Punnett Square

This is my inheritance: limes rubbed

on the inside of wrists, earliness

as a virtue. A clever tongue, to be a

happy drunk. The ridge

that splits our faces and green blue eyes

from southern Flint. Pens,

writing lists as daily prayers

we add to just to scratch off.

Smelling the trash

to know it stinks - Thus

an aversion to tequila, to

our knotted knuckles and backs.

Johnny Walker Black

with water on the rocks and

the snap, pop of seasoned knees.

A steady hand on a French press,

folding and refolding dogged ears

of Melville, of the gospel of Luke,

margins almost black with scraps:

poetry. Doodles. Hebrew and Greek.

I know why you married her;

how her grace tempers our nature.

And she told me how your father

pressed cash into your hand

as he hugged you. And you bookmarked

your favorite poems

with dollar bills for me,

threading our inheritance.

the land of

i had a dream of milk and 

honey you were in it, leading me

across a way i never built, saying

sorrow never hurt a body and oh

will you give me yours, sweet heart and soul?

i had a dream where i was ghost

so maybe more than how i am

to your pen on paper future

spinning a wish of what i could be.

it is sorrow, isn't it honey? it bites

me so swiftly and heals by the

the knowledge of God that steps

where i step since i met

your conscious voice, all of grace

verse my nature. it is nature, isn't it,

this sorrow's hurt upon my body

and this awake. it is not just

my dream i dreamed of milk and

honey you are it.

this is indian summer

this is indian summer:
sepia ink on my wrists,
the dusted monarch wings
resting on your extended palms
face up toward the cool sky
and the rogue moon that brushes
against your flushed cheeks
as you dance with a grown ocean,
landing with lavender and
half-turned leaves.
it is the finger dipped in batter,
the first delicate step into
a lightly bocca-ed rain,
nails navy blue and lashes
curling with laughter, slim fingers
round a coffee cup i fill
and fill again to hear my name
upon your lips, & eleven-morning
sun on a street burned gold,
shadows matching and smoothing
the frayed edges of my hope.
it is your Michigan Americana folk song
smile, gifted.
this is my return to your unaware;
the architecture of my autumn.

k vs. k

KH

I have never been so aware of my misery,
never held the shape of it in my hands and known
its color, width, breadth, so acutely, and this
clarity is compounded by past experiences which
drag me into uncertainty. in fact, I have known all
along the mystery, but afforded myself the luxury
of putting it away with the other cobwebbed relics
of common sense and sanity. someday I’ll come
back here looking for an old feeling and will
find these broken smiles to remind myself.
I know this – I know what happens – I have seen
the descent, I feel it beneath my feet and knocking
knees and I have heeded myself. I am pausing
just to remember, to learn, like reliving
the past will eradicate it.


KC

you pressed first though you didn’t know it
I breathed fast as a summer breeze, wasted not a moment
to absorb the inches of your features.
then I knew

you to be beautiful by the measure of your voice,
a burning light baritone, and the steady smile you gifted
carefully. I began to see our differences
match

your measure where I rush, faith in place of
moxy. I project loudly. and I pressed back, to your
knowledge just a brush, a flicker in a
meadow.

you may see a sea from where you stand but
my eyes among many are thieves for you only.

for P255 - Personality & Voice ("Pride of the Philippines")

It’s like my tiya Shang says:
“Lub neber pails.”
I got this idea man –
I’m just full of
so many damn ideas –
if I could just
get this one right,
you know
it’d change stuff.
Hand me that sauce
over there, yup.
Lolo says I can split
the tip with you ‘cause
your car’s gonna smell like
crispy pork. Anyway
who’s asking Rin
to prom? I heard
Beckett. That’s some straight
bull. Dude touches her I’ll go
all Manny Pacquiao
on his ass, right, all,
“Pride of the Philippines”
til he learns to
treat a lady right.
Remember when
I did it for you?
That was hi-larious.
But dawg this pig’s not gonna
fit in your scrawny trunk –
you bringing this lil’
thing to school? –
put it in the back seat,
we gotta go before
this feast gets cold. Ya know
if I was at your school
I’d be bumpin’ Weezy
everyday. Becoming
a “murse.” Yo that’d
be sick if we went to
college together
if I went to college.
I’ll come see you bro
don’t even worry about it,
you know my tiya
Shang says love never fails.

strife of the innovator

That's sort of the thing with the world,
you get older and you think
with the freedom from getting in
trouble for the truth everyone
will be open
and
not fear it.
but then we have fear of
disappointment and failure
that fuel the fire of disillusionment
and over time this process has become and infrastructure so big
that those that chose to work outside of it are insignificant 
and find them selves lonely in crowds
and competing for naught

those of us that are outsiders are punished with our own doubt
minds clouded by the economic wrath on our innovation
the social wrath on our exclusive radical nations
hurt because we are an after thought this great 'haven'

Broken after the cruel thick humoring of our brain children
 that don't stack the capital and promote diversification
Unsteady once our children can hardly eat off our slave wages
The youngest of us looking to soffocate the light of the spirit that
  differentiates us in an effort not to feel empty

I feel like a swordsman with a sword that lacks in reach.
He is a nomad because there is no place he can see to lay his head.
She sees no reason in competing in a race when she is not a runner.

But we have no place.
 we are alone

for Poetry 255 - On Love

Love
was that time I ruined
one whole side of the car. Love
was when I threw up from
dawn ‘til dusk on
someone else’s birthday.
Love was tracking mud on the tile
forgetting to scrub the bathroom and
leaving my lunch behind on the
first day of 8th grade.
Love was that time I went 87
in a 70.
Love was awake when I came home late
(love was, every time).

Love was then &
love is,
love is,
love is.

cloudless

There's never been much of a LIE
I've chosen not to tell

And it used to come so easy.

It takes the devastation of the simplest
of misinformations and intentionally
misattributed words, craftily placed
for a heavy fall
from
grace.

to make one believe the TRUTH is all
there is.

I used to think it was so WRONG
when people
said things
that weren't
true

but we are a culture of soothsayers
and peoplepleasers

we say yes when we mean unequivocally no

we tell lies because the truth is abrasive or evasive

and maybe the LYING is WRONG
and I've known it forever

but I LIE to me
everyday.

and it makes me feel closer to the TRUTH
like I know we want to feel.

oh how we stray.

for Poetry 255 - laced

my fifteenth birthday I got
cash so I drove to the mall
where I was bought
by the ugliest pair of shoes I could find.
Vans. Canvas Classics
in red, obnoxious.
sunny.
mom gave them a look-down,
tight lipped.
from then on
they owned me.
I laced ‘em
beneath the tongue &
we were off!
two dozen
concerts, someone else’s beer
sloshed on them,
a thousand dusty days
of high school and down to the
downtown of Detroit where I wore them
until they didn’t squeak,
they scraped, and stuck
particularly well
to the backs of
church pews
and skate boards.
Oh they knew the Holy Spirit and the holey
rawness of skin
versus pavement!
size 8 devils wrapped
in rubber and
trouble, gorgeous
fence-scalers,
treasure excavators
and ditch
explorers.
filthy.
my nineteenth birthday I got
the hose, sprayed
those tomes ‘til they let
the dirt loose but
left the
stories intact.

for Poetry 255 - child's play

there’s the clatter of my sword
on the driveway, followed by a fat silence
as two warm trails converge
into one glossy, livid, fire-engine red
path that tumbles down my lips and chin and neck and
gets clamped hard
between my fingers, still oozing slowly.

he is pale and startled. in his hand rests
a broomstick – a makeshift
lightsaber today, magic staff tomorrow,
and the current weapon in question.
fiddleheads of paint are peeling from the handle.
there is shame in his face, but I am awed.

soon he props a bag of ice against my nose,
telling me that we can pretend
I survived an alien invasion,
Empire attack, and meteor shower
all at once.
you got the wound to prove it, he says,
and you are a hero!

ten years pass and I can’t pick a pair
of glasses that fit quite right – they’re always
cocked a notch to the left –
but things are never what they seem,
and I wonder if he knows
the gravity of how he shaped the way I see.

Love needs...

I love you
always hits the heart
just the way it's suppose to,
but hearing about
the trust that seals
love type implications
is so
much better

how we burn

without a single shred of context,
i murder in masses, have a penchant
for glasses, and will never trust
another yellow buttondown.
i'm ruined.

even as a scholar i'll turn up any turned-down
dog-eared page with a Bukoswki
poem, venom churning,
because my heart is still burning
from her hands.

it's all got to burn. every
memory, trashy television program
and gum flavor. i should have ran,
but i'm doing all the running
now.

in the scope of this life that leaps
as fast from me as it snares my feet,
there are greater things to be done
than try to name the color and shape
of love.

control

I feel as if I'm holding this weird power that I never meant to have
I don't know how to get rid of it or how to give it back to who it should
belong to,

it seems even if I offered she wouldn't
take it.
I feel like a little kid behind the wheel of a car
and I can't see behind the wheel
I can't reach the break
and the only think that
I can use to steer are the screams coming from around me

I just want to land where it's soft…or where it's softest

It's all relative now.

I wish I could take it all back

control nothing

be alone.

From Day 1

it's never easy to remember your intent
and disregard it.
it's never easy to pick up the phone and dial
then hang up when you hear the dial tone
or throw the weight of the ax as it's coming down.

There are horror stories of submission all around us,
and quests that have intentions that don't match the
strangled process that keeps us all alive

but mostly we suffer from disconnect and
the brutal yet insistant message that our intent should
not be our own and that our quest should be only for
ourselves.

it is ever difficult to convince a being to give up everyone else to
serve himself

unless everyone rallys him to it,
and cheers him
from day
one.

postage

it is not
enough

to live through letters.

i can duck behind a paper phrase,
but i can't hide face to face.

i work for four fifteen hour days
to buy a ticket with pocket change.

to be weird and lost here or there
doesn't matter -
it's in presence, in the recesses
of your fingerprints on my mind.

bring your heavy chained soul
and i will free it,
leave your constant loud voices
and we will be silent.

time touches only what stands still,
so keep running,
let the postage keep up.

belief

i am a fool for belief
and its sweet everythings.
i know the nearness of faith
when falling on what can
only be felt.

i believe in meanings,
am meant to have
meaning.
if i am alive to hear the cries
i am meant to stop them.

here in this suburb
meanings gave way to
less-than,
the relief of exorcising one's
demons
by declaring

they

don't

exist.

i've been fucked for believing
in meaning. i was told,
"it means nothing,"
and i believed that meant
something -
what
a holy fool i am for falling.

it has always been
those demons
who keep me strong.

now i pick up my scraped knees
my knotted knuckles
and still believe.

for me

I'm so lost.
I feel like the wind is pushing me around
and I'm strong so I remain still
but I get no where.

I want to push this approved love away and
I want to have the simplicity of being alone

I can't say one thing and do another, I won't
settle for anything lower
than I what my mind can reach on its tippy toes
I'm not being pushed I'm being prodded

and like any woman who's had sex at least
once knows, that's not pleasurable it's annoying

but how do you say, "let me alone" ?
how do you wish to go back to nothing
when the newness isn't even stale?
how do you slam the door on some
poor lamb when you are a lamb yourself?

How do I ignore all the calls and whispers, messages
letters, texts, shouts, searches, comments, pressure,
heavy silences, packages, pages, and voicemails

how do you get away to be alone how do you make
someone understand that ALONE doesn't mean
never and that TOGETHER means occasionally?

no man is an Island but Islands are in chains so you
always know the nearest person isn't that far
but the distance is important.

I always knew there was more to this than appreciation
and love, but this commitment is so hard to find worth
it these days
and YES it's because of me
and NO it doesn't mean
I hate you or don't care

I can't talk to anyone but my mother more than twice a day
without getting annoyed because I know if it's more than
twice the words really don't mean much
and I can't waste mine because
Can't
You
See?

I have so many important things to say
for me.

Truant

I wish I had given myself more time to forget the day
and leave behind all this concrete.

I wish I had just walked into the woods with courage and dreams

and a pen

something to give me the push to write without worries
to have nothing to really write about at all

I wish I had given myself freedom and the
choice to live away from demands
I would do anything to just leave
hang a sign, like they do at small family owned stores
"out to lunch be back soon"

no obligation to really comeback at all,
no pressure or reason to hurry
or be bothered.

no one to want to account for me
no missed calls or
unread text messages
or fear about where I must have gone.

The silent pleasure in riding myself of all those voices

to be a deserter must be so splendidly frustrating

and free.

MisMatched

I feel like my personality has been mismatched
and the tv doesn't help.
on the glowing screen
I keep seeing my propagative attached
to some clueless single minded character
where is the complexity?
I see good hair and lively lives
and success that I can't imagine for
myself.

I am not the most sentimental,
or thoughtful.
honestly I forget a lot of the
things I say,
cause I know if they're off the cuff
I mean them

and I think myself into inactivity
because I can't have one mind
I still find the highest solace in being
alone

and I've never depended on anyone for my drive

I am mismatched in personality because
there is no reason
these ideas should be trapped in this
character, who can never really
stop.
and.
speak.

Habits

this diet of rainy days and
my thoughts and snubbed invitations to
birthdays, drinks, and coking
I can't quite remember what actually
happened all that time ago
my thoughts are, more selfish than they've ever been
and I still can't explain why a night in sounds better
than any kind of night activity with anyone.
I've got 1000 miles to remind me that
love is precious and another 1000 to tell me
that love is hard but only inches to remind me
I need to work get better analyze
understand that trust and reputation aren't
transferable credits.

I need to stop dreaming of dreams and
use my fists to build a reality I can cope with and
vent my frustrations in beautiful poems and
mind vacations where a paradise exists
but is wholly unattainable, yet see able and real

I've come to realize belonging is overrated,
passion is akin to air and adversity
weeds out everyone who's not worth my time
but still this isn't quite what I imagined.

being alone, thinking,
listening to the rain fall

fiction

i don't have anything in me
that hasn't been put
there by a movie. (flesh and bones
and bloody noses.)

when i die they'll take my body
away on a dolly.

DOCTOR 1 TO DOCTOR 2:
"she's stuffed with scripts,
and all her organs run with ink."

'cause i'm a paper man with
all the wrong dyes, just a
paper man with two lost hands
and the kind of blank-page
panic that makes manics sing.

this girl is oh so ever clever,
pretty like a bookcover with no body -
an actress. and i'm the pages
that want a spine but got no glue -
the writer.

i love her fiction,
how i invent her over
and over and over again
to reflect and refract
my reality.

we live in these flickering frames of light,
and we have never been so alive.

because you know

it would be better if i could take my thumb
and wipe away those dark crescents beneath
your eyes, but i'm not a painter, and i'm
not God, and i'm not the sleep you're losing
over her, and anyway she's standing at the register
with cash in her hand like i'm about to have
quarters for eyes. i can't take your look
but i'll take the coffee i haven't ordered yet but
that you have in your hand
because you know.

my face says more than my choked throat does,
is that any surprise? or are we fooling ourselves
when we talk, like it means more than the wordlessness
that passes between us when you pass back
your lit menthol and we're singing all the same songs?
it's like the times we throw down on the floor
with the haze and hot breath. i give you goosebumps
and you laugh, say i can't do that,
not even when you ask sweetly
because we know.

he shows up when the cup is empty and tells me
you're not very cute, that you have nothing to hold onto
and nice noses don't do that. he's trying to help
in his backwards way to stop my train from derailing.
he doesn't know it makes it worse, that my arms
are heavy from not holding, that i would take
my brazen fists to his face for your honor,

because i know.

Rotation of the earth

The rotation of the earth doesn't really matter.
I still don't feel like I'm moving, you come up to me with your
cropped almond colored hair that splays out just perfectly
and compliments your freckles and you tell me
I'm moving even though I'm sitting still and haven't
bothered with any involved thinking for
an amount of time that might mean I'm not real anymore
that i'm not living.
you can tell me I'm moving even though the words that I say have no consequence
so little and so believe by me that after I say anything you're more likely to get me to tell
you the circumference of the earth than what I just said.
I'm so stagnant that I'm not even careless,
because even carelessness takes an effort and
requires some sort of absent planning to be worthwhile.
it's almost tomorrow and I've waited too long to get anything done.
I've wasted everything and I"m not going any where.

but the world spins at 1038 miles per hour without me
I'm just left behind all the same.

day/weak/strong/week

the poetry in a still room
while the mind is full of motion

hammer head, brash moves
regret soiling the whitest sheets

alone, swallowing heat
sitting on a swing with a cigarette

sick punch of nausea
character shifts as fast as wind

catharsis comes slow
like stumbling home
on a moonlit cobbled street.

i paid my tithe last night

i drank the holy water -
a sweaty sort of baptism.
now i smell like smoke and
perfume (incense of choice).
every body's sacrifice marked by
orgin-less bruises,
painted purple in the dark.

my hands still flutter
with the feeling,
the memory of running
my palms up her thighs
and putting my faith in the sway of her hips

to lift
me up and up and up and up
out of my head
and into the world.

tears

she cried for me,
totally selfless because I'm afraid.
makes my heart hurt and
keeps me up when I should be sleep

I still can't believe that there were tears
that I almost didn't hear
but then I knew she cried for me
and when I asked her not to
and when she explained why

I knew that
she loved me
more than I ever had at that point
and that was just her being a
friend

How beautiful the tears, and it
makes me sad to think in that
moment I was unsure

I dream that I could have
somehow lifted her out of the
worry and calmed her
fears

but I am just me
and not powerful
even in my direct ventures.

I feel insane sometimes
because I dream we can
grow so beautifully
and simultaneously

and we'll be fed by her tears that she cried for me because of fear
and love.

exhale.

they were big sighs.
she told me not to,
as they made her nervous.
or something along those lines.
the case being - apparently - that my
unexplainable puffs during
moments of silence
were indicators of unease.
like something was
wrong.

i never told her they were
thoughts. the ones too big to
express, a heavy feeling
on my chest that i let loose
and sent spinning
in the air to dangle and float,
heady things that came
pitter pattering, landing on our
bodies, in our hair.

what's next

i don't really know what's going to happen,
after this act or this role
I left with the expectation to never come back
to have few days without excitement
and to consummate my youth
with mississippi river adventures
like the books I used to read.
I want to go out and make people love me
and realize I've not wasted my time
doing things i never planned

That's a weak point,
that's the bust the dumb idea
the ignorance I trust
to get me nowhere in a
specific amount of time
carrying nothing but my frustration
and my thoughts and leaving

I Call

The only think I can do is hope that she's at home.
I'm not there to sit and talk at that black white and confused
granite table,
or ride around in any car going anywhere with a zip code that starts
with a number less than seven.
I'm covering lots of ground just thinking of what she could be doing
where she could be, how she's doing

And Then I Call

I call because if I don't my mind will get away from me,
I'll cometo welcome a type of unfiltered worry that starts out terribly
but then ends in utter satisfaction in not caring at all
I'll know what happened and of COURSE it happened that way
because you
haven't changed
at all

And now I'm disappointed and it will be weeks before
I can bring myself to call again-
several hundred hours before I pick up
dial your number and say:
"hey kid, how's it going? have you moved back in with your parents yet?
No? Well, what are you going to do?"

homecoming pt.2

i'm putting things into boxes
moving books and scraps of my life
that haven't see much light,
only steady piles of gathering dust.
time is moving through my mind
like nostalgia always does -

nostos
to return home
algos
to ache

and that's the point.

i'm putting things into boxes
moving away from this life and toward
another. when i come back,
it won't be to the same room
or even to the same space.
everything will have a different color and shape.

all filtered through different
lenses, my life churned over
in minds that are not my own.

title

and when i
laid my head down, i
found it hard to
quiet my busy
mind, lit-up like a
city at night.
i could not see past
my memory,
could not smell but
to search
for that scent. yet
above all else,
it was the pounding
rhythm her name
beat on my heart
with each
and ev'ry
breath i
took,
repeated through
my weary bones.

i was lost in two
syllables -
that was all it took
to spin my mind 'round
perfect words
and half-lidded eyes.
even as my mouth
formed the shapes
of letters, i
could taste
her on my lips,
feel her breath on
my neck.

and so it cycled
in my mind
like an
uncontrollable
tic.
a name.

title

to gain an attraction
and forget my passion
This is my greatest down fall
Perhaps-this roller coaster ride must
meet its end before I can
think to write again.
but its beginnings created such new inspiration.

I should be able to write on it
again and again until the writing
starts to look the same
and the poems become dull

when the fountain stops giving youth.

that 70's show

my feet were clenched tightly,
as if somehow that could stop the walls
from changing shape.
a hulking shadow in the form
of my friend reclined on the couch.
i was trying to swallow my own mouth.
he grinned at me.

"how you doin over there?"

well, did i send that to...
the right person? and
am i saying the
right things? and
will my sinuses
stay this way? and
is my phone
going to...die
before i can say goodnight?
and, ohhh god, what if - what if -
the girl next to me thinks...
i'm hitting on her.
or worse.
what if - subconsciously -
i am.
and if that happens to be the case,
what does that mean?
and…does that make me…
an emotional slut?
is this aaaaaaaaaall a very
obvious secret, or
am i just being...annoying?
and i just want to know if that's a shadow on his hand,
or if it's really that dirty. and….
does anyone have a problem, and
has anyone ever had a problem at all?

"great."

contrast

She says she likes the color of my skin,
says it's a beautiful color.

It's hard for me sometimes, to understand that
the stories that Mr. Whittler tells me, on late nights
and long days at an immaculate marble table
I watched built from the ground
by a man who does not look like me,
it's hard to know that his reality is different

I breaks me down sometimes to think that
the rope that held him close to
dark shades, and gets him pulled over for the hell of it.
cuffs on before questions. and makes him feel
like hardened is what he should be, to think that rope is now string
and I can't be bothered by obstacles it presents for me
it makes me feel far from him

Farther than integrating a school makes me feel from my own color.

No matter how much I talk or joke. no matter the audience...

And I admit I love the contrast, the possibility of the contrast birthing
a new shade all together.
So when she says she loves the color of my skin, I swallow the possible implications
the wondering in the back of my mind I shove down.

I remember, I accept, I realize.

the season

there's no more small, sloppy flakes falling
outside my window and
it makes me think about how this all happened around spring,
about how time is moving forward with us, won't fall
back. no more cold air caressing the curve of my neck -
just me rubbing warmth up up up

to your fingertips.

nothing could possibly be dull anymore with so much to
daydream about,
'cause my shirt still smells like your bed.

& the difference between my gray winter and this green season is
that before i never wanted to wake up & up & up

to my reality.

but now i hesitate just to
fall asleep, thinking maybe someday i'll have a cup of coffee
and realize you were a figure in my dream, a fragment of my mind.
but for now it's safe to call you mine.
so stay alive,
because i will find you.

Real life vs. past times

There are these terrible moments in life where I ask myself
what the Fuck is going on?
how did I get here?
and where am I going?
Where are my hopes and dreams?
Where did I start?

And then I realize my answers don't really matter,
or is that my questions that aren't quite right?
people say that sometimes, that the questions aren't right.

I forget some times..............I forget.
Just like I forget my time tables
and my northern life.
and my southern manners.
and that everywhere strife.

there must be something
something
something in that water that
Satan keeps on serving me.
and i like it too,
that cool fresh cup-of-elixir
that shit tyson, and jack
and billy graham always tell me is poison

That love, that passion, that extra hand
that honesty, that realization, that reality
my shaky unsteady breath,

not needing them telling me to drop the candy,
when they have no intentions of giving me anything
but water.
"Man does not live on bread alone"
Will water sustain me?

That's okay because I've met cooks, and souf chefs,
and big mammas, and mothers, and lunch line ladies
and none of them have ever met with the Good Lord
or even thought of him in a directional kind of way

so those moments. those terrible moments.
That doubt.
the undeniable orienteering flaws,
the dreams I never dreamed of
and the realities I never expected.
They are my starting place.
I move up, and I look down to see how I got here.

letter to anyone

i may not be able to see into the future,
but it's the uncertainty crouching in every day
that makes me feel more and think more and know more.
i've come to understand that what i learned
by getting too drunk and living too hard and loving too fast
has been more valuable than the majority of five years
i spent being told over and over and over again,
"the world is out to get you."

cause yeah, the world is out to get me,
and i'll let it catch me.
i'll fall into its hands and let it hold me,
let it drop me, let it scrape me,
let it pick me up again and press its hands to my wound.
i love the world with all i got and it loves me right back.

it could love you, too, if you stepped down and yelled -
more to yourself than anyone else -
"i will never be perfect."
the world loves you and it hates perfection because
the truth is, perfection is ugly and you,
you with your features and your flaws
and your shades of grey and your broken heart
and your fire eyes are so beautiful -
never let anyone tell you otherwise.

what i've learned in the dark
has made the world glow,
and i can tell you with my heart, hands, mouth:
it is beautiful.

so get on your knees.
let someone in.
reach higher.
admit a fault.
drive somewhere.
lend a hand.
admit a victory.
drink that drink.
stop wearing that damn watch, and
press somebody against a wall,
take their face in your hands,
and kiss the hell out of those lips cause you know you want to, right, so don't deny it.
own yourself, own your story, own your life.
cause its the only thing you really have.

wild life

I grew up in the Cincinnati zoo.
I learned the alphabet from
aardvarks and spent lunch
lying with the lions,
stretching my neck and pondering
giraffes.
I tugged my brother's sleeve -
but how'd they get so tall? -
and he laughed.
they probably only eat
long, gangly things,
kinda like how flamingos
dine on pearly pink shrimp
and sloths can only handle
the slowest, most ponderous,
laboring, lumbering meals,
and anteaters - well, you know.
mom says the chimps drink
too much, but they look more fun
than the elephants, 'cause
who'd want to remember anything
forever, anyway?
a kid could get confused
growing up in a zoo.
there's the difference
between see-ya-later
alligators and in-a-while
crocodiles, which I always get
backwards, and they say
don't tap the glass
cause snakes like their naps
but who says they wanna sleep
their lives away?
sometimes
spending days in cages
and nights scaling fences
makes you forget which
is actually free.
that's why always I liked birds best -
I could imagine those clipped wings
one day
growing back.

taste buds

I can't decide if I like the taste...
it's metally, sweet
it's physically salty
it's like a spiced rum to my spirit.

There is a satisfaction I've known before,
in a different format
a new motivation
a taste I can get used to.

mint

cotton shirt,
cotton skin.
cool hands,
small and soft.
eyes? blue.
(i think).
side smiles.
little shrugs.
all
the
right
words,
landing
(shhhhhh)
gently,
and with
caution -
but earnestly!

words that
fall from lips
i'm getting to
know better
with each
and every
lock.

just thinking about it...

the affection you can feel,
inexplicable, uncontrollable
a delightfully squeamish feeling
in the pit of the stomach

and the uncertainty,
it is
poetry.

The uncertainty is dangerous,
panicking, terrifying
a sign that any move you
make is only going to further
the imminent conclusion of this episode.

The possibilities, the unaccounted for plot twists,
the real life literary tricks and you,
the ultimate catalyst.

untitled

think back to when you first
believed.
were you scared when you heard
about the fire? you knew,
of course, that you were bad.
so it became about goodness.
measuring sticks.
weights and scales and
rulers - the kind that have inches
and the kind that hold rods.
every man for himself.
as a kid on a yellow bicycle
you fell and when your knee
hit the pavement you cursed
for the first time.
your best friend wiped the blood
away and suddenly you were far,
far from where
the world used to be.
he had a leg up on goodness
because in the light, everything
is measured.

bring back the badness.
bring back the madness.
wipe out the scales and say,
i'm abhorrent.
my soul is black. don't hide it.
when goodness rose, grace
fell.
and no one remembered
whose hands held them anymore.

i should write a happy poem

but…
i'm not a happy poet.
since beginning is the part
that's hardest,
i'll make a simple start.
i guess i love
this coffee mug,
sitting with an indian's style,
and how warm beds are so worthwhile.
i like best friends and
freckles,
reckless activity and
keys that work quietly.
and now that i ponder, i know i love
the heat of summer
and how we take pictures
or skate to piers to feel
like God hears
when He's been gone.
oh,
and
blondes!
i love more than i think.
and by that i mean
more often does my heart swell
than my brain tell
me to slow down before i'm in love with every thing and every body
i see.
so many gifts to humanity:
donuts and plates of cake,
television and mutual hate
for insufferable bitches -
while we're on the subject,
fuck!
tit!
shit!
i love spicy sauce
in speech or pad thai
and the way i tie
my shoe laces. not having braces,
how people fill spaces
in your heart you didn't know exist.
i love how vodka twists
and tumbles words.
man,
i think i love the world.

Oh, these sacrifices

So it's five ten a.m. and my computer is playing
California girls-a song I really despise
well, at the very least I can't sleep to it

Then down the stairs, er, elevator
to the laundry room, at 5:30 a.m.
deserted and messy

Back to the top and then coffee.
coffe and browsing on the internet
because that paper due in
-it's 6 a.m. now-eight hours
isn't pressing enough to make
me want to start

it's 11:49 a.m.-I'm still about two pages away
no reason to flip, other than the midterm
at 12:30 p.m. before the class that I
have to take my paper to.

the exam was multiple choice.
I'm not sure how I did, but
I have a paper to finish for my
next class in thirty odd minutes

Oh, these sacrifices I make to be irresponsible.

self cooperation

I have to tell my self that I actually haven't put myself into this odd dispare.
I communicate the meaning of my own obvious limitations to reality
and the world around me seems to say
'disregard the fallic notions you have of yourself'
As if I didn't want to bend myself to my own will,
as if I don't want to bend reality to my own will

And there is a desperation I can't get rid of and a civil war of sorts between the darkness and light within me.

I want nothing but to win myself.

when you walk in the dark

there's something about it
that makes the light of morning
feel more real.
the thud of a coffee cup and
the heater turning on
and
silence, too.
there's the soft dampness
of hair drying,
the texture of a dog's fur,
your
own body.
how it creaks with the chair,
yielding but unbreaking,
toes crackling from years
of being team captain.
a
smoky throat.
the hollow feeling in the chest,
followed by a rising -
remembering sugar,
remembering salt -
ghostly tastes, pictures of
other
people.

Falling

Falling in love is hard
I'm speaking on all sorts
of love there is a greek word for

there is no good reason lovers
always steal the show,
I mean they have the simple give
and take of normal human relation

What about the love between the mother and child?
certainly a battle if I ever thought of one.
And the forced bond between siblings with some sort of
unspoken, heavy, implication of success?
a fight that comes physical more often than others.
What's to be said of the love of friends?
the most painful of all, because one can just

Walk Away.

difference between parts

i am chalk on the hands, a kind of windblown pigment
tousled by water and rolled in the rust.
there's too many clouds in my blue sky but
you won't ever hear me complain.
i'm that grin, the one that bears it,
a scent hound, a falcon, a ferret, what-have-you.
i'm the eyes of the operation and i'm looking up.
there's a million other places to be but we're here and
if that means nothing to you,
it's your loss.
cause i'm the atom, the catalyst starter.
i don't follow but i don't meander
and i don't stay put oh no i'm a mover.
i'm in the nooks. i burrow. get in there.
i differ. i do. i go. i go do,
cause not so long ago somebody took off the filter
and said wishing isn't doing it's wasting.
our eyes meet and i tell you i don't want you to leave
and on my life i know it's the truth
but do me a favor honey, and kill me if i ever say
i want to leave with you.

she may never read this

sneakers rubbed raw and loose at the back heal with rumpled dirty shoelaces
-from wear though not the elements cause her shoes are always tied.
slightly high water pants and crazy t-shirts that department stores infer
only boys should wear from their department divisions

Hair that goes uncombed but washed for weeks on end that gives the impression
of an over-sugared kid that one day might get into trouble comparable to that of a
poor seventies hippie that somehow managed to get back to the present with a decent job and a college degree.
and there's that fucking Monroe, that people pierce their body for but that never tuns out quite perfect
that's placed perfectly-perfectly natural-and makes her look sort of french, which she insists she is
yet, relents soon after, in the wake of admitting she knows no french anyways (save a few scattered words)
keeping to herself her very apparent uncaring of what 'she is' in comparison to the rest of the world

She plays the drums and I've never heard her, but I'm more confident now then ever-since seeing her air drum one friday night when we decided to stay in and get far-out drunk-that she's probably brilliant at it.
I mean if she knew she was no good why would she waste her time studying jazz and explain to TSA agents that while a drum stick could be used as a weapon, she is only a music student and has no intentions of doing so.

and she's brilliant at more things than the drums and I care for her in so many ways sometimes I forget that we only first spoke to one another on my last birthday-the second of the ninth month- and it's only the second month of the next year now. She's a perfectly acceptable partner in crime and we've already agreed that, although it would be conveniently otherwise, we need a dependable third party to bail us out of jail because if she lands herself there there is no reason to believe I'd be anywhere else but in the slammer with her-you know it's strange.

but she may never read this so I won't waste the time to say
I love her here.

If you didn't know already

I sent my heart in a letter
to a friend.
A person who uses words like rage as a verb
and thinks that rollerskating drunk is
an unbelievably great idea until
the next morning when bruised knees sting.

I keep my mind half on a girl
I met in a square-a box
that was much too small for anything
she could imagine while simultaneously
holding a pen

Near one-thousand miles away
somewhere in the snow flanked
not-chicago-side-lake-michigan banks
there is a bit of my soul-split by love in my heart and not blood on my hands
that walks around and thinks and laughs

Here in all that is me
a nice mixture of what I am is
her.

The best of what a person becomes, is a friend.
and I can only hope as she is to me I am to her

These People, my closest friends

To think that a person so devoted to the givings of others
can hardly count the social dimes in her own cup
Leaves my standing confused and wondering
why people like this should have the burden to exist
To be some sort of jester,
once a fair princess or prince
of a fair unpretentious kingdom
only to one day-early on- be captured,
and painted mockingly in gay colors
-still dancing for the laughs.
because even in this sort of dispare
there is some sort of value to them in serving the
simple, yet destructive, purpose of pleasing

And to think I have the courteous pleasure-the cursed pleasure
to have two of such serving people in my heart, close to it
never far from my sometimes overwhelming sorrow.
yet, I keep hoping beyond reasonable hope that one day
I can liVe to please them.

I've been Tamed.

worry

it was blinding when i drove, but
that sunshine was wasted on the day
that god deemed to brim with tears
collecting on the edges of coffee cups.

i came like i knew i would
like a rescuer, a sort of savior
even with holes in my palms it
turns out i can give a fuck.

later on i kicked the dresser until
it gave way, or maybe until my toes did
i was angry at being helpless to help
and afraid of being afraid of being afraid.

so we learn that nothing is as stoic,
nothing as toxic as compassion.
lifting and carrying and carrying on
through everyone's cracks -
even your own -
forcing you to face yourself
when you just aren't enough.

Time

A new adventure
A new hobby
A new life of sorts

All wrapped up in time.
tImE.
TIME.
time.

it is the currency of our life
and with it we measure our lives.

we:
buy it.
sell it.
trade it.
steal it.
sleep through it.
harass it.
Mistake it for something else.
we THROW IT AWAY.

and, jesus, if we could stop it.
if only we could stop it. pause it. reverse it.

well, Jesus would still be alive.
and not just him
-Every hero that ever died.

Struggles (and fighting the undertow)

There is no real relief in
releasing these things that cause me strife

but,

there is a confidence in being able
to look into her eyes and know
that she knows my deepest struggle

There is no one-stop cure,
Just endurance and Learning
and trust
-you know you have it when
you look into those eyes

and you see love

the side of a bed
it's quiet and cold outside the sheets
heart leaks

the inside of my head
thunder and lightning fighting in turns
stomach churns

the palm of my hand
so delicate and childlike, ever curious
mind furious

the height of a plan,
carefulness, confidence disolved by a look
world shook

my legs and the strides underneath

these are my arms, this is my mind
and i am my own body.
the cotton on my skin acts as a shell
and it won't tell you what's behind my eyes
or why i'm slouched in coach class seat E
watching the great American plain
roll away beneath me.
there's just something i have to try and fix
or at least hold in my wrinkled palms
until the bleeding has stopped.
the tapping anxiety in my feet
makes it clear this is urgent
but i'm no surgeon, this is no ambulance
and a thousand miles can't be trifled with.
so i rest my weary head on my knees
to let the time slip away
until my hands find the wound.