the body relaxes
the mind opens
a pressure cooker
a giant black kettle of sky
releases a million brilliant stars 
a fervid brew of seeds awhirl in wind
current that curls your hair
shocks it on end
a wild stallion galloping
deep thunder you hear
feel in your chest
a wave—the ectasy
of want & wonder      

~ Inspired by Sylvia van Nooten’s art Star Poem & Kirsten Harris’ art Wild Spirits

you will never stop searching

even when they tell you it is a lost cause

even when they say they are so sorry
budget cuts
there just isn’t the money
the public buy in

even when all the lights have been
shut off and the the computers repoed
and the coffee grounds sit molding
in their filters
forgotten

you will continue your work

you will enter data
and research probabilities

you will lift up every rug
and every floorboard of space

they say
he is in his own little world

an alien
of some driftwood planet

they beg you to understand

there are so many galaxies

you are just one person
you cannot possibly expect
to reach him

but

you will walk as many moons as it takes

you will spin along the rings of every
red and cold planet

you will spend infinity among the stars
breaking down molecule by molecule
until you are only dust
and particles

if that’s what god asks of you

but you will find him

and you will bring him home

Like Grandmama’s starter
on Saturday morning–

water, sugar, potato flakes.
The key to bubbling is warmth. 

It takes time and knuckles
to knead for ten minutes. 

I’m still learning to like this part.
Recipes don’t list hard work,

but I’m rising 
and this week you can wave. 

How do you measure a flutter?
Is hope enough?

One day I’ll believe you’re real
and still wonder how love made you. 

My last few days,
I soak it in,
I stare at all the trees below,
I stop and smell the flowers,
I take in the blue, blue sky,
I look at all the people’s faces
And see the joy in their eyes,
I feel the pain in my feet,
See the freckles on my nose,
Touch the stinging sunburn on my cheeks,
I soak in this feeling
Because it will all be wrung out,
But I will still be damp with memories.

Guilty guilty guilty guilty

i guess this is it,
the synth track turning up
sun shine & sweat
bittered blood
bitten tongue
the amalgamation
of all i was
of who i was supposed to be

my mother won’t get any notecards
in the mail
my father won’t get a teary goodbye
i won’t get that deja vu feeling
that this was all it was for feeling

there won’t be scrapped knees
or twisted stomach aches
regret following me in twisted ways
shortcomings are banned from being
painted in my heart

this is it, summer
set free, everything,
of what i wanted to be
growing up from where
my soul was planted, 
away from the totality
of what was wanted
for me

white-covered landscape

brighter in the rising moon

yet pale before it

I was alone in a place

where I understood nothing

could not expect the future

in my wedding gown

I’d gone where you went

taken your family as mine

forsaken my self

left everything to chance

with no sign of my passage

(after an untitled photograph of a bride in a snowy clearing from the book, “Wife During Quarantine,” by Chris Sorensen)

If I sung my hate to you, my discomfort. My sadness, my fear.

And the beat dropped with every stifled sob,

Could it reach your stomach, punching you in the gut the same way?

Would you bang your head to the sound

of the thrashing waters that shake my head in every moment?

If you could grind my hatred, roll my anger, wet your lips on the filtered end of my grief,

light the childlike love I once had,

Would you smoke it to fill that void you call a stomach?

You are not a bad man. You are simply no man at all.

You are a brother, a drinking buddy, a kick-ass uncle, the last to leave every fucking party.

You are a boy, a baby, a good soul at heart. You are guilt. You hurt.

You are a hungry hippo. You are the windchimes knotted together at your mother’s grave.

You do not change the flowers. You will not make the trip.

That small town died to you when she did. You died when she did.

Daddy I mourn you.

You may have not died, but you are reborn.

You are a teenage boy stuck in the flesh of this Man. This teenage boy did not know me.

I was not part of his plan for life. I am stuck between knowing you, loving you,

And being unknown by you. You are a wound I have patched all my life in

Temporary sensations. Empty loves. Starving art. Starving. Art.