We are Gods With Our Senses

we are gods with our senses

judging what 

looksgood feelsgood isgood 

from what does and is not

all roads leading to evolution

however winding they seem

we have every right to grow however the sun awakens us

and find a water source even in the hardest rock

I have stumbled on many rocks

in some bitter moments

I have known the bite of a thousand dirty hands on my tongue,

silencing where they touched

touching where I hid

forgetting to feel the pleasant things

that hadn't left yet

still feeling the invasions

that were long gone

this morning I looked through blinds

and in that half-inch second,

the whole world was one blue sky

I don't have a point if you're waiting

this is a poem about the way we censor our joy

& our lives together

but I’m stumbling

the lines between brilliant and distasteful overlap

we are that flavor

I know it's a cliché but I don't love anyone as much

as those willing to cut me up

those able to say 

they see through the façade

and love me anyway

I don't have a point if you're waiting

I think we should give love lost a proper burial

burn it like an offering of gratitude, 

to any eyes searching the sky for hope

Yes, Virginia, connections are tenable

and yet tentative in every moment

she asked me, calm as you like,

If I remembered when we were dinosaurs together

I pulled her into myself

and split my ribcage to nestle her in

I discovered in her midnight fingertips-we are all the fingers of the same god's hands

I discovered we are all

remembering how to live for the first time.

and yet again in every moment

and I never wrote a poem as true

as the scream I gave with my first breath

so, if life's worth comes from honest pain,

I will accept nothing less

Apodidae

we locked together
like we were drowning
in a feeling of captain ej smith helplessness
you sighed my name, saying
maybe the ocean is just another sky
as you pulled wings from my spine

this morning baby chimney swifts
faced a dilemma akin
born to a family of acrobats, they
peered over fascia and felt
fly or fall.
ecstatically, emphatically, they
pumped the earth gone.

so grounded I tried to be
from aster to zinnia, you pulled my number
as if you planted it when sappho roamed
(you, the hurdy to my gurdy)
this dance I've corrected,
cranked and sped
has me stumbling now-
my flight-useless legs and feet
rendered inimical.
I miss a horizon I've never known,
a feeling of ej smith helplessness

see, the sweet swept-back swifts
are born
obliged to rise

8/30 Frontiered Calliope

Somewhere between El Reno & Altus
is a town called Nowhere

the single attraction

hidden southeast of ole' Ft Cobb,

are a pair of broken bricked lovers

two shed-like contraptions,

just off the main road

one leans left while the other right

I have suggested it barricaded in brocade

if someone living lived in Nowhere,

walls would be condemned,

they no longer are as they once were

a frontiered calliope

now they stand

sentinels charged with the hill-laden landscape

defending their necessary existence

which passes unbeknownst
in many a rearview

rails and coots are the only squatters

spending seasons nesting

into a future the entwined won't live to see

(did the fledglings offer saudade songs?)

the crippled roof 

weathered high beams 

bare dirt floor

built so close to almost be one, yet

they are an emaciated and aged couple,

decomposing above ground

as testimony

to a surrender the world should not forget-

don’t think I didn’t have designs on the place

                                 to wrestle it back from the earth

to envelope myself in a love’s forgotten letter

Even so...

sunlight speckled

how one leans left while the other right

eventually their parentheses

will be the echo of sound

from nowhere

carried in the wind by birdsong

harbor my boat to the tightrope
of your lip lines
if it sounds as if I'm trying too hard
it's only because I'm trying so hard
for something that seems easy for you

your smile:
the gawky kid in me thinks
when I grow legs as long as yours
I want to spend the suntime
watching how
your smile grows
the gentle lover in me agrees
your lips are nearly ripe
to think I am a portion
of your blossom's season
the rain and fertile ground
where your joy is dancing

Prior

That time we tucked our mosquito bites in
unattached to a thing
to any things.
We tip-toed outside
to smell pineapples
growing in old rubber tires.
Moonlight whispered down
through lava trees
As we swallowed the stars
nesting in each other's dimpled cheeks.
(I forgot to tell you then
because I didn’t yet know how)
the bees would frighten me irate
even as they were slipping extinct
(I forgot to tell you then
and I still don’t know how)
To me- being poor was a terminal illness;
I wanted to scrape it off like leprosy
So- I was going to save us by sailing away
I wanted to protect us from every thing
From all things.
(And I know,
though your silence is an echoing time-capsule
of who we were together
Then.)
To you- I was running away.

I’d take an island of bees over your sting.
I, the coward, the invasive specie;
Misjudged.
Yesterday, I walked the covered grove
down the red highway into the sea
where mangos rippen and drip and pop
I swam almost too far
as my legs sifted the navy waters
pumping with wonder

and from below, I felt the moon cry for us

not the us in my mind or yours

not the potential us

but for the two stars she gave us to see in each other

and we never gave back

or even acknowledge anymore

 

Here's what I meant

Years ago when we both huddled under a capsized boat
Rain slipping awkwardly from our shoulder
Both so thirsty we'd nearly drink anything
Here's what I meant
We were listening ears cocked at the ready
Heart poised and yet inept

Playing gunshots or fireworks

We raced, laughed and worried the river rocks smooth
Here's what I meant
You 

Took me on the adventure of my lifetime

We 

Wouldn’t take no for a ride, remember?
I 

wish, for a moment, you could leave yourself
To see yourself
It's in the
pushing your own understanding

I gulped

a minute is all I need,
But I need it now.
You sipped
& here we are years later
Entwined
River at the ready
finishing that sentence we couldn't before.

It's true
I romanticize about the times I could've died
As an aborted
As a premie
Intentionally from the age of eleven
Recently just
Would you miss me?
Places I would've blown to
People I would've died for
Once, I hit my head so hard
I got scared
Once, I forgot who I was
And imagined the worst
Sometimes I know I am alive
Only through the reminder
Of more pain to endure
Worth is subjective, irrelevant
To the hopelessness and fear
Of a sole alone
Would it be better to have been here
And ignored
Then to have never been at all?
I don't know.
I don't know.