Coward

I twist-turned into the car like

It was mine, somehow, and started it up

I turned the radio volume higher feeling full of something like friendship, only simpler

Wet and cold and exhausted and feeling touched, by something. Feeling grateful.

I pulled into the driveway like

It was my last action before the martyrdom,

Full of serious, slow significance and a tidal wave of dread that knows it isn’t wanted.

Contemplating that open garage door as if it was the cave that held my monsters. If only.

I walked into the house like

It was the same action I took every day,

As if everything was normal, as if I wasn’t bothered, as if I wasn’t lying with every smile

And turned impulsively away from the voice in the living room, to keep one second more.

I engaged in conversation like

I didn’t think it was cynically meaningless,

Or far more terrifying than jumping off all the high places I’ve ever been, without a rope,

And nodded and asked the questions I was supposed to and pretended I wanted to be there.

I left to strip for a shower like

I wasn’t trying to wash off my feelings, too,

And I stood there in the hot water just trying to stay as blank as the white-flecked wall.

I let the water run down my legs and pool around my toes, already wrinkled from wet socks.

I brushed through my hair like

I wasn’t stalling in that one empty room,

I stood there in front of the mirror and didn’t have to try to keep my face straight,

Just fumbled uninterestedly with my bra, the catches sliding past, past, past.

I left through the front door like

I wasn’t sneaking away like a thief,

A criminal who steals the support of a family without offering their own solidity to be used.

I pulled the handle until it clicked, and didn’t look back as if I would have liked to lock it.


XXXX-

A Third Dimension

To get off the ground has always been difficult.

Since mankind first learned to run and move and understand,

We have envied the creatures that have claimed the freedom of a third dimension.

We have longed to map our potential in spheres instead of circles,

And to breach that upwards that eludes us.

I love airports and the hours they hold all bottled up within them.

I love the tacky news stores with racks of candy and the long, wide corridors.

On a plane a feeling of suspension – not of gravity, but of time – pervades my senses

And suddenly it seems my minutes are so meaningless I can waste them how I choose.

I love the way the plane noses up into an angle surely steeper than Everest,

And watching the miniaturized landscape spread out below you, unobtainable, distant.

There is a weightlessness that comes with swinging, when the arms are long enough.

The air-cutting movement form one end to the next is exhilarating,

But the true freedom comes right at the edge of the arc as the seat goes out instead of up,

When you feel like you could just keep going forward, just slide off the cusp of your seat,

And never land again.

I was never good at climbing trees, I was always too afraid of the uncertainty.

I was always too aware that I could fall at any moment, my foot could slip so simply,

And the earth would rise up to meet me in a rush of air.

But there was something about struggling higher, always reaching one branch up,

Feeling the subtly changing sway of the trunk beside me,

Feeling the branch made for grabbing – its width, its bark made for holding on to;

And I wanted to reach higher, I wanted to make it to the crest of the evergreen

But I never could.

So often man describes lightness, freedom, tranquilty as “like flying” –

As if that action should require no work and give only reward, the vast skies;

As if once man can lift himself off of the ground, all the worries of every day

Will fade behind him, indistinguishable from the land.

Sometimes I stand on the pedals of my bike and pump my feet like I am sprinting,

And I rush across the pavement faster than my eyes can track my progress.

Sometimes everything on the ground – this unknowable web of connections –

Is simply too tangled; sometimes I want to leave it below me until it becomes obsolete.

Sometimes when my eyes well up and I don’t want to feel my own tears fall,

I just push through those pedals like my feet are meant to go all the way to the ground.

And sometimes that isn’t enough, I just can’t go fast enough. I have to go up.

Sometimes when the air starts to eddy off me and stir through my hair, I pretend

That each push of my foot to the ground is also a tiny push upwards,

Every time my pedal comes around is another propeller turn to take me up,

I pretend that the click of my gears is the slats deploying and my wings are extending out,

And maybe if I keep pushing, keep going forever, someday I’ll lift away from the earth.

To get off the ground has always been difficult.

But I’m willing to try,

If only one more time.


XXX--

If It's Inexistant

Time always struck me as an

Odd configuration of numbers on the façade of a primitive perpetual motion machine,

I never quite calculated

How throwaway seconds could turn into unfathomable millennia.

Time always seemed to me a

Heavy blanket of reality in the air around us, a fundamental force,

Springing into being in the

Shatteringly theoretical explosion that red-shifts us all.

Time always struck me as

Inherently inexistent, envisioned but innately intangible

It is incomprehensible

In all that it is everywhere and omnipotent, it can barely be imagined.

Time always seemed to me a

Stuttering human invention to explain the root of that ineffable change,

A term created from paralyzing fear:

That of action and reaction and inaction and what we have done and must do.

Time always struck me as a

Falsehood in and of itself, a lie created by the most self-deluded species only to comfort

And since time doesn’t really

Exist, I didn’t really turn another year today;

I didn’t really climb sixty thousand seconds closer to a great unknown today;

And I am only moved to stand on the cusp of adulthood

In our human-warped view of the world.

XX---

Letters

Words spill over quietly to him like

The childhood stream I can’t dam fast enough,

Confessions tumbling over my wall which

When I started, I never meant to let go.

My head skips from one thought to the next, and I know that

If this were a conversation I’d be talking way too fast,

And as it is my pencil lines are blurring and

My fingers are tripping over themselves.

In lucid moments I know I’ve got to tell someone

The truth, because it’s escaping towards his vacuum presence

Just for somewhere to go, and I throw up walls because

It’s not the direction I want.

Who is this man? He’s just some

College-age vagabond, just a person I chanced to know,

And if he has a brilliant mind and duplicate philosophy and

Smiles at me when we meet, it’s just coincidence.

Who is this man? My troubles aren’t his

Worry, his problem, his place to listen to; not for

Three more months at least; and if he

Laughed because of my letters, that means nothing.

Sometimes when my walls slide down a little and

Reason is in view, I know I’ve got to talk to

Someone, other than him, so I can breathe again

And let the thoughts in slowly, one at a time.

As it is I just set the pencil down again and

Close my eyes like I’m sitting in front of the

Sunset I don’t want to see, and take a breath and

Start to write to him again, my head a little lighter.

And if he’s just a vagabond, well

That’s alright with me; hobos all ace poetry,

And if he’s so much more as I suspect then I

Will send this letter on with love

And live in preparation for the next.


XXX--

Watching Them

Watching their

Feet skirt feet skim the top of the linoleum floor tiles, like

It could be hardwood in a ballroom

Watching them

Drift like thunderclouds,

Not graceful but steady, not wistful but intentioned.

Watching their

Hands placed lightly together,

On a shoulder, a waist, a thigh

A gentle reminder of presence, of countrol

Watching their

Faces turned up in the confidence that comes with age, or

Turned down in the uncertainty it brings,

Watching their

Eyes which don’t wander in the circles they’re tracing

Eyes that stay tight on each other, on looking up and forward

Watching them

Watching each other,

Their gazes directed into one another,

Into a past that they share and they hold.

Watching them

Dozens of us, our eyes quiet and thinking,

Wondering or wishing,

Watching them

Dance across that linoleum floor just like

No one is there at all.


X----

Now Changed

You used to be the responsible one.

You were a human calendar,

You were always ordered and never forgot and never forgave

And you urged us to live up to your standards of commitment

And aesthetics and perfect attendance.

You used to be the eager one.

You were always pushing us and marching on

You were moving forward and striving farther,

The first to volunteer and the first to complete

And to climb another step up the pyramid.

You used to be the radical one.

You used to get into debates where the answer was always “you’re wrong”,

And your position was always the left.
No matter the argument, the reasoning, the person,

Liberal was the only right way.

You used to be the flirtatious one.

You were always around when there were clothes to be taken off

And cuddles to be had on the hallway floors,

You always stole kisses where you could get them

And emphasized the female side of bi-curious.

Now you’ve flipped on those of us who thought we knew you.

Now you’re a wary moderate, you defend capitalism –

When you think no one’s watching –

And you haven’t held my hand in months.

Now you’re unreliable, irresponsible,

Indefensibly flaky,

And you couldn’t care less about a schedule.

Now you aren’t the person we knew anymore.

You aren’t the constant we came to expect.

But if you had to make that choice again –

To remain who you used to be, or to change –

I would tell you to make it over and over and over.

Because now,

When you see the catalyst of change for your reliability, affection, and morals,

Now when you meet him in the parking lot,

Your smile reaches up to the sky.

X----

All In Spring

My spring was all in February.

My crisp sunny days, my new-leaf-green and baseball, it was all over months ago

In the two-week flash of warmth within the rain.

My spring was all in February. My official hibernation’s end,

Me emergence from the shell into the world again

It was contained in those days of the barely-born year, singular.

My spring was all in February. It was the mind-set,

It was the way we stopped wishing for snow and started wishing for sun,

Stopped recalling the summer and started planning for it.

My spring was all in February, this year. My Opening Day was two months ago.

My spring has come and gone and now I sit and wait through this interim,

This summer that doesn’t know it’s summer yet, that still battles with the rain,

Patiently remaining through a storm not spring-fresh but summer-heavy. Summer-dull.

My spring was all in February. My spring was three days in an open field,

My spring was all alive in a spark of cloudless skies

And six separate laughs.

My spring was all in February, this year. My summer started then.

By the time the sun stretches out wide enough to embrace us, again,

It will already be fall.

XXX--

The Edge of the Night

Every day fades out with a pink horizon and another cycle of homework,

As the night fades in on the periphery of vision,

Slowly, shadowy assassins creeping nearer

Across the edges of the yard and down the street.

Pushing the night.

Just keep on pushing the edge of the night.

Every evening draws darker with the hour,

The night combing shadows out longer and thicker like carded wool.

The dark seeps in under doorways and through windows,

Filing up the places light had held so shortly before.

Pushing the night.

Just keep on pushing the edge of the night.

Every night slowly closes in on itself,

Each soft light a point of resistance against this creeping sea of darkness.

Slowly the shadows close in from all sides as the light bulbs go out,

One by one by one,

Until only my reading light remains, a bouy in the ocean.

Pushing the night.

Just keep on pushing the edge of the night.

Every mind succumbs to dreams sometime,

Every eye must eventually close.

But don’t surrender to the clock and the quiet without testing your strength.

Don’t let your last corner of light be surrounded with night and destroyed.

Strike out farther into the dark, last longer than your alarm says you will;

Let your rebellion be in your existence, persistence, your sleepless remaining.

Pushing the night.

Just keep on pushing the edge of the night.

Every night finally recedes into morning.

Every stretching shadow shrinks back towards the pink horizon,

And the inexorable tides turn away.

If you can resist its pull, the darkness will retreat

And the world returns to its wakefulness.

So when the thrill strikes you to remain,

To stand sentry against the dark in his kingdom,

Remember what you are doing, with each second that ticks by to eyes open –

Pushing the night.

Just keep on pushing the edge of the night.


XXX--

Sun-Born

I was born on a day without sun.

And I’ve never regretted that fact.

I was born in mid-April, and there was no sun, there was no snow, there were no… thunderstorms.

There was plenty of rain.

I as born on a day without sun, so

I didn’t get any inside of me we I took my first, trembling breath

And opened up my eyes to that first view of fluorescent hospital lights

And rain.

I was born on a day without sun,

So I don’t have my own little nova in my chest,

Flooding my insides with light and seeping outside into soft warmth on my skin.

I just had to make some of my own.

I was born on a day without sun,

So I just created a little light for myself –

Just enough that when it dapples through my bronchia it’s still bright enough to fill up my chest,

It doesn’t have the pure gold hue of real sunlight and it doesn’t slip outside –

I don’t glow like those born into the sun –

But my sunbeams are just as bright,

And just as warm.

I was born on a day without sun,

But I never worried about it.

Everyone has to make their own sunlight sometimes.

I was born on a day without sun,

So I make it for myself instead.

And usually it’s simple – all you need is a little personal fusion –

And my head’s full of easily combinable materials,

Unworded thoughts and wishes and stars, memories like orbitals around my future,

And plenty of potential energy.

But sometimes my head gets dark, and smooth as night,

Sometimes I need a little light to start with,

A narrow bean to lance in through my eyes and reflect and collect in the back of my brain.

Sometimes I really need a genuine sunray.

I was born on a day without sun,

But sometimes I need it more desperately than I care to admit.

Sometimes I seek it out while clinging to the last sun beam in my chest,

Wane and wavering,

Alone.

Sometimes all I need is one of those sun-born. One of those nova-fueled people who shine out.

One of those people that glow, that radiate; one of the sun-born.

You were born in the sun.

You have that light-source within you; you radiate.

This isn’t a question of work, or of struggle;

I know you need to make your own sun, everyone needs to make their own sun sometimes;

This isn’t about strife; I know that my sun is so much easier to make than some,

I know you have struggled to make it before, but you –

You were sun-born. You have that golden glow.

You have that warmth that lets you wear sandals year round, and that inherent shine.

You were born in the sun because the light that you make can come out.

Because you shine, you radiate, and that sunlight can come out

It can lance in through my eyes and reflect,

And collect in my heart,

Because you were born with a ray of light in your chest.

You were sun-born.

I was born on a day without sun.

But I’ve never regretted that fact.

You see, rain becomes a blessing when it is your birthright.
I think the first element I ever felt was water,

Was tiny drops falling onto my new-born skin

Before anyone told me which weather was “bad”.

It hurts my eyes to look at the sun,

But rain has always treated me gently. The rain has always fallen softly on my skin.

You were born in the sun.

When I’m around you, I feel like a shadow. You eclipse my self-made light,

You with your summer-gold hair and that way that you radiate.

I was born on a day without sun,

But you fill me up with it. Your beams lance in through my eyes

To reflect and collect in my lungs.

And even though the rain is my birthright, and my sunlight is real,

 Being around you seems like summer.

It’s the way you radiate.

It’s the way your beams lance in through my eyes,

To reflect and collect

And collect forever.


XXXXX

At Night

You used to always be there at night.

It wasn’t just the childhood-hazy plasticine stars, it wasn’t just bedtime whisperings

Or the way you made sure the closet doors were closed:

You used to always be there at night.

It wasn’t just the TV on low when you were too cool to spend daylight with me,

When the door separating us from our consciences was slowly slid shut;

It wasn’t just the infomercials and the late-night chatline ads –

It wasn’t just while we were awake.

You see, you used to always be there at night.

I could tell when I finally stood up as silently as I’d learned from you

And slid back the door as silently as I’d learned from you,

And passed by your bedroom on tip-toed toes seeking solid floorboard, I could tell –

I could tell that you had been the last one asleep that night.

That you had been waiting with me.

You used to always be there at night.

Sometimes I went to bed and your light was still shining on,

Sometimes I woke up when the front door opened and you slipped through,

Sometimes I sat at my open window and just stared unseeing past the sky

As you smoked weed in the basement while our parents were out,

And sometimes you were six thousand miles away

But while you were on that airplane I was in your bed, I was remembering,

And I was waiting for you to come home.

Because you used to always be there at night.

Somehow time slipped past us and you moved out and you moved on

But that didn’t change how I felt about you, that only made me proud

And suddenly when things came crashing down and you came back I realized

That now you’re no longer here at night.

It wasn’t being gone. It wasn’t that you were missing too long.

It’s that I can’t remember that girl whose eyes met mine in our wall-wide mirror.

It’s that I can’t hold onto the light under your door when you’re the one thing I’m trying to get away from,

The one thing that fills up my head when they’re fighting again,

The one thing that I try to flood out ever day with the noise and conversation and anything

And now you’re no longer here at night.

The one time you were constant, the one time you didn’t flicker like the lit end at the window

Well, now you’re no longer here at night.

Now when I get up silent like you taught me I don’t think about you,

Only the time and my laptop and the sleep I’ll be getting.

Now when I pass your bedroom it’s an empty shell and I don’t notice, I don’t care,

Now when I finally fall into bed and close my eyes I’m asleep before try to remember.

Now you’re no longer here at night.

It’s my one respite

From the way you haunt me in the day.

XXXX-