Rain Jacket

Properly fold

Clothes with gentle care

Conscious of wrinkles and fuzz pills

Smoothing shirts today

Alone and lonely

Staring into fridge and cabinets

Mentally holding invisible plans

Too confused to sort a recipe 

Once a moment wind soft

Sun mild blue

Courage to paint a door 

Proud and effortless red

Not for trespassing traumas

Real and suppressed

Non-existent 

Wearing a rain jacket of anger and remorse

Failed finding words

Questions ignored

Clarity reduced to vague

Abandoning what fire did not destroy 

Just a Colorado Neighborhood where I Don't Live

I am an artist again

Eating pasta with butter

Woolen slippers in snow

Consuming less space

Vision lost deciphering

Mountain's valley sun-blinded

Painting words in silent anonymity

12 Year Dissociation

Wearing shorts at the kitchen sink

Speaker loud

"Haunted by the ghost of you"

Hands wash diligently 

Head buzzes 

Overdosed hot chocolate 

Hot September morning

"I don't know what I'm supposed to do"

Planned to run

Distracted packing 

Frozen staring moments uncountable 

Lost red dog pissed on the floor

Books of art plates coughed up hair 

Police seizing pages

Valuable as my virtue

Toppling off rail of my station wagon

Nothing makes sense 

I'm privileged 

Stairwell photo of your Aunt's wedding 

Your toddler fingers rub the fabric of her dress

Your eyes

I see you 

My heart is breaking

"I am not the only traveler..."

Did I do enough

Dysfunction rolls across all of time

Nature of man exactly as it should be

Perfectly no mistake 

Noses half snaps genetically weakened by industry

Nothing is whole 

Injustice smells like money in hog troughs

While water flows with DNA

I'm sorry

My heart is breaking 

Who cares anyway

Dust like flies everywhere 

My hand touches desert rock

Will it know the feelings words cannot replace

Where will energy go when breath ends

My heart is breaking

"to the night we met "

Who were we

Haunted by ghosts of men 

Black fish suffocating in a dying pond

You knew it was there

Above everything

His arms carried you

You saw it all

Sealed in mitochondria 

My heart is breaking

Begging Hope to Stay

Bargaining with Energy

Performing compulsive acts

Of paper fire affirmations 

Begging Hope to stay

Though wishes crumble 

At the edge of embankment 

Before a saltless sea

How will I not fracture to dust

As whistles howl between my ears

Offspring scattered far away

Which threads are severed 

Or saved on spider's web 

No one feels the gavel

Under left hand upon my chest

As the Judge's words commence

I see myself under over head

Wondering again will I breathe

Skin of my arms won't reach 

To shield their eyes 

Pulling them close to me

Still seeds scatter

Paint a landscape 

Where birds sing to Hope

Even over barren concrete

 

Local News Tonight with Raindrops

Evening walk to check my mail

I sat among simpletons in the comment section

Haughty sordid words heavy weary flesh

Retracting letters tapping delete

I Pause

I am dumb

Close my eyes

Clutch phone dead black

Gravel crunches under my shoes

Smell-the paper

Ink washed away 

Written prayers on useless checks

Folded into paper fans

My unacceptance 

Falls into the rain

Everywhere still flows a small creek

Where minnows cross over flooded path 

On their sides

Silver looking up at the sky

No longer able to sleep at night

UP

Uptick in latitude decreased the atmospheric pressure 

Releasing déjà vu 

August flora lining lake 

Periwinkle sweet pea wild grape 

Russian sage tansy hibiscus 

Greet me at the door with Nostalgia's kisses 

Take my shoes 

Offer me rest a season

Companion

Say you it was Real 

Real in the Dark 

Where the weeds grow through asphalt

In thoughts and visits of dreams

Between you and me 

Stands your companion

As real as rain on my windshield

For me to deny

As I sit in the remnants

With only my breath

Until I felt what I didn't know

Where air became quietly crisp, familiar

Love, unhurried and reliable

Silent Mates in Density

June past, only the frogs 

Filled the night space

My phone across the room

Quiet as the empty jar

Still I could fall asleep

Dream as usual 

Animated with intricate

Complexity

Maybe there you were

Accompanied

Keeping my toes wet 

In the reality bog

Of physical Density

I beg of my Soul

Soul, what do you see

Time, only time

Love is earned with these coins 

When wrapped in flesh

What do you know of the time Today

Nothing

I hear hollow bellow 

Bullfrogs calling silent mates

Without yearning nor pain

Only Light of their purpose

Beyond my abilities to 

Reconnect

Racquetball

There is nothing to explain

No required

Vomiting exposure of innards

I feel the compulsion anyway

Feelings feelings feelings

Water dripping over the rocks' edge

No need to capture

No need to drown in drinking

No need to measure the entirety and publish results

Feeds the moss or exists not at all

Leaves dry and crumble

Dust sand bits dead bugs

I see now what I was doing

Found an open crack in the skin of my finger

Dry jagged begging for my lips

Moisten and soften soften

Smooth smooth smooth the edges

Screaming quietly

Aching in my throat tingling to the lowest depths

Sitting there unattended finally longingly forgotten

Success winning

Forgive me leaving you possibly exposed on the curb outside

Without explanation

Climbing safely under the walls of an old racquetball

Within the tightly wound bands of my own vessels

Bouncing fast and hard against the walls and the racquets

Trusting the orbit of my true self

Ticket One

Some believe afterlife  

Others believe more

I know for sure one

No interest in supposition

It is short

Lovely Faith is why

Tall grasses pull tears

Mountains hollar loud

Drop my bags and sprint aboard the train

A Climate Change

Snow is falling on the last day of summer

Heat off my engine kept stopping my heart

Numbing my fingers

Stranded on i75 

My phone remained silent

Southside Atlanta

Need became ridiculous

Want was lonely

Ending world on crumbing asphalt

I said it out loud tossing white bread to the seagulls

Morning became noon

Heatwave in December

Stretching through the ache 

Of the age I've become

With gratitude and ease

Again I greet the Sun

From your side of my bed

Where the dent is less

Hôtel Mercure Paris La Defense

Junk Drawer

I assume all men have a junk drawer

No matter how beautiful they seem

No matter how pristine their skin or scalp

No matter their voice thick sweet honey 

Or biting as virgin olive oil

In the kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, or car

A box in the garage

A jar in the tree

A collection of treasures and atrocities

Mostly garbage trivial trash

Old tickets, receipts, coins and bottle caps

Momentos of shit

Precious nothing

Without sifting without debate

With cheers and laughter of disbelief

Relinquished mine

Shwooosh

From the bureau into the trash bin

In this moment mentally

Created a habit of maintenance

Synced with oil changes and tire rotations

While walking with peace

Out of the bush

A shadow 

My guilt, good deeds, failures trail me

I hear him meowing

A gray dusty kitten

Deprived of milk and abandoned

Blue Truth and Pebbles

When Truth was a bear in a child's nightmare

Where the forest was camouflage

Walking sticks covered the path

Marching straight into the fire

Without thought without fear

My love is not like that

Excavator of many pebbles

Reveals a moraine of silence

Manifesting courage void all phobias 

Ensuring discomfort's retreat

Bakery

Relax relax

Cue to my belly

Let go; melt

Let my hips be butter

Sinking into soft bread

Stop hovering like bees

Collecting pollen for their hive

Coming into the waterfall

With you

Blasts all space 

Replacing matter in my melon

Lemon 🍋

Sum of all colors

In the center fire of the sun

Winter Swan

My sadness is a winter swan

On a snowy lake

Where 8 am feels captured by dusk

Watching my sadness as she glides

Timeless in Aeolian silence

With sforzato caws beyond naked trees

Heart safe from freezing beneath her waterproof down