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[words-uncollected]

22.12.01 (November Dump)

:Formal

it was calculated, we thought. precise like the moon exactly where it was meant to be, & the ocean swinging.

your hands clasped on the sunburn of my neck, the red skin turning white.

we settle down we exist.

:division

split in one swing & splayed on either side of the chopping block, the wood soaks in the dew of the starchy grass - the sun only half above the rim of mountains & sailing through the pines.

there is, of course, a time before this, but it is hard to know when that was.

:Master

the first thousand steps through a blurry morning the concrete glistening with trash juice & each foot strike after another

the garbage trucks pulse slow through the streets passing slowly, wafting so much that was left to rot, & another breath, breathe it in, keep the pace

:Hear

the dog’s nails clack on the wood before she settles at your feet, licking the carpet for something you can’t see, either.

:Breathe

it is early autumn & we’re standing in a circle watching our breath mix & dissipate

& i like to imagine it stirring the heavens, talking to rain clouds, waiting in the blue open sky

to come back down & become breath again. this air we’ve carried our whole life

like a chain pulling from our teeth.

:Reptile

i’ve always been a reptile. the eczema that itched on my elbows & behind my knees, like the skin sloughed off of my brother’s bearded dragon - ignored except to feed, the shed along the sides of the fifty-six gallon tank. a self completely surrounded by a self.

:Disaster

there was a fender bender in front of the bar where we met -

the recently divorced dad in tears, so the other driver’s kids were crying, too. it was

hard to take the man’s insurance & she said it’s fine & left. so the crying man

waited for the cops & thought of how incredible it was to still see

someone that looked just like his daughter. we ordered beers.

:Violation

wondering if there can be forgiveness-

the earth spinning the sun into view & waiting for the first rays of light to hit the ground

:Fisherman

the salt on your neck & in your lungs -

hands rubbed raw by ropes, & skin thick from the sun.

it is easy to forget alone on top of the ocean

how much lives in the deep

covered & breathing the same salty water

:Litter (A Sonnet)

carry me home. the night sky rising slow & dark, the paper trash swirled with dead leaves across the sidewalks & streets. pull your sleeves over your gloves, & feel me settle low

against your hips. I’m heavy no, i’m no small child, you think. the rats run on the eaves of quiet houses, no lights inside. trees rattle their brittle branches bare, alone.

your breath quicker now - grows panicked, grows uneven; sputtering, short, harsh. your lungs thieve the air i drink. carry me home, my knees dragging on pavement, turning down a through-

way. for the first time you realize the lights in the city make everything too bright.

:Oral

i’m never looking at your mouth when you’re talking -but i know what it looks like

:Classroom

there was a last time i walked into a classroom & sat bored & half-awake. & i realize

there are countless lessons I’ve been taught & learned so little

there is a last time i sat in a classroom & if i think long enough i can almost remember it.

:Business

the sun isn’t risen & you are in the bathroom - sweat from your pre-dawn run mixed with shower water on the lumpy rug, moldy & in need of replacement

you zone out, imagining the drive ahead - a merging car merging into a lane of merging cars & merging still as the sun sets.

the last rays of the sun cutting under the overpass & in your eyes. you can only partially see the road.

:Attic

piercing - the debris of bat droppings & dust, the attic of any house only grows chaos.

in the blaze or freeze of the seasons, detrius accumulates & morphs, old pictures curl & stick, the memories changed by neglect, so

when you climb the rickety steps to remember - it is not you alone who’s different.

:Rest

one breath & then another. there is so much in watching a chest rise & fall.

:Claim

the palm on your chest - ragged, chafed, leathered skin split at the cuticle of the thumb,

it is a flagpole held upright by an A-frame floating on the surface, blowing in the wind

it has nothing to do with the earth below.

:Extend

the always open mouth attached to an arm, stretched & retracting, dragging chattering teeth, no eyes, no nose, no, no, no. long grasping, pulling itself on unknowable lines - un stopping - tugging as at a tight collar forever.

:Regret

there is a space between the door opening & closing where it is still

at the furthest point of its arc ready to swing.

but it hasn’t, & that is exactly when you see the entire world in & out of the room.

:Captain

the good ones go down swinging - proud chested - the dark water

drinking them in, resolute though the cold shivers their core.

of course, it’s not really the good ones that go down with the ship. they keep sailing.

:Line

the space between me & my morning coffee is a straight line

on the map - it curves around a river & past an outdoor market

where a man

without his left pinky will drop a carton of heirloom tomatoes, & one will roll directly into my path -

two ducks will stand on a submerged ridge, the water roiling by & they are unmoved.

so i will walk towards my coffee in a world that can be anything.

:Clear

the sun rises for only a short time. it is winter, & it is cold,

& the clouds overhead are gray & glowing.

i had wanted to rip my heart from my chest - to be distinct & joyous, & to know what I want to say. but it’s snowing, & the sun is only risen

such a short time.

:Novel

new ways to get lost. new medicines when you’re green phlegmed & hacking through the night. new adventures to sleep through - restless, tossing, awake but not alert. new people thronging frozen on busy thoroughfares, homeless & alone in the nearly always night. the stain of human misery latched onto the brightness of being. all is destroyed to be created.

:Squeeze

i know only one thing

we woke up to the dull sun, a haze of misty snow rain, & a trek to the airport. our circadian rhythms fucked by darkness & artificial light. we pressed on, landing in below freezing temperatures, taking awful shits in public bathrooms, driving through dark night black at four pm here at the top of the world - further - further - further north than anyone else I’ve ever met, & they have streets, too.

I only know one thing, when you’re squeezed what’s inside comes out.

:Arrangement

it was the last house on the street, but the road continued anyway. some days we would walk it to it’s end - a dock filled with crab boats. not even noon, & most returned from a night on the sea.

you carried a bucket, & your old friend would watch us approach for a long while. there were always a few good ones saved for you, & we would take turns carrying the full bucket home.

:Write

it is hard to write

:Recycle (A Cento)

like the moon split in one swing &

the concrete at your feet, licking this air we carried alone the sides just like his daughter

the earth spinning in the deep your breath quicker no - grows panicked, grows at your mouth & learned so little

the last rays of the sun it is not you alone in watching a chest the palm on your chest - attached to an arm, stretched ready to swing proud chested - the dark water is a straight line

i had wanted night. the stain of freezing temperatures, taking awful to it’s end - a dock filled it is hard to write

:Video

it is a life packed away in plastic, placed upon a shelf & stored. the dust that collects just the same as the dust in the frame - somehow alive outside of time. this is how

you remember it - the life framed, set aside for the long nights when fires smell like water & teeth dance like horse hair in the snow. a reminder is needed -  everything out of the shot a suggestion. you pull it down, pop it in, & go to work on forgetting.

:Sink

dirt dried against the edges of your boots - you stepped so much today, you think

the prints uneven & soft behind you, stepped in by faceless commuters, treads of countless boots digging deeper in a shallow earth.

seagulls swim in garbage, bares kick up the latest refuse for the birds to pick through, & you are certain of nothing -

a candle burning against a cave wall, the carcasses of unknown animals, strewn & defanged.

:Satisfied

the sun rises slowly when you watch it.

an orange voice along the horizon singing into the open air,

filling the breeze, moving the skinny birth trees

against the waves of the glowing day.

:Center

nothing, at the core shifts eternal. nothing at the center but more center. an egg in an egg, cracked into another egg. i’m getting to it - nothing like the puff of air from frozen lungs - wispy & nothing. do you let the darkness hold you - can it, if you breath it deep enough to touch where nothing does? the first thing the newborn does is reach out into nothing & hold on.

[words-uncollected]

22.11.01 (October Dump)

:Rings

there may somewhere be a center

& i hope to know it at least a while, while standing there

the ring remains long after the jewelry is removed.

:Mindlessness

you could be forgiven for imagining anything different if you were after all, imagining anything at all.

:Bait

how slow does the deer’s leg move

when she knows she’s being watched

:Freeze

the light that passes through something

frozen is no less warm

the snow falls, swirls, rises, & falls again. it always has

:Build

the furnace they use to make bricks, piled high by little hands, placed neatly here before neatly there before, finally, home, is the same furnace they use to cremate their dead

:Husky

if all you are is all you leave behind, then huskys are never gone

:Enchanted

there are blessing you do not want - which is easy to say sitting in the bounty of an orchard

forgetting how deep the roots run.

:Frail

i had wanted to fall apart in very

specific ways.

but no one can choose how the world will break them. no, they just break.

:Swing

i can hear the sound of backyards i don’t remember & wonder what is youth

:Pattern

it is always easiest to see what comes next when what before it, is broken

:Snow

wet socks on the radiator under the front window

there is a tea kettle almost singing in the next room

i wonder how much energy do we have left?

:Dragon

what are you looking for?

there are things you can’t find.

a generous reminder

:Ash

pick up a bone from the ashes of last night’s fire

-singed, gray, crumbling

it is easy to forget that these were sturdy, these were wings, that they once flew.

i toss it into the woods

:Overgrown

the trees topple over each other, the largest branch growing into a neighboring sapling becoming one over years

when i show the blade of an axe it still does not question

:Legend

cleaning out the attic- the head band reeks of sweat long after the moisture is gone

:Wild

foraging isn’t the same as living

bunch up your sweater around your elbows & wade into the water

:Ornament

unpacking the decorations & stepping backwards down the foldaway steps

you wipe away the dusty of the preceding year & it hangs in the air a moment before resting.

:Misfit

does it matter if it breaks if it still fits?

the only question: does it work?

:Sling

the hardest part of the bone flexed till it cracks & fuses, later stronger, still

:Tread

it is easy to forget the tires spinning when the car is upside down

so you imagine the breath in your lungs pushing past your lips & filling he cracked rubber with air.

:Treasure

we left the canoe on the lake bed

when it started taking on water the shore looked

so far away, but you paddle anyway. that’s the only way

it ever gets closer.

:Ghost

you were the singer of the ghost band & you always wore white.

           how impossible the lives that live inside our skin. what are you not

:Ancient

nothing lasts in the hollow of cinder blocks, dark & air, stacked high by hands chafed & dark in the sun

nothing last underfoot, at the backside, a part of the light.

:Dizzy

the summer heat runs down my back

& into the stupid air.

it is a sidewalk chalked by children to say love in the shadow of a fence leaning against it’s rusting poles.

I do not know where you are

:Tasty

when the door closes for the last time

you realize it’s the scent - crisp & apple -  you remember

:Dark

the last time you watch the sunset is the first time you watch the sunset.

& the night is more night then you ever recalled, glowing like ice in water.

:Coat

we still quote the trash we found in college - we get it mixes with who we are - it coats our history

:Ride

the lobster charm printed with “Nova Scotia” still slides across the outside of your thigh - hanging from the ignition of the car you still drive.

do you remember the gift shop where i picked it up? the sun straight through the dusty window. we laughed.

:Injured

when the last bandage comes off, you see it for the first time, again.

the way your skin will always look, you think, until it doesn’t.

a cold comfort before you bleed.

:Catch

it is the rain falling into open hands & soaking your skin, the thought that some of it is held a little longer

:Ripe

you spent the summer sharpening the blades you’d need in harvest

so walk the rows of crops, inspect them, wonder how they grow

in the blasting sun. the handles of these tools are worn smooth

until they splinter

[words-uncollected]

22.09.29

this is my history & it means nothing to me, unless it’s shared with you

[words-uncollected]

22.08.03 (Survivor’s Guilt)

do you not feel it when standing in line at the grocery store, holding a bag of pears? looking

at the shape & bruises of the fruit

that brought it here.

your skin has always been soft, you think, never ripped at by knives or bullets, never bloodied, never anything but standing in a line with a bag of pears

& don’t you feel it. the weight dragged by all those trees

[words-uncollected]

22.07.16

you learn to make your bed for the first time when your mother shows you how to place the mattress on your hip & work the fitted sheet to it’s corner. Hospital sheets, she says, not quite to you. & again, you share this with your partner

the first time you do laundry after moving in together. they show you how they learned to place the duvet too low on the bed on purpose. pulling it

up to the top makes it neater. & again, you learn

to make the bed when the dog you adopted won’t move. this lesson is

that it doesn’t need to be perfect. & so you keep learning over and over again how to make the bed & there are so many different hands that work with yours until at last it’s your hands alone that do the work.

& so, you learn to make the bed alone, for a second time. you wonder if you’ll learn to do it again

[words-uncollected]

22.07.07

it is very late at night when i’m walking the dog & he decides where we go

he likes to walk at night when the trash bags are piled on the side walks

the garbage juice mixed with dog piss, staining the concrete & shining in street & moon light.

he guides me to all his favorite places to mark -  the new tree in front

of the candle display for a new mother killed by a car a month ago.

the fire hydrant in front of Ralph’s - licking the littered plastic spoons as I look at the moon.

the street in front of the hospital - half taken over by permanent temporary fences & plastic tents, he

stops to shit in a planter as an ambulance pulls out slowly with it’s emergency lights on,

but no siren. he turns for home, & was it on purpose? there are clouds now, it has become very early morning.

[words-uncollected]

22.03.27

i had want to give my hands away on days when the sun would set before work was over, the street lights

outside the closed window on, & you had to wear the holey flannel over whatever else wasn’t dirty.

i had wanted my hands to chafe with use - the skin around the cuticles to scab over with small cuts,

the kind that come from moving milk crates full of useful things - tampons & toilet paper & gallons of

milk. whatever is needed when it is cold & alone in the world. i had wanted to give them, my hands,

to some useful thing, like another person trying to make sense of the sunset which they had just seen for the first time

[words-uncollected]

22.03.26

it was nearly ten pm & i hadn’t had dinner because there was no one else to make dinner for

& i was tired & hungry so i didn’t want to make dinner but i figured it wasn’t so far to walk to get pizza

so i walked alone to a pizza place & got two slices. i ate them alone & i walked home, very much wanting

a drink, but i was alone so i didn’t have one

[words-uncollected]

22.01.16

it was snowing earlier today, but i didn’t get the dog out until it was rain. that’s okay, we bought him a jacket - it’s reversable

so when the snow turned to rain it’s okay.

[words-uncollected]

21.08.23

you are walking in the forest & you know the path. you know the names of the mushrooms (those are morels, around the bend there are oysters, you know this,)

& you know not to eat the ones with red caps.

you know, of course, what you are doing in the woods. you are walking on paths

marked by painted trees that you didn’t paint. still, you wonder, would you know the way? you

would know the way, and which mushrooms you can pick. you would know, when you park the car at the trail head, it takes twenty minutes

to get to the good spot to watch the sunset. you have time, in the parked car, to roll a joint, to finish listening to the song that was playing on your way there. you know the names of mushrooms, you know the way,

you know the way the sun, in late summer, sets to the right of the fire tower when you sit on the big rock, the one with paint, that you painted, on hikes where you learned all this. you know the way back at night, where the oysters & morels are, you know that you can drive your car anywhere, & so maybe you will, you think. but for now,

you are sitting in your car at the trailhead, & you know the way to the sunset, & you know where you’ll sit, & you know, alone in the car that you are never just alone

[words-uncollected]

21.06.30

you wake in a tunnel that is cool but not cold. it is dark, and there in the distance is a glow

so you walk, you realize barefoot, on ground that is even and soft, not dirt, you think, but cannot see, the glow remains, behind you

the same nothing in front. it is endless, you think, but remember of course nothing is endless.

nothing is endless, you remember, can mean more than one thing. there, in the distance is a glow, always a glow in the distance.

are you crying, you wonder unable to see your hands as they reach to wipe something from your face.

[words-uncollected]

18.04.28

it was a small fender bender outside of the bar, but he was recently divorced & she looked just enough like his daughter so he lost it in the middle of the street

which maybe wouldn’t have been a thing, but there were children in her backseat & the passerbyers were worried with their phones already in their hands 9-1-1 was easy to dial

& it was a slow day for police so more than needed came to quell an argument about a fender bender outside of a bar where the workers didn’t have legal standing

that they trusted, that they knew they could count on to not be sent home, where they wasn’t any work & their families were hungry, so the lights reminded them, outside of the bar, that they should make it quick, & they did

fixing the molding, setting the dry wall, staining the chairs & door & setting them outside. they asked if the barkeep could set the door after the stain set, & it meant less hours of work to pay for so he said sure

but the rush started early when a water main broke & flooded the minor league baseball field down the street, so the chairs stayed outside & the doorway just an aperature

[words-uncollected]

20.02.28

the long way home passes by the bakery & at this time of night it is filled with immigrant hands kneading dough - cinnamon &

blueberry in the air. & if you’re going to start this way you might as well walk over to the river. it’s high for this time of year - without the cold keeping

the precipitation on the ground. besides - what might you find pulling out to sea. from there the record store is only

a few blocks out of the way. you can’t go in with the dog you’re walking but it’s nice to walk by & see what’s happening. maybe you’ll

run into your friend’s friend & struggle to remember their name as you talk about the last time they saw you at that party

& then you’ll both be silent before you laugh & say you have to run. they may notice you walking back the direction that you came & you can laugh about it.

you can say, “I’m taking the long way home,” & look up into the night to wonder just exactly where you could walk to next.

[words-uncollected]

20.01.17 (Good Luck Everybody)

this is the vision

a wave, deep blue & large sweeps the entire seaport into the sea where it sinks because it has to & there is nothing between the center of continent & the bottom of the ocean

or

the instantaneous heat of an inhuman bomb rolling entire buildings onto their side crushing whatever they crush & the starving radiated winter that follows & never ends

but

it is neither. it is the mirror & what’s in it

[words-uncollected]

19.06.20 (nights of summer)

in the city in the summer after a night rain

it is impossible to tell if the water in the air is now rising or falling still

but you don’t worry about that as it fills your lungs

because it is June

[words-uncollected]

19.05.31

don’t take the first exit;

the next one gets you a little bit closer.

these are only driving directions & you are only driving, you

figure, at least until you’re not again, & let me be

clear. you are only driving & these are only directions

to a place far out from the center that nobody has chosen - to a place

picked by a dart in a map blind tacked to a wall

that no one will clean. you are only driving,

& these are only directions that you didn’t want to follow

across a flat island dark in the center of

an acidic sea. you never realized how much it hurt to sell your soul

til they lowered the price.

[words-uncollected]

19.05.16

am i guilty for walking in the early summer night wearing nothing but a shirt & shorts and headphones - blocking out

all that nothing in the evening air? am i guilty for having the heat of my breath mix with the evening air - the only thing

between me & the moon. am

i guilty for loving the feeling of the summer heat bare on my thighs under the few remaining lights in the city at night?

i was told that there is nothing wrong with walking alone in the city & feeling free