If In Waking You Find Yourself Lie

Among the grey stones
sing your praise
statuesque and proud to have

arms held high
but not upheld
see sincere
sincerely see.

My Life as a Deer

I have eight point antlers and am almost certain that, were we to buck,
then your little sprigs might shatter all across the wilderness,
but what goodness would I feel,
having left you bald beneath the maples.

But what if my untried antlers turn upon themselves
like an old man's back or a politician's words (and I am a bit of both)?
What if I wake up to read the news and find myself already lost?

I will wait here by the pond, you know the place, and you also.
I will confess, it is easy for me, the one who waits and knows, that
whichever way the world is settled,
my crown will be waiting at your feet.

The Flower

Those troublesome leaves are at it again;
there they are outside my window.
I hear them rustle and taunt
me as I sit

screened in by screens;
have you seen my face these days?
It is a woolly companion
whose music has chimed and changed—
repeating lines about loss and hope
and goodness in life
that springs from itself like a flowering seed.

What is it that flowers do?
Grow from within to without—
pushing through dirt and grain
to cool, blue peace.

But this old seed is rattling along.
Its hardness fermenting fragile life
and, with the weakness found,
searching to find which direction
will lead to sky
and which to sea.

There, beneath the ground,
shaking beneath footsteps,
the world is amplified;
the seed nestles in.

In My Room

The air is dry. Stale,
I lay on the floor
staring up
and waiting for a cloud to form.

The cracked earth shifts
around my arms—
the beggar’s hand
pleading.

Rain comes.
It pools and trickles;
it seeps through the cracks
and I am left faceless,
clean.

Friendship is...

remembering a time when everyone was younger
and not minding so much
that back then, he "accidentally"
stole the chipped chain necklace
that you kept hidden in your room.

It's staring down into the eyes of
the idiot who just lifted you up by the crotch like a forklift
and thinking
someday this will be funny.

It's sucking up pain and letting it flow
under a shower in a far too public bathroom
where you are never certain if your clothes or towel
will still be there when you're finished
and laughing in the fear that you may soon
shamefully walk naked down the hall towards your safety
only to find your bedroom door locked.

It's quiet words and wise silences
that were purchased by chance
and forged into lives.

It's again sitting together,
casting our words out into the ocean,
as grace falls
like a slinky
down old and dusty stairs.