Cranial Pressure.

I rarely finish what I start.

My Hair, My Head.

I went through an age once,
when I dreamed three times a day
that a dark sparrow would swoop,
deep beneath the clouds,
and pluck me out of this white field,
acres billowing with uncertainty
and sleep.

I imagined that he would tuck me elegantly
beneath his oil-black wing
and carry me to a place
of color and magic,
where we could speak together
in wrapped-up tongues,
in clicks and squawks,
in bright agreement.

I can still smell the wind, there,
like woolen rugs, beaten with
the forearms of a sixth generation,
and dried figs, baking listlessly
in a round and inviting sun.
And the way that smell would get caught
within my thin, Scandinavian hair,
so unsure of the scents the air carried
that each strand would cling
to the spices and curls of smoke,
so that we could bring them back home
and breathe them in
before rolling up the covers.

But now,
my hair seems to have lost those smells,
and are beginning to fray
in a heavy want for an American boy,
closer to land and
farther from such an old world.
Somebody, it wants, who wears brown boots
and tends to climb over all the rocks in the road.
A man who forgets to scrub his hands clean
before breaking his bread,
which he does with a song from his belly,
and a mouth full of healthy, hungry teeth.
A man with thick bones
and tan lines,
and a mother who can French braid.

Truth be told,
my hair has been splitting
since it last felt the hearty hand of a lover,
some odd years ago,
and now my mane and I
have become lonely widows,
curled up in a bun,
writing love stories
we know so little about.

The Old Wise.

After a week in Brooklyn. I never finish the things I draw.

I am the Hell That Saved You.

From 2007. Illegible and insane. Mostly about my father's cancer.

Absent Love.

I'd like to dip you
into a pot of honey,
so that I could
lick your shining
arms,
and have
that nectar,
the taste of
our sweet,
smitten place,
our simple
adoration,
our easy,
easy love.

And when all of your
cold parts are
warmed and
nursed,
wrapped in gold
and ready
for a flighty mouth,
I will clean you.

Take my hands,
browned and
balmy as they may be,
and place them
over your
eyes,
below the sunlight,
so that you may
see through my
skin,
and see through my
bones,
blood,
and my need
for you.
Take my hands,
so that you may
see as I see.

Lift your tongue,
through the
shell of my ear,
delight in the weight
of every word
you've spoken,
every word
I've never forgotten.
Run over the
ridges of our past,
the thousands of
letters stacked
upon letters,
and sentences
coiled behind
theories and fables
we've parented
together.

Disentangle
your cold fingers,
those fingers I've
dreamt of
for five messy years,
and pour them
over my chest.
Lay them still
and you may notice
that your breath
is pushing
and tugging
with the sway of
my own.
Listen closely,
and you might
find that my
heart
is twinkling
quietly
along with
yours.

I'd like to take you
away to an island
off deep in the sea,
where only
two sets
of blushing lips
are our company,
where we
wind eachother
in white palm leaves,
and laugh
like children.
If I could protect
you, if I could
save you and
all of the glowing
jewels of our
past,
I would
build us a ship
and sail us
away from
where we have been,
because I see
how deep your lovely
feet are buried
here.

Book of Wonder & Delight.

Something in my journal.

Nice to Meet You.

Very old, never finished.

Once and Again.

Starting off with a bang- this world has been turned on its ear, is lying flat, listening to the thumping sounds of the earth. What's coming? Distant vibrations and foreign clouds of dust lead me nowhere, really, just back to you, wherever that is. The sky is billowing after the fires it embraced the night before. I haven't written since I taught myself to forget you, and now your face is seared into the darkness of my cold garden, like you were there all along. After we spoke ourselves hoarse, my fingers are seizing with the unsaid. I slept three hours last night, and then dreamt of your face, white as bone and much warmer than before. I don't understand, and never have.

On Being Where We've Been.

Do you remember how you used to rub your thumb against the inside of my wrist when you tried to calm me down? And the way your sheets smelled after we peeled oranges in bed and told each other about our earliest dreams, do you remember?

And the day you palmed my neck and pulled me in close, kissed me with your eyes open and a tattered, yellow letter in your back pocket. Later, I read your untidy words as you called me your cup of coffee, and drew me sitting outside of a sad, empty birdcage.

We spent an entire summer in our pajamas, too, and took turns blowing smoke rings up to the sky like little halos leaving Earth.

And then you wanted to paint your dresser pool blue, but once we dipped our hands into the can, we got carried away and made love together like two cold bluebirds swept up in the jet stream. And we never told anybody.

I didn't mind.

Do you ever think about the night we sprawled ourselves on my roof nursing a bottle of my dad's old bourbon and watched as three-thousand-year-old constellations illuminated the dark pieces of our limbs?

With unseasoned hands, we fell in love with every inch of oneanother.

Wasn't that the day you told me you liked the name Jason for a boy?
Sometimes, when I start my car up, there's a moment before the heater warms itself when the air smells like the days we used to spend together.

Do old street names remind you of us, like they do me?
I remember one afternoon we rolled down mossy hills, smoked our young, blooming worries away, and promised ourselves that we wouldn't wind up forgetting our lives together.

Do you remember?