saintharvey

[saintharvey]

W 12.25.15

It is easier to write about you when I can see you almost like it's easier to paint when your subject sits still for hours seconds ticking by as you smooth their features onto canvas Natural Selection slowly sculpted your neck, your jaw, your lips I want to kiss each one until your tense hands come undone Timid and tantalizing touch me like a tailor measuring muscle I envy your chest that needs no constriction your low strong breath tells me I can trust you I don't have to win the game anymore we are on the same team and we are playing against  time Sadly, I have fallen for you the way that famous poets do not the kind of feeling I can control the kind that drowns me when you're away I used to be a diamond blade that cut the boys I tried to slay but something must have made me dull enough for you to hold me Maybe it was your magnified eyes that widen when you smile pearly whites like bright lightning past perfect pink lips Handsome, danceless, sixteen blue The boy who stole my heart was you.

[saintharvey]

May 4.27.15

A little bit of summer air penetrates our callused skin, A love affair with freedom still yet to begin. Desire, melting a frozen midwestern heart threatening to burst screaming to get out of those concrete walls those concrete walls those impassable concrete walls they hold us in like cattle we roam the halls swaying slowly side to side like driftwood caught out in the tides we float, with bodies tense and frail, we hope that someday we’ll prevail and breathe that summer air again Oh please, please God Release us Amen.

[saintharvey]

York 3.30.20

there's only one man left in the park today he's playing instrumental polka on the back of his bike as he rides into the basin now he's waiting, pretending he's not there looking through his notes. he was alone in his house all day pretending to be busy. the sun is setting and there is no light on his bike to bring him home. maybe, like me, he knows his way in the dark. this place on the hill has  softened under my steps and each time, I think of you lying there in the mud - he's started the polka again. it's time to head home.

[saintharvey]

Shampoo 1.31.19

I smelled your shampoo on someone else today I've been getting over you but when I caught that vaguely floral generic fresh scent I just wanted to cuddle back up Too big for two in the twin bed, twin bodies folding around each other all night, until you get too warm, then I'll touch you with just two fingers from across our little world I don't know why I got those nights with you they seem like an interlude: the dream of an afternoon nap. we woke up and life went on and I was okay But I can't tell if this was even real because when someone says I love you and no one's there to hear it doesn't mean anything When I say I love you to a mirror does it mean anything? I give myself the drunken pep talk anyway I'll find a boy someday, I say my heart is not to give away to someone who can't give me what I need But you are more beautiful than the endless western sky stronger than the ancient peaks you make me smile more than a single daisy between the rocks When I visited the Badlands I wanted to stay forever there was so much to look at but I couldn't find a place to pitch my tent.

[saintharvey]

Holy Ghost II 7.24.19

I don't know why I keep putting reminders of you in my life I put little stickers over  the lips of every man I fall for saying WARNING DO NOT LET IT HAPPEN AGAIN you said I was crazy I thought you were for not loving me and look how that turned out But I'm glad you broke my heart back then I'm stronger for it, now I keep my heart packed away safely in a shoebox at the bottom of my closet so that I have to go home to get it if I need it I can give yearning friends advice and condescend them with my feigned immunity from heartbreak Because of you, I can take rejection from one of the most amazing people I have ever met and the next day, console them  as they talk about getting back together with their ex. Because of you, I take zero offense when a hot boy from Tinder ghosts me. Somehow, in your wake, I found an island that very few of my fellow travelers have been able to spot. I am all alone here I get maybe a few visitors a year but they never stay I'm busy enough with the waves and the sweltering heat that I don't mind.

[saintharvey]

Untitled 7.13.17

sitting down playing my electric guitar unplugged all of the lights are off and the house has gone to bed but me a thought crosses my mind that twenty or forty years ago a punk kid could have been doing the same thing as me plucking away almost noiselessly in their room I am awake so I feel like a rebel but I am invisible and if a tree falls and no one is there you know how it goes everything around me exists because men in suits allow it to and it was the same twenty years ago and forty years ago someday I may be a man in a suit but I hope I'll let the melody play on perhaps when it began there was a homemade lute a wooden cavern dug by hand birthed from one's own mind trial after trial over generations and the melody crescendoed until one day it was so loud  that it's mother wouldn't even recognize it I am holding something alive  not as alive as a fresh cut cherry tree carved by hand to hold a tune but this wood was once alive on the other side of the world and the glossy arrangement of carbon was distilled from  the juice of leaves buried millions of years ago Pressure brought them back to life the melody carried on from before the dawn of apes before there was a knife to carve before there was a quarter inch to plug in and fill the room I wonder if my guitar sees my hardwood floor as  a carpet of bones Every pluck of a string sends and impulse down its spine and it sings or does it scream? or does gripping into the frets twist into knots and break your back in the best way

[saintharvey]

When I Call You, When It’s Dark 4.6.20

pressing into your lips like pillows that we rest upon from leagues of golden grass away I watch  you dream about stars and oceans and my eyes and the lines of my body stenciled out across a silken bed sheet, I wish I could send a raven to deliver you my love. Instead I'll sail up the Mississippi cross gitchi-gami  through Huron down Michigan until I see you waving from the shore. I will hand deliver me to you for a single chance to dance with my lips upon yours At Last and fall down on that pillow beside you.

[saintharvey]

Sin 3.3.20

I stand up and you are covered in blood I am laughing you are afraid of falling in love with me The ladders to escape are many but we are here and there is even more blood, Jesus This is my blood the blood of the new and eternal which will be poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of Sin

[saintharvey]

The Minneapolis Institute of Art 2.11.20

we all have different names since we last met I guess at yours and am incorrect you don't dare say mine, which you know I can't say anything but your name and even that... I can't put into words memory love? who are you now why are you here? seems a silly question then what to say I have nothing to say to you anymore

[saintharvey]

Eden 4.36.20

Can I follow you into the forest?

never see another eye but yours

mine are so tired

of being believed

Can you love me in a different way? 

Love the air  flowing through my lungs Leave my body Leave my soul Love the air

feel it

can't you

be the wind

and I'll be the leaves

and all their brothers made of air

Hold me as you scour the Earth

for there was never one like me 

in Eden.