the color of morning
filtered by three panes
the sun fills the black of
my early narrow eyes, 7am
the dirty sliding door shows
dog prints of the day
multiplied
the empty glass in my hand
held up to the light, smudged faint
in translucent coffee brown
to fill the glass
to borrow heat from the glow-orange
of my fingers to the day
only to return in
the color of morning
filtered by three panes
something about the summertime
and running the creeks long legs
in the endless light of the solstice.
something about the heat
and dirt in the east coast air,
swimming through it
so it sticks to your skin,
soaked, sweaty hair across the lines of your face
where salt drips to your tongue
through the corners of your mouth
earning years of dirty youth.
and lightning bugs at dusk against the grey,
green lawns
humidity thick on our voices
screaming out of breath with
a thousand false flashes across
the street trailing our memory in yellow
streaks and long exposure.
it’s February tonight
the streets are quiet in my headphones
and I miss the summer sweet.
You chase it in spaced out seconds after your favorite songs because the lyrics left you reeling. Traces of enlightenment in every stranger, flecks of gold in your field, the light between two eyes in passing. There was the thought, yours but only loaned out. There was the stunned space, and a long forgetting. There you are in weeks, afloat in the same rooms reciting prayers in the same melody and flipping switches on the off-white walls with your fingers crossed. You seek the same lighting and a trance, futile swears to something from hot breath frustration. Maybe it never happened. Maybe you should light a candle, the flame glow and the plants shadow thrown to the wall haven’t been tried. Maybe the state of questioning is the only soundtrack you know.
I’m checking my junk mail for notes lost in the cracks. Those telltale signs, those brief attachments, couch cushion of the universe kind. I’ll lose sleep over these, and other sad songs on the internet, and other questions I didn’t ask, and other truths I’ll stretch to frayed ends to satisfy the silence of mixed vibrations. We don’t lose touch anymore, we choose to disappear with sigils of the 21st century, into the new salt of the earth.
I’m always falling into things, like the little space between two of my favorite words posed together, floating from bedlam behind my teeth.
a little red in the wrong glass
nights like these, i don’t like the stems
but it sips right
it’s just me and it’s early
its getting late
the dog is pacing, pawing at every wall
so am i
it’s nice like this
but sometimes i just
want to make it through a night
without the longing
of another life
stiff in the winter arms
of the trees across the street
I walked your flowers to the streets edge
reds and yellows
pure from your hands, fragrant
and I fell into
the soft cup of the earth
dampened, low
on our tears together
and the knowledge of wounds that
soon should heal
I’m summoning a portal with my plants
a half-moon congregation
a hallway that wasn’t there before
like the ones in House of Leaves
and extends into everywhere else
a darker black and a couple greens
Fox stares into the ink
his eyes two starry pours
we’re scared of the first steps
I’ll carry a coin now
and flip for every indecision
The weight of two cosmic faces
flung from my pocket
And I see my futures
in flashes of sudden memorial
Seven times a week I wake up different. A quick look in the mirror, a five-alarm snooze. Still recovering from the night that I watched 30 planes fall short of the runway at the same time. Still staring at the sky and the wings with the orange glow. Still grasping aimless for the polaroid I lost I didn’t know I had. I woke up in another morning, I woke up for the green grass. I woke up in the same sheets wrapped for the winter. I woke up with the same name but needed to be reminded that the picture pieces of dreams are only altered cinemas of sleep.
I am a body full of wires, strung in errant Christmas rows
and the subtle energies of the matter run the circuit open.
There’s something more to this, like learning to let it go.
Like shaking my limbs electric in ode to forces I don’t know.
There’s something more to this and my heart just overflows,
always full submission to voices of my own.
I am a body full of wires, criss-cross overgrown.
I am stumbling disposition, and happiness is a few seconds I’ve never been comfortable in.
I’m thinking of the weird ones while I play the same album over again to memorize the feelings. The words are the feelings, the words are not the feelings. It’s a trigger in any event, it’s a melody unlocking a door in a hallway you passed by a thousand times but didn’t recognize until the open swing and the burden lifted. Its personal in a way that everyone knows in the same stories with different names redacted. I might listen to it all night because it’s the only home that feels the right kind of warm. I’m thinking of the weird ones because I like the way their pictures fill my memories, and the colors cool with mine, and the sound of all these voices singing about times I remember I missed out on. I recall them in other songs, old scenes I’ve wandered into unassuming just to slip into a wall, a specter, golden.
Treat it like an inhibition
Treat it like a friend
Treat it like a distant memory
Treat it like a last goodbye
and pull away
it comes again
Treat it like a crime
Treat it like a penance
Treat it like a prayer
one last last confession
for the last years of your life
Treat it like a song
Stuck in your head
dead battery in the dashboard
repeating dashed white lines
Treat it like a mystery
Treat it like inspired
Treat it like a lifeline
Treat like the worst time
with the best friend
you’d never leave behind
I forget where I am and I separate. I always sit and I’m always separate. Even now glancing out the window in dashes every other second when the outside yellows glow peripheral. There was a car, then a delivery, then a raindrop leftover from last night sliding out of memory, then I decided I had astigmatism and the lamp was looking suspiciously luminous through the glass so it must be the north star. These stories I find in perforated little fits. Stories confessing themselves all around me on pages unrelated and I don’t have time to finish them all so there’s never endings and the beginnings are never-ending. I forgot where I was, I was at work and the keyboard revealed itself. I forgot where I was, I was eating an apple and found out where it’s from. I forgot where I was, and this is about forgetting.
I remember the first time someone told me I had sad eyes. I thought I knew myself before that but I know I didn’t know myself after that. It was a subtle public trial, and I quietly left before the world witnessed the tears I’d been holding back for years.
I didn’t know I was sad, but someone else that knew me said so, so it was true, and it lives like that, through regular reminders I forget to remember to feel. So I’m a sad person now, and sometimes a stranger points it out for me and I can roam restless under my breath in aggravated acceptance.
Sometimes I want them to acknowledge the weight in my eyes so I know I’m doing a good job and I can go home and listen to my favorite songs so I remember to act right.