Hitting the concrete, stuck in humidity like jam.
Wondering if I made the right decision to take
this troubled route, but then I see it on the horizon.

If only I take a few more steps here and a few more
steps there. The summer sun will begin to rise in the
distance. Mileage only counts in these hours.

When the only people I can spot are running and
running to a goal larger than life. Steps that lead
to something that won’t happen until years later.

I set up the mornings with mileage. Building and
building until I’m afraid I can’t anymore. Until I’m
afraid I’ll collapse on the pavement from exhaustion.

It’s a different kind of feeling to be the only one out
there. There isn’t anyone to rescue me except for mind
games pouring in and out of my brain. Games for miles.

By the end of the work day, my body is crying out for
help and the only relief I can offer is a meager amount
of sleep. Before I return in the morning for more.

Blisters come and go offering me warnings that I’ll
keep ignoring. At the end of the day, it’s the only
reminder that those runs in the mornings were real.

Those runs in the mornings at five and eventually
four as my mileage grew and grew. Until I ran for
hours and waited until I’d be able to have a chance.

A chance to run alongside my peers instead of
struggling against the wind alone. A chance to prove
that I was where I was meant to be all along.

The summer sun will begin to set in the distance,
bringing the breeze of autumn to my front yard.
Where I’ll lace my worn down shoes once again.

Distant in a field of English lavender,
tethered to nothing but the sensation of heat,
I lapse into the blue noon, glimmering.
A cicada spins out, nosedives into the hollow 
between my collarbones. Stunned, it lays
against my skin, a broach, a brief adornment.
I only cut the wildflowers that will dry well,
I leave the rest for the fauna. I slip away
just in time for the darkening clouds riding in.
Not that I mind the rain. I’ve always enjoyed
to stand still amidst the chaos of it, witnessing.

Hike back to the car
Pick up something forgotten

Up on this hillside
Climbs up from the sea

Through the labrynth
Dense homes and twisted oak

That sound
Not cars, wind or rain
Ocean waves, crashing

The tree weeps deep
dark red leaves. None have fallen.
The birds dance softly in the dusk,
& the cicadas—-quieted now—-buzz around gently.

I pray that time
be gentle with us

A sharp purple geranium falls from the Heavens,
gravity, like time, impeding on the mundane.
But no, the crying tree catches her stem,
sparing her. God was merciful. Gentleness prevailed.

I pray that we, too, are saved
by something broken

Cheese, obviously.
Pepperoni, of course.
One of these, whatever that is;
Peppers and onions;
Chicken bacon ranch.

All love

you keep going and pushing 
for more gigs 
to get that Fourth of July 
spangled fever all the time
so every day doesn’t feel 
like a deadened nerve
where you want to use 
a spoon 
to remove your teeth

you want that center 
with those lights and noise 
where people can judge you 
in four minute intervals 

instead of that 
awkward 
unrelatable
scarecrow with 
white flash smile 
cold and inhuman
 
this running 
won’t last forever 
we all have to sit 
across the table 
from ourselves 
and do the work 
that’s going to leave 
a lot more than blood

When that sopping Kentucky air hit me again
after suckling desert fumes for almost two weeks,
it carried a tingling like the first winds one breathes
when they arrive along the coast.
This smell always greets me
as a distracted welcoming
to places long abandoned
and also at places I have yet to visit.
I fear this first gust always envelops
some message I must wait to receive,
a fortune tucked in a cookie
that I am not yet ready to eat.
Nature’s signals rise like a tide
bent to the contexts of our lives
where others turn away,
we walk into the retreating waves.
This time that liquid voice whispers still of places,
murmuring of definitions of houses and homes,
and buried within the variations of those terms
is the potential to define them myself.
While previous interpretations
fall apart
amidst composings,
I believe in this new translation.
And even though the internal origins of this wet breath
sometimes disgusts me, again and again,
I continue to remark
that it is not just hot air.

i want no savior
no god 
nor
anything 
that demands
i abandon myself
—
i stand 
within
my sacred
shadow
lifting 
golden calf
in adoration 

The End is Near! I’ve seen the signs
held high and proud on street corners,
as billboards shrinking to fill
the frame of my rearview mirror
while cruising these parted seas—
cornfields stretched across summer,
to the crooked edges of Ohio.
It’s been coming for years,
I chuckle, tuning the radio to a sound
more my speed—a sad story
bouncing away to a bright melody.
A distraction, a deception, sure,
but a fine way to pass the time
between all my good intentions
on the road to hell and back.

Oh man it was perfect