homesick?

weaving thru fragments of
beginnings & endings
thru pieces of perceptions &
potentials. yr fundamental lack of reasoning
& my impractical quest for sentience.
this blank slate is too smudgy with
reminders of what stained it before -
rub it clean with yr gaudy meditations &
yr startling grin, till we
forget who we are. were we?
i think i'm remembering
what to miss, i think
our unhinged speculations are
our own undoing &
we've delved too deep this time.
you see, i'm perched on a ledge
with a view to nostalgia
& only yr distractions will do.

a memory, canada in september

& all i could think was
how intricately beautiful a photograph it could be
the sunset behind you
yr tear-streaked face in the fading light
the heartbreak in yr eyes.

yr tears &
my calm arms &
i wondered how i could be so cruel.

& it wasn't till morning
behind the wheel with you just vanished
in the rearview mirror
that reality hit & my eyes flooded &
i cried for every ounce of love
i've ever had to leave.

glimpses

standing on my bike stepping
full body into the pedals i'm
taking off i'm soaring i can never be
stopped, & the instances
captured in the lighted spaces whizzing by
are held hostage by these cold dark streets
are bound to each other
in some self-referential collage that
contracts and expands and
repeats night after night after night & my
squeaky bike chains and my visible breaths
give me away
make me look solid and grounded and real
while really truly i'm weightless and gone.
& the silhouette of yr beard is too
close a match, too
strong a resemblance so i
shake my head & will you away
& what am i trying to prove with this
attempt at inexistance i wonder
what detachment have i designated
for myself?

fingerprints

woke this morning to
bruises on my thighs like
ghostly fingerprints
had left their mark & i
wonder did i clutch myself
too tightly curling and
shivering
holding myself together in my dreams?

leaving

walking down the street today watching the curl of my breath in the air as i exhaled, slipped my hands into my pockets pulled from the folds of denim a pile of pale dry crumbled fragments that vanished twisting into the breeze only a memory of warmer air, of the close of a day, of another walk, singing face flung to the blue skies above until the perfect shade of autumn crimson caught my eye and i stopped and reached down, spun it between my fingers then tucked it away as if to save that fall day, that anticipation in the air, that sense of the weather almost gone, hovering before fading away. a smattering of vibrant leaves lighting up the street where today they lie soggy and brown clogging the drains and soaking the hems of my jeans. i brushed the last bits from my fingertips trying to recall their former hue but the sky only turned greyer and spat raindrops my way, whispering: winter is here.

downtown pdx

i'm so tired, & the sunlight is so short
these days. this is a picture of me
crawling across the floor groping for my alarm clock
this is the shock of cold air
the smell of rain and leaves.
the electric glow and the darkness,
they look like you
in the periphery of what i used to be, You
just out of focus when i look away


the dryness in my eyes & the
cheap sugar cookies turning sour in my stomach,
the clean empty streets & the
bar-goers who look at me sideways.
the shiver in my shoulders tonight,
the smile on my lips.


how many of us are faking sane and
how many faking crazy?
you staggered down the sidewalk making people
jump! in surprise
at yr laughing eyes and loud voice;
the second time i passed you i told you i was lost
you said i was breaking yr heart

wet wet water

i licked dairy-free buttery spread from my fingers &
you came clean about the milk you'd poured in my cereal but i only laughed
turned up the oven while the toast crackled
and the smoke drifted up
and let's just hope the fire alarm doesn't work, else
the screeching beeping will drive us outside

into the rain and we'll
wander confused, wander wet
with drops drip-dropping off the ends of our noses
streams coming down from our hair.
listen, do you hear the clouds silently fleeing?

now that we're wet and slippery we should go to the coast
before it dries up too
oh look i imagined it maybe but here i am still
in this puddle drenched and shivering,
transported. where have you gone, my enemy?

bike time

time moves at a different pace on a bike - each ride in its entirety one unit disregarding clocks and schedules, each ride in its entirety a release and a relief, a forgetting of how fast the world moves while we cling to it with our feet or plow through it in our cars. skimming over the surface all relativity disappears till we jolt to a stop come back down to earth wonder how many minutes have elapsed.

amethyst lake

a shock of hair a flash of eyes a glance as fleeting as that flicker of smile

yr face remembers me yr limbs recall our future submersion - let us allow ourselves to get acquainted once more

i'll be the ice fisher chipping away numbly to lower myself gingerly into yr cold amethyst depths - you the impassive the impenetrable the vast and beautiful

you fill with lights shining through the translucent blanket like underwater fireflies darting from possibility to moment to anticipation

write me a song to lull me to frozen sleep so we can sing the refrain together in my dreams

you were never the legible type, i was always the sleepwalker stumbling into you hands out as if my blind fingers could pull a textured meaning from yr unbearable smooth surfaces

one night i spun fiery circles in a fierce dance a dervish impersonation illuminating your dark still countenance and i felt you melt and shift a little beneath my feet

before you regained yr composure