The Most Beautiful Things Are The Strangest

I don't think I know who you are, but I know you are climbing,
and rising into the sky, soaring on the canvas of a child's kite.

It's the Face that's the Culprit

I saw your toes aimed at each other,
thought that you would make a lover,
out of me, catch me in the breeze
of hot winds, branches, climbing trees
we climbed when you & I were fifteen,
but now we're honest, & twenty-three.

Remember when you came over,
wrote on my hand, "forever,"
and I squeezed the life out of you,
cherry, apple, lemon, blueberry blue.
Your heart was juiced, an organ drained.
All I wanted was for you to stay the same.

But you can't and so can't I,
Believe me, even though I lied.
About the months of August, September,
And July- I lost you, I lost my pride.
I'll never feel the same about what I did.
There's no use, we're no longer kids.

And you're not the same as me.
I wouldn't lie through my teeth,
Smiling so secretly about intention.
Forgetting to look at me & mention
Your hands over his body, his chest.
I broke every vein in my head, my best
Memories were destroyed,
Obliterated, spoiled,
Like milk and lemon in a cup,
I'll never again give a fuck
About what you need and what you want.

Waves

and Sand and
Waves and Sand
and Waves and
Sand and Waves
and Sand and
Waves and Sand
and Waves and
Sand and Waves
and Sand and
Waves and Sand
and Waves and
Sand and Waves.

House of Cards

There is an ember in the heart of the kiln.
There is smoke rising from a silver sun.

There, the garçon plays with his father's knife.
There, the hissing leaves build the landscape.

There are things in me that just aren't right.
There are hearts in mouths, and wings in the mind.

Beyond Me

I'll have settled for a way out,
unobtainable good. Were we not
the same as we once were? We
can be, but Ryan knew it best:
patience serves one well, and,
two even better. Don't you agree?

You smile through your teeth,
wondering where you'll go next.
Go, explore, and make recipes
for the sandman, the wolf, and
the liar. I am indebted to your
forgiveness: its two months
treated me, well, conditionally.

Untouchable like the clouds above
my hand. I'm reaching as high as
I can and there are no stretch
marks of the air, no spans of
prolonging to know how you became
soft. Who you became to me (lover),
and to yourself, nobody knows.

A butterfly hovers, but you are a moth.

Glint

The yellow Volkswagen Beetle whipped around the parking lot,
it's horn sounding like a call, a whistle. Ask them their names.
And their birth dates. Maybe they're into older men.

Knowing

We are afraid of what we don't know, he said.
"It's a kind of 'fear-of-the-unknown-phenomenon'."

I rustled through my lecture notes and found that
on my fifth page for the lecture of September, the 17th,
I had planned a visit to the Smithsonian Institute.
They were charging eleven dollars a student at that
time, and I had wanted my class to understand a
little bit about the art of collection: anthropology, so to speak.

Why would anyone want to relive the past, he said.
"Peoples' lives aren't at all interesting."

I cut him off there and told him that as long as
there weren't two billion Ben Steins in the world,
that the "individual" would be unique, and thus,
exciting. He retorted...

"Don't we know enough about people? Why not try, I
don't know, space? Or physics? Information, where does it go?"

By way of knowing about these unknowns, we must know "us,"
which is to attempt at learning the unknown, I said.

I gave my gun away while it was loaded.

I sat upright in my bed, wondering where I was.
The curtains changed while I slept, wandering
in and out of my neighbors' yards, making a mess
of their flower beds and nicely trimmed hedges.

I thought about the time I was struck with a fear
of the unknown: my fan had slowed, but not stopped.
I sweated out my dinner milk, and screamed until someone
came to wake me, but I was already awake. My brother
and mother saw the fan blades stop, and I silenced myself.

four

I woke up this morning, after last night's ride through the park where I tore apart your desires as if they were day old notes, and I decided that I crave that smile on your face. I wish to see those eyes shimmer above your cheek bones, those lips laugh and expose your perfected teeth. Your hair dropped from the top of your head, down below your eyes, covering the blue radiance: their shine. I realized that I loved destroying your soul, and that while resting their under the tree, eating our lunch that you prepared, I should have prepared for what was to come. I could not imagine. I could not imagine now, as bolts of fire leap hundreds of meters into the air, I would regret anything, but I have come to. Those moments where you threw yourself towards me, and I declined, I have not forgotten. Those moments where you were entranced, and I avoided your eyes, poison my thoughts like minerals in coal. I dug into the "us," and vanished at your weakest moment. But fire flies tonight, and days ago I dreamt you had spoken to me with a smile on your face that I had placed there.

"I can't lift you up cause my mind is tired.
It's family beaches that I desire.
That sacred night we watched the fireworks.
They frightened the babies and you know they've got two flashing eyes.
And if they are color blind, they make me feel, that you're only what I see sometimes."

Warmer than Warm, Yeah

"-Well, I've been here before;
sat on the floor in a grey grey room
where I stay in all day.
I don't eat, but I play with this grey grey food."

-D. Rice