Ghost Hardware

your hands seem as playful
as goldfish in a milk jug,
but I'm only ever eating the walls again,
privy to the noises that beggars
make when running by,

i have this stencil
of Jesus
whiskeyed out
on a park bench,
spilling nickles
like daydreams
onto the broken pavement.


i lack nervousness in nature..
my anxious heart is only restless
amongst the concrete that my mind acknowledges,
but will not give into.
i've seen everything leave
& seemingly return
in the ocean of my life.
i'm waiting for something to stay,
as unlikely as that may ever be.



the hours
deplete me
of irony
& ivory.

I keep blades of grass
in my back pocket
to cut through the memories;
shadows are like dead relatives,
friends I've lost along the way
& the strangers I've left in passing
that I'll never see again.
I keep them all like coin collectors
hoarding stamps and rings.

each love affair is a different life,
every parting of the lips a reminder
of how many times I've died,
lived again
& started it all over.
the parts of me that are missing
make me whole.
I take deep breathes
when I'm remembering,
then tuck my eyes
into my dreams
& let go.
in my secret body,
I am both always & never
alone...

sadness seems more potent
when you attach its name to the seasons,
but its always just an lonely in the winter
as it is in summer's
purposeful daylight dragging.
perhaps
it's just the years that add up
and make the surface
seem so much more shallow
then before.
or is it that the debts
at which i feel seem deeper
& more lived into
with age?
& its as if the hearts
would rather perish
than love so freely..
I would rather sink or swim.



it took me so many years
to even see the ocean,
to ever even notice
that I was getting older
than I should.

i remember this hurricane
when i was four years old.
afterward, I stood
where my house
had once stood.
I could say it was the first time
that I understood emptiness,
but it wasn't the first time
that i realized that the wind
could carry me away.

i think children are more poetic in the rain.