tapfer.

i know you’d rather die on your feet than on one knee 
and maybe, yes, things are absolute shit.
and hell, i might be even a sweater,
but you’ve taken home girls in stupider outfits.

if only you would notice.
in blue light that won’t last,
fasting delirium,
hands guiding footprints, 
sleepwalking up your front steps.
nothing would be better than tomorrow but today.

when my face lights up against my will,
as you light up against the wall,
between our palms and the wind 
where i’ll let you be what i haven’t tried yet.

 when my love for you is running
through the dark hallways of your mind,
tearing open shutters, 
tripping over collapsed chain link fencing,
tumbling in through the back door and running
out the front, leaving it open. 

when i left without saying anything, hungover. 
with a day dragged too long
along the radiating asphalt,
a green sheet lost its surprise tacked over one window.

when everything is so new and blinking
in the sun, straight through.
the lazy moments of summer are curled,
between you and i,
the wet of your eyes trapping mine
even my mason jar coffee couldn’t stain your heavens.
but upon sinking in, here they are
they are.

it’s easy to say that life is simple when you’re so careless

yesterday
we gave ourselves to the wind
and all I heard was poetry and
I wanted to push back the theatre curtain
to see the light
when the clouds rolled off of the evenings,
blown like dust off a mirror,
the sky cracked with twilight.

and if i catch your carelessness beneath your charity,
may i live to hold it in cupped hands
to kiss your eyelids
to hear your broken heart in your voice
to heal it with mine.

just the same.
to love with such ferocity
as to sent the ghosts of unlove
recoiling back into the shadows.
and I find that without them we still cannot see in the dark. 

we’ll drive to the edge of this city
to lay next to stones in the ground.
to stare and bow our heads
to bury one more feeling.

side by side 
so that the airplanes might dip down
to scoop out our horrors 
and take them as sacrifice to the sky
to sprinkle them over the lip of the earth.   

here’s to holding hands,
to holding a moment,
to holding ourselves together.
and everything means so much more
just knowing you’re even
one mile closer, 
so that your breath may join the wind that moves these trees.   
unsure and hopeful throwing pebbles at my windows, saying:

“don’t go to sleep. i know you’ve got dreams to meet, but i don’t want to fall asleep on your lawn.”   

i really do hope you have a nice day
it’s been years,
and man, 
things have changed.
and if i should have anything left to say,
for you, i could wish one day.

i hope you have a day so nice 
that the colors and splendor of it all
fuses itself to the lies trickling from your mouth, 
and crusts around your lips.
and when you wash your face tonight, 
looking for your own beneath everyone else’s, 
i hope, for all your scrubbing, this one nice day never comes off.
that it drips down your neck and through every pore,
all your real colors draining down to pool on the floor, 
running off somewhere into storm drains,
dripping your mediocrity, your insincerity,
straight back into your water supply.

just one solid day that’s enough. 
where every breath snags on the back of your throat, 
choking up with just how nice it all is.
you may, at this time, consider that you’ve never had to think:
if you wanted that baby or not,
what kind of flowers to get your dead best friend’s mom,
or what backseat you were going to crawl into tonight.
you will never feel a full moon slide into your heart like a home runner,  
but take comfort in knowing,
your mind will never leave this town, 
leave the ground,
and you will find your home in staying stuck. 

every footstep away from you
feels lighter than neil armstrong’s 
on his first day of primary school, and i 
just want to get home or get anywhere
and chase down these words that are seeping
through insides of my mouth and outside the lines of my lips, 
and escaping in snatches with a soda can hiss, 

so i really hope
when all’s said and done, man

have a good one

i am driving much too fast,
limbs out of windows,
cutting my way through fields of nothing.
ink seeps through canvas and puddles at the horizon,
obscuring and blurring and muddling.

cradled between the sky and this blessed ground that holds you
the gift of blue space of mania passes a year like an hour
and under these windmills I look to the lights: 
an ache for remembering and a delight in anonymity.
the earth takes a sigh and i close my eyes to breathe:

all the ways i love you live in a slow exhale.
all the memories fit on the head of a pin. 
all i have left is your voice in my head.
and i miss you heavier than this body can hold.  

if i remember correctly,
(and i don’t)
i smoked one bowl and half a cigarette
and your incense burned to cover the streaks.

i am propped on your bookshelf, 
wedged somewhere behind the couch,
and placed gently on your bedside table,
i am flipped record spines, 
upside down and sideways.

i am hoping i’m not sorry
when i brush my fingers through your secrets
and your whispers off my ear.
when finally when you can’t stop 
the whispering,
there,
when your hooded eyes draw back 
from the front line of your story,
spilling much too much.

I hope it means enough for you to notice.

“Don’t go to sleep. I know you’ve got dreams to meet, but I don’t want to fall asleep on your lawn”

the space between your neck and shoulder feels like home 
and I am holding you like water in my lungs, laughing like I just learned how, 
and your whispers tickle and hang heavy on my ears.
I breathe you in like safety, and you exhale reality 

I have too much faith in you (and you and me and everyone) 
but if there’s a better way to live, I don’t care.