In a Garden

She stepped among the coloring flowers
and kicked over every ornament in her way:
a bird bath, an old gnome, a boy
whom she'd been chasing. Her dress already
brushed in strokes of green and brown,
she knelt to pick dandelions from the grass;
the yellow weeds staining young fingers,
she held death so loosely in her hands.

My First Video Post

Fishing for Fire

Lying in bed, I stared through your sleeping eyes,
wondering if soft blankets and words were enough to live,
whether shivering together would bring heat or just friction;
my cool fingers drew slow circles around your mouth,
but I could not feel or imitate the warmth escaping your lips—
freezing alone is not the same as freezing alone together.
I left that night as dreams of sailing beautiful oceans
turned into a painting of two children slipping over ice,
and like an ambitious autumn breeze catching the spring,
the unnatural season began to pour through my veins.
Soon, dead leaves fell like snow beneath my skin,
and covered the water I had saved for the ensuing sun,
lucid water that had promised to grow green futures.
I ate fire, drank fire, and smoked fire,
but nothing seemed to heat the frigid lake of leaves
as it grew slower and sharper beneath my skin,
pushing to break and speak out against the season.
Fragile and barefooted I wandered carelessly that night
searching for a reflection of my inverted world,
a mirror to talk to or simply a tongue to place down my throat,
anything to forget the potential burden of breaking alone.
...I found it, eventually, before the sun had begun to rise
at the edge of a night littered in matches and clothes;
it was in a pond, nearly placid, reflecting in the moon,
shivering alone with no one to see or break the surface.
I knelt down to touch and gaze beneath sleepy ripples,
and I saw beautiful flames sailing within the waves,
hiding their light beneath dead floating leaves.
That night, I decided to go fishing for my fire.
I dove head first into life's cool essence of darkness,
chasing scattered flames like old summer dreams,
and I watched the sun rise as we thawed alone and together.

Ants with Sticks

I watched them dismantle a cat's game in my backyard,
their X's and O's imprinted in the rust-filled sand,
symbols left behind like fossils who refused to change.
I watched them transplant the sticks piece-by-piece
over new blades of grass, new colors of flowers,
hoping they might be filled with sweet, simple time:
free land, free energy, free love in arms of freedom.
Sedentary, I sat watching and drinking beer
while a tired sun set behind the distant hills;
political ads poured out my windows, ignorance
screamed back-and-forth like wavering curtains
torn by the hands of an evening draft—I sat,
I watched them play games with broken branches,
and the history of our world continued to suffer.

...and Through the Tornado

Coasting over snowy fields of an imitating world,
I yearn to feel a painful comfort from the earth
as my stripped form can no longer find warmth
buried within this barren space—blue is all I touch.
Cold lungs no longer satisfied with dreamy breezes
transiently blowing over my mouth and wings,
every piece of my body stops pumping as I fall
like a broken spirit into winds biting at my skin.
A sharp bitterness cuts through my chest
as I look down to see the unforgiving clouds
that will not soften my journey with hope
or reveal the divine on a fairytale mountaintop;
I am to be sent alone into the funnel of smoke.

My head is an earthquake, but the sky does not mind;
it torments placidity, equaling my mass and gravity
and the distance I measure to each end—equations
like fog could never support my unknown intentions.
I Inhale these wispy seeds of recycled water and doubt
and slip through the white cushioned apparitions,
as I find myself saturated, a snowflake built on dust.

Through the chaos, balance will bring life—death.

Darkness now engulfs my sight, as the tornado
tears the land like night around my pale figure.
I inherently delve into this ferocious wind
with freezing palms that split and fill with dirt;
I cup both bleeding hands around this earth
and mold the particles as a child packs snow
into a tight round ball—Is this believing?
I place my creation into the spiraling wind,
and it circles up through the storm and is thrown
past the clouds, cast over the wispy blue space
like a saturated dream that I can never keep;
as torn dust eternally swirls around a center,
ashes will beg the wind to burn once again.

The Unobtainable Stars

I am 7.
I decide to become a Jedi
to fight against the evil dark-side,
but the night still scares me
and I pull sweaty covers over my eyes
as my flashlight begins to flicker;
I put my faith in the force
and the fear slowly passes
like clouds over the moon,
stars appearing in-and-out of sight.

I am 14.
Girls do not talk to me,
so I try to move things with my mind:
pencils, paper weights, my teacher's
right and left breasts.
I seem to fail at everything.
I stare directly into the sun
in hopes that I might soak in the fire,
maybe obtain the power of a superman;
my doctor soon prescribes me glasses.

I am 28.
I have been taught everything
that I have ever wanted to know,
and begin to construct my own philosophy.
Some exclaim, “Magic!”
They seem to believe that I have powers,
and I become more than human
as I drink in the high praise of my followers;
I will find something new for them,
something special, something more
than simple thoughts for change.

I am 56.
I have perfected the power of knowledge
and many hang on every word I touch,
yet I have not found my supernatural gift,
my destiny to have one ability
that no one else will ever have—I want
to look up and fly over the trees,
and I need to be the only one.
Staring at a cloud covered moon,
I wait for my chance to taste
a quick reflection of the son.

How We Understand Space

I slide between narrow rows of pines
crunching needles under soft feet
and note the paleness of the horizon
through green and tangled branches.

Christmas is all I smell:
eggnog, wrapping paper, chopped oak
burning a red flavor through the house.

I step past the framed columns of trees
and stand at the edge of a field;
the world looks broken from here,
caught under these dreary eyes,
frozen in shambles until the spring.

I wish I could speak of the sun—
registers shooting warm air into gloves,
the heat keeping us safe for tomorrow.

Bare fingers chilled numb by the wind,
my pockets loaded with pine cones,
I call myself the walking tree
as I step through the empty field
pushing seeds into the snow and ice.

A quiet warmth sets through my veins
as the sap and dust sticks to my clothes
and nothing is left to do but wait;
out here, memories are never certain,
but maybe I will not die alone.

The unkind art of feeding

You have to feed on something,

they said, or I imagine them
saying, and I do... but I don't
want to feed,
at least not doing it to trade
in visible doubts for a life's
uncertain

drift between I am, and I'm not...
fed fat by the neatly packaged
carcasses
clearly drained and cellophane wrapped,
to keep unclean hands bloodlessly
far from mine.

I'm told but I won't hear, We're more
highly evolved. We think therefore
we are so
discomfited by not knowing...
whether the fed-on think and feel
what we do

when life's last light runs out, taking
with it the green and red that played
over flesh
and bony because... if they do,
it could be, we're feeding on one
another.

That's the unkind art of feeding.