should be easy. Can be hard to see
how a tree can be alive. Sure—
in early spring, the limbs look bare
when they contain many universes:
the imperceptible bugs that colony
and caper up and down the bark,
in between the starts of buds.
It takes people weeks to see them bloom
and melt back into their stalwart background.

This one leans the wrong way over KY-1295,
Every September it lets go a crop of vestigial fruit—
tropical green going custard,
two rows of seed big as thumbnails.
Fruits drop where they grew,
macerate onto the asphalt.

A Silverado takes one at fifty,
the scatter turning to liquor in the heat.
Ants and yellow-jackets and all else
brave the road to harvest
like no man will.

I’ve never felt easy to love,
though you could pluck it from me like a fruit.
If I were a tree,
I wouldn’t want you to see me
drop it all
and let it kiss the road.

If you called it anything,
you’d never even have to call it
love.

fan and sword 

My uncle died alone in a hospital room.

The doctors called him a “non-compliant frequent flyer”.

For years I checked if he was alive through arrests.org.

When he made it 6 months between bookings I’d worry.

He lived in a condemnable house with no running water.

As a kid he let me ride on the back of his four-wheeler.

He smelled like engine oil and tobacco then.

Above his bed hung a deers head with wonky eyes.

He drank Dr Pepper and scattered bottles all over the floor.

He once caught his own car on fire because he wanted a new one.

He brought my grandma 4 gallons of tomatoes when she was dying

so she could tell the nurses she would can them with her grandma.

He nodded out by her bedside every night until she passed.

He left everything to my cousins and I.

I don’t know why, except there was nobody else to leave things to.

I don’t know if he ever paid taxes but I’ll find out before probate.

His water bill was up to $900 before they shut it off.

I couldn’t guess what outfit he wants to wear in his casket.

I don’t know if he wants mahogany or cherry wood.

I don’t know what songs he’d like played.

I can’t help but feel the crushing weight of knowing someone

no one cared to know well.

Still, someone has to write an obituary.

When the world you thought
was moving forward is now
skidding into reverse and 
gains that seemed assured

are dropping like dead leaves.
When you reach the age when
friends die faster than you 
can make new ones and

your knees and hips and back
ache when you try to do simple
things that once were easy, then
you begin to appreciate retreating

into a past, that maybe true, maybe
not but, in it you you could run
and ride sleds down icy hills and
walk the train tracks into town

without wondering even once
if your body was up to it,
if your luck would hold, if
your friends would have your back.

Trapped inside my mind
With no way out but a pen
I am told to write
But a pen is not a key
I am still locked in

I want every word
I type or pen
to be profound
touch the depth of being human.
I’m a savage snake in a box
by brevity or levity
wholly constrained.
At the mercy of my mind
my motivation, my pain.
Nomadic hunter
following my creative buffaloes.
I fashion weapons out of words
hurled from flesh and bone.
Look to the stars for inspiration
sit motionless as the moon glides home.
Stare until my eyes dry and glaze
the sky my kiln, glass-blown.
Constellations tesselate
usurped from their thrones.
Every word must matter
I strain, I groan.
Come hell or high water
I will squeeze blood from this stone.

i’ve got thick new skin
and a cat that kills
i can fly, but i have crooked wings
i also have gills

Sometimes, no word exists to say what we mean.
Trapped as we are between dirt and sky–
our footprints of carbon, our head in the Cloud,
just animals leashed to our senses, 
singing the songs of our empiricism 
with meteorological metaphors
or with those of war or sports– 
our language often fails us. 

How marvelous then are the spaces between words–

where sounds rebound in echoes

and connotations can expand like universes

and pauses become eons for our neurons to fire–

where intuition finds meaning

 and writers and readers meet.

How unpromising must a book become
before you decide never to pick it up again?

Or does the need to finish the story keep you bound
to what you know could be a loss of precious time?

What exactly would that binding be? Guilt? Need for closure?
The fear of missing out on an unexpectedly good ending?

What does it take to finally tear yourself away?
How does a book feel if it suddenly gets dropped?

Some say not to stay where you’re clearly not satisfied
especially when there are so many other books to read

but how can I avoid repeating a mistake
if I don’t know what mistake I made in the first place?

Maybe it’s because metaphors are inherently flawed.
People are more complex than the finality of ink on a page.

A book read now and the same book read later
might somehow be two completely different books

or maybe I’m just a different reader, wiser,
better able to connect with concepts once beyond me.

There must be more to following your heart