schismatic migraine thunders
no time for lightning wonder
consciousness without orientation
regaining Percival in physical
feel the spell of Mordred wane
want to be someone somewhere
pacification displaced
replaced with estrangement
Lancelot and Percival bicker
to bear the fickle Excalibur
my Labyrinth is ruined
from foreground to horizon
but Camelot will rise from ashes
at the behest of architectural knowhow
tragedy will not strike twice
if able bodies survived Mordred’s final rites

Will you come back for me?
I expect you to stay
but there’s a considerable chance
you might go.

If you leave I don’t think you’ll come back.
I think I understand what people mean
when they say, “just a friend from high school.”
Right now we feel infinite.

But I can already feel you slipping away.
You don’t text me as much as you used to.
You never visited me at work like you promised
There’s still time.

I want to let you go.
But I feel like I’ve let go of enough.
Next year you won’t be in my classes.
You’ll be on a campus 10 minutes or 1000 miles away.

You’ll move on
get older
I’ll graduate too
but the years won’t be the same without you.

The guy asks of I have proof
of my name change.
At this point,
I’ve been divorced twice as long
as my marriage lasted.
I remember the burning
need to toss everything away:
Pictures
My bed
Anything that held memories
I’m wished to exorcise.
And here I am,
fourteen years later,
looking for proof that
my marriage happened.
A reminder that things linger,
Like a shadow
on the edge of an old photo.
And you’re never truly done with anything.

In passing
A man
Arms full
Dropped something
So I stopped
Picked it up
Handed it back
“Thanks girl”
I don’t remember my answer
But I said to my father
“I wish he hadn’t called me girl
I’m 37
A mother
A professional
A woman”
He told me not to complain
It was a compliment
I look young
I swallowed
Feeling more girl
Than woman
Because I couldn’t explain
Why that hurt

“There is no instance of a nation benefitting from prolonged warfare”
-Sun Tzu

You know that click
when death

enters the chamber
a warning that saved you

in the delta humid bush
that sawed at your arms

on the cobbles of Sarajevo
where child’s toys were trapped

crossing the Rwandan border
with the wrong tribe

in the unforgiving hills
of scrub & desert

mujahedeen & marine
beret & balaclava

blood loss is cash flow
money in the bank

I sat in my chair and began to notice
The house mirrored across from me
The roof that have been softened by rain and age
How little bugs flew across the bush
That rested against the banister
Light raindrops on the leaves of the tree beside me
Varying in size from tiny to large
Orange wildflowers dotted across the field
Cars in the background that sung in cadence
With the chirps of the birds around my ears
The smell of the plants in the dirt
That have been moistened by the early morning rain
My feet barely touching the banister
As I am too short to reach
I began to notice my breathing soft not as labored
My eyes not as hazy from the sleep that I had just awakened
How I wasn’t rushing through my morning cup of coffee
Just so that I could sit out with nature for just a little bit longer

the crack in your voice
leads to a hall of silence
pure as a vacuum tube
then reverberates 
through the rooms 
of your common lives

you find a further chord
to unwind the path to mending,
step out into a yard of astonishment,
in the rich ring of it’s common tongue
bird song alone is enough
to begin the act of repair

you go back into the kitchen
to say come hear for yourself

it pours in and out of me;

flows freely.

other times its obvious im trying too hard;

can’t let it be.

its obvious I can’t just get free.

no turning it on,

not turning it off,

waxing or waning,

or nothing but staining 

a perfectly 

good 

piece.

my camera and I looking for the unusual, like a faded red rocking horse under a stable’s marquee, or an abandoned house falling to the east as the roof beams rot to powder, or the contradictions of brick mansions between the broken concrete of silos marking family farms, barely-two lane macadam roads with odd names like Steger, Andres, Pauling, and Burns, meaning nothing unless you know the land’s history, who built the railroads and tended the fields that made a Crete-Monee road out of wagon paths joining towns that fed the cities, all that is mysterious and nearly forgotten in the countryside’s genes, just as we will be when our great-grandchildren are old.

A drunk man waltzes shirtless past the bus stop,
flickering in the June air, orange-tanned, stumbling.
He drank a bottle of flowers, every petal is a sweet word
to slur for the girls with cheeks like roses, eyes of thorns,
but still he pours and pours, give me fucking thank you. 
His blue eyes blur down the street, tripping home to nowhere,
and in the morning the light is sour, the sun comes up grenadine.
And there is a time when that man is not drunk, but never free,
and he sits on the sill like a window-box of petunias, smoking,
 looking down at his life, his hands, hands who have ripped apart 
daisies, daisies that left no stain, no red to scrub from his teeth.
Not like the wine, not like the endless solace of pharmacies,
just a sweet scent of spring. Sorry falls like sundown’s color,
just something to sense, but never tangible enough, the night air
is only his own breath echoing. He is good. But he could be
other things too. Staring past himself to the garden, pondering
if it is worse that he does not know what he has done.