These mountains When I aim my nose and think at these mountains I feel like taxi driver talking into a mirror I feel like a boxing glove strong shouldered Spinning questions like a sundial made of sawblades Like I spit gum at the camera and the camera spit it right back into my hair And I fell back and got stuck to the hillside When I close my eyes I still dream of her I blink and something big is awake here The sun setting behind me speckling light over the opposite crest of this valley Spilling too many shades of gold into my stomach for me to breathe through almost It is like a kegstand A one night stand A one night kegstand in which the keg is an ocean the moon has gathered to it's breast too tight and then let go of and it's blush filled up the sky and it's body sunk wobbly over the hills so far from the shore I am all the pine trees on that hill When I close my eyes I still dream of her Today I caught a salmon with my teeth like a bear It said 'I forgive you' and I learned from it I learned where music comes from The stream burbled in 3/4 A waltz A ballroom The wind makes everything dance I realize the air is making use of my lungs to learn itself I cry so hard for that salmon I burble in my tears in rhythm a heartbeat pentatonic It spells thank you It weaves grief into admiration into understanding I ask the wind what my function is It whisks the question away so easy I almost float off like a dandelion for how much weight is lifted When I close my eyes I still dream of her When I'm not awake to stop myself I chart stars The night sky unravels in my hands The night sky is locks of her hair The tiny craters of her pores prove She is where moonlight comes from The pink sunset births itself across her fingernails Pearled as abalone Her hands are streams stitching breath into mountains Her mouth is the lifecycle of salmon They are swimming upstream when we kiss Sometimes She is the only language I can read in Without her I am four legged And clear eyed Running through the woods Forgetting things

I am held in the womb of the forgotten blue, the haze of watery light in the dim heat, I am held here. Hugging my knees and singing to myself maybe quietly enough not to wake you up, I hope quietly enough not to wake you up, I'm sorry. I am held in the forgotten blue in my half of the love we wove and fractured out of, in a cold blaze of logic and misfiring defense mechanisms, inches away your body is a lost continent, I am trying not to be loud or move too much in my grief, I am trying to be small, it's impossible, there is too much of my heart, there is too much now, I will stratify and melt into the creekbed. I have woven the cut threads of my half of the web across the wound, it is not successfully stitched closed, it breathes air, it sings at night and writes letters. I will never stitch it closed, but I've made it beautiful again, it is rinsed clean and verdant and cries tears of gold, All dressed up and standing at the platform, waiting for a train long disappeared into blue evening, tracks inches beneath the water, beneath your eyelids, a dream I wasn't there for. I saw the whole forest die when I was holding you, I saw all the life that's ever been sprouting and withering and differentiating and sinking back into stillness and oneness, somewhere along the edge of your ear, a lock of your hair, the whole world contained there, the whole story all at once, I could see it, red and amber and perfect and breathing and blooming and already lost, I know you want to be seperate, I shouldn't involve you, I shouldn't worship your embrace as an altar through which I experience all creation, I shouldn't heave big sobbing breaths into your chest and make contact with god, I know this is exactly what you polarized against I am ready to dive from the cliff now and swim the dark waters to the place you tried to bring me, I know it's too late now, I didn't know about the drought, I thought there was a creek, I remembered rain here. Now the sky is a dellusional void, a gap, a dead vulture's feathers, I lay for days in a musk like rotting flowers, an invisible windchime of shagbark cedar, Taking shape in the fog

I was five years old When I learned of my father’s mortality, He isn’t dead but I still question his morality Pondered over crab legs at the chinese buffet where I turned eight Where I learned of The ancient zodiac’s claim that I am a rat Insults on the playground With options ranging from raging dragon to crouching tiger Who would want to be a rat? But the mighty tiger is endangered And the dragons are long gone while the rat lives on Thriving in a world desensitized to mouse traps, No need for the rabbit’s luck when you’re the one dealing craps Seven out line em in, the don’ts they win again, Don’t touch that, don’t go there, The ancient babylonians called me the wandering water bearer, Atlas with the whole world on my shoulders, Shell backed traveler who loves birthdays and no longer fears the thought of getting older, Steady growing boulder, sisyphus with the laundry list of a narcissist, Starving tantalus with a thirst that can’t be quenched Some of my best dreams are had on a park bench next to modern day nostradamus screaming his head off at demons only he can see Asking myself if it’s okay to be in a world my friends chose not to be Strangers see my tent and avoid my eyes like the black plague I ask for directions and they act as though I asked for crack cocaine But what should I expect as a rat thriving in a world desensitized to mouse traps A world that champions mental health over the internet While ignoring the cries of help from the schizophrenic baphomet in the city streets And we can go ahead and blame the stars or the world’s elites, But the truth is, We’re all guilty

The way you loved me, I forgot everything Everything I felt ego death, nirvana, You filled me so good, When you pulled away, for one shimmerring moment, I thought I was made empty Like a prairie sky Nothing but a picture frame around a forever of good clean air But then the hangover The morning after you left I awoke with vines in my mouth Green bruises under my eyelids Like spinach in the trash I wished I could just throw up But I don't know how to purge what's grown here, I am just how you describe the salt lake Like, not good to swim in, Whatever you had quieted and buried in me Has been composting for two weeks Sends out spores and fungal growth now I am heavy with the fruiting bodies Of unremembered dreams I wasn't like this when you shined on me, But I don't blame your leaving, This is my breathing, natural, Every forest does this, I know the science of rot, of ash, How organic matter gets recycled and woven back in The daytime and cleanness of your love I can dance there, for a time, for sure, But some nights I shiver in the uglier corners of the cycle of rebirth, It's part of me It's the lehigh. I didn't know right away I'm sorry But I got water up my nose and down my throat The lehigh entered me It bled right through That river said to me don't make this about your new person I been waiting for twenty four years To pull you under and see what that body became I made you outta muck and sediment and broken glass I made you outta my curse I made you outta runoff Don't run off Don't stand on that high ledge above the water singin empty promises You started a ritual and now you gotta finish You're gonna give me those shakey legs And we're gonna drink from each other. She wraps her fingernails around my throat as she says this, she says, Blind seer, little messenger, poet, You self identified as storyteller and now You're gonna listen to my story with your blood Goddamn it, I don't know what this is darlin, I wish I could just flower all year like you do. Keep it simple. But I know there's something in here I gotta find, I gotta learn, I gotta mend, It sucks. You kept asking why people have to go to work, I ask that too as my cracking bones lay me down on this old bed, head fulla heat lightning, belly fulla swamp, sweatin out the sick humidity Why do I have to go to work. What is it that's so important That this wrung out body has to be set ablaze all over again What is it trying to find