Heron

 I love to see you swoop

I hate to hear you squawk

I love to see you fly

I hate to watch you walk

Today I told her that life is just the same battle over and over again until you die

And to find comfort in that because perhaps each time is a little better

And there is a synchronicity of the world reminding me it happens in cycles

And because I am being reminded now I am being reminded always

Cyclical, cyclical 

round and round

Remember the highs

When your feet drag the ground

Yesterday she told me each of Scheherazade's one thousand and one stories and

After every single one, we hoped the king might spare her life

And each story sounded the same

If only she could crack my heart like a nut and get to the fruit of the stories inside

Imagine a duck who is god

Feet move so fast they do blur 

His flippers do flail under water

Above not a feather does stir 

Tomorrow I will ask you who you want to be when you grew up 

And how you dream of futures in relation to community

And how you dream of loving the land and letting the land love you back

And maybe we will dare to imagine a new story. 

Poem for you

I can't remember the way your hair is sunlight 

But I wish it was night so I could see it shining for the south

I can't remember the way your laugh is the green grass bursting from frozen ground

But I wish it was spring so I could smell it living and growing

Here I am sitting in class and all I want is 

To throw myself into the lake of your blue jean jacket with the lady painted on the back 

And be shocked by the cold of the water on my skin

To feel every nerve of my skin wake

After this sleepy apathy of this seemingly unending lecture

Imagine a future where you have eternal sunny days

Imagine a space in between the day and night where it's still warm but the sun is still below the horizon 

Imagine a warm dark space where you know the names of every living thing around you and imagine you hold a paintbrush and lights and colors pour fourth from your hand

How do you hold the days in your hand and how do you imagine the night?

Body series 26

 I am entrenched in the metaphor of fall

I cannot escape the synchronicity of pumpkin spice body lotion and apple picking themed phone backgrounds and skeletons on windows

I am an anthropologist, deconstructing the empty symbols of my own home

Drawn to conclude the inhabitant must worship some eldritch god of cinnamon and bones who breathes fire each year in honor of the maple leaves

I am entrenched in this metaphor of fall

And when I fall to sleep at night my blankets only seem to contain the slowly-creeping cold so determined to leach into my bones

And I refuse to turn on the heat until October 

And I pretend the weakening sunlight will still be bright enough to light my heart and ribs from the inside out

I watch the birds flee with the rest of the common sense

And all that's left to me is story telling and fire sides and pumpkin spice and the knowledge of winter sitting cold in the bottom of my heart.

Conceiving the unspoken

 Here's love letter

Composed of the words I want to say to you every time I see you:

I love you

I'm in love with you

I have been in love with you since April

I'd like to push you against a wall and do some nasty things involving your neck and my tongue that would literally take the air from your lungs

When you wear your hair half up and half down I feel like the earth has been swept out from under me

I love when you show me your art; it's like seeing your insides and I'd like to eat you out until your calves cramp and I want to trace the lines of your body and I want you to look at me with your blue artist's eyes and see my soul and find it wanting and decide to love me anyway. 

I'm collecting little pieces of you: you love chocolate ice cream, you've been doing yoga for six years, your family pet is a pitt-bull named Sparkle, you and your roommates went apple picking last weekend, your favorite thing to cook is sesame noodles 

At the end of the day I sweep all the course books off of my desk and marvel at the empty expanse

I take this collection of favors and small loves and I lay it out on my desk like I would lay you down

And I run my hands over the familiar figures and pretend it brings my closer to your lips

I sound 50% creepier in this poem then I do in my head and the problem is I'm so overflowing with love and without a place to put it

And last week when maintenance came to unclog my shower drain they brought not one but two plungers in spite of not even working on a single toilet and 

I do not want my feelings to make a mess on the floor and I can't imagine where I left the metaphorical plunger

Red Convertible

 Have you ever driven a stick shift car?

Do you remember the sound it makes when you accelerate, the way it moans underneath you

More speed, it demands, more fuel. The car is hungry, wanting

And you give and it takes

Pushing you back into the seat, and adrenaline accelerates through the roads of your veins. 

Remember learning to drive?

And felling the power of the rocking, the shaking

The car bucking beneath you, eager to please

And you were at once sure that you held the power of this great beast, 

Ready to unleash at the very twitch of your foot

The car told you what it craved and you listened.

Do you remember when it became a well learnt route

When the gear shift fit into your hand

The lines in your palm mapped the desire to go faster

Faster and you knew exactly how to swing around the curves

Cut through the mountains and 

The car was an extension of your body

Gripping the pavement, rushing for the next horizon. 

A poem for Persephone

 Dandelion woman

Drift in and out on strong breezes 

Dandelion woman I knew you in pieces: 

Your hair in whips on your neck

Your breathy laugh 

When I asked you a question you would not answer

(could not answer?)

Dandelion woman why were you all questions and no answers?

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

 Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

And what happens now? The play is over and the villains 

Have won?

Lin Manuel Miranda understands how

Storytelling is the most important part of history.

Which begs the question, if Rosencrantz and Guildenstern 

are the oafs Tom Stoppard would lead us to 

Believe, how come these two gentlemen

Seized the imagination of so many generations? 

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead

So who's left standing on this stage? On this

Rock as we fly through the void? 

The ushers understand that once the play is over they must

Sweep the theatre and throw out all the popcorn that has

Fallen from hands and mouths agape to the floor.

Shakespeare demands us to ask, can we ever do anything but 

Destroy? But the ushers would like us to

Just clean up after ourselves please.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead

The Dog won't have to sleep on the potatoes anymore

--William Carlos Williams