I spent my 20th birthday in a petrified forest
It meant nothing and I sweat very much

I wonder how it feels to be petrified, how it feels for
Nature to memorialize you,

Laid to rest until coal-covered hands unearth you
Gingko and sassafras and yew feel the sun’s aged, dotted hands caress all over

This is how it feels.
A petroglyph carved from ancient basalt

And my dad carrying our dog on his shoulders.
15.5 million years of layered rock and

Worrying about the size of my legs next to yours.
Ice age floods exposed crystalized bark and

You wipe the **** off your shoe and we drive some more.

Holding and touching

each other, gently doing --


what is in our mind.

I sit in her bed,

looking at her, her body --


the promise it holds.

Beneath the vast and starry sky we lie,
Where galaxies in quiet splendor spin,
Each touch a comet streaking through the night,
As hearts collide and form a world within.

Our bodies merge like constellations bright,
Mapping the endless reaches of desire,
The space between, a universe alight,
Each whispered breath, a spark, a flare, a fire.

In this expanse, we drift from time and place,
No bounds to what our love can e'er explore,
Like cosmic waves that gently interlace,
We float through space, and ask for nothing more.

For in your arms, I’ve found my world, my sky,
A galaxy where love will never die.

~ inspired by, & for Sally~

the modern internal combustion engine
is a series of controlled explosions, a spark
ignites the flammable gasoline, the pistons
moving, dispensing energy to turn our
wheels so we may voyage as a pair, to
there, and to here:

our very hearts, the original model of
this energetic blood disbursement of
oxygen ignited by electric pulsations,

one contemplates
at this late hour, at this late date, when the
moving parts, obedient servants,
collectively concur
that the use-by-date has nearly arrived and
we must soon take a sabbatical to the whereafter

what two, surely not three, digits will complete the right side of our hyphen,
our from~ to, as if that were an achievement,
more than merely, an identifying bracelet

think upon it, thousand of explosions,
millions of sparkings electric, we have been
engineering our reactors to go to over 100%,
until we cry out
how long you gonna run that body down,
and when the answer is ascertained,
we now done and undone,

we
no longer care, that last datum,
we are, of it, unconscious,
the date prior inscribed in flesh,
its mate, its uncomplimentary
complement,
can be only scribed in
Vermont granite,
as a warning
to any passerby
that yet harbors
the illusory that
the future can
be foretold

life gets so busy
and hard to control
so you continue your absences
you’re on a streak, on a roll

5, 6, 7, 8
does this effect my fate?

I know the answer, I know the truth
i always say I’ll work on it
ive said it since my youth

it becomes a hassle
a tough way to live
but you chose this life,
“oh what I’d give!”

but now you’re stuck
hanging by a thread
and your time is consumed by this
and the thoughts in your head

you can’t remember the last time you went to get coffee with your mom
or the last time you held sand in your palm
by the ocean waters, feeling the breeze
but now you’re here, killing yourself for your dream
and all you can do is remind yourself to breathe
and think of the things you want to achieve

push past your body’s limit
and start a new day
with affirmations
that don’t feel the same
as when you started to say them
you recite them anyway

scrunch your toes in your sneakers
and ballet slippers
my contemporary socks
and **** in my stomach,
under my tights and over my liver

the baby pink
so soft and sweet,
your teachers tell you “better turnout, is what you need”

sing to the radio
in your mother’s car
she takes a risk
and drives you so, so far
but god knows
your feelings are tightly kept
under your bed
in a glass jar.

they rot and rot away
until you open them up
and spill them into your notes app
or onto a blank sheet of lined paper