dreams

afraid to turn off my mind tonight
full moon’s up above the house
all the branches that fell last week
pile high like an elephant graveyard
toward the sky

what could happen
slim possibilites
keep my pulse high
write all my dreams
each night i see a thousand futures
and i wake up back here
and each time he’s there to remind me
that broken hearts make broken years
and i plead i scream i shake in vain
and i wake up back here

Filed under: poetry

symmetry

symmetry
i’ve always wanted two halves
mirror mirror
but my body sways right
and i only work at night
and my heart only tears
never grows or repairs

got a crooked spine
that only hurts half the time
got a good plan to split
but i won’t follow it

the other side
three thousand open miles

symmetry it gets lonely
i only said
i only said
to come in alone
bring your hands
and turn off all the phones
i know it’s a shame
but we were both built that way
and i will keep searching for
the other part of me

sort our tracks
we overlap
we overlap
we don’t find our way back

Filed under: poetry

Poems-R-Kool

Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color.

–W.S. Merwin

Filed under: poetry

Harvest

how can i feel at home
in the house we grew up in
when it’s gotten so cold
and you don’t care where i am

with all my wisdom teeth
and counted one more
i have learned nothing
if nothing is sure
of leaves taking last breaths,
from new color to death
to sensory memories,
to here is what’s left

there will always be a few
sentences left around the room
edit, erase,
and write back soon
and we may not speak
for many more harvest moons
but i’ve got your words here
and i’ll write a tune

Filed under: poetry

“love”

love has to be something
it is always old or impossible or
new and scathing,
too much to carry,

“holding breath”.

yours hasn’t been
born yet -
you are sitting on eggshells,
waiting for the first peck

will you know how to feed it
this time

mine’s grown up and gone off
on its own
it barely writes but i know
it’s alive out there
i have a few postcards saved:
“it’s a different world out here”

love is not what my
middle school journal said it was
it isn’t how you smelled then
and how you smell still -

scent of time divided by
two lives
(we are all just on different parts
of one wide path) -

you choose to walk alone,
which is fine
now, my love said,
“well, it’s your life”

in the morning creeping up
in the blue through the glass
in the thoughts in your sleeping
head
love came through ,
i shot it dead

Filed under: poetry