,
Just isn’t for me,
I can’t have a white wedding,
With a pretty dress
And roses galore,
I can’t have a little suburban house with a swing,
In the backyard,
And a yellow lab wagging his tail by the front door,
I can’t get married…
Because I already am.
I am married,
Sealed and sewn,
To my love
My forever soulmate,
Who has me,
Mind, body, and soul,
Until the end of time.
I cannot give you my hand,
For my whole being belongs to her.
She owns me,
Like the sun owns the earth,
And it’s her tender,
Unrelenting,
Nourishment of love,
That sustains me when I must travel,
And we are apart.
Every day I wake to her beauty,
And every night I drift off peacefully in her embrace.
If I am ever forced to exist away from her,
I’ll die,
Just as slowly as everyone else,
But far more miserably,
At the base of an altar to her,
Surrounded by canvases marked with her image,
I’ll die,
Like a dry succulent,
Slowly wrinkling and withering,
Without the liquid life from the sky,
I’ll die,
Of heartache and loneliness,
If I’m ever forced to be away from
Texas.

To be held,
Oh, God,
By Her,
Is to be home.
The air is sweeter,
The lights are brighter,
And the world outside seems full of potential.
When she holds me,
Oh Lord,
The music comes from the Heavens,
They sing out,
“Allelujah, allelujah,”
And my heart leaps in my chest,
Because in Her embrace,
War is far,
Hate is fiction,
And I am deserving of love.
To be in,
Oh, God,
Your Church,
Is to be home.