Moments

She was crying so I flipped the switch to madness and leapt straight into the air, thirty thousand feet of troublesome sky. She stood in line to watch me go, waiting her turn with the ghosts I've left strewn across the country. The Atlantic looked on with disapproval, and I hoped I could find a piece of Pacific before word traveled that far. The light hits me square in the pupils so I reach for some mountain shade to pull over my head. I just need another hour's sleep and enough oxygen to last my lungs till landing. She dropped her wheels straight in California for the sickly sweet Oceanside style and some Oakland flavor, but I kept my distance and flew on over her head with all the world beneath me. 

It's three drinks before my mind slips out and I'm left with a vacant skull full of fading Northwest sun. Something restless is being painted on the cavernous cave that echoes with empty thoughts and she is the Michelangelo to my Sistine scalp. I am branded and collecting donations, a visitor's fee because no one gives a shit about beauty unless it costs something. 

No photography, please allow the moment to be a moment and hold your breath until it's done. Hidden in all moments is an expanse of experience that must be cradled as an infant. The lines she draws in cranial nooks follow her pattern of sweetness and there is too much beauty as layers of grey sink into bone like roots digging for water. The world has crowded in to watch, everyone minding their elbows and sneezing into palms slicked with anticipation and ignorance. The dull roar of thoughts hurtles ceaselessly around this bone canvas. Her tears fall as she paints and I stand in line to watch. 

This is

So this is today. 

We are mountain fog and misty thoughts, coming down incessantly. 

Coming down from atmospheric heights, pure perspective miles above our surface

Lending gravity to the weight and fall of each drop. 

Aiming for water, not land. 

Hoping for ripples, not craters. 

Soluble missiles, dead in the water, muffled communication. 

Sound travels through blades of grass and echoes across asphalt quicker than swamps and silt. 

So we aim for water, not land. 

Drain the lake or walk on top. 

Absence

I feel the ache of absence

Without the parallel bars of twin lives

Instead of straddling supports,

I try landing on my feet

But the earth is warming, 

Bringing groggy contentment and treacherous sweat

Making every step a game

Of easy smiles and ground-floor memories

As I grind my teeth

To the rhythm of typewriter keys

My roots expose

And twist in nervous numbness 

A roadmap of shock

Sending grey to my eyes

As the keys type goodbye,

I escape to a bar named You

And stare at the answers,

Swimming in alcohol. 

Summer

I'm riding in the backseat, with my arm out the window and almost too cold summer air filling my vision. The street lights flash orange-tinted images of my veins and the color staining my skin; a tree with roots running through the back of my hand and down each finger. I turn decay to oxygen and spread my limbs to the black sky. 

Pacific

I have Southern California sand 

between my toes

Carefully carried cross country

To bring Pacific back with me. 

Expanse

The grey span of earth, laid out beneath me

And dirt roads that cut 

Like capillaries

As monstrous cotton covers peaks and ridges

Endless expanse. 

Fear like photography

There's a fucking half smile on every stranger

And It makes me sick with jealousy

Of everyone who sees your lips

without fixating like this

I develop fear just like an allergy

Listening to songs about hope

And hating myself for apathy

There's a look on everyone around me

And it tells me I'm crashing

There's a book open in front of me

But every word I read is you

Every word is you

I'm holding fear just like photography

Snapshots of doubt

I just can't throw away

I'll keep thinking poison

Sketching fear with ink

A tattoo made of shades

To let you get some sleep

Linger

We are strange and made of extremes

Like mud-filled patterns, boot-stomped trails

Aches following steps

Unnamed scratching beneath the surface

Hidden bridges and rope swings 

Staining each page

As my fingers linger on dog eared corners

We talk in conversations around each other,

Never direct,

Betraying our selfish,

Licking the razor and holding our breath for the endless moment before the skin separates and nerves tell the brain:

"This is pain. This is how you should feel."

This feels like a swan song,

And it reeks of borrowed time. 

I just want to know the ending. 

Do I go like a bird in midair?

Or a cat searching for a place to die?

Poetic Conclusions

We share the same sky

The same smoke, the same lie

Walking concrete divisions 

Of hurt and goodbye

Our secrets are turning

On desperate pages

The tree blooms above

The flowers below

We tread the damp earth

Soon drying to desert

Among history's names

Of death and of life

The bridges are building

Through hungry ambition 

Their cables suspended

 On oceans of white

We hold the same treasure

A twisted cognition

Condemning a future

Of hope and grey skies

Our speed turns to liquid

Fills wide dusty canyons

With hot summer air

And pacific blue eyes

We read the same tombstones

Poetic conclusions  

Of dust and despair

In an ocean of time.