Best Thrills

Excitement elevates the Evergreen spring,

while we waltz through crystal malls flooded with cologne,

picking out brand names that have that certain ring,

indulging in thrills that only rich kids bemoan.

Tonight we won't think about digital worries,

since together we'll crash until sunlight flurries.

Morning reveals soppy blankets in the ground,

the fading worn speakers but still rejoice.

I soak myself in the backyard bed, heart unwound,

listening for days to the echo of her voice.

The illusion of warmth gets colder and farther:

you know it's all over when you lose your phone charger.

Mother, I wish

Mother, I wish I could blame you

for all of life that I've gone through,

but I'm grateful that it was from you I was born.

Mother, I'm torn.

I wish that I knew you better,

and that in twenty years I'll get a letter

explaining all it was that I missed.

Mom, you're at the top of my list.

You keep my clothes dry and hold my mail,

and because of you I can never truly fail.

Not with the wisdom of your song.

Mom, one day I'll be gone.

But the sky will still illuminate blue,

since in the girl I love I'll always see you.

Mommy, for once I pray

that you have the most wonderful Mother's Day.

The image Between

Remember that time you thought?

Memory leads to event, which undoubtedly

leads to a person, specifically one,

your mind a marvelous interchange,

directing seamless traffic over multi-layered

bridges from Here to There.

You were thinking, then, you're sure:

until the sun melts through the curtain,

and the carpet hairs bristle with anticipation,

each standing so individual;

everything popping out

with the purity of a smooth juicy pear,

and finally we can make sense of smiles.

With a flick of the neck, the mind unvanishes

cementing color and touch into hopeless memory,

and then you start to think

about how long you've been sitting there,

watching the carpet hairs grow.

This is the Hard Part

This is the part where I lost my pencil but wanted to say that you do not have to change and that in all likelihood we will be friends.

This is the part written in bold: You appall me to no damnable end.

This is the part where I know not what to think of you, what I could say to you, that isn't as outright pervish and slobbery as your manly essence, which evidently welds shut all the eyes of your heart.

This is the part where I ask you to read my poems and you do and in between every drippy line is a glowing and infernal "How could you?"

This is the part when summer explodes,

This is the part where I comment on how cold it is in here

but fail to mention that it's all your fault.

toads deserve second chances

While picking harmless blades of grass

I spotted him, stumpy

on top the smooth copper Snoopy,

the Capital of the Capital!

Poor thing seemed lost.

On the plain of Snoopy's hill,

his back legs flailing,

pushing to make progress

against the cool shade statue.

I watched him there

while he tucked himself

into Charlie's pudgy fingers:

timeafter

timeafter

time.

until I picked him up by his belly,

and put him in the longest grass,

where no one can watch him find his way.

Caffeine (Is Bad For You)

My dazzling coffee:

churns my stomach,

kicks my brain,

and races my heart–

I've had it, it's good.

Or my swirling tea:

sweet to the lips,

warms my chest,

and floats my frame–

Well, I'm sure it could.

But I don't know which will keep me awake,

or if they even should.

i think i just saw a night rainbow in the northern sky

Ice water piercing my dark blue veins.

I'm smearing this research paper with my brains,

scrambling words; making nice with omnivores.

My fingers ricket, my nose sniffs and sores.

But all my tissues, I used to masturbate.

The bulbs are burning out; it's getting late.

I've given up my reins, and tied up the horses.

Fuck, I forgot to cite my sources.

i don't have to care about this poem

short, stooped child

in the wet sand

under a dozen hot suns

shouts SO SPICY

and knocks down people's sand castles

while the ocean waves roar with laughter

Prom?

I have immortalized my memory of you that night,
Only poems, few pictures: there was too much light.

I couldn’t stop staring at the flowers in your hair,
And spent the rest of the night drunk off the air.

When you left, the songbirds took your place
While my pages filled up with your face,
Until the crystal azure morning finally came.

From the warmth of your bed you woke with a yawn
To find my dreams lain delicately on your lawn.

Your smile gleamed white, your thumb raised high,
Silhouetted against the white, gleaming sky.

I promised that for once I’d have fun,
And that we’d try our best to look as one,
But first I’ll cut my ragged mane.

I’ve got a permanent fixed rainbow over my head,
Giving a vibrant warning to all misery ahead.

Yes, I’m a poet since I’m perpetually in love:
Not yet, I think, but it’s something I dream of.

I don’t mind if you never see me that way,
And if we’re still friends long after that day—
To me, it’s happiness all the same.

May Day

For The Alley Track, my incredible friends.

I would like to start off by remembering a spirit who is no longer with us, a mournful spirit who once flickered with lovely lilac flames and emerald diamonds for eye sockets, but is now forcefully under the ground.
So now I'm widowed!— I've had enough of that.
The Winter Wake has blossomed into a garden of fanciful flowers, friends flowing yellow! So what have I done, I dare ask cosmically,

to merit this May Day?

The room, expanding exuberantly, beckons me to a much richer dream, that goes beyond butterfly lips and eyelash blankets, though I wish every night that they would come to pass—
but dreams of non-seasonal satisfaction, and there are harmonicas swaying, and diamond hills of rolling ecstasy, all addiction and disgust barred, and men sweat clouds, and women plant flowers in their hair, and time stops for every hug, and the sun forever peeks through the trees in that perfect dusk manner, and while I'm at it: No more choices! Time stops for deciding things;

every choice is a motionless sunset.

So with these love-dreams in my delicate hands,

I stand on a land-locked ship,

while pollen streaks of gold sing from the sun, illuminating my face, looking upon a dozen cheerleaders turned soccer players, golden sweat adding dew to beaten grass — when does energy's love end? Until the sun collapses! and the yellow leaves pour their joy into my lovely, gorgeous friends, who still race around the pollinated sky, arms outstretched, with little concern for darker skies in the world, which I adore and behold:
laughter adds showers of sweet spring-water to otherwise dry, dead deserts, and raises the lowest valleys of the world— see it! See the Grand Canyon tumble into the sky, crashing into stars and rubbing against planets:
This is what we do. We give height to lowly things; to the trenches of wars and cracks in the silent ocean floor, and the most magnificent feat of all:

Myself.

No single child holds up the stars; there are too many honest smiles, too much hair curled so naturally to be the work of one; so in my future I kiss every forehead and recall the memories of being young, acting young, playing belligerently in the face of wrinkled oppressors:

Education. Damnation. Isolation.
And with soft, grass-stained feetsies dance through the dandelion fields of May:

Evocation.

In the blinding sunlight, a turquoise spirit rebirths, asking that ageless question:
“Will you be my friend?”
I am speechless smiling. Happy horror; trembling with roses swirling on my cheeks. I know not what to say. I want to look up to the envious clouds and shout

NO WAY, MAY!

—But like an esteemed knight, I kneel in the daisies of Minneapolis-Southernly, most gingerly, whilst the shiny badge of friendship is brilliantly awarded after the ceremony of unplanned walks and talks
and long stalks of goldenrods line the path of your visit:

oh what is it!

Beautiful Sage of Spring, gaily dancing in the midst of wonder children,
not holding up the stars but breathing life into them.

Oh where has the youth all but disappeared to?
Playing night games! Chasing shadows within the shadows, finding each other among leaves and chilly air that signals the close of the Day of May— rapidly fading to the familiar November Gloom— frosty end-year so lethargic and untrue— where can I go but the catacombs of my un-human blanket?
The room echoes false. The golden rays are gone.
All the spirits— under.
Elms, petal-spheres, honey-grass, wilted,
exhaling while everybody looks through photo slideshows of when they were ugly and applies temporary tattoos to their snowy December skin.
And her olive skin. And her olive eyes.
Hand me that golden leaf:
I will sparkle it onto her face… the speckles illuminate electric spring… her lips so dreamlike… pollen
falling
from the small
hands
of
Heaven.

Anaphylactic shock.

My body is fading to stone.
My mind is writhing for air.

But my heart, it takes precedence;
controlled only by the Virgin of May,
whose vivid vigil appears before me just now,
smiling all of Spring upon me,
lifting me up from my knees,
“Will you be my friend?”
Who else would ask but she,
the turquoise princess of May Day morning.