Things to Think

Think in ways you've never thought before
If the phone rings, think of it as carrying a message
Larger than anything you've ever heard,
Vaster than a hundred lines of Yeats.

Think that someone may bring a bear to your door,
Maybe wounded and deranged; or think that a moose
Has risen out of the lake, and he's carrying in his antlers
A child of your own whom you've never seen.

When someone knocks on the door, think that he's about
To give you something large: tell you you're forgiven,
Or that it's not necessary to work all the time, or that it's
Been decided that if you lie down no one will die.

-Robert Bly

turn it up

bioluminescence is the way to my heart

My heart beat like a ballroom.

There are so many poems that I don't write. They just sit and hum the hymn of the ignored in my broad heart. I pet them like a cat. I whisper them down to sleep. Someday they will be yours. 

And somewhere inside of my mind is a map. A cartographer's pretty daydream. You would grow dizzy if you tried to follow your finger across the zig zag witchcraft of the haphazard travels of my heart. 

But I'm not asking for a storm

It's like a hot pinch.
A summer myth.
It's the middle of the year.
The summit of everything.

when I hold you

Your hair smells like the sun.
There is heat and there is light.
I live in the midsummer skeleton of the year.

shall we?

let's just put on the Rolling Stones

you can't always get what you want 

and hope that we look

back and forth

and around the corner

with a Jagger smirk

with a pirate smile

let's shake our fist at the future

let's win

trivial

the sun was an assault rifle at our eyes
I told you useless facts
like Kiefer Sutherland has one blue eye and one green eye
like the king of hearts is the only king without a moustache
like children grow faster in the springtime
and I knew you wanted to pull over and throw me down on the green grass
on the berm
and kiss me until I fell to pieces
we laughed and the air around us was warm
I put on lip gloss and your arm looked tan

wood walker

I want her to give me more direction. A map. A silver compass. But she doesn't. She gives me food and we listen to elastic beats from her stereo while the sun drops like a penny into the hillside behind her house. I whisper to myself while I walk home. I make up a song that distracts me from myself. I sing it to the moon.

the emotional seat of my brain

sun hot drained pools
skaters with bleach tip bangs
punk music
tan legs for miles
& I didn't know nostalgia yet
just the feeling of missing you
when you were gone
away 
the way you held me like Ohio
home like a lost soul
the way you pulled my hair
and showed me what I liked

The story of us.

I've memorized it.

I give myself gold stars when I can recite it without sighs.

sigh #2

I thought to myself that he contained a whole universe that I had yet to know.

-Patti Smith

sigh

I exist in two places,
here and where you are.

-Margaret Atwood

 

can you hear the air leave my mouth?

power of suggestion

I believe in Plum pudding, not mechanistic science

there are no coincidences 
I know things happen
(for a reason)
bad
good
the word spins
like an old drunk on a barstool
meaningful connections are just walking around out in the sun
and you are a shiny universally understood symbol

The Ohio River calls me home as summer lifts her dress to us all.
There are old men on the side of the highway with berries and red, fat tomatoes.
Arms hang out of car windows.
Motorcycles speed past.
There is so much green.
I turn towards you and ask you to walk with me.
I show you my Appalachian heart.

you know i love the past cuz i hate suspense

And I'd probably write it on a cocktail napkin

I'll write you a tiny manifesto
about things
intentions
light motives
views
and I'll read it to you
standing across the table
out loud with a shaky voice
just so you know I'm serious
the air between us like a fugitive
palpable

perhaps in some ripple of time
at the edge of the world
we sit together
and eat bright apples
the sun licks your face
your body relaxed
one of your hands resting on my bare knee
and we never knew anything else