I am hurtling through tight pressed air,
524 miles per hour, 33,000 feet;
all recycled oxygen and stiff limbs,
with miles below and miles above.
These are miles that think;
miles that raise questions
leave the answers floating
like clouds; peaceful, turbulent.
I know the boy next to me,
deep thoughts muddled and made murky
in the midst of the changes;  
and I hear the kid behind me,
screams of laughter
or maybe terror, I can’t tell which;
and I see the girl across the aisle,
flinching with every turbulent cloud;
and I wonder if we are all in the same boat,
or plane, if you will.
My clouds are much the same,
murky and turbulent
thinking about where I have been
where I am going,
returning only to leave again,
this time unfamiliar, unwanted, not understood.
But I am now winged with new friendships
ready to test time,
and a strong prayer for faithfulness
to outlast all.
I am not ready for what lies ahead,
but I have come to find
that I often never am,
and never will be.
I am one for whom
peace is not easily found,
thus instead I am practicing patience;
and I have begun to say shalom.

Riding in an airplane,
Is one of the most terrifying,
Yet most beautiful things,
I have ever experienced.
There is something about the
Rumble beneath my legs,
Of the engine's purr.
Something about the lurch into the air,
That moment when you're
Neither on the ground
Nor truly flying.
Beautifying and petrifying.
And when turbulence is hit,
In the tiny Beech1900D,
The continuous jump, jump, jump,
Of my stomach,
Like an unending roller coaster
Only going down hill,
Lets me dance with death,
If only for a moment,
Before our wheels screech,
Against hot, angry tar,
And I can kiss the ground,
Once more

there is a certain liminality to airplanes
even the ones now fixed to the ground,
all museum tours and rot held at bay,
for a while.
yearning for the strain of metal,
a voice calling out safety procedures
(don't tamper with or disable the smoke detector in the lavatory),
and someone who loves them to come back to brush
knowing hands, since gone to claws, over their instrument panels.

in the air there doesn't seem to be a good reason
for planes not to tilt,
tilt down inexorably,
till they kiss the earth again.
all crumpled aluminum and fire
and a small black box
to tell those we left on land
some of how it happened.
I can tell myself about physics and engineering,
about this being my second flight today,
and about how (if nothing else) I made it onto this plane.
the turbulence pays me no mind.

touching down, touching ground, it hesitates.
there's a ghost of movement still.
a waiting. a breath.
the rush of air and engines,
not gone so much as paused,
halted only for a moment.
I am a little afraid of flying
but I'm more afraid of moving on
moving past this moment,
all muscled grace and limbo,
a portion of earth held up in sky.
then we land and walk to baggage claim
while behind us the airplane-
the airplane holds.

“isn’t it crowded in california?” people always ask me
but you should have seen the way it looked from the sky

expanses of empty valleys
mountains of uninhabited ridges
cities that i could touch with my fingertip
much like the stars in the dark night air
and green as far as the eye could see
the silver snow that dotted the land
reminding us not to forget about it

never had i been so far above that i could notice it all
always stuck in my corner of the universe

and you should have felt what i felt
knowing that there are still
areas of my heart that have yet to be
realized and explored and populated
by anyone who is not you

even though at one point
you occupied the spaces
the cracks in my chest and lungs and limbs
so much that i thought you were a piece of me

but the seasons change and so do people
so my winter will be drastically different than my summer
when you climbed out of my life and into another’s

and hearts break and shrink and expand
to make room for different hearts
(mine’s currently in the process of getting rid of you)

Sometimes
I look into the sky and make sure the stars are still there,
make sure this wasn't all a dream.
Funny how the ones that sparkle the most
aren't stars
at all.

In gentle hands,
rising over waves of wind
to lands anew
we fly. And from so high
we are as small
as frost on the windowsill.

someone important to me once said
that as a writer
he always needs to do something with his hands
and thats why he smokes
maybe i just want to see what it feels like
to survive a forest fire
or set myself on edge
or maybe my lungs crave experience
the feeling of something that isnt oxygen
they might get tired of the same old thing
maybe their exhaustion has just spread
throughout my whole entire body
i get the feeling that sometimes you stir and smile in your sleep
sometimes you are thinking about the wedding band on my finger
i wonder if you ever get the urge to move it a finger over
i coax my reality into a state of calmness by reassuring it with silly dreams
and words
i think would feel good being whispered out of your mouth
i havent met a single person
that wished they could be in control of someone else's lips
instead we just press them to our own
and whisper sweet words
and shift the mood of the emotion calendar
pack me in a suitcase
and if i die before we reach our destination
of sprawling castles and empty dialect
at least my dreams were above the clouds
but because i hate planes so much
they were probably curled up in a puddle of *****
"at least i was with you,"
they will exchange soft words as they sift
on a messy bed
trying to reach a comfortable state
of being
and mind
and pulse life into one another again
maybe they will even
attempt some work on me
look at how bright your future is
they whisper
as they hold me steady in front of a moving train
i cant see anymore i cant see anymore
it is impossible to thrash
are they taunting me? are they raining on my parade?
are they are they are they?
would they would they
would they?
their grips are like the blood pressure machine
stop squirming, you *******
you useless human flesh
havent you realised i've inhabited other minds before?
i know what theirs looks like
oh yes
inside and out
nobody is as fragile as you are
through every wire
every twist and turn you try to sneak past me with
nobody so blessed so beautiful
curl up and breathe life
into my brain
my bones should automatically respond
i will stretch i will stretch
i am like a dog on a cold morning in a warm bed
with someone who radiates love toward him
i will twitch my tail and
dance like a spring
when you creak off of the bed
and i will follow you
into the dismal day

Hallucinating Bureaucracies and auditory Hallucinations : When the voice in your head speaks when you don't want it to, to head's of State not present. I could snuggle in bed if I wanted to, but I've got to orchestrate and reorganize the Clinton dowry. It started outright with trying on a purple, yellow, and blue button down shirt that had Scabies in the sleeve- and now you're all going to know why Mr. and Mrs. Obama don't want to talk to me about potentially increasing livestock traffic across the Americas. I think could practice will follow from such a manure, I mean maneuver. I pick up 10 or so bottles of plastic single-serve water for consumption in my apartheid room. It's awful in here. The gold disappears from the mines, and even the hands I used to work with are blurring up in the twister, and as much as you call or don't call I have no business managing your intentions- only mine. Some barrge of women over thirty. But still there isn't a problem. The river is beginning to flood, and the fishery's stockpile is running low. Maybe we ought to empty out an African mass grave and fill it with blacklists of co-conspirators and then make a drake or a flume out of the narrow walkways between the cities. Then maybe we'll have water to last us through the dry season.----------------------------------------------------------­--------------------------------- Where in the world is Sam in Hammond, Can Diego? Forklifting pillars, bribing monkeys, playing with his Mickey Mouse and Michelob, catching the taller, eighteen and up crowd catch the last car riding the rapid drop from Space Mountain through, "It's a Small World After All:"  

It's a world of laughter a world of tears, it's a world of hopes and a world of fears. There's so much that we share, that it's time we're aware- it's a small world after all."  

And then he takes the biggest gulp of water into his mouth that I've ever seen the man take, and he puts it in a small cooler that's strapped to the back of his calf, and he swears to me that the aeroplanes are going to come loop around, and when they do their glorious water-landing, he and I, or rather, the both of us, will be saved. Saved, hm? I don't even bother sharing insights or my insides. I quickly flash him the most-pod horrific a tryst that irons down a photo of Egon and I back in the Old City, what was it, Chicago, or something that very much sounded like Chicago. Could be totally awesome and I'll chime in that now is the time when we do our work best. That's all. Intrepid,

I hate airplanes.
I hate them
More than
Anything
I've ever hated.

Except the flight
From Dulles
To Ft. Lauderdale.
I like that.

Especially at night
When it feels like
Stars
Can be caught with
A thin fishing line
Twenty feet away

And eventually you
Go off the mainland
And can't tell where
The water starts
Or
The stars stop.

Then you see a
Sudden line of lights below
And beyond that
An infinity of bright bursts
Of lights
And lamps.

All darkness,
Then suddenly
Light.

I really hate planes.

But not the flight
From Dulles
To Ft. Lauderdale
At night.
I love that.