Glimmers

You left me behind

Where is my trial?
If I am to be condemned to life without you?

I feel like you wrote your name on me with blades

Tattooed me with loss

But I see you in the trees
In the river
In the moonlight where the dryads dance

Glimmers

I hear your voice in your daughter
I see your smile in sunshine
And my god I hear your laugh

I want to fight with you
I want to shout at you
I want to scream that you could have come back sooner

I want to tell you
You were worth more than what happened to you

So on days when I bereave the world because you are not in it

I tell your brother I miss you

I tell my love a joke you told me once

I tell your daughter I love her
I tell her that she is golden and gorgeous
And I tell her she is worth more than what has happened to her

My Opinion On Dandelions

I keep thinking there is someone I can call

Drugs I can take
And powerful things
The darker things
That still know my name

I wish I didn’t know myself so well
I wish I didn’t think of me at all

Exchanges in my head
Are so powerfully meaningless
Septic nonsense

A dirge of names

A treachery of mine

A castle in the sky
No more attainable
Than serenity
As accessible as death

Like esoteric reading of tea leaves
My future in the debris

I am always the fool
When it comes to dandelions

But this cotton candy romance is wearing off

Self awareness like poison apple fills me with reproach

No one tells you that the grave is full of time

Death of the Palm Tree

Oranges fall to the ground and rot in California

Palm fronds litter the streets of gold that have never really glittered

All the mundane

Wrapped in temperate weather and small towns

The cities are just markers on a map

A vague indicator

Of the somewhere you pass through

Destination unlikely

Evenings stretch out into the setting sun

We are breathing

I am just a palm frond

Chaos Converging

I have spent so much of my life looking for something to fight

These days I never remember whether I won or lost

They were the same really

Just an excuse to become an adversary

I thought I had to fight

Gasping for breath was the only way I knew how to be alive

But these days

I’m just a little more peaceful

How dare the queen of chaos
Eris the god
Say such a thing

But chaos for chaos sake is a beautiful fire

And fighting for the sake of the fight
Will only leave you bloody

Destruction
Nihilism

But these days…

I’m just a little more peaceful

Gratitude of Dusk

My life made false start after false start
The runners were poised
The pistol was fired
And it died from the bullet

Life began when I was waiting

It began with endings

Such tremendous endings

I never thought I would see the sunset that way

Now both shoes have dropped
And I am running barefoot

Towards something
Something

And I am finding my way

The long twilight of my soul

Has come upon the stars

And notes like jazz
Incomprehensible
Are on the air

I am in the falling light

For the first time
I feel found

An Optimistic Stanza

I am a better poet the less I indulge in chicken soup for the soul

Or maybe the indulgence is that I imagine myself so darkly

I am my own creation
A stanza
Read a loud

Are similes and metaphors enough?

Do adjectives adequately explain?

That these days are sweeter than honey
More comforting than the sunrise

I am no longer scared of who I am
I am increasingly curious about who I will become

Every evening in the dusk I breathe deeply and sigh
It’s like I have forgotten how to lose my smile

In answers
Geographical and otherwise

If I have not been clever I have been lucky

The words are so pale compared to the Technicolor reality

I would paint the sky with those colors if I had that talent
If I had that energy

I am at a loss
How to create without friction

This is my first time
Hopeful and terribly happy

Other Questions for the Dead

I can’t comprehend never

I can’t fathom that days just go on
That blue skies turn black
And time is endless

Endless?

There is an ocean of agnostic nothingness between us

And I am to bear forever?

I whisper tiredly
My voice ragged with emotion

How could you do this?

I want to ask if you miss me and be disappointed no matter what the answer

I need to know if you still play hide and seek?

And can I know
If you are loved?

Does it compare to this love that is behind you?
Love that makes my heart beat wrong
Love that slides down my cheeks
Love that now feels like a crushing weight in my chest

Answer me?

This is just like the night as you were dying

Questions, questions

Answers esoteric if at all

And the things I wanted to ask haunt me like shadows in a mirror

Can you stay?

Will I smile the same?

Did you know I loved you more than snow and ice?

Was my hand in yours enough?

Can I come with you?

Questions I just live with in my bones
With this infinity symbol that is never
Slowly snapping my spine

Capitalism and Candy

I keep thinking in quotation marks
Reality incorrectly used

Sometimes I wake up
In the middle of the night
Just so my body doesn’t have to respond to the shriek of the alarm

The void is never silent
And at night the curves
Sing lullabies

I’m thinking I need chocolate
Some kind of sugary rush
Glory to the addict automotaun

Then I remember that American chocolate
Is made with palm oil
Which causes…
Slavery…
Or something

I forget I want chocolate

Do I need coffee?

This route is like skies so cloudless and blue
Overdose on beauty
And still you die

More Than I Expected

The light is soft and fading
As my heart
On tip toes
Remains light

The death of you was
Like drowning
As you struggled
I could not breathe

There was not a moment
Even in the inevitability
Where I could gasp
And let the cool air
Burn my lungs

Tears sting my eyes
But at the same time
I can almost breathe again

Because I miss you
And something about that
For me
Speaks of love
Unyielding

And the knowledge
That if I can perhaps
If I can be pleased
If not happy

Maybe
My time is worth
More
Than I expected

And my smile becomes
As valuable to me
As it was to you

Northern California Gothic

The stark blue skies
And hooked highways
Crawling across a landscape
Barren and strange

Not quite a desert
But thirsty
So thirsty

Orchards and rice
Give way to small towns
That tangle into concrete jungles
A questionable landscape painting

I can’t remember overcast

The heat looks like spring
And feels like a planet closer to the sun

Emeralds and effortlessly green grass
Are in a distressed memory now
Torn
Threadbare

I wish I could see clouds

There is the scent of smoke on the air
More a question than a threat
Is it time?

Mountains hazy in the distance and train tracks that run like Jack rabbits
Up the haunted country side

Another day where
Rain is not even thought of
By the brutal sky

I can’t remember overcast