midnight purple

Midnight Purple is not so deep—

Not here in the city, at least;

Not with the light from the front door, the street,

The deciduous tree line where it meets—

It hazes in a dusky hue,

The kind they might describe to you

As twilight—the normal cloudy blue

Has given o’er to midnight true!

Midnight Purple,

I miss the stars.

on the 40, almost home

I thought I saw a swan by the houseboats

On the northwest side of Lake Union

But we were driving too fast, and there were too many trees

waltzing to violas

I felt desired in a dream

Twice

Held against a familiar body, unfamiliar owner

Belly to belly, head on their chest, hand on my head

Swanning through the room

I am so hungry for that affection to come back to my life

That I will only accept it from someone who feels

Just right

I miss you

The tide pulls in and the wave rises above my head and I am submerged

I miss you

on my way to therapy

Air smells like when I first visited and knew I would live here

Warm fog

The overcast on the horizon betrays the rising light on the mirror side,

almost white hot gray

while the rest of the clouds cling to February

Seems all too similar to September 2013 in Troutdale

To February 2019 here

i saw the moon

Warming up on the couch—

Listening to stories of metal crows on the television—

I bent my neck backwards at what should be an impossible angle to talk to my cat,

And caught a glimpse of the waxing gibbous moon in an apparent starless sky through the window.

I felt like, for the first time, I saw the edges of its craters, captive in a thick slice of cheese,

Framed in the blackness of the void of space, like in those photos when craft are within spitting difference of the thing!

For the first time, I saw, for what it was,

Sunlight,

Reflected off the surface of the scarred porcelain face of Diana!

A gift of beaming, in the night, from the day—

Cold.

An ice cube in a flat drink.

I bent my neck backwards and thanked the light pollution 

For a sip of my favorite kind of illumination.

you keep saying (to the tune of Wolves Where I'm Going)

You love me very much,

Very deeply,

But do you write songs about me?

For me?

It's hard to tell

Because you talk about you and another person smoking

And I know you know that I kinda used to smoke, but not really

I'm enough to move you

Off the couch, and out of your chair,

And sometimes into bed

But am I enough to move you

To write me into chords and picking,

And open mic hauntings?

Because I would haunt you, too

If I die first, you know I would haunt you

bubble waffle

Do I like them more because of the texture

The little pops I can sink my teeth into instead of squares

And finding they're less hollow

And still filled with sweet dough
Sink my teeth into squares

Sink my teeth into squares

Why does it get harder and harder to stop myself the older and older I get

What have I let go
What have I abandoned

What have I killed

What have I let

Why doesn't this unlock every time I listen to him ramble like the Columbia without a dam in sight

Like nothing as dark and rich as his voice has turned on that light before

What is it about the sun that kills my cave creature interior

Why can't I walk this way easier

Why do I always feel inferior to you

I've always felt that way but before I could buoy myself knowing that despite that fact you still wanted me

You, wanted ME

Do you still want me? Still need me?

I'm nipping at the edges of what I know

I can't plan a wedding

I can't curb a craving

I need sugar

I need sleep

I need to go lift more weights

Lift more weight upon my shoulders

Oh what a soft cross to bear

I wish I could wrap you up in my giant fallen angel wings, I know they're there

Describe them for me

Describe the softness of my thighs for me

Describe my legs, my somewhat cut calves, my shoulders,

Describe my neck for me

Describe my jawline, what it was and what it is

Oh take me up on it, I'll fill in my neck below it with tattoos just to make sure it's still there

august.

    August.

Facing the sunset

peaches and sugar,

and the sun inside the evening

like the stone in a fruit.

    The ear of corn holds intact

its hard yellow laughter.

    August.

Children eat

dark bread and tasty moon.

-Federico García Lorca

strange, i know

I know that you can't cast light without also casting shadow,

But the point still stands that I see that light in you--

I see that radiance, that life,

And I see the shadows, the draw towards death,

And yet I am here. I cannot help it, I will not resist.

I am here beside you, walking with you

Behind so I can catch you

Leading you when you need guidance through darkness too strong even for you to see through.

You mean a good chunk of the world to me and if you go,

a good chunk of my world goes with you.

You are important to me.

You are important to the world.

You are important to yourself.

Stay.

tenderness

I would elope with this beauty in a heartbeat

Fly ‘em up to the moon and slip into its crescent as if under a blanket,

Content to lie there, bodies in arms and temperature-perfect,

Resting in peak, blushéd joy for the rest of our lives.

Instead I hold their face in my hands and kiss it softly, all over,

Content enough knowing that, barring any apocalyptic reason to jump the broom before sharing a home, 

I get to savor this time.

This time is all ours.

circle

I didn't walk away the night after we met wanting you because I thought you'd be a good project,

    "I can fix them, I can heal them" etc. bullshit.

I just recognized that my heart met yours,

    side-by-side on parallel roads to some sort of recovery.

Different roads, different clothes, different bodies,

    but we matched.

Our voices go back and forth

    between matching melody 

    and clear harmony,

weaving currents through a jetstream.

I will come back around to you every time.

Every time.

looking forward

I want to welcome you back

    with pine needles

    cinnamon and turmeric and ginger

    sugar and warmth

    blood from biting my lip

    open arms

    thumbs on your cheekbones

    jaw cradled in my hands

I want to kiss you and taste all the cigarettes you smoked to catch a breath

    take it and give you the sweetness 

    and sound of the rain on the roof in return

Take the comfort I feel when you hold me

The safety I hold so close to my chest

when you're away

after every night with you so far

I see myself a tower still being built, further into the sky

You have bruised me and bitten me in the name of Our Hunger Who Art In Bed With Us

And I'm not asking for the full stigmata,

I just want to keep these marks on me for a while

Although even as reminders, I doubt we'd need them to remember,

But to wear, simply as proof:

You Were Here

and Here

and Here and Here and Here Here Here Here Here etc

I have never been as aligned with another body of stars as I am with yours

A constellation I often catch staring at me

And I stare back

The void not unnoticed completely around us

but our celestial bodies pulled more into focus, rather

If my repetitive declarations of your beauty and how it affects me makes it anywhere beneath your skin, I will count it successful

I will tell you even if you don't believe it

If ever there was a time to put faith in something you don't think you can see now is that time, these are those words

You've untied me like a wrapped gift and left me open: There is no mistaking my contents--

and so when I tell you, clothed or naked, that you are a work of art, you are beautiful?

Drink of that well! It is purified water

I don't know where you think you are in your story--

if you have reached your denouement--

but if I had to jump in as co-author, I wouldn't know where to start,

there is so much--!

When you said of the wedding where we met,

"I never felt more...seen...than when I was talking with you",

I tell you truly we are mirrored--

I had met my match in kind,

in whatever kind of soulmate form the universe saw fit to make from our thread

You are rare, raw, in all forms glowing--

by the light of your cigarette when you're at your favorite smoking spot,

by the energy thrumming from your words as you weave at our table,

by the blue-fucking-everlasting-sea-glass-green of your eyes when you look at me and smile,

in all forms, I tell you, and no, I'm not talking about the sad lamp.

There was a time when I would be sore afraid,

but I could now run a whole day on those eyes and that look alone

So stick around, nerd.

I wanna see museums and antique malls with you

I wanna go sifting through history with you

I wanna watch you run a newspaper

I wanna keep playing at your table

I wanna write and build stories with you

I wanna see shows with you and squeeze your hand when they sing my favorite lyrics

I wanna listen to your voice for as many hours as you can speak

I wanna listen to your guitar for as many hours as you can sing

I wanna I wanna I want you

And if all of this falls through,

please stay--my life, now knowing you, is pure bleakness without you in it,

in whatever capacity

In Our Name We Pray,

Get after it.

it’s all for the archives

It is what it was

That fracture of a moment

That fractal of a picture

Fixed points in time

Timeline of a hairline fracture

Contents of the skull

And there’s something to be said

For the living curation

An ever-evolving, rotating, movement of the scene behind the window(s)

Bless that present

Guidance for the image being captured 

that we may see it clearly when we see it next

But for the history, leave it intact

Do not disturb the mess

Leave my misspellings alone

It’s all part

It’s all a part

It’s all apart

And if I’m no longer around to tell it,

Then I want to be all around to speak it

Show it like this

Words like that

Here it is, here is me

That very second

These thoughts

Those exact feelings

And ain’t it just…

It is what it was.

i hold few things in reverence these days except the cycle of the lights.

Because I was up all night,

again,

I was putzing around my apartment,

flitting from task to task

at 15 past 7 in the morning.

The last time I witnessed sunrise

was in January, but the way my apartment sits is

better suited for sunsets.

The only hint of daybreak I get

is from the cityscape and the lake and the bay out the living room window

waking up under bluer, brighter light.

But I was about to make the fifth trip in the last five minutes

from the kitchen down the hallway,

and I noticed actual sunlight against the northern-facing blinds,

so I sat on the arm of Grampa's old chair and peeked through them

with a sideways peace sign,

looking East just for fun.

I didn't expect to see the sun.

I ended up catching the morning blinding coming through

the trees half a block up,

butter yellow and bathing.

Some kind of holy--

no, not holy;

holy presupposes a fear,

a trembling, like,

Sure, a reverence, but a shaking one,

full of anxiety--

this light was peace, I guess. Which is unknowable, so

how do I know?

But that's the best thing to call it for now.

Fuck your holy.

Call it sacred: something to protect, not to bow down before,

but to live with, and in.

A daybreak, a morning.

I didn't expect to see the sun.

the carpet crawlers

Well I was gonna credit you for all that cool

But you've blown your cover.

Now I'm always gonna know it's him.

the lens of you

I would be better

    for you

Make myself better

    for you

And hopefully one day

    through you

I'd be able to see myself the way you see me

and build myself better

    together

        for me

        for you

for a lion's jaw

I just want to be strong for you

to be your height if not slightly taller

be able to lift you at least a few inches off the ground in a happy embrace

hold you in my arms, lead and glide you all across a dance floor and into a dip with no fear

be better at fixing things,

at making things

with my hands

Defend you with my body when you need another energy beside you

Encircle you when you need someone else's wings

...to do all things you'd desire of a man, for you.

"O that I were a man" etc etc—

the first time in my life i have wished for the strength we know as, we hope is, a man—

but not the first time i have wished for muscle in these arms,

for strength in these legs,

for a sure grip in these hands.

I will never know if i could have had that

but if i had been grown naturally like my brother, i might have had the potential for a body that could endure.

I never had that chance.

I have known myself and been known to be

delicate

petite

fragile

Breakable

i see myself, useless.

I have tried to correct it, but glass infuses every bone and tendon—

covered o'er me like a quilt of pastels—

and i am wrecked. i am a wreck.

i am small. i am too small to function, let alone to champion.

I don't even know what you truly want,

and I don't want to fall into the trap of a binary groove,

but I just want to be strong for you.

I want to be some of your strength, as you have been some of mine,

so that I can learn how to lift myself up and out of hell

and lift you off the ground at the same time,

in the same life,

even if only by a few inches.

whole heart

clear skies you could eat up in spoonfuls
air promised with that fall chill, brisk sunshine to fill it up and light everything on bright

we drove our heels into pavement and toes into soil as we walked amongst the dead--leaves, grass, bodies buried
i'm sorry for the disrespect but i never thought i'd see a satanist buried side-by-side with eastern orthodox so i yelped

we walked through mausoleums in open wonder and reverent joy, here for the architecture and the years carved in stone
i worried a dying rose petal, black and shriveled edges, with my thumb, 
as i sweet-timed my way down the serpentine wall of names, apologizing on behalf of this world for each short life as i passed
ended at a monument with two unintentional birdbaths in front. floated the petal in the leftover rainwater of one basin and hummed Dvořák to speed your river on, whoever you are

walking home, drinking in the bottomless refills of autumn calm;
all i could think was how i hadn't felt great or even good for most of the days this year, and
how rare this peace is for me these days. hell--most of my days.
and also, how much i missed you all. you will never know. you pull me out of hell.

and you, i love, i think, and you will never ever know. you will marry him before you do, and by then i will have untied that cargo and let it float away. hopefully.

i will do nothing, there is nothing i can do. and yet today was everything.

you who never arrived

You who never arrived
in my arms, Beloved, who were lost
from the start,
I don't even know what songs
would please you. I have given up trying
to recognize you in the surging wave of the next
moment. All the immense
images in me—the far-off, deeply-felt landscape,
cities, towers, and bridges, and un-
suspected turns in the path,
and those powerful lands that were once
pulsing with the life of the gods—
all rise within me to mean
you, who forever elude me.

You, Beloved, who are all
the gardens I have ever gazed at,
longing. An open window
in a country house—, and you almost
stepped out, pensive, to meet me. Streets that I chanced upon,—
you had just walked down them and vanished.
And sometimes, in a shop, the mirrors
were still dizzy with your presence and, startled, gave back
my too-sudden image. Who knows? perhaps the same
bird echoed through both of us
yesterday, separate, in the evening...

-Rainer Maria Rilke, Translated by Stephen Mitchell