last saturday

Four corners no matter how small still can create an island. 

You can look up and around but here beside the             opening

is a horrifying step to            stake out the campsite and tarp the corners down

because the storm is blowing             in from the place where I have been             before.

But as for me and my house, we will stay amongst the            lightning strikes

and the crowd gathers gloriously beneath the gladiolus            hanging

but of course there isn’t room for an island

beneath those trumpets of tropical             varietals.

Two clicks to the left to illuminate a space of            dust

or mud-cloud             showing what was left after the downpour.

The birch bones shone like an X-ray of             crooked,

speckled pieces of disaster that night on                         the island

never knew this was                        coming

up and around like the comet that sat            burning

a hole            in the backyard between the trampoline and the house

that was built on the edge of the             sea.

You saw it when you descended the stairs.

The house from amongst the lightning strikes that once                        stood

on the island              now makes its way               floating

circling like the red light in the sirens you could hear approach in the distance.

how to write a poem

Sleep in a room that’s door opens to the outside and have your feet facing the wall. You might slip out or you might be pulled out but there’d be a fight first. There’s always a fight first, he told me. Just like in elementary when the popular girl made you fall in front of the boy you liked so you cried in the last stall on the right of the second floor gymnasium bathroom.  “God loves you” and sketches of crosses on a hillside watching you weep because graffiti at that age meant evangelism not conversion. It was in the moment when you cut the snowflakes out of printer paper and pasted them on the window this winter. Something changed that winter that caused the tenants of building to stop sleeping.  A steeping-feeling fell over the brick building on the edge of the city that told them it wasn’t time to go just yet but it wasn’t their decision anyway. There was more to be extracted no matter how painful the squeezing, tamping, smashing.  Try king cobras, love affairs, or the comet that sat glowing and burning a hole in the backyard between the trampoline and your house. You saw it when you descended the stairs. Try the stuff of your dreams. The red-head with a cleft lip told me the pile of carrots were the his treasure trove and he slept next to the outside door to guard them so I started with that.

digital jesus:

master sifter with his sieve

an augury

the causation of

dry mouth

like a mausoleum

an infrastructure

a certain fragile fiber of the foil

gold in the round circumnavigates the sun                   not down here

the seeds that permeated never planted

the distance long became the distance high

the rain that fell didn’t fall for growth

but out of fear                                    now it freezes

and the cold cuts clearer

I collect you

I said

as the building where we stood                                    burned

February

It took me 3 hours to get out of the shower today. The barrage from above and the drain guzzling from below were enough. The warmth encompassed and the slightly too-chlorined Nashville water beaded and broke into streams mirroring veins that pulsed beneath my skin.

The midday sun froze over the scene. A student found dead in their car on the 5^th floor parking garage next to the basketball stadium. The same garage I climbed to the top of to watch the sun melt into hills. But today was different. Today it stopped in its tracts like in Joshua but the rays this time didn’t showcase victory but instead a defeat. My space of glory was someone else’s place of knee-buckling sorrow.

A hospital suite of secrets, of screws and bolts and affairs and moving-ons. The keeping out was what got me. Thursday fell once more to 5 years of hiding and I wasn’t let in again despite my knocking.

These spaces were everything.

They were too much.

But this water hitting and hitting. The consistency of streaming, not screaming for life or love. It’s realer to me today. This is the only space I want to feel today.

red piercing circumnavigation

recollection                                                                                                                        repetition

                                                one in the same

one backward

drenched in ghost silk

a floral pattern of childhood

                                                                                                                        the other the nerves

                                                                                                            the stretch or known as the

                                                                                                                        coming into

                                    the night of sirens

haunts                                                                                                                       

the sweetest darkness                                                                                   

causes the retranslation                                                                       

hypothesis                                                                                                           

                                                                                                                        continues

                                                                                                                        the sound

                                                                                                            plagues the inky filter

                                                                                                            catches you up in the round

           

                        the machinery circumnavigates

the latter feeds the former through the frosted fluorescent spots in winter blackness

                                                                                                           

Hillsboro Road

A fire truck pounding like a steam engine through the rain on a narrow city street

No breaths or wavering

But the movement sends shudders and makes gutters

Of water pulsing into rivers following the flashing truck

Like it’s also rushing to aid

Or save

Like the water from a rock when struck

Or a side when speared

In a similar way,

Dark eyelashes splayed against a fair face in white morning light

Show the same complexity

The same unwavering of pursued

goodness like the rushing truck

But in unending softness

For the unnamed broken

For me

grace

It’ll stop you in your tracks

then

The causation equals likely to

Dry mouth

Like a mausoleum

Containing frozen words that bite

Metallic but quickly dissolve to dust

As the interior folds in on itself

The space

Getting smaller and smaller

due to articles

objects

an infrastructure

of a certain fragile fiber of the foil

The master sifter with his sieve

Collects the almost implosive particles

Trying to hide and disguise and

Tell of the reverse that’s already been won

I can be a part of you for only a little while.

It’s strange what goodbyes do to you.

It may seem like a word or two, perhaps a hug. But the difficult part is that they involve people. Humans. And whenever those are involved.. whew.. things get messy quick.

I’ve been in this place now for approximately 3 months and 15 days. Just enough time to become a familiar face, to get past the awkwardness to those deep-bellied laughs, to fall in love..

I have those feelings of anticipation to be home, of course, but currently they’re pretty swallowed up by fear of what will happen once I get there. Change is definitely a scary thing. I think I’ve forgotten my place back home. I know where I fit here, even if I don’t like it, at least I know.

Leaving can’t be easy in any way, I’ve decided. Even for me, who’s felt so uncomfortable in this place and has had a homecoming countdown on her phone since the first day.  It’s like having one foot in two places.
Actually, it might be like not having feet at all.
Not like you have to use your feet to jump from one place to a different one, but instead, your feet don’t go to either place. There’s no feet because there’s no movement. You’re just sitting, stagnant. You’re left with a lot of second-guessing. How good was home again? Who’s waiting for me there? Maybe I don’t fit in either location. Maybe I’m still searching for where I’m supposed to be in and all these others still aren’t them.

Even worse, what sort of goodbye am I going to give to these people who now have a part of me, and I of them? How do you sum up over 3 months of laughs and conversations and thankfulness to these humans in a moment? I only have a moment before the cab takes me away. Just one. And how do I begin?

Months ago, at one of my first visits to the stream that became a savior for me during this season, I wrote while standing on the banks watching the water move continuously onward. The words I wrote were, “There’s nothing I can give to this, I can only be apart of its life for a little while.” I was talking about the water rushing over the rocks, the leaves as little boats on their hurried mission. It was all so perfect without me. So utterly perfect, and I had nothing to do with it. I couldn’t even bother it severely. It would continue whether I liked it or not. Perhaps now, even though I have impacted these sweet ones some, they will continue. I can only be apart of them for a time, but ultimately, they’re going to continue in the way they will go, and so will I. We only got to have one another for a season, and for that season, I am thankful.

There’s so much more to say here, and I’m afraid these words I’ve left don’t make much sense and are especially disorderly. But they’re the one’s I have. I needed to get them out of the way so I could go back to my studying.

gaping

with eyes blinded and arms out in front of myself to try and sense the way toe tapping puddles elbow scrapes ancient words that have fallen from above to this lightless below me feeling anxious feeling just the right size to push through past the hounds baying in the distance to this voice right in front of me speaking sounds of honey that cause question and keep on walking blindfolded into the pebbles on boulders on inverted mountains that grow wider and deeper each day mirrors the gaping holes between these bones.

the cold cuts clearer

she's gone back to her digging

summer's blood died with the leaves
and was trampled underfoot
the night's coming soon
she finds the seeds that permeated never planted
the frail roots are breaking
(no matter how numerous)
the frost's grip is too tight

the bare moon offers no answer
neither from the cracking pine
there were too many witnesses, she worries
but could it even be considered crime

the distance long becomes the distance high
you knew that rain didn't fall for growth
it fell out of fear
now it freezes
and the cold cuts clearer

the wallpaper

Part identical dropping petals and branching stems

from the gaudy floral

Their dots and dashes in congruency

Creating a cohesive mass to drown in

I tip-toe, stretch and

play the game of Operation

but the buzzer sounds and like a piece of flypaper I stick

and they stick back

I’m redrawn into organized layers

of chevron and hound’s-tooth

polka dot rubber to my knees

pin-stripped wax fabric covering my arms

my canvas is covered into a mixture of patterns

that stifle and I just want to be solid.

Like the crop fields of continuous brown or green.

Undisrupted by the interplay of other colors

I prefer to be siphoned by mole holes and

crow's nests

I prefer to be a part, not the whole pattern

Only ravaged by rays of sunlight that bring depth and life to the countryside

Instead of the chaos of order that plagues the rest of this

Tapestry of mess.

schematic schooltalk

words are those clever devices
we skip and drag and tie in knots
and before we’re done with them
spit them out and not expect any spots

that leave a trail giving ourselves away
as we rush and stumble our way back
not feeling surprised we’re made out of clay
still sticking to the ones who’re late for the play

a song, dear, and keep singing loud enough
to drown out the

..clearly words are still causing a fuss.

the prelude ------------>

through the pouring kettle 
tumbling head over feet, we race.
mix a little sea and sky with a smattering of ice
and day will yield to night.
the perpetual sunset presses against us and
shadows spill out like oil
creating sharp, grotesque creatures
that frighten and fight against
what will save us
but our faces have met the sun still
and tasted its honey
as it sinks, momentum gains
under the weight of anticipation
as we wait in expectation

middle-march-autumn

apple picking, indian curry, literature, and feminisim were
just enough before
rain caught and left us breathless
stomping through puddles and
the terrible feeling of incongruency
falls quicker than this storm

they call it the retrograde of mercury
the turn of tides and planets
of things I don't understand
is there any difference from those far-off
and of these held in my hand?

the yellow house

Still when I lay my head down to sleep,
if I let myself I can hear the
ticking of the old clock that hung between the windows
the scrape of dishes in the kitchen
and laughter reverberating off those awful beige-toned walls
trailing into the bedroom
and contentment again nestles in beside me.
The pair of them sitting on my bed and
speaking and giving and debating and
hiding
as we grew together but apart and I never realized.
The familiar sliding of the door across the wood and the thumping of heels amidst a string of muttered curses in midmorning rang familiar and warm.
But still the clock ticked and the kettle boiled and the oven unthawed those pizzas and life moved sleepily forward inside that yellow house.
I just never quite realized.

--

I was trying to be alone, you know,
saturate my senses in the smog of the
newspaper city
embraced
and
enveloped
I let her in
I breathed her in
Staked my claim and planted my feet
I should have brought my own handmade flag to
anchor in those layers of grime and soot.
But she is malleable
fickle
she fought back and
wouldn't budge
I was only hers for a time
She showed me my fears in the
winding, calling darkness
Then spit me out when the last grain fell

and I was ushered like Jonah to Ninevah

with my teeth gritted and my hands tied I fought
but, regardless, here I sit

The great eastern
-in its howling and hollowing
the waves
-in their breaking and mending
I shiver and quake

But, do I do well?
In this restless anger, do I do well?

whisperings

These prints proclaim my separateness.
(throat thickens, heart quickens, brow furrows into restless desperation).

“How do I reinvent the past?” 
            or, even more anxiously,

“Must I destroy it?”

Ancient words ring audibly.
Words of proud families and excited friends.

It was natural. 
     It was usual. 
           It was comfortable. 
                It was expected.
Like those first noticed warm breaths in the morning. 
Like the feeling of feet in shoes.

If everyone was so sure then, how am I supposed to fit?

From this angle, I’m much too small. 
I fit in the cupboard that’s forgotten on the corridor. 
Mind-forged fetters contain me - but how could I complain? 

,,

the past and present
they sidle and gently whisper

these irreconcilable two 
somehow saturate
and lose their 

boundaries bleed
together they're as real
as a walk down a
peat path

the two tied
and one haunts the other
until reality ceases

and I hate it
I can pull and push
grit my teeth and kick their welded bonds
I would try anything to

detach 

but I'm the walker on the peat path

my inhales and exhales create the rhythm that fuels them and
independence raises a white flag.

skin

and the wind really does howl, love.
you can hear it coming, thundering, like timpanis
just before it tries to take you with it on its undoubtedly malevolent course
"it’s only skin" he says, sleep-talking
but it is this skin that’s pierced by icy incisors.
this skin, here
the one gaping and hollow
holding the bones being gnawed at
day after day after day.

it’s only skin, yes, yes you’re right,
it’s only skin that contains and protects.
perhaps I’m coming to that
this skin, this skin here,
is not enough.

wuthering

time stagnates.
like childhood, I wait for the door to unlock
for the crack in the corner to elongate
break apart and release
into Canaan
or at least the freedom of any familiarity
until then
I rise in silence, darkness,
accompanied by the ghoulish wind
that winds itself in circles
around this stone-encapsulated town.