Lonely Persons

If you would have taken the Metro
I would have picked you up,
We would've grabbed coffee,
Or tea, or whatever you're into now.

Sat, got comfortable,
Settled into malleability
And you would have humored me,
And I would have listened-
A child dipping her toes
In your stream of consciousness,
executed with that other-worldly cadence,
I'd have listened.

And taken in your face,
Steady as that tea or coffee,
You, continuing to speak,
And I would not have told you
How you stretched me;

How in two years I've not stretched, but grown
And if you would have taken the Metro
You wouldn't have been lonely,
But a lonely person
with a person to listen.
And aware, God-willing, and glad of the difference.

Home III

I have every confidence
That someday I'll come back and find
the silverware drawer on the first try-
I'll make it  "home"
Call it "home",
Paint a sign and hang it on the door.

Everyone's got a favorite place
To be or have been;
"Honey yours has always
Been in your skin"
So when the window doesn't match
The picture, you don't live there,
You hang your sign on your shoulder.

I'm getting too good at this, I tell myself
I can wrap my heart around anything
With a coffeepot and a front door-
I call it "home", I call it "home"
I don't know the word.

Everyone has a favorite self
They wish that they'd stayed,
And the fear to feel so run-of-the-mill,
I'm just trying to sink my roots
Into anything that'll stay still.

Make me believe
I'm no worse for wear,
Best to start
From the start in the straw.
Place me in pictures
Where we can't find us,
You know
How I don't mind feeling small.

Telescope (2008)

Baby's got to give,
Kid's got to smile-
Live and let live
and wake up for a while.

Fold up your telescope
And leave it a dream-
Throw your fistful of hope
Back into the stream,

And hold onto shore-
Let it slip through your hands,
All you'll need, no more,
Someday you'll understand.

It's a life to forgive;
To carefully grow,
To live and let live,
To love and let go.

Crucita, Portoviejo, Guayaquil

-

I was just like you

when I had more to say

and less to choose

and my words

wore tap-shoes-

they were

wild and unafraid

Real as Ribs

Tell me-
Did you tremble too,
or was that me
shaking on the sides of you?

Did you breathe
or were you dancing your chest,
Like a human,
Me- sensing your humanity,
real as your ribs
and the hot tea
I spilled on your sweater sleeve.

We laughed
because my hands
are big for girl's hands
and yours are small
for boy's,
and our fingers-
crooked in the same ways
so you said I'm like a mirror,
and I smiled because you smiled.

Swallowed in your favorite eyes,
I remarked
the alcoholic benevolence
and the human so speculated,
so sideways chastised
and warned against,
remarked the humanity
real as your ribs
that trembled on the sides of me,
Repeated for my sake:

You're just as much a fixture of this
As the frame around the window,
And I'm learning.

Nesting (2008)

Grin, Bear it

When I came to you less aglow,

More a-futile,

You took me by the face

You said “grin and bear it”

And you meant it,

And it was true.

I didn’t need to see you crack

But there you were, cracking,

Not breaking but fractured

And bandaged together,

With your grin,

Your bearing it,

Your lending me your words-

Handing me the hatchet

That dulls its strength

Against the talc-ish surface

Of a terrible sky,

“Grin,” she said,

“and it’s important that you bear it.”

Don’t worry about these,

These soot of bejeweled apathies,

We think at first

Fuck you,

Your haughtiness, your quaint aloof,

But we grin, we bear it;

We say we care less and feel more,

Feel less, think less

More less, less more

Fake it, bear it, bare skin

Like a necklace

Made of semi-precious stones,

I won this

And I didn’t even cry-

I am the best he leaves me alone

And I don’t even cry I don’t,

Don’t say “I miss you” because I don’t,

I can be as unfeeling as you,

I can be sorrier than you

And unapologetic, don’t misunderstand,

Don’t miss-upper-hand, I can

Do this all night, see you at breakfast.

I’ll be the one with the 10 minutes less sleep,

Chipped them off the morning

To look pretty for you,

So when I see you

My eyes see you,

So that you see them back,

With the edges, and I won’t even cry

But I’ll grin, I’ll bear it,

Because I see now

That you’re just as much a fixture of this

As the frame around the window,

And I’m learning.

Pear (2009)

Figure I (2008)

Love, Home, Her

When you said "love"
did you mean "write down"?
"Want", "Need Now"
"Find"--
Do you find me?
I found you, swimmingly,
Do you find me still?
Ought I to find
myself as well?

And when I said "home"
did I mean the ground?
"Here", "Address" --
suburb air I populated
with strings of
Vampire Weekend and GrooGrux,
Did I mean "shoes"?
Was each barefoot stroll
down Helen's Way,
Cherry Brook Road
a frivolous, short-lived
nomadic experience?
Home?
Shoes?

When they say "her"
do they mean Charlotte Ann Jones,
with the Birthday
and Social Security Number,
"Red Sweater", "Smile"?
"that", "it", "Everything" --
"Something"? "One thing"?
Do they mean you?
Find you, love, home, shoes?
Did you ask why, too?

Never Again (2008)

Places, dates & numbers killed in genocides in the past century (background)

Dancer on Skyline (2009)

A Seed (2009)

Hawk Watch

taken by my roommate or Emily, Saturday atop North Mountain.

Satellites

I remember the day I almost kissed Amir.
Day that encompasses night, night that nearly persuades
the scarlet-veined leaves that it might fold into their peaceful subtleties.
They shivered as I shivered, draped in the afterthoughts of a cigarette
and secondhand addictions I compared to his.

With legs swinging blithesome over the edge of a picnic table,
I entertained quiet fascination.

Four inches between his face and mine,
a different distance between us and the stars,
and then they became the same;
numbers evaporating into the greater fact and persistence of space.

I remember the day I almost kissed Amir,
and it was the day I realized
that never will I look at the stars and not see a satellite.
And it was not one, but one in relation to the other
that so resonates in my own cognition.

Admiration

We are quick to admire,
To admire admiration
and so become
that multifaceted show
of artificial light.
The pigment of what we chase,
the texture of what we grasp,
Moving
is like Dancing
is like Writhing.

Push.

to push you
I'd have to touch you
I'm just sitting
in the grass
legs folded
eyes bent
you see, dear one,
I'm just trying to hold my own hand

Home II

Home, like “aum” cut short,

A fragment of energy suspended in solution,

Losing the definition of “home”.

That which may be calculated through each callous of the foot,

mine, each our own,

every abrasion every triumph to trace back with greatest precision

to the rock of the path that was home.

 Less under-way and more under-foot,

not a process so much as a concept-

a spinal concrete to carve your name in and bleed your fist on.

Home, that thing that ought not to be page three, facebook photos, and on:

more in feeling than in fondness, dare I want,

dare I conceptualize, ask the lips for the words of the wanting,

all the beautiful ideas, shells of  reality

that might make a paleontologist out of me

given the day and the radio.

It is the roots without the tree,

Carried some hours by car and $233 by train,

Then propped up against a landscape where trees grow,

And the family and the friends and the mind and the matter,

Like the centralized paper of a fortune catcher

Unfolded and found in its corners.

There’s a harrowing simplicity in saying “lost”

Like a feeling, like a place,

A specific inaccuracy that stains its appeal

And then there it is, still,

Lost, like maybe I’m the fragments

Because home is the fragments

And I can only find one inasmuch as I may find the other.

I’ll mention now that these are two things

I did not mean to misplace,

In fact found for sure, held in my hands like

Laying in a field and wrapping your fingers around the grass,

And you won’t pull it from the ground

Nor will you stay until it dies;

You give it immortality by existing entirely in that moment.

Then lost, much like lost,

And you ache for everywhere you were last,

Make a picture-book of home (bound and all)

To not look at, to pine for less

Until it is contained in its stark two-dimensionality.

Maybe we’re all a little on the shelf.

Maybe it seeps back into us anyway.

Then home is abstractly represented in oneself,

That we are the collection of area code romances

And crisp afternoons, familiar passages, growing grounds,

The moments with the people who snagged our fabric

Enough to let the light through where we see it now.

So the picture is not yet complete, but I might carry it

In myself until I have a wall to hang it on.