night subway ride

I’m listening to Earth, Wind and Fire
On the subway and the music is loud
And I lift my hood and take off my hat because it’s hot.

I stand slack against the door.
Casual. Western, even. I wonder
what’s going on for me and then the song changes
To a David Guerra song and it’s true,
I’m listening to a Spotify playlist called
“Songs to Sing in the Shower.”

It’s been my second favorite playlist this week.

I think we’re all just jostling into one another,
Bumping cartilage and viscous in ways we don’t understand,
All being much sweeter than we know.
All showing up as God for one another.
And not really knowing what that means never
Felt so like taking my clothes off, and slowly
Walking into an Appalachian mountain lake at night.

I don’t know what I’m doing, but sometimes,
Neither does the rock next to the buckled little tree
During a blushing dusk.
Neither do you.

It’s worth getting to know more about, I think.
Supremely worth it. So when you enter the room
in my mind, it feels destined for me to realize that these are the days
When I’d write more poetry.

Untitled, Spring 2017

There's a glass of water sitting in 

jackknife daylight on the piano. 

The print of lips faint like a fossil or 

Water damage along the rim. 

The trace of a thought: we're just in our

Bodies, kicking like someone who might be swimming 

For their life.

Flight UA 1505

I’m miles above where they wait for life to come
Take them anywhere else,
Days behind on bills and thoughts about
how different the packages god sends us
look than our dreams,
Seconds into feeling the weight of the warm sand
You’re shoveled onto my chest.

I feel half-born, legs sticking out at odd angles, but
Like I inhaled something and felt my bloodstreams loosen
For the first time with more of me.

I reflect on the fact that I’ve never fought for something before.
Never cut my hair.
Never battled like Sampson with blood
In my mouth and on my name.

Which makes me think - you know when the universe is a black hole and you see
Your own dark matter pupil looking back at you from the eye
Of our storms?

Yeah.

I guess I wanted to care like ivy growing up the your wall,
over the years.

Instead, I ended up sitting next to a girl on the plane who is bipolar
Who has not eaten for months at a time
Who once spent all her savings while blacked out in mania
Who has an arch nemesis
Who had a man stalk her across two continents
Who smiled and laughed and showed me a way to lay
Worries down like I did your body last night, when it felt so good
To be alive

En Route to L.A.

This world of muffled heat

Of so many wild wild things we cannot afford to feel nostalgia for

Like mercury moving in us, liquid rising 

Nothing stirs in this land beneath me

A lone road splits the back of capitalism’s graveyard 

No futures here, folks

You can see where water once ran torrent veins

Cut canyons and opened hillsides 

Like a sutre. You can see how the nothingness screams

Violent inside of men

The statue of liberty

From the southern tip of the city, all I can see
is the back of her head.

reunions

The one thing I forgot at home on this trip

was my toothbrush and toothpaste.

We joke and laugh while playing corn hole, but are scared of losing 

and being laughed at.

Lightning flashes like bulbs behind the clouds across the bay.

I hear the birds for the first time in a year while running in the woods.

And I remember I haven’t written you a poem in a long time, and 

am grateful to call you a friend.

i made a series of poor decisions

and it felt like my heart 

was gaining weight

Untitled

today i heard that in order to love, sometimes 

you need to be 

a stranger. 

My Body

An abuse

A sack of gold-lillied water 

A saltless fantasy

My body a bird between 

Wind currents 

This world a handful of twigs

My body a heart

Foaming like lattes or rabies or

Excitement 

My body standing in the center of the room

Oblivious like art

This last line will not punch you,

And I have not been gentle with myself

This is the feeling

Fall rasps me longways with its tongue
And I hope when I die
I die like the summer does

Untitled

There are moments when I am a fool
For us. When I think of sitting and drinking 
Coffee together and talking about how we've 
Grown, and how we 
Haven't. 

A Night at Dripping Rock

I am here to feel the leaves change color. Here to watch 

trees shake their heads like horses in the wind.

To see what quiet does to a young man. 

To ask if I can kiss a young autumn. 

See how that feels. 

A sparrow brushes my shoulder up on the high rocks.

The black sky is star-stained. Exquisite. Deep. 

I’ve been working on making it start.

The thick silence ruptures. Tree frogs and crickets climb out,

the night’s throat suddenly open, shrill til dawn. 

Working on making it start, again. 

This field of the mind is still the same. Yet I have begun 

to walk different paths through it.

Everything

is a beautiful
thing

if you went to a concert would you go to the front row?

I think you're really pretty,
But I focus on the raggae band instead

life's a funny place

maybe my self-care routine is me thinking
this is a game I can hack
maybe my lack of a self-care routine is me thinking
this is a game I can hack

i wanted

to chase after your rules

like afternoon thunderstorms

It's Hard to Understand a Person

when that person is you

It felt like

losing you happened 

behind my back.

galore

today i avoided you like porch light

to my headful of swerving bugs.

today i avoided me like a rest-stop bathroom that

hasn’t been cleaned by Tammy in two weeks

(fudged the numbers there).

Sometimes

I feel like someone is holding their hand
just above my skin but
they hold back.

Now This

Last night I fell asleep thinking pride was like a wild horse

I had to break. This morning the sun sits golden on the horizon,

Like the times I walked through the acrid, sick sweet smell 

Of burning trash, streets waking like your gut turning over and 

Starting in the morning. 

I remember the thick thudding of housemat being cleaned, the muffled 

Cough-hack-spit of a morning routine, birds freewheeling

Amongst the ramshackle wiring that reminded me of childhood doodles

And how I feel when I look at women. 

Now, my limbs ambling and loose, joints unfolding

Like math or a waterfall. 

Now, my thoughts hushed like loam. 

Body, standing in the middle of an empty highway.

No cars, no people.  

I remember, it is Easter.