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.