Let's Run Away Together ★★★★

Let's run away together

I've grown tired of waking up in these sheets

That smell like the past

Of obligation and complication

Lets slip away under a shroud of night

With only the light from your eyes to guide the way

We'll walk barefoot on dew coated grass

Through hidden mountain passages that take us

To a home that only exists

Bound between thin cardboard leafs

Lets get married

We'll find some small town chapel

Full of well-meaning old hideaways

Who we will beguile with decadent lies

Like fine chocolates and silk from our smiles

We'll set up camp like stalwart explorers

Eat fast food and jars of peaches

We can make blanket forts of the pews

We'll drape honeysuckle from the pulpit

And bells from the windows

We'll open the doors to the moths and fireflies

And anyone else who will come

If they ask what it is

What we're all on about now

We'll tell them it's their high school reunion

A bowling league

The Armistice Day Singers

And we'll smile and say "come in"

You'll wear a key from your neck

And a band of Russian amber

And I'll wear a dress

Lined with baby's breath and butterfly wings

Instead of sharing champagne

We'll put on matching crowns

And raise our hands to the sun triumphant

Conquerors of everything we could be

And owners of everything we couldn't

And as the cold night air settles in

We'll play music on my ipod

With not a single song about love

We'll find a best man and make him toast to the absurd

And the pointlessness of life and loving anything

And everyone will be confused

And nothing will make sense

To anyone at all

Except for you

to me

And me

to you

Untitled ★★★★

I love to watch the way his body moves

I like to see the plates of bone within his back

Flex into a seamless crease above his spine

The shifting of the cords that bind his shape

I like the branches that rest under his neck 

From which he hangs the bell that holds his heart 

When it rings I feel it in my breath 

Because I see it in his eyes

Fluttering like the wings of moths

Shimmers of iridescence and the memory of midnight

It threads through me in a tightening embroidery 

I could feast eternal on that moment

My eyes devouring his 

Without his knowing he has become

the dagger in my breast that severs me

I watch his hands as they shift and tense

The line of his neck, that place I could bury myself 

I watch, waiting for him to break

Give himself away in a glance or a smile

Some unguarded elusive ruptured suture

And he'd shuck his skin like coils of birch bark

Let himself unbind unravel and peel off in layers to rest at my feet

So bare that I can see inside him

Presenting a core of being to which I could press myself 

Like a flower among his pages

A moment where he is nothing but what he is

And I would know it like I know the coursing of my blood

The singing of the spheres

A truth unintentionally and so softly given

Piercing and momentous and tiny and frail

Painted on his body in the way the surf engulfs the shore

Broach ★★★★

The world feels like a day dream

The lights and colors are cutout cardboard

On matte black backing

The city swallows the stars

And my mind diffuses my memory of them 

The images I conjure falter

In disconnected static

Just like how I can't remember

The look on your face

I only recall how it made me feel

The pressure in my throat

Inside me your eyes are a blank void

A curtain to hang the stars

Your hands are fragmented pieces

Like exploding shrapnel

Nothing holds me

Nothing keeps its shape

Nothing is certain 

Other than the feeling of my breath over my lips

The rise and fall of my chest

I can hear the shuddering sound of it 

And I want to fill it with your name

But I know it would just slip away

A dying dislocated notion

Dissipating like fog or a dream upon waking

And I need some small thing to still feel real

I need some way to keep you here

Parallel Parts ★★★

If you were on my mind 

What words would give me away? 

What would slip out of my hands

Trickling secrets from my throat

Filling in the cracks between the letters

Like caulk and analogy

If I spoke of firm hands

Gripping fabric like flesh 

Would you picture your own? 

If I mentioned a line of eyelashes

Painted in sumi-e brushstrokes

Would your own flicker in response? 

Is there a fragmented thing being born 

In the spaces between us

Filling in holes and improving conduction

Or do I fly under your radar

My words only ever saying what I mean?

Turned ★★★

There is something thick like oil

coating the inside of my skin
It dips into and drinks of my mind
When I stare at you I feel it writhe
Like a caustic animal
A breathless parasite
Quivering and reciting the words you said last night
Or the words you said three months ago
Or whatever will make me ache
It weighs my arms down when I would reach to you
Numbs my mouth when I would speak to you
Makes me placid and hollow
It drips into my thoughts like a sinus infection
A building bitterness like opiates and dark chocolate
My land of milk and honey has laid in the sun
For these unwinding summer years
And while the honey might be sweet
The milk has gone rancid
I feel it thickening inside me
I want to walk to the river and rinse myself clean
Let the water wash away our egos
Become clean and simple and uncomplicated
I want you to give yourself to me
your crown laid into the crook of my neck
All warm lips and soft skin
To push into my small places
Naked and pure and easy
But your distance is one I can't travel
An insurmountable gap
And I feel so heavy under all our yesterdays

A Poem About You ★★★★

I think about you a lot,
when the hours grow long and I find myself alone
in the bleeding hours of morning,
driving myself home
So I speak into this box
and press my words like flowers into the aether,
the first step on a strange path
that ends with this thing that you are
Hollow-bodied,
an echo diffused by fog
that returns my words in muffled murmurs
and makes them sound foreign to my ears
You are the pit I want to climb to the edge of
and throw my words into
You are a great wall of black glass obsidian,
an endless expanse of surface,
covered in crags and narrows
that catch the light that shines in my eyes
and throws it back in a flurry of pinprick points
that dance across its rough forms
like the night sky tearing asunder
Sometimes you are just the sky torn asunder
You are the sound,
the chasm
the empty vessel
I pour myself like liquid into you
I can't stop thinking about you
Inescapable and immutable
Empty and nothing and all encompassing
A blank board to pin my greatest hopes and expectations
A feeding machine of needles and tubes that drain me
You the blank white page I am spilling my blood like thoughts on
You stand as a mirror
reflecting the image of a father
who I'll never see again
You wear the face of a man from a dream
who slid his fingers across my face and told me
everything is going to be alright
A mirror of me
And also everything else
But trust me,
holding this conversation inside my head,
I'm talking to you and nobody else
And how does that make you feel?
Does it get under your skin like it gets under mine?
Does it scratch into the surface
as if I were writing calligraphy upside down into your insides?
Could I sew you up with ink in words?
Could we manifest some greater connection between us,
crafted by the exchange of concepts and ideas,
a suture to pierce through
some greater barrier of misunderstanding?
If not now then perhaps another time
Another night
There can always be other attempts
To pull worth from tangled tongues
and mangled weavings
For you to listen to
I just really need you to hear me

Winded ★★★★

All night long I've been listening to the sound
of branches falling onto the roof of your house,
and when I go outside
I can feel the wind blowing hard and hot,
pulling at the threads of my hair
like your fingertips sliding over my cheek bones.

The streets are littered with twigs and leaves,
as if everyone had all at once forgotten to wake up,
as if no one had walked these streets in years;
and driving out into a still midnight
there is nothing yet that might tell me otherwise.

The only signs of life are the rhythmic rituals
of the changing traffic lights
and the steady glow of laundromats and convenience stores
mirrored in the inky wet asphalt
their beacons cast downwards
looking so much like towers floating in an endless black.

So I drift along in this lucid dream
waiting for the pinprick that brings me back into reality,
that pops this bubble and brings it down
in soft showers around my shoulders,
like the last remnants of storms
falling down on bare skin,
like feeling the brush of lips
calling me back.

But please
let me sit here awhile longer.

Because in sleep we all are dreaming
and awake I am alone.