Tinnitus

When you opened your mouth,
speaking just above the sound
of the fountain crashing in the background.

It was loud.
Too loud to speak,
but not loud enough
to cover up the sound
of you not wanting me

Not loud enough to cover
the heat in my cheeks,
My public rejection,
My public solitude.

It was only just loud enough
to leave the ringing in my ears
For years and years
and years.

Print Temps

I have been many times in love.
but never quite like this.
Where falling for the world feels like falling for myself,
and I thought I loved me then...
When suddenly every beautiful thing feels close enough to touch...
like spring is happening inside my chest-
the creaking of my skin, bones
flesh- expanding- let more in!

Oh world, I can not hold you close enough
so let me stamp out little red lines across your heart,
and they spell out
I
  AM
        HERE

But though I left to prove that
once
I existed.

What I found was
My own footprints fade and blend with countless others.
No,
I will never change your face
with my feeble footprints
but you never needed to change,
it was me
all along-
My substance has shifted for knowing you better!
Surviving your misery,

like winter waits for spring,

gives me new life.
New strength
One that waits frozen
for the sun.

The brave crocuses who poke first, through the frosty fields
and die
brave soldiers, pioneers,
martyring themselves
for the rhododendrons and daffodils
who will follow in their footsteps.

My Brain Feels like Scambled Eggs

You

send hot and cold shivers

down my spine. 

My heart pounds,

My head swims,

My palms sweat.

You 

make me want to stay in bed all day.

You change the way I dream 

and make me slightly nauseous

You 

make me sneeze a lot

And I can't stop coughing,

so I'm taking lots of vitamin C

The flu is the worst.

Emily

Emily doesn't like poems that rhyme
which is good.
Because I have to write poems,
and only she reads them.
and magicing words
out of the air
is simpler when I don't have to stop
and... [air... bear? bare, fair.]

Why would I talk about those things?

I would rather write straight out of my fingertips
and off the top of my head
and then say, quietly,
"Emily, I wrote a poem.
It's not very good, but it doesn't rhyme".

A New Year

I’m listening to The Wailin’ Jennys and it makes me miss my hometown.

No one in their right mind should ever miss North San Juan. 

It was a no-horse-town, covered in a powdery layer of red dust. Its citizens all hippies, cultists, or methheads. Most of my friends were hippies. 

We were cultists. 

There was a lady who worked at the gas station who only had two teeth, and she always gave the biggest ice-cream scoops. 

Because the gas station was also the ice-cream shop. 

And the Yuba river, which accidentally wandered into this little town by no fault of its own, was always that same clear crisp green-blue, no matter how many dirty diapers floated away down stream.

On Saturday nights, the kind of summer nights when the sun didn’t set until midnight, we would sit in folding chairs in that wild jungle garden and listen to “A Prairie Home Companion” on a battery operated radio. Swiveling the antenna until the crackling stopped.