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.