Wispy, subtle words leave your tongue,
floating from lips to ear with ease.
Leaving behind a trail of silver dust;
sonic spores spinning streams of song.
Lighter than the air they rest upon.

One voice, bending harmonies into new mold.
Locking my eyes into place.
Paralyzed from the fear of any movement -
making a noise to scamper into this sacred sound scape.
Fluttering lyrics like brittle, little moths
seeking out a flame. Dying to be heard.

Melodies lifting, lingering in yellow.
Dissonance, crisply crashing, mixing to green.
Washed away by a refreshing blue refrain.
Only to be boiled into the ole' gold chorus.

Anthem of awakening for the foolish sleeper.
This is the song of the migrating flock -
the hymn of the winter-slumbering hive
to tell of the memories of many springs past.

So I sit, simmering in suspense.
Hoping, praying that the silence not return.

Sounds of leaves laughing as the wind -
tickles them on the tips of their branch-homes.

In the age of prophylactics,
we build skyscrapers out of plastic
Agents of terror trade their bombs in for germs
So we make ourselves prisoners to serve out life terms
Unscalable walls that circle each axis

Hemispherical gates in which they have stored us
Intersecting steel Orobouros
With plenty the yeast farm to serve as our food,
and trend setting deities that change with our mood
A quarter united, we sing out a chorus

Hyper-interactive nonsense to entertain
Connected by a network direct to the brain
With war buried deep, next to monarchs and castles
Their drones target  individuals to save them the hassle
While we sleep in our bubbles, ignorant of pain

I was looking at your chest x rays on the lighted wall

Your straight spine centered behind your rounded ribcage
Looks like busted churchgates
from all the times you let your ghosts go

And there are bees buzzing in your shoulders only
you aren't cold this time

So much faith in what I do with words
Willing to love me like a half written gospel
we are filling in as we go

And I want to write us poetry
like the first man was asked to play the first piano

Come
dance with me to my deathbed

I am afraid
That one day I might kiss you
like a deaf stethoscope
that no longer hears your heart

That this language will grow stale
Along with your faith in me

but my knees
are riverbeds for prayer

And I carry my chest heavy like a library
full of books that hate the silence

You should know that
being a poet is more than just a choice

and maybe my body is like a library
but when I pray to you
I'll never use my inside voice

Just like I know that god used nails
to make the iron in your blood stream

That you'll be strong even when you're old
and even then
I still want you to believe in me

When we are like trains that no longer run the tracks
when we've fully mapped the topography of our bodies

But some days
our engine chests come back

and I write a poem about you that is new

And you listen
To my huff and rumble
you lift your tea and saucer with shaking hands
I close my eyes
and hear our train coming

Moths that look like little girls hair bows,
I squashed you underneath that binder I used in high school band class.
It was you or me.

How it starts is there's an apartment your family lives in
You do not live there
but your stuff does
Then you find out your mom brought bed bugs home from the rehab center

They are downsizing everything now
You show up with 3 boxes
and tell yourself
these can hold more than enough

Mostly you fill them with your favorite books
and in the heat of it
even that feels trivial

But you look at the photos in the frames
The pictures of you at six flags on your last birthday
You let those go
The paper towel painting Monica did at the lake
It's all in a box marked trash now

You joke to yourself about how silly
they would look on the dashboard of your car

The old electronics
and journals
writing contest trophies

You take an inventory
of everything you've ever owned
all your clothes have been thrown away

and you leave with just three boxes
and you ask yourself

"If my life were on fire
what would I save?"

only you can't answer that question
because when the fire is burning
it's not that everything looks as important as everything else
so much as nothing does
not even you

So you smile
and say that you are happy to leave everything behind
because now you have the joy of the memory of having it

Only this time
there is a girl
and she is riding shotgun in your car as you drive away

And maybe she can see the mixed emotion on your face
like driving of a cliff in your boss's car
only he is in the trunk

And she scratches the back of your head
and says
"Tell me a story handsome"

i have found my words again
31 miles from you, half asleep
drunk words of encouragement - you are everything between stuck zippers and pulled hair