The natural light creates veils on our foreheads,
With the deep restorative smell of raw earth.
I feel toothpaste and clean air squat on my tongue.
A lily white hand where my hip bone peeks from thinnest skin.

There has been an absence of higher feelings
Since late autumn with fingers down my throat,
accompanied by a familiar writer’s block of repressed emotion.
These blank chapters are merely layers of coffee on my teeth.

My only wish had been recklessness.
We felt more dull than usual and burned down cookie cutter houses.
We pretended to be Johnny Appleseed,
this time spreading palms full of sunflower seeds.

That very next second,
Next minute, next hour,
Were weird,
Will always feel pleasantly strange.

I stretched back with a long neck,
And threw my arms into the air
As if I had been unmasked.
We began to ingest everything.

Hungry, hungry caterpillars
We felt lively and played tag,
up and down the bean stock
until we were too content, too full to run.

We ache for something to proclaim infinite.
Most strongly when REM lends us the paintbrush.
Most strongly when we are on the fringes of doubt.
My self proclaimed Bohemia grows outward in all directions.

A Union of Man and Dog

Our hands are in the dirt,
Packs of humans, gathered on all fours.
Devolution. I can see fur sprouting,
Tail wagging, dumpster diving scavengers.
She hunts, he gathers.
To appease perpetually growling stomachs.
Our survival tactics are the same.

Bitter vagabonds, devoured by the id,
have drooling mouths,
and teeth that puncture tough hide.
Furrowed brows encircle their prey
And bite marks surround their every obstacle.

Whimpering nomads, wander streets for handouts
Batting empty eyes like vacant hotel rooms,
they extend their threadbare paws
to strangers with genuine gratefulness.
They get glared at by the rugged dogs.

I know a staunch, battered pup.
He followed me to the railroad tracks,
In the early morning with no where to rest his head.
My hand was in his coarse, dusty coat.
He looked at me and asked for nothing.
As I lowered to my knees, we reached eye level.
His expression was so genuine it frightened me.

The Paper Cannon

He created origami, no longer.
A niche, the butter on his toast
He looked down at the calluses on his fingers
As he folded the finial paper figure.

It was a single out of body experience
The edges hummed a melody,
as they laid on top of each other
like the segments of the hoary braid down his back.

With gentle uncertainty
And cruel ungratefulness
He nudged the paper boat far,
downstream, away from his weary vision.

It feigned strength as it seemed to sail away.
Its form was crooked, stoic at first glance.
As it drifted upstream and disappeared,
the boat grew ill. the sea was green.

Early morning, the creator of mystical figures
could see tiny fragments of colored paper,
rowing themselves away from the surface.
Violently used, the void imminent.

It was only sediment in the soil.
An insignificant home of boney toes.
But it had hindered the composition of the land,
and our deep breaths that become routine.

Magnification is peppermint to my memory
the jagged illuminated horizon
gently resists the polluted shore
together they inhale, exhale
in the drone of the boat’s motor

Warm city breeze tangles my hair
From the distance this dying town
Appears intimate, unruffled
Clonie wraps his arms around me
we smile like children

Preconception has lots its tongue
I carefully recline
into a fading reggae melody
as dark giant reflect
upon the mistreated lake

How badly to I want to grab
this city by the hands
and pull it to its feet
lasso a sky high government building
and use it as a brace

The Flatts hibernate
with streams of cider
Clonie and I stride down he boardwalk
hand in hand
gathering remnants of incognizant beauty