More you might like
The river runs home
In a year by the river in the woods off a curvy back road
When I’m rebuilding after what I burned down
Rooms still with walls half knocked down and
Holes in the ceiling here and paint chipping
There and sometimes I’ll knock down a wall
I didn’t see was there or I’ll trip and stare through
The hole in the ceiling thinking I will never ever
Patch it up but I will build a dock too to the river
To the river and it will be sturdy and it will be safe and
Though the holes in the ceiling let in rain and
The walls are crumbling and there are rusty hinges
Even though even though
There is a room here for you when you need it when
You rest when you breathe when the river makes
You weary when you want to stop and drown
Stop and rest because though I am building I am
Strong I am safe I am growing I am building and there
You can patch the hole while you’re here or just sit
And paint you can knock a wall down with me and
I’ll repair the leaks in your port and in your bow and
When you are healed just for now go and love the wind
And I will love the wind and my crumbling home with
The hinges you fixed and the paint you left
Splattered on the floor and the warm dappled sunlight
And the dying leaves and the frosty wind and the snow
And the snow will fall through the cracks and comfort me
Until until you find me again when you’re weary
When you’re tired when you need me
I wanted to play spit but you wanted to play speed
Your long legs gave me butterflies when I was only 12
We played cards at 11 pm in our pajamas on your floor
And I wanted to kiss you and didn’t understand
I loved looking at your face your masculinity and your femininity fusing equally into one
I wanted your mind and your body and I wanted to understand you and I got neither of those because
Distance and forced morals and anxiety and awkwardness
And I see you now successful beautiful in your sharp way
Following dreams climbing mountains running marathons
And I’m a little jealous look at your life now how wonderful it must be
And I wonder what would have happened if I kissed you over our cards on the floor in your room in the middle of the night
A flower contemplates her existence
In the garden where you wander I wonder if you see me and know me as myself or as one of a hundred blooms blossoming at this moment only and do you consume my scent and turn to another beside me and do the same or is mine enough alone and do I as a bloom of only one of a hundred exactly the same matter as myself or as one of the whole and does it matter to me if I matter or am I content with being simply one among a field of blooms with scents all the same when nonetheless my scent is enjoyed regardless of the innumerable blooms besides me and if I were to bloom alone rather than in a field would I matter more to you or to me or at all if I were to bloom alone or as part of a whole does it diminish my scent or does it stay the same and will you pluck me and let me die in a pretty vase in the house or will you leave me to die alone at the end of my season surrounded by others exactly like me and rooted here among these others I wonder what matters and what doesn’t and how do I feel and how do you feel and do you even notice me at all only one of a hundred in this field of blooms
Old state route 5
golden light on back country roads
glittering on the dying autumn corn and soybeans
warm morning light flooding in through the kitchen window
dancing on the cold tile floor while the coffee drips
reading with the window open and
the crickets chirping and the crisp last day
September breeze drifting through
blanket impenetrable soul soothed
home again with dirty hands and new callouses
to the one I don’t and won’t know just know
I miss you in these moments
A penny for your judgment
Your words your simply cutting words scald me and
Startle me boiling hot on my skin stripping away my thin veneer of
Worth sewn precariously onto my filthy disgusting
Unworthy bones with a single thread straining against
The weight of me pulling it in two directions at once
And you slice it exposing me for the pile of disjointed detritus I am
And on my tip toes I stand keeping myself alive
Afloat pretending I am worthy of still being here and
You kick the chair from under my toes as you turn
Your back because if you turn then there is no one
Else there to measure my merit to see how I try to
See if I’m valuable and so I fall and am caught by a
Rope of my own making
Of all the farm towns, in all the world
You flick your pocketknife open and closed with a rhythm that soothes my nerves. Driving on this old back road highway is beautiful and I love it but the curves make me grip the wheel a little too hard. You play with your knife as you look out the window, silently, contemplatively, your eyes a sunset I would have photographed. I point out another clearing between the woods for the power lines. A long stretch farther than I can see running up a hill of no trees and not even high grass, so the power lines can go through. They always stun me into distraction and once or twice I’ve had to swerve to make sure I didn’t miss a curve. They’re magical, their existence is magical and wonderful and if I think about it too hard I might cry. You point out a falcon sitting on a fence bordering the farm we just passed. One of those mid 19th century falling apart barns I love, the unsafe ones, the ones I always eagerly look in when we drive by and I’m not the one driving. What’s in there? What was in there before? What hot summer nights happened there in the hay? In the passenger seat, I marvel at the enchanting expanses of mowed grass, what a silly thing to love. I want to know who does the mowing, and how long does it take, and where does that path go that goes back into the woods? I want to see everything. I want to explore everything. You mumble along with a Bon Iver song, the one that always helps me find my breath again, and I look at you, driving, magical in your existence. You smile at me like Rick and say his line, you know I love it, and I look at you, glowing like Ilsa. Your eyes are back on the road and this time you’re the one that points out the power line clearing for me, wanting to see the look of wonder on my face when I see it. I play with the knife now, a little fearful of its sharp edges, remembering our sharp edges and how we have dulled them with this, these back roads and farmlands and hills and more green than either of us ever saw in our childhoods. It’s magical. A fawn stops at the side of the road. I startle and slow down, pass it as it runs back into the woods, all clear. I look at my empty passenger seat, sigh, and continue singing to Bon Iver.
Fight against the sadness, Artax
I sit here in love with the grey bright moon its
Mysteries beautiful and daunting and enchanting
But I know it only has one side the one I can
See I sigh in delight at the blinding sun brighter than
I ever will be or can be unworthy of its
Light but I believe it is a planet that shines
I pine deeply after the white glinting stars staring
At them in the deep black night hoping they will
Rescue me and I tell myself they are pinpoints in
A fabric that an ancient goddess drapes
Over our flat earth and it
Isn’t a joke I mean it I
Do because I am in love with
Nothing I know and I call it true
I sit here alone unknown and
Unknowing and I love ghosts with
Words that echo in my head and
Phantoms that haunt me in their unmoving
Forms captured by anyone but me and
I am nothing I am
Pointless a ghost myself an
Unknown and I think I have felt hurricanes and
The heat and depth of the fucking Mariana
Trench but all I have done is sit in
The dark in a cage in a prison made of words
And nothing and imaginary feelings and
I cry
For nothing
Meta metaphor
Your gaze knocks me sideways it comes through a fog your eyes across her shoulders as you size me up behind her the true one the false vision the real belonging and your eyes slap me across the cheeks until they are red and bleeding and when my eyes find yours stopping your violence your questioning your lust your blindness you turn away and forget about me ignore my desperate seeking needing pleading and you look back one more time to see exactly what you want to which is nothing I am at all
Michicant stop loving you
You rip through me wildfire burning me to ashes before I’ve had a chance to take a breath
To breathe to remember that I am whole now I am healed
I am not that false delusion hot October night dream stabbing myself in the gut with a sharpened tanto
Your collarbone is no longer a slick edge I slip on cracking my head open on the obsession
Your hands are not resting disembodied on my pillow lulling me to sleep with their perfect veins and lines and knuckles
I am not a Murakami dream girl but I am a Murakami lie and you are nothing and I am nothing
And yet your presence suddenly slams me against the bricks and my skull cracks open and bloody pulpy words spill out
I want to believe
Do you believe me in the daylight when I control my words and my thoughts and my feelings?
Do you believe me in the bright summer sun when I say I’m doing well?
Do you believe me in the sweet morning dew when I’m achieving when I’m productive when I make sound choices?
Or do you believe me in the moonlight when I’ve lost all control of my feelings my thoughts my words?
Do you believe me in the darkness when I’m frantically writing and crying and gasping for the black night air?
Do you believe me in the starlight when I think I’ll never be loved again that I won’t survive this that it wouldn’t matter anyway?
Because I don’t believe me at all
