A Field of Differance.

I'm squinting against all this light
flooding through me, bathing
the field of thin golden stalks
that tickle my legs and my cracking bare feet.
Motes of dust and loose seeds float
purposelessly through the heavy air
and I sit in the hard-packed dirt
I lie on the folded plants
and I stare at a crystalline sky

and I breathe.

I breathe.

breathe.

.

False Gods

I've imagined that God-
like an old italian man
selling ice cream on a beach
for a few dollars
to buy his wife roses-
would sing out the name
of the one thing I wanted
in a harmony
I wouldn't hear
until I saw my favorite flavor
in his cart.
Plump and rosy,
he'd smile
and squint his watery eyes,
call me bella
and hand me a scoop.

Walking away,
he'd whistle through puckered lips
a simple tune
I'd quickly forget,
licking drips of chocolate
from my wrist.

Steel Guns

To witness people’s quiet oddities
will always bring me back to early days
when nothing mattered but if I could play
with neighbor children. Only sharpened blades
of fresh cut grass could pierce the bubble made
around our games, though watchful parents tried
to temper manic plans. Now, any word
of judgment or of doubt can bring a plan
to end and I, for one, don’t care to test
my skills of dodging rival bullets now
that guns have turned to steel and blood is real
and friends who lose don’t fake the wounds they feel.

You are Young Nonsense

I think of you like childhood candy—
a Pez dispenser cracked below the chin.
Tangy sweetness on my tongue
smooth plastic moments bracing my fingers
camera flash
sour laundry stuffed under the mattress
creaking refrigerator ticking softly
in the next room over.
Seeing your face is
a fuming sauce, so quickly turned awry.
It’s Arielle Cooper shoving me down,
calling me crybaby at Spreckles on C Avenue
because I always hated tag.
I loved playing tag.
New buildings were built
as we walked by to school;
heavy packs full of notes, key chains,
winnings from playground poker in velcro grass.
We couldn’t hold the cards because our teachers didn’t love us.
Egg pickle – let’s go.
The unnamable joy of controllers and anticipation
cheated our dreams in
the prison of dank summer afternoons.
The sun wove clothes out of mole hills,
spun records at discos.
Heidelberg slept through a dozen earthquakes
and someday will draw, craft, create
the shapes of new games to play.
The pierced years have passed
jittery and molded beneath my gaze.
My mother has never left me.
Ich spreche eine kleine Deutsche.
The little candy tabs graffiti your name on buses
and rest their eyes on you.
Your face, gleaming bright with
future tenses, cheats my dreams
suffocated under velcro grass.

My Life Today

Live in the moment
when truth and reality
no longer collide.

Unpack My Heart with Words

A found poem of love for the prince of Denmark, taken from Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

O woe is me,
of ladies most deject and wretched,
sprung from neglected love!
Pity me;
I was the more deceived.
You made me believe
a puff’d and reckless libertine,
watchman to my heart!
His affections do not that way tend.
Sit still, my soul.

I did love you once.

I
must render up myself
(like sweet bells jangled out of tune).

Oh fie: hold my heart;
I’ll follow thee.
What should be the fear?
Lose your heart?
Your love? As mine to you,
as pure as snow.

See what I see:
that unmatch’d form and
power so to seduce!
The expectancy and rose of the fair state.
An honest man.
A noble mind.
A noble heart.
A king of infinite space.

What a piece of work!

Adieu, adieu, remember me
sweet prince.

A Heaviness Natural to a Day like This

Every thing feels like a totem
(saturated paints turn to pregnancy,
a blade of grass or shoe is lonesome)
and I sit below, breathlessly.

Saturated paints turn to pregnancy
with careless tears mothers cannot calm
and I sit below, breathlessly
writing sonnets on my palm

with careless tears. Mothers cannot calm
as worlds weigh down like an empty bed.
Writing sonnets on my palm,
the movement drowns in my head.

As worlds weigh down like an empty bed
a blade of grass or shoe is lonesome.
The movement drowns in my head.
Every thing feels like a totem.

Insatiable

I have known the insatiable hunger of subways,
Tucked in tight tunnels, surge of cars and tiled walls,
All the gasping of rumpled trash and clothes,
Appetite in tainted common corridors,
Cavernous ticket booth, passageway, timetable,
The writhing tactics of tourist and worker,
Craving of toe-tapping, loafer and Rolex,
Endless custom of man and taut paper.
And I have seen mud cake the floor of car cabins,
Thicker than blood, throbbing, less filling than gases,
Clot, fully obscuring, over these constant commutes of routine,
Pouring a thick crust on cans and cracked gray tracks,
Coating the quiet hours, the starving masses.

[This poem was inspired by the form and rhythm of Theodore Roethke's "Dolor," which can be read here.]

I Have Known.

I have known the hunger of attempts.
It groans and it aches
and there’s never enough.
And there’s plenty to go around
(plenty of rejection)
and I’m not afraid
because this is not,
assuredly, not
my life.
But I remember the hunger
(the insatiable irrational hunger)
that begins in your nerves with your arms shaking
joints throbbing along
with the rock in the hole in your middle.
A shaking becomes a convulsing
(convoluted motion of the body
pacing and dancing and waving and waiting)
to be noticed.
And there’s plenty to go around
(plenty of rejection)
And I’m not afraid.

Sweet Salty Return

Full heart
Happy tears
Salty liquid washes away the months apart.
The weeks of warmth
apart from your salty coolness
Your damp greenness
Your heart breaking breath stealing beauty.
Your wild days
productive nights
Sleepless weeks
and happy moments
inescapable
incomparable.
This is home.