The days, they start sometimes with a smile and a fresh steaming cup of something hot for fall, sloshing around in the cup holder of the car on the way to see family all bundled up in layers of fabric like onion skin, healing in layers. Healing in layers, supposedly, that's what they say. And then sometimes, the days that start in smiles end in tears and whiskey alone, they end in music that drowns out the endless stretch of seconds ticking, sliding down the drain with the rotten herbs you boiled to try and soothe the stomach gurgling from stress and a sadness you can't understand, or something dark like that. You watch the sun creep down and be swallowed by the horizon, down down slow below the line of trees, trees that watch you cower on the minuscule plant-covered balcony in a desperate attempt to be alone, rocking rocking back and forth for soft comfort, curled on the hard metal and wondering where the hell to find a piece of substance when trivial pursuit is the only board game you keep coming back to, dusty gold medals and all. And sometimes you reach out, you reach out to those eyes in the night and hope for a stirring, but the backs turn away and the words thrown at you hold no love, you accept the inevitable, you accept your unhappiness as a lack of gratitude but deep down mostly you just accept your punishment, having tried to be good and pure and make good decisions that suit everyone, having tried to be true to yourself and who you believe yourself to be and then failed, start as trying and end up tired, having failed at fitting the puzzle pieces into their rightful positions, all lined up to be marched to war. Your tongue is lined with fur. Your heart is etched stone, only you can't make out the graffiti....all gibberish and smart-ass obscurity, beautiful and damaged like a photo you once saw on Reddit. Funny enough to not laugh. You blame it on capitalism, blame it on the Illuminati, or your possibly nonexistent gluten intolerance, blame it on these hot November summer days that make you feel an alien in your own dry taut skin, hell blame it on your Father, no matter so long as at the end of the day you stand up and be a man...because none of us will ever be the heroes we want to be. Just a man, a haggard-faced man maybe with tits or dry hands that takes responsibility for his actions, be they tears or smiles or silence or raging fury or fear or cowardice or a much-needed self-slap to the face.

You can hold me tight
sleep next to me at night
but you can't protect me
from myself,

You can't put out the fire.

The following was brought to you by
self-imposed solitude during
my healing journey in Panama.
(This was while staying with the beloved
Mercedes, a purely Spanish-speaking "cuandera," or,
a healer who has been practicing natural medicine for
over 4 decades. I was mostly alone there, studying,
healing, learning, growing for almost two weeks.)



The rain came steady, finally,
(Lluvia despacia)
and
In the wet thicket
I can taste my natural soul
like warm herbs and fresh
papaya,
A burning woman-child
cries out in need
as
I paint myself,
The strokes of completion
Of happy alone, alive
Of healing, at last.
I understand everything so suddenly
as in the distance
The chorus of voices
echoes out
[The familiar peace of foreign chanting]
In unison
and the night, still young,
is coated with the
Twittering and chepping of
a harmony of
Creatures,
A cacophony of life.
In me, I have found the mother
My Earth
has turned her soil over
to expose the
Roots 
of a tree planted before
I was separated from the
umbilical cord
And deep inside,
the water flows raw and makes new again.

Is strength really the purity of love,
the courage of living
or
the love of letting go?

You have to fight your way to the earth, where your tears will feed life and the ground will eat your pain -- all real human beings must do this or be ill for not doing so.

And in the meantime, I'm throwing wild parties in a treehouse -- on a limb in your heart.


The more empty I am,
the more full I feel.
Do not stand at  my grave and cry,
I am not there,
I did not die. 

I have so many burning, aching
Words
in me
Begging
to be dug out
with the shovels of
Your mouth.

The need, it breaks across
My skin
like the fire
of
Mysterious mistakes
and
Autumn,
she is wreaking havoc
on my veins,
whispering
Slow burn
Scream loud
Fuck hard.
Come find me in the night
those pearlized white crescents
beaming into my smoldering complexion,
Our medicine soothing the unquenchable
hunger shrieking through our savage cells
until my moon-sticken complexion is only the
striking reflection of your own expression.
Separate we are soulless,
Together we soar.

Night Train

I remember waking to a comatose leg,
numbed by the sudden onslaught of
cold mountain draft,
Swiss alp snowy dawn,
my eyes nearly crusted shut by
the crackling stiff train air,
tight enough for breath to get
Caught in.
I was confused by the frigid ozone --
after all, when I had drifted to sleep
in the train car (rattling like old bones)
on our overnight journey from Czech land
through Switzerland to
Tuscany,
it had been stifling sticky unbearably hot,
air thick enough to slice with a
blunt butter knife in summer...
And now, shivering,
I have to stumble over my sleeping roommate
to rummage for my jacket in the
Dark.
Still numb, back in my seat nest,
I dare to slowly peel
the window shade up, inch by slight
Inch,
Unbearably curious as to what
lies beyond the icy window border
in that ghostly foreign Abyss.
Winding and rumbling through the rolling mounds of
Trees
and thin suspended bridges
Above sparkling ethereal towns
painted into the wooded peak crevices,
I remember thinking
This can't possibly be real
I've woken up in an ISpy book
And the night train just howled and
Clattered,
Like an old metal teapot
tossed upon a campsite fire to
Burn and steam and smoke until
sparking its own demise.


And every October
since that glittering train reckoning,
that late night early morning awakening,
Each October
This memory creeps up to me as
I lie sleeping in my sloppy unconscious
Golden tower of disarray --
Surveying the wreckage of summer
(messy nymphet of
scattered light and
fallen leaves)
This memory jabs itself into my
Broken skin,
Injecting me with wild pyre
Get up, it says
Wake up
and open those wide eyes
Remember how alive you were,
that night?

When everything appears unreal and the
movement of time is
too mercurial
even for a Gemini,
Breathe it all in
Doesn't matter if you keep up or
Slow down
Just clutch the beauty
to your heaving chest
And run with it as fast
as your heart can hold out,
Until your skin peels off,
leaving nothing but a rattling skeleton
Night train of bones,
rumbling into the darkness
climbing through the mountains
surrounding the miniature sparkling
ISpy towns
Covered in a glistening blanket of
surreal Swiss snow.

Life is too short, too fleeting
to miss one second
from behind sleeping eyes,
It's all a waking dream,
anyway
And these memories are what keep us
Breathing
(along the neck of October).

Sweet September: the Things I Remember


scribbled on a cocktail napkin on September 8th

The dogs are digging for field mice and 
My tongue
is made of warm, salted caramel
I'm breathing a healthy mix of fear 
and contentment 
Like heavy-weighted chocolate,
A dark and dangerous sweetness 
Thickly filling my chest cavity, my mouth 
And spilling from my Midwest lips.


These quaint tragedies we invent,
They're crawling along my veins 
Like the cool breeze that's serenading 
My feverish skin, and
The symbolism of the wind -- 
No longer bearing fire and 
Destruction (breeds creation) -- 
Suddenly, is viciously striking...
(That invisibly sweeping movement fanning the
Carnage of heat)
Oh yes, fall is decidedly nearly here 
At last,
I'm streamlining these wispy, dreamlike 
Castle-house neighborhoods, these haunting streets,
Cradling nostalgia like a newborn and
Craving everything unspeakable.




Mutual catharsis


I remember your eyes across the tin table etchings,
the smooth burn of adulterated tea and sidecars
Lining my throat with confessions
I had yet to understand, 
Roughly loving
Together we are strangers enamored
Or
the burn of unfulfilled real potential
Maybe the scream of whiskey hills with
Head plugged into chest, 
Heartbeat rumbling like
A distant train in the 
Hawkish, sticky night.


I remember thinking,
I would wrinkle my nose for you always,
Climb you like my favorite tree
Mold my lap into a bassinet for your
Weary, well-traveled head.


With every soft-spoken "hi"
I couldn't help thinking
"I like us together",
like
Perfect home-fries with homemade
ketchup Or 
Flawless omelets with
Provincial veggies,
Like making intuitive sense,
the sensory delight of
Fat fresh-baked biscuits and 
fig-mint-gin preserves.


I remember wondering if you noticed
Me noticing
that in the midst of our reflective
Loving gazes
You would close your eyes for the
Briefest
of moments 
as if you couldn't 
adequately maneuver the 
Wide Breadth of your affection.


And the deflated mattress reminded me
That nothing supportive
Lasts without frequent maintenance, 
But perfection and expectation are
Overrated and 
Pale in comparison to the 
Tangible ferocity of 
Two body-beings pressed together like
Mutual catharsis. 


Do you remember?
The thick sex of dust and that 
indescribably spellbinding smell,
Cottonwoods or maybe Hickory
Some kind of mysterious burning leaves, 
Unseen --
And Me, pitching into your frame like
A lean-to battered by the rain,
Your shelter wrapping tight and
Filling me quietly like 
Whispered bleacher reticence.

I remember: Unspoken sharing,
Our matched longing for a stone-cabin with 
Climbing walls and a smoking chimney,
Some kind of ghostly private nest 
For a pair of bluebirds
Taking in the city lights from pre-pubescent
Hilltops. 






Wobbly


Aspens fall in the forest with a delicate
Sound that awakens me 
Each night, without fail.


I remember everything,
I remember you the most.

And where are you in this mess,

Where are you now?

Are you fighting to hold on,

as long as you are able

Until I fall away, merely

A tree dream?

Are you lacking coordination or

Nursing the remembrance, 

That unwavering Elegant Universe

The heaving breasts of our 

Sweaty Affection?

Do you see me

Watching you 

over shared coffee (with cinnamon),

Wanting to be
yours always,

something atypical but overly sweet

with a kick, like

Lover's delight or chai

with soy and malted eyes?

Where are you now?

the last ferry out


Who knows what tomorrow may bring
Maybe sunshine and maybe rain
Maybe I'll see you again and
Again we'll find whole
Or we'll start all over
Maybe spring will break open and the
winter won't take hold or
have left us broken
Maybe
Someday this old machine will
feel no pain

But tonight your thoughts evade me
I'm crawling and holding
my hands out, but you
You are walled away
Another state....of mind
Arms and chest and touch, faded
from me as skeletons
Some supposedly necessitated form of
sensory deprivation
So far and stretching longer
They say distance makes the heart grow...
stronger.
"Time heals everything"
But only love can cry and buckle, like this
Distance wrings me out and
Dries my eyes with this
Strange stiff remoteness
between us.
Skeleton me.

Seems like a long time since I've
been above you, known and loved you
You're folding need like laundry
and dodging bullets or
Keeping a safe, (close) distance like
a Ghostwriter
Playing the cards just right
Coloring inside the lines
like you promised
Half-heartedly tending the fire
Aces and evasion of solitude but
Fuck,
I know you feel beneath this
The aching bones underneath
The blood firing bullets
Waiting for some passionate
words to shatter skin and spill over
My blue translucent flesh
You must see through me,
See my need and hear me
Read my words and remember
Surely,
you must..

Still be full
of those
Surprise shooting stars,
watched in tandem
From the safety of a
sentimental trampoline,
From the wild spinning of
an oddly calming
Carousel.

Our tangled limbs,
they wrestle daily struggle
Crushing unspoken into
carpet burn
But I will not allow these sparks
to be smothered and
Fuck,
I know this was my idea but
All I want in this moment
is to be alone with you,
To climb you and clamber inside
Soften your thudding heart
and feel your pleasure tearing along my skin
like shredded scrapbooks
Or something equally meaningless
in the light of growing up and
moving on.


You've ruined me now.

Ruined, skeleton me
Flightless bird
With a wretched hopeless
heart of scalded gold.
Sell it in the pawnshop and
We'll call it a Fold,
call it
a night.

Into the muck, together
Feel free to listen
Feel free to
to stay around,
To wait it out or
Fuck,
feel free to hurdle this fence and
Take the last ferry out.

I am the watch you never wear. I am your lonely waking. I am the rain in your hair. I am your spirit aching. I am that extra ingredient your pantry lacks. I am lost and found. As the days roll by, I am their sound. I am the beauty of pattern. I am the belt against bare skin. I am the funk that you're in. I am your black coffee jitters. I am fresh-cut bangs. I am your first fall sweater. I am childhood board games. I am blissful ignorance. I am your old friend insomnia. I am the wind that starts wildfires. I am fear of corners. I am your favorite soft t-shirt. I am skipped meals. I am methodical airplane safety measures. I am gullible travels. I am awkward family photos. I am the bruises of allegorical ghosts. I am drug-induced dreams. I am the rug that ties the room together. I am the broken record player. I am your earned sweat. I am the comfort of fortuitous happenstance. I am the coyotes crying in the distance. I am the abyss of politics. I am drought. I am the defense of heretics. I am the hole left behind by umbilical cord. I am dilated desires. I am catastrophic complacency. I am the rhythm of settling. I am the glamour of nostalgia. I am your mother's silence. I am the burn in your throat. I am the call of the wild. I am melted ice cream. I am the itching scars.  I am the creaking tables in dusty, ancient bars. I am the gloaming magic. I am the sting of solitude. I am the undiscovered aptitude. I am dandelion wishes. I am the symbolism of unwashed dishes. I am the secrets of puberty. I am fanatical astrology. I am garage sale treasures. I am the unspoken chemistry.

The seasons have already begun 
to change and 
I can see the harvest moon and smell 
the trees prepping for pre-hibernation
shedding 
of layers and skins
Such timeworn yearning 
ready to be buried and dissolved
into the dirt's flawless complexion.


I want to fill my senses
and swim until I wash this decay
away
and my lungs swallow the
distance,
until I feel your bare skin
touch mine in the endless
waters, stretching tight
and perfectly near to 
the heat of me. 


I am so ravenous for you,
you see
You see me beneath 
this
messy, haphazard packaging
these wide eyes tangled hair and
trapped need
running so fast and racing time 
Sweating for something
only you understand
as me,
Real and burning for autumn.
Burning for the newness
Crawling toward 
that ripeness
within the breadth of your arms
and the precision of
your gaze. 

I'm painfully in love with you.

But the question remains,

What now?

------------------------------------

I will wade out

Until my thighs are steeped in burning flowers

I will take the sun in my mouth

And leap into the ripe air

Alive with closed eyes

To dash into the darkness

Will I complete the mystery of my flesh?

lyrics by Bjork

bruise

I need you so much closer.

A place where holding tight takes all

time and energy

Can't stand too close without

Burning apologies

Cut out those candid glimpses and

Wind me up; I'm ready to blow

Explode,

Time to go

...with you

Can't escape this

Best line of fit

Building fire in blood, in

Something higher than wild and

I remember being inside something more,

We are more than this.

And you beg quietly,

Someday you will be love

and not the sound of settling

I'm quilted into your hands

or keeping you tucked

Far too deep to mean

What I need,

But will you wait to finish

What you started,

Or is this what the cards read

to the backwards attraction of your

Glowing eyes?

So far-sighted that you can't recognize

To place trust in who or what

You recognize,

As real.

Speeding toward the line of trees,

That pale shelter

of broken down

Earth and shadow and

A love you clutch tight to

until the clouds roll in

and the bruises look understated.

Blue and plain and broken because

You can't feel this, anymore

You can't feel my hands on you

The way that I do.

And tomorrow it will all change

Tomorrow

will you look at me the same?

Tangled hair that smells of

Lightness,

Forest floor and

The dust of our affection.

Sudden gesture and I'll bruise

your faith into the right,

Read myself into your history

Rewrite this dementia.

I need to make you writhe,

need you so much closer but

Nothing makes you move further

down the wire.

Maybe we just all forgot,

we're all lost in autumn.

wedding day

She throws apple cores
and rotten peaches out into nothing,
out into nothing for the land to reclaim
and clamber over.
They fall occasionally
on the hood of a dusty old car,
a dusty old car that leaks oil like
the lies in the oceans.
The car once belonged to someone's father
and his father ages ago,
ages ago before they founded the towns
and paved the roads.
The father is gone now,
lost to the wilderness sowed by truth,
sowed by truth that's mocked
by reality.
The reality we live,
where we bring foreign soils,
foreign soils along which we
tread fermented smiles
that
More and more every day
they smell like a wedding day,
a wedding day that may never
come.

Lupita, Part One

I could feel my ruddy cheeks beneath the scruff of facial hair beginning to burn moist with need as I carefully watched her play, pouting lower lip twinkling with Southern summer heat. Bead by bead, sweat eased down the easy slope of her small breasts, and her toes were curling trails of absentmindedness in the soggy dirt she sat splayed across, elbow deep in mud and brown flesh of legs tight and smooth. She was flushed from head to toe, and strands from waves of unattended hair were loosening themselves to tangle in her abnormally long curls of eyelashes, my disintegration was near. I watched her and she knew, she knew more than perhaps even I could comprehend, that she and she alone was the sole impetus of my demise.

She looked up at me and I saw the recognition cross her features for the barest and briefest of moments, and I stood there in the doorway frozen, tray of prepared sodas motionless upon my palm as her eyes latched onto my vulnerable stance mid-longing. The patio threshold was a frigid stiff realm of packed tight tension layered across certain secretive, knowing exchanges, I should have left instantaneously and let those seconds slide away by their own time frame, instead I was stuck here like a doe in the headlights of the finest pickup truck glare, eyes fixated on those pores oozing voluptuous yet girlish sexuality.

She did not avert her gaze as she grabbed the sweating glass and gulped its contents in less than a pair of seconds, and I watched every swelling movement and gentle heave of the ball of her throat, the creamy planes of skin rolling like heat waves.

The ice clinked and jangled in what seemed like a deafening manner as she roughly set the cup back down on the plastic. She glared at me defiantly, beads of perspiration running like bared legs sensually and abruptly down the tender lines of skin that wrapped her in such
pliant yet tight
coating.
My voice caught slightly as I tried to say her name.

The air was heavy, humid, fluid like boiling water music, and inch by inch she was melting with it, hovering on a cloud of the thick smoke of my incensed arousal.

I will crawl inside your head

while you sleep and dig myself a grave

to lie in, I will awaken each buried desire

like a sparkling soil-ridden treasure with

the flick of a dirt-smudged wrist, my

limbs so tangled in the foilage

of your dreams, your needs, the leaves spiraling

uncontrollably until they come to rest

against the mole of my right bare breast.

Here you will rest, here we will lie together

until the rains come and break open

our ground, so full of life and death and

the creation of a perfect destruction.

Something fledgling, burning

Need that

cracks apart my skin

Already blistered by

the howling summer

winds outside

I cry out for you

but across the empty

streets and crackling heat

there is a silence

that screams aloud,

nothing like patience

but a lot like

love

(or something

like it)

and

A yearning for

the white-hot resonance

of voice that builds me up

up

up...

to the tops of my

tree-like bones.

Reaching and

screeching in the dark

for something

painfully real.

I want to give you that.

I'll give you all

of it,

but is that enough?

I am crumbling

beneath a pressure, desire

with

no name,

an ache with no

words,

only fingers and

tongue and

such perfect skin to hide in

and on.

(Might as well fall in)

I'm not sure who you are,

where you came from

but

You feel like home.

And in the nights

I wake up wrapped up in

you,

your voice

pulling me under

the water until

we're

swept into the

darkness,

together.

Spindly fingers like piano keys

Long, strong and I see them

stretched tight across my

Ribs, counting

Quiet

but I know what songs

Your thoughts dance to deep

in the night.

And today

it finally rained.

my peace brought the sky

down

down, in pieces

from your strange heaven-

what a ride

Fireball of reckless

Joy

And I felt you here, with me

Roaring

on the wind

and emptiness.

In those moments

you feel so alone, so far

you don't know,

you don't know

how beautiful.

Today I was lost in

my own head again,

Driving slow

Enveloped

in the imaginary touch,

the hypothetical end result

When suddenly a little

gray bird fluttered

to a standstill

on my front driver's windshield.

He stayed there and

sat with me,

together we sat

in knowing,

knowing where

my thoughts had

led, once again

and

These days you are with me,

always.

I can feel your autumn from

Waves and echoes

Too far in the distance

creeping, burrowing

In gorgeous lines of melodies

Along my skin

Too close for comfort,

Mesmerizing and rich, dark honey

Like the clang of childhood windchimes

Like the pull of the moon tide

You come to carry me

Away.

Along the months like

Falling leaves, like old lovers

We have walked so tall and proud

But within us lies that same quivering

Each fall that sweeps our breaths

Along the ever stretching ground

We are both waiting, it seems,

For different things

But in the night we become

The same shadows

That unfurl like sleepy vines

Of longing, of creation

Or maybe

The destruction of that distance

That called to us before.

In my dreams last night

I touched your face,

I found the violet sky laid bare

In those beautiful, music-roughened

Hands, Fountain

of eternal youth.

Ranier Maria Rilke said so many things of value, where to begin?

“The deepest experience of the creator is feminine, for it is experience of receiving and bearing.”

"Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night."

"For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation."

"The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things."

This time for us is beautiful and I am spilling gratitude, we have come so far, but I stand in the lingering shadows of the morning's first breath of light and I am full of a fire I cannot share with you, a need that you will not feel for an unspecified, unlabeled amount of months, weeks, years (because timelines are for people who can't embrace seizing the day) and I will learn to let go, because that's what you do in times like these. That's what you do as a human that loves another. I have been defeated--you will say, that's not the attitude to take, but the night has fled and I have left my bed and still I feel a shrieking ache that is my own to keep and grow into. You cannot take that from me. Behind these walls is a fortress that needs protecting, and you cannot take that from me, even in the most bloody of battles when vulnerability is a warrior lacking armor barreling into the line of fire with a shit-eating grin on his face. This fortress is my solitude, it is a home built for bearing and receiving, and as I learn to let go you will learn to accept and scale the stone as another challenge, because that is what you do as a human that loves another.

Winter does not want to unclench her talons from our bones, not yet. She howls in protest at our doors, shaking them with fury as her fists find their way into soft-shelled hearts of stone and wood and brick and wool. From miles away i feel you here, i feel your cry in her, your eyes flung wide open in the dark, recalling a metal roof and solitude sleeping next to you-in the emptiness your mind spirals out its fingers and sleep slides from our body cavities a distant memory. You become Black Oak and i am touched by your rage, your sugarcoated depth of despair like a well in the earth swallowed by a mysterious bloom-covered moss. I know with the morning will come your poetry, because deep within you i live, like the coyote, like a crystal in snow, like Colorado, live alongside your deepest fears as a call to the wild and a call to arms.

Ministry of Home Security

We are not as impressive
as we would like to think,
Make like hands and toil, tremble
over cloudy cold glasses of alcohol
Picking at fat and open
Pores like whores laid wide open
For the world to take a crack at.
Go on, take your best shot,
Cowboy.
You have no idea what I am
Really
made of.
You haven't a clue
how old I really am.
You will never know all
of what lies in this
Possession of a heart
Dirty, wretched thing.
I stare into the mirror until
Nothing but smoke breathes back,
Breaths and breasts and
Beasts of burden.
I blame my cold bath on
Your absence but really
I can only blame my own denial.

You can call the shots in the dark
when no one is watching
and you can call yourself
Less than a man for me,
But I would rather fool myself than
Let go of what I know
In these cold nights as real.
Speak not and I may
Hold it against you
But tomorrow those sockets
Will hold the safety of new eyes
and your fears will be
Nothing but
True grit to grind into
the dust of
Only loving one another.
Because that's all we have,
right?

I can feel the altitude in my stomach as the wind wraps tight around the mountains, my bed sparked in the night and colorado is coursing through my veins. All i want is for you to lie here with me, before my head explodes, before i float away.