These were all penned between July and December of 2017. I wrote a lot less and as a result what I did write was more raw.
*Note on dear former best friend: if you are reading it, it does not refer to you and was written during a social anxiety attack*
Colorado
i wore your old hoodie,
covered in fingerprints of memories
of stolen laughs in old libraries,
and i cut through miles and pines and storms
into a stretched out sky
the color of your smiling eyes
and flavored with chilled infinity.
i stand in peaks touched by sight alone
and silent they hold vigil
on the centuries, but i
just quietly wish you were here.
Counterculture
the past bites my view of the future
{ paper cuts on my retinas
smog on my skyline
chains on my wrists
rocks in my nets }
america says, live dreaming till you wake up dead
or save sleep for the grave.
i say, give another heart a reason to beat
and keep walking.
all roads go somewhere.
mistakes
cement this resolution in the highway of my soul,
won’t look over my shoulder at the red lights i blew
and the closed exits into goals i won’t hook nor attract,
won’t check my rearview mirror for the dead dreams
i amused my mind with on wide awake nights.
they still look closer than they appear
but i know that’s just the vhs of memory
distorted by dust, static, and a handful of the solar flares
i call a tendency toward self-deprecation by means
of a sickening neon cocktail;
overconfidence with a splash of doubt over rocks
of cold reality: stars don’t get you wishes, just neck cramps
from staring too long.
instead, i’m mapping out the stars in our eyes,
pulling the top back for mouthfuls of interstate wind
and i’ll measure my life by heart rate.
you always send it on a run anyways.
american love
he’s ohio cornfields and kentucky mountain blue,
all quiet starlit forests and the loud atlantic too,
with legs to scale the mountains, and hands to catch the sky,
with eyes for appalachia and the tall girl by his side.
she’s pennsylvania chocolate, oklahoma sunset gold,
with a taste for colorado, the nonstop and the bold,
with a mind to race the clocks and untangle thoughts of man,
and a smile she unbottles for her sweet ohioan.
they untie this knot of rivers to the city of steel bright,
to dance above their sorrows, to get lost in the night,
and every autumn sure as day she’ll find her way to him
and every day as sure as fall he’ll twirl her on a whim.
love cannot be a fire
love cannot be a fire,
for fire feasts on fuel and dies
when nothing more can give.
love must be a forest,
ever growing, ever blossoming,
ever standing strong
amidst the seasons changing
dear former best friend
dear former best friend
i know the exact way to stroke your hair to make you fall asleep
and the temperature of your tears
i know your brazen soul too well
it nearly pushed me off a bridge.
(ironically the color of your eyes and
the lake we last took a picture smiling)
now if i saw your unsorry figure
your curves you so proudly carry
sometimes i think i’d break your nose
damage your face
give a permanent mark
like you permanently
damaged
my mind
(and laughed)
and then maybe you'd understand what's happened to me
no one'd look at you the same, either
and while in reality i am the grace that walked on me and i will opt to never
try and chain myself to your approval again
i do not understand the honey-flavored poison under your hypocritical tongue
it wrings tears from my dry eyes on late nights
peace
i know it now no thanks to you but rather thanks to your absence
and your successor who takes my hand and shows me
you never were what i thought i loved
how it breaks me
break break break
how hard is it, i beg you, to say
i was wrong
school
i get high on ancient thought
tourist
i am a tourist in this life,
just here for the food and experience,
but i know i don’t belong here.
somebody tell me when the train for the next arrives.
i think i’ve seen enough of this rain-gray place.
haiku vi
love, the only stars
i will ever wish upon
are those in your eyes
