floating grass

The need to reach out to someone, anything
is quieted by the emptiness, the no one.
When you never give back,
your outlets decay
and grow elsewhere.
Like a candy machine asking no coin,
they've sold every ear that listened,
every piece of sincere caring,
every scrap of wanting you to be happy,
for nothing.
Your coins were never theirs to keep;
you bought their love for nothing
and investing nothing, saved nothing
for today,
for the need for someone today.
With nothing sweet to abate your need
to feel understood,
you wander through meadows of floating grass--
a bed of squandered roots--
seeking something unspent.

My fortune useless,
I wander the sties and stalls
for somewhere to sleep.

light rain

raining crystal
shards of light jumping
exploding into crowded black
isolated governments of sharp
pieces of energy
petrified fire
white lines with no halo
no glow
but sharp edges between opposite
ideas that spark

It is the time I spend alone most favored and most hated.
Not all at once, but separate bliss and terror.

valor

keeping things
even from yourself
riding on the high of self-justification
of sour grapes
of self-assurance

ride it like the setting sun
ride it triumphant into darkness
embrace the cold
you still burn from bitterness
you independent furnace.

ride it as long as you can
be happy you have something to burn
you will need it traveling sunless
or suffer feeling what's really heating you:
nothing.

the sum of parts

I wanted to learn.
But things I learned were shattered by feelings.
Knowledge was tested by joy and pain,
two teachers with new ideas, with new knowledge.
Knowledge came into me and fought its own.
I learned and unlearned the lessons of living,
admitting it was all true, though all in conflict.
I knew less and less the more I learned.

Knowledge was a shattered picture,
and none of the pieces went together,
a puzzle of oddly shaped parts
and no answers at the edges.
Knowledge was plural and unsympathetic to its parts.
I stared at the pieces, all crying for validation
and could do no more than admit their existence.
I couldn't discard or embrace one over the other.
I knew nothing singular.
I had no title or definition for all the pieces that made me.
I lived in a constant struggle for finality, for definition,
for one meaning.
But I was many,
and torn to pieces as I learned each one.

Steve, Jess, Sara

When I had the best, even the worst was gold.
The blizzard that turned our faces white
and froze the tops of our feet
only made us warmer.
The smell in that hostel made us laugh.
Money was paper; ice was water.
I couldn't be made to realize a frown where I saw it
or a sigh when I heard it.
Loneliness was an ancient word; yearning--even older.
A language lost to time.
Fatigue was a peaceful lure; neither dream
nor reality could be told apart.
I was safe from fear
because I couldn't lose.
I had them,
And they were everything.

slate

I get sick when I remember.

My stomach churns the undigested pieces of you, the pieces you forced into my mouth, the jagged slate of your affection. I choked while you smiled. How could you smile? You saw my throat convulse. I bled into the napkin you provided and forced appreciation. "The bad is good for me" you made me say a hundred times like sitting in at recess writing lines. But the bad was bad for me. My poisoned blood was foreign to my veins. I almost died.

But I didn't die. I was saved by mirrors. I saw the person I once knew, the one defined by me. It's not your fault I believed you, believed I was something else . . . for you. It's not your fault I avoided mirrors. I let you own me, but I missed myself. I never should have left me; I should have left you. I should have taken care of myself. I should have loved myself enough to be alone.

But I believed a lie
And I get sick when I remember.

half lit

Blue notes from a half lit heaven
Blue wood to hammer steel
Vibrate in a blue root-seven
Two notes to make me feel

the party

lively music
raucous sound
wishing washing smiling clowns

sprinting to
racing fro
shouting things you think you know

eating fast
getting done
searching for the next thing fun

looking far
farther still
missing everything that's real

The Weather

The weather. It's come to that. I guess it was bound to, sometime. The interesting thing is how long it took.

It was always strange to me how some relationships played out differently than I expected. But the expected will always happen, unexpectedly. Time and circumstance are the only unknowns. The rest are constants. And always more constant than I'd like. I will lose her, even when I don't at first. Someday the only thing we'll talk about will be the weather.

I knew this would happen. The moment I crossed that line and turned to watch the ground split behind me, I knew. But things happen fast when you don't know the future. And I turned around to face the sun and forget the canyon. Then sunshine dimmed, but promised to light the way. But how could it light the way? What sunless night has substance enough to guide me? What natural laws did I really think to change? The darkness darkened all around me the gaping whole I would have to cross. And I waited for the sun to rise again. But it didn't. It never does. I had to descend, then rise again myself and make our worlds worlds apart. From so distant she asks me how the weather is, tells me she is shining again . . . without me. "Without you" is all I hear. But I am tired from the climb and haven't lit the sun again in my world. Her words hurt me.

I wanted to hurt her because she hurt me. If only I could be sure she was the last to suffer, to pine for the former, to reach for what's no longer there--then I'd be happy. But not really. But kind of. Because my power to hurt is the inverse of my power to heal. And everyone needs to heal someone, just as much as they long to be healed themselves. But I had no power to do either. To discover this absence is to lose what it feels like to be alive. The bottom dropped out of my world and I scrambled to stab something and hold on to the grip of my knife . . . or I would fall for the hope that love would catch me somewhere else. I let myself fall. And the knife too.

But landing is as rare as sunlight during rain. Love is sparse and floating all around me like moving baskets in the sky. I've tried to catch one, to time my fall just right, to angle gravity. But it doesn't work. I close my eyes and hope that fate is real.