Your mother is naming you 
after a song. She wants 
you to follow the lyrics, 
to live inspired 
by the words. I hope
when you get here, and 
you realize her actions 
don’t reflect those words, 
you decide for yourself
what songs you hear.

I haven’t the heart to sing nursery rhymes.

To think I once believed them true
that little boy blue could sleep in the hay,
that all the kittens went out to play,
that little miss muffet was not frightened away.

I believed in the world where sunshine and love
shielded us all from the heavens above
and somehow the invention of automobiles
made all our lives more convenient and honorable.

But it isn’t and it doesn’t and it mustn’t,
and we won’t and we shouldn’t and we will not obey
the order of things that sleep in the hay,
now haunted and shoveled and taken away
by the spider, you see, he has spun us his way.

I heard a sad song on the radio
Driving home from work once
I cried the whole way; tears
Streaming down my face and
An unearthly amount of snot
But it felt good to let it out to 
Cry a little bit while singing
Breaking my heart but also
Stitching it back together

when she’s in a room
I can hear her laugh
looking over 
to find that curved body
her hips
in medias res

those blue eyes finding mine
conversations just another
hurdle
to get back home

I see you

then alone
when the music flares
out in a purple-red splash
she tilts her head
eyes closed
a splay of stars behind her

i can’t ever get over
that my hands
know her body

a roadmap
that’s always
full of suprises

Waves lap around his boots
Dried and cracked from salt and sun
As he stands at his latest destination
Proud:
Of his perilous journeys
Of his adaptation to new seas
Of his eagerness to find novelty.
After the cargo is unloaded,
He and his crew find a place for the night.
Tomorrow, many will part ways
Some will return home, their travels complete
Some will continue for a few more trips.
But the seafarer will sail the ocean until it takes him
For nothing awaits him on land
That he could stay long enough to find.

There is so much to think about
that I’d rather just sleep,
but the world does not stop
no matter what happens.

I’d rather just sleep
but the sun is still shining,
and no matter what I try
I can’t see the starlight.

The red sun shines still,
even the clouds bleed,
but I see stars burn through
waking the nightmares.

Even as the clouds bleed,
no matter what happens,
the waking nightmares
won’t let me rest.

I sent my musical miniature motion pictures.
You must have glanced at the stills,
not invested enough to watch
any of the three minute videos 
of my heart wailing her blues,
plucking on her own sinewy strings,
one grizzly bloody nylon strand per chamber,
perfectly tuned for the right ear.
A few months later you asked,
genuinely unaware,
Oh, you sing?
Are you any good?

I Love you, Montana

for giving me my great-grandpa, Henry Price.

For sending his Blackfoot self here to Kentucky

to finally marry the love of his life,

my Jewish great-grandma, Mary Fisher.

I love you for Froid.

For the people who embrace

someone like mechanic 

Roberto Orozco-Ramirez

as their own.

I love you for the contradiction

of pure humanity that you are—

Seeing how someone is not just

exactly like you in skin and tone,

but so alike in heart.

You are my home.

That energy, that substance
From you Mother, Father
Welcome breath
Taking that in

Nurturing sustenance from breast
the great sun, life in water
Taking that in

An open heart, “I see you mama”
Embracing siblings, discovering friends
That glorious banquet
Taking that in

The presence is here
All around us, ever-present
Enfolded, embraced
The grace of Love