stubby cracked fingers

no

they're not

elegant and calming

unearthly connections

ten tiny wells

what flows through you?

what do you channel?

create through lead

through wood and paper

create through the flesh

little muscles focused

around the circumference of a pencil

something exotic

in the wild wild strands of hair

little muscles focused

around me

what do you channel through me?

what flows into me?

let my body

be a canvas

for ten slender brushes

send my color

flowing out across the page

across your sheets

a history of lines

across my back

and in my mouth

megan is in the hills

that follow me out to the east

flowing force of earth

swimming up and around rock and river

they're the arc of your back

and the rivulet of your spine

under a waxing moonlight

i can only feel the comfort of your calves

the hills are something boiling

something tumbling beneath the skin

and oh my flaming head against the window of the greyhound

a holy circle of frost around my bowing head

i was praying for something beautiful to happen

the way back west

soft earth and moon replaced

a painful solar gaze and a stretch of dead field

it was the morning's first invasive light

grown into the size of a week

and it was foreshadowing to me even then

in your basement after dark

my hands are spiderwebs

clinging lightly to every corner of your body

and in the dark we both pulse

we ebb and flow

between finger tensed lip biting tongue shoving leg gripping throat moaning sweat dripping jean straining neck sucking breath stealing muscle aching back arching thigh pulling hip thrusting

passion

into

th

e

calmmmmmm

wide

wide

eyes

deep

..

black

whispers whispers

what we are afraid of most

whispers

whispers

..

black

whispers

what time is it

but the black whispers us back into each other

and the black crushes me back into you

let me put all my color into you

can i show you my deepest reds?

my pinkest pinks?

whispers

..

an unseen black heart beats now

bangs out of pace now

something primal that swallows us both

it's in your eyes

and i hope it's in my eyes too

and i hope we're both caught in the black's bloodstream

swept up into clothe tearing wrist holding hard kissing hair tossing mouth gaping teeth sinking back scratching nail digging rhythmic pounding dragging grinding throbbing breathy heaving gasping

love

the first storm was this morning

rain at my window, thunder in the walls

but it was you that woke me

and all day a fog hung around the streetlamps

and all day a fog hung around my head

taking in abstract resistance

the shadow that's the darkest side of us

pulling me down

and 52 neatly packaged messages

of genital mutilation and rape filled up my eyes

bloated out my head

and i don't quite to know what to say

when you ask me what i thought

with your earnestly inquisitive eyes searching out the recesses in mine

and it's foggy in my mind, can i touch you

when we're sitting in a dark room watching burning photographs?

i guess there's something in the way

that you run fingers through your hair

and it's foggy in my mind, can i touch you

when we're sitting on a bench listening to local artists

i guess there's something in the way

that you kick your legs when you laugh

and it's foggy in my mind, can i kiss you

when we're parked in my car in your driveway in light rain?

i guess there's something in the way

that the streetlights fill up your eyes

and i guess it makes perfect sense that the drive home was through a thick fog

Dream Journal 14

i was with alec and we were on a soccer team but we were playing against a british team so the rules were really different. in the game you could use your hands and toss the ball around and pick it up and run with it. so i guess it was more like rugby. the game was a charity event to raise money for some disease, or veterans, or something.

a bunch of other people were on the team; kody, megan, ben, and others i don't remember. i wasn't on the starting team and neither was megan. on the bench she was talking with my brother and ignoring me. while i watched the game our team was not playing well, we kept doing all these extravagant and pointless moves and not just scoring easy goals. we kept missing shots by just a few inches.

then it started to rain and the field got muddy. megan was still ignoring me until i made a joke about how maybe everyone in the game actually had diseases which is why we never scored. she laughed at that. after i said that they played a video of a helicopter crashing and the pilot dying on the stadium big screen. i guess we were playing for him.

next it is after the game and i am putting on my clothes at home. that day i had gotten a new bra in the mail and so i go to put it out, but it's more of a sports bra that will leave me looking flat. this upsets me a lot. so i take off the bra i am wearing and put on the new one and then the rest of my uncomfortable clothes. i look at myself in the mirror for a long time and wonder why i never noticed that i wore women's clothes before.

then i woke up

so out of place

so absolutely in the only place i could be

listening to josiah

listening to flicking lighters

my quiet humming and your fingertaps

the fading winter wind no longer bellowing

the sounds of us both living in your car

so out of place

so absolutely in the only place that i could be

in your basement on the couch

feeling each other dully through thick comforters

feeling the sun and the hours and windows

slipping away

lusting to escape the growing springtime light

into the dark

so out of place

so out of sync with the way that we were

when you ask me kindly to go

so you can get some sleep

and i never worked up the courage

to try and touch you

so childish so childish

i drive home waiting for a message from you

swaying like distant heat in the summer

feeling like a child

meeting at a central location on bicycles

bare knees and bare feet

whispering beneath a plastic slide

when we speak in these wild open tones

it feels exciting

i hope i'm not placing too much hope

on your slender little frame

it's so exotic to have another body

inside this car

empty for miles and hours

escaping and returning to looming shadows of skyscrapes

i hope i'm not placing too much pressure

on your slender fingers

writing out each lengthy message

about color palettes of paintings

or the ways that vonnegut has affected ourselves

so selfishly waiting on your overflowing response

getting hard at everything that you say

i hope i'm not placing too much of me

inside of you

needing to tell you my anxiety at 3 am

today i liked

sitting in a theater filled with people we didn't know

and some we did

i mean some that she did

and watching a terrible movie and laughing out loud

at all the same awful parts

and none of the little strangers making a sound

i liked megan's voice

and how it was so much lighter than i thought it would be

so much lighter than anything i had heard before

if i'm writing poorly it is like a whisper on winter winds

it is something forgotten, a moment shrouded in nostalgia from childhood

something like a million little ants on the sidewalk

something like being alone in a forest outside my grandparents house

if i'm writing truthfully it is soft and delicate

fragile, no not fragile, but crystalline

and her eyes that looked so unafraid into mine

and i was always the first to look away

and i will always be the first to look away

the drive home was fast and i was light

and it was a moment of pleasure that i should hold on to

like the tralfamadorians do

and it will just as pleasant to take medicine and fall asleep

to Daniel Johnston screaming about Satan in the woods

and how some things take a life time

and i wish i were a better writer when i am

sick and/or happy

i promise to start writing in the first person more often

and using names of the people in my life

in attempt to be more truthful

whatever that means

i've been obsessing over the brains chemical cycle

and how it rockets and dives in bright violence

every time we orgasm

and how i pile these peaks and valleys on one another

creating a jagged landscape in my mind

rocky harrowing heights for a synapse to climb

and then a 500 meter drop off for my thoughts to falter off

off

off

off

and so it makes it feel all the worse when i get off in the shower

my stomach glowing red and little beads of sweat gathering

at the edge of where my forehead meets hair

and i can't quite remember if i said your name out loud when i climaxed

to feel the chemicals drag me down the drain

to watch half myself go down the drain

every time i get off

off

off

off

megan makes me wonder what it means to get this off my chest

and where all my anxities go when i pour them out onto paper or through keys

does she absorb me when she reads me? does whitney still cry?

does my mom have this page bookmarked as a way to try and get close to me?

how come i can only write about women? i need to turn my libido off

off

off

off

i guess this is me trailing off

i miss jackson and his slender frame and awkward elbows

and the way he made me feel like a central character in anything

and he was a cronie and a sidekick and more trustworthy and reliable then i ever

allowed him to be

nostalgia for a seattle summer and walking down to the fishery building

for creative writing and then loud laughs on the walk home

how often did i split off

off

off

off

guess i am trailing off now

sometimes i wake up

and my eyebrows are falling out

and the hair on my stomach is cemented down

held hard in unnatural bends

sometimes i wake up

and my arm is asleep and heavy heavy dead

cells spark up the feeling eventually

and i can rub the sleep from both eyes

sometimes i wake up

and my throat is full of mucus and i can't breathe

it hurts like i have been crying hard

or that i should have been

what do i choke back in my dreams?

sometimes i wake up

fetal and alone with a phantom body pressed to mine

i think about all the pretty pretty girls i am awful to

and how i won't be calling anyone today