Echoes

22/30 - 2

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 19:45:13 -0400

I see them on sidewalks and in coffee shops,
holding out their hearts like tin cans,

like elevators with doors always open,
waiting for no one in particular

8/30 - 2

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 17:51:36 -0400

the way you speak
is a key turning
some hidden door
inside of me

i do not know when it was locked,
only that it will not be the same.

1/30 - 2

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 17:51:07 -0400

We didn’t fall in love,

we stood in it,
bathed in it,
watched it rise up past our knees,
brushing the tops of our shoulders,

this golden light,
cascading upward over trees and mountains alike

everything was so soft,
it seemed to float,

burying ourselves into one another,
every single breath speaking,

this is how easy the world can move,

can shift, stretch and settle in our palms.

She said

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 22:30:26 -0500

Maybe some snug loft-apartment,
tucked away mid-city.

Maybe coffee or hot chocolate
and safe little jobs,

monotonous can also be meditative,
ya know, if you remember to breathe,

we could have date nights and roadtrips
and various little victories to look forward to

and if you drift too close to the sun,
I’ll hold your hand and kiss you,
to pull you back down to the soft earth

It wouldn’t be much of a glamorous life,
but it’d be ours,

if you want it.

"How are you?"

Sun, 11 Nov 2012 09:02:00 -0500

I keep wondering how far the idea of a person can be stretched before it becomes transparent; I feel tired all the time, like something is getting closer. I still roll out of bed in the morning and make myself simple meals, though.

I wash the dishes, however few, while staring out the window. I think of something that I’ll end up forgetting, it matters at the time, though, or so I tell myself.

Winter has this way of reminding me of the fire in my chest and fingertips, the cold encroaching like a pack of wolves; there’s a lesson in this, I write it down but never remember to look at it.

Where was I? I’m forgetting something.

Light (n) - a fistful of bonfire sparks thrown into the air, firefly-morse coded messages, the...

Tue, 30 Oct 2012 21:37:31 -0400

Light (n) -

a fistful of bonfire sparks thrown into the air, firefly-morse coded messages, the star’s reply, sunday-morning-tangled bed sheets and hair, the stuff your heart pumps from fingertips to toes, the way you say “good morning”, the church of your body, the electric-calm of your mouth, the tomorrows in your kisses, the nuances of a smile, post-it note love letters, grilled cheese lunches, backyard afternoon sangria, you.

Eighty-Seven

Wed, 24 Oct 2012 21:07:26 -0400

when the stars fell
we picked them up like fruit
and cracked them open over our knees
sitting there on the front porch
it was hard to think of anything else
bits of cosmic space running down our fingers

you kissed me on the cheek
your lips wet with light

Dear,

Sun, 21 Oct 2012 22:28:59 -0400

I was made to love you.

Meticulously sculpted by Time while your name echoed inside of me.

Poetry collects in my palms, like water now, only because i know of your thirst,

I know that the field in you matches the sky in me,

that my fingertips pray on cliffs for your shoulders and thighs,

and how my lips ache for the delicateness of your collarbones and wrists,

this body is something of wonder, breathing you in reminds me every single time,

that it was given to me
only so i could give it to you.

Love,

What do you like better: writing, or having written?

Tue, 28 Aug 2012 22:09:00 -0400

I don’t really sit down to write or make a thing, some kind of ritual where I hammer words into submission or anything.

I just jot random ideas and words and sentences down on a scrap piece of paper or envelope or receipt, then those little things grow on their own into bigger things, I come to find them as whole paragraphs, sometimes, whole pages sometimes, then I take a little and frame it in a post.

Having written is frustrating, it’s capturing a moment, usually old, stale, moment and trying to make it immortal but as you reread things, as I reread things I’ve written, I can already see that I’ve outgrown them.

They seem childish and silly and hard to relate to because even as I hit the post button, I’m already outgrowing it, ya know?

Seventy-Seven

Sun, 29 Jul 2012 21:05:56 -0400

the fire inside of us doesn’t always burn
sometimes it just sits

lightning flashes of nostalgia
for something we’ve never known

or maybe always have
it’s heavy

as silence

sitting just the same
under the influence of poetry

and sangria-kisses
strong enough

to wipe away your trembles
while Time strains

but baby, we are ghost -
anything more, now

is just
icing on our fingertips.

Dear,

Sun, 15 Jul 2012 21:29:37 -0400

Your bedroom is my favorite church,

all the vagabond prayers, whispered through clinched teeth or moaned through dragging fingertips, swirling and stampeding through the air like a thousand wild horses

their muscles glistening in the sun like the syntax of poems who stand just the same

your body, my favorite altar - I have been kneeling here for so many days now, tracing your soft edges with candle wax-drip lips like it’s what they were made for,

the delicateness of your wrists and the way your dress moves over your hips is a song that is always stuck in my head,

when you are gone, i hum it quietly to myself,

sightlessly traversing the nape of your stained-glass-sunlight neck.

Love,

Seventy-Four

Wed, 20 Jun 2012 21:26:09 -0400

I’m tuning my guitar at 12:43 am.

The world is turning,
I can feel it

It’s like a gear in the machinery in the universe of night

We’re smaller gears, with interconnected stories that grow and form,
even while we sleep,
things are turning, right now,

major plot twists are building bridges to find you, they are restless as a child, learning patience just the same

I sit on my bed playing a song that I will forget

The machinery in my chest is making glowing things that I will give to my children

The world is turning,
there is a bridge, leading somewhere I’ve never been,

materializing beneath my feet.

Seventy-Three

Mon, 18 Jun 2012 21:44:34 -0400

she told me once how she always dreams of flying,
how, sometimes, she would even wake up floating
and that her mother would fill her pockets with rocks, so that she wouldn’t lose her like a balloon

nothing is as serious as it seems, she says, that’s why i’m so light
though, with age comes a certain shifting heaviness
that her shoulders have become grateful for, even if she still insists on holding onto me while we take walks, just in case

but together, we’re more like clouds, never worrying about the direction of the wind
offering the mercy of summer-shade to other balloon-children, playing, while the rocks shuffle in their pockets
and the sky wrestles with gravity, sending dreams of flight, like maps, in every direction.

28/30

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 20:23:52 -0400

i have touched so many things
leaving memories on all of them

that doorknob only feels dirty
because it has all of the afternoons i ran outside as a kid on it

my skin is made entirely out of these things
everyday it changes, shifting

constantly outgrowing some while making more
they are as light as prismatic feathers

when i dance around, the room is filled with them
shaken off from my shoulders and hips

and if i were to sit still for too long
i reckon this coat of prismatic feathered memory might get too heavy for me to stand again.

26/30

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 21:11:07 -0400

there is such wild in you
saltwater skin and sandy footprints

fields without fences and those skies - those skies!
we’re from there, you always say

pointing towards the glowing dark blanketing us above
or, out and off, to the waves travelling from the horizon to kiss our feet

we’re from there, while you rope swing
into a dream of orchards in bloom

writing poems and kisses on the front porch
delicate lines of prose and fingertips on skin

the sky in you, waterfalling with light at dusk
the golden beacon from home reaching for our hand

we’re from there,
we’re from there.

24/30

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 21:04:05 -0400

just past the trembling heartland of this drunken country
(drunk on wine and easy words and shallow philosophy),

that’s trying to rowdy-stumble touch
its way into someone’s morning conversation,

there’s Tennessee,
where people have the stereotypical Texas accent,

(the same accent that no Texan actually has)
and when we cross into Memphis,

it’s known that we’re only stopping for 1950’s diners, gas, or blue-jeaned Elvis Presley’s,
that don’t sleep as much as they should and who’ll trade music for miles,

and about two diners and three Presleys later
we’ll see the Blue Ridge Mountains,

the ones that everyone sings about,
and we’ll know that we’re almost home.

20/30

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 22:53:00 -0400

the world crumbles when you close your eyes,
reassembles when you open them

some days i catch the wall climbing itself to get back into place,
some days the tiles dance and find themselves laying beneath my feet

i walk freely into the labyrinth of Silence
i run my hands along its walls, every inch of it feels like the word “further”

what is there but this?
what is there but now?

conversations feel like an abandoned church
filling with snow

i close my eyes
what is there but this?

what is there but now?

18/30

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 06:22:23 -0400

I met this girl who was woven together out of lightning and hourglass sand,
flower petals and sun

she didn’t have a name,
she said i’d remember her by how it felt

laughingly telling me, that way,
the only way to speak of her would be with poetry

you’re a handful of thunder you know that?

no, no, i’m two.

17/30

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 21:26:00 -0400

let the moonlight stain us,
sing to me backwards

i will remember the words
and write them on your back in kisses and fingertips

throw a handful of music into the air
and we’ll be all sangria and hips

while the morning waits for us
like an old dog on the front porch

but for now we are here,
and that’s enough,

that’s enough.

14/30

Sat, 14 Apr 2012 22:51:21 -0400

sometimes, my bones aren’t shifting tectonic plates,
sometimes, they are glass

glass organs and fingertips
that clink and clank long into the night

the rivers of my veins can be seen
as my heart pushes and pulls, so delicately,
i can’t help but stare at my forearms and thighs

the sun shines right through me
my shadow is crimson and gold dust

we’re made of these things,
i tell everyone around me

some days, i learn how strong glass can be
some nights, i find how soft

sometimes, i jump further than i should
breaking entire parts of myself

i spend weeks, months
reassembling myself piece by piece

staring at the crimson and gold dust
telling everyone i see,

we’re made of these things,
we’re made of these things