Older Stuff
Looking For God
5/07
I’m looking for God
And I think I’ll find him in your fingertips
He might be there, tucked between the end
Of your nail and the rest of the world
I’m pretty sure that tree is heaven and God,
All mixed in one
So let’s climb
And see if there really are angels at the top
Because for tonight, I’ll believe
In demons and angels,
In dreams,
And in you.
It might not be God, but it’s something close to it
That escapes my lips ever time I exhale
When it’s cold outside
And I’m smoking on my balcony
Because it’s 3AM and I’m down half a pack
About to go for my fourth pot of coffee
It might not be right
But it’s the closest to God I can get,
Sometimes.
Because my soul isn’t like yours,
It isn’t this glowing fire
It’s a white sheet
With traces of being Catholic streaking it in black
It’s a white sheet
And with every day, it becomes a little dirtier
Sweat and blood and tears staining it
But I’ll try to make it pretty
Write poetry across my soul
Make it into something worthwhile,
Something more than just a white sheet.
Because I might look for them forever,
But I haven’t seen angels since I was five
And I’m starting to believe
They might have been spider webs,
Like my dad said
——–
(PS–I miss you a little)
Old Stuff
Dancing
12/06
I want to dance for you
I want to be in a large room with a big black stage
That echoes when my feet land from flying
I want you there, the only face in a hundred seats,
Watching me
I want to dance for you,
To show you how beautiful my body is,
How beautiful the world is,
How beautiful it can be when I’m dancing in it
When I dance, it’ll be quiet
But I’ll be dancing to whatever song is stuck in my head
And to your favorite song
At the same time
And if you listen really carefully, you can hear them both
Dancing together
And if you listen with more than your ears,
You can see them
Waltzing across the stage together,
The different notes making love to each other in a way more primal and natural
Than we could ever dream of
I want, so badly, to dance for you
But a gym teacher destroyed my knee a long time ago
So if I dance, it’ll only be to one song, my song, and maybe that won’t be enough
Because your song would have made it magical
So maybe, I’ll read to you instead, and my words will pour into your ears like a
Waterfall
Flooding you with sounds so
Beautiful that they fill you up
Until you’re so full it comes
Pouring out your
Eyes
And cleans them
Erases
All the dust and pollution that’s been blinding you and your
Tears will clean them, until you can see again
See like you did when you were five
And the world was wonderful
And you can see for yourself how
Beautiful
The world is
How magical
Because maybe, you forgot.
But maybe my brain is just as damaged
As my knee
So all I can give you
Is this list I wrote of sparkly things,
Because really, what can be better, than that.
∑ Freezer frost
∑ Glitter
∑ Frozen pavement
∑ My suitemate’s makeup
∑ The pencil I’m writing this with
And my eyes
Right after I cry
But maybe that’s not your style
Maybe you don’t like sparkly things
Or maybe your ears are just as destroyed as
My knee
And my head
So instead, let me kiss you
And maybe, when our lips touch, you can
Feel the poetry burned on them like
Tattoos and scars
And you can read me like Braille
And feel the poetry
On my lips
My tongue
Down my throat
All the way down to my belly
Printed across my organs
Like the tribal tattoos you get some places
When you become a man
And find meaning in that
When we kiss, maybe you’ll finally see all the
Beautiful things I see
All the time
And we can sit on the rooftop of the chem building or the library
I’ve been on them both,
So I’ll let you pick this time
We’ll sit
And we’ll breath, calm, as the sun falls asleep
And you can tell me everything I showed
You,
So I can see it
Again.
From A While Ago
10/06
If my grandfather wrote poetry,
he would do readings in small coffee shops,
In Bellingham,
Near where the Harley shop is
About a block away
He would read from a little cheap notebook
One he picked up at a gas station
This side of the mountains
Or maybe the other side
The side with the gas station
That sold the earrings
Shaped like Alaska
That he bought for my grandma
Or almost did.
But didn’t, because she’s gone
Scattered, across the last frontier.
He would write about those earrings
And the weight they had in the palm of his hand
Maybe
The weight of other earrings
the small bulge in his coat pocket
That weighed less than it deserved,
Those cheap earrings
He had found
Just for her
At a gas station
At a rest stop
On this side of the mountains
Or maybe that side
He can’t remember any more,
He would say
It was a long time ago,
He would say.
And the crowd would believe him
After seeing the truth written in his eyes
They would listen to his words
And see the truth of them stretched across the lines of his face, one hundred miles of truth for every wrinkle
And he would turn a page in his notebook
And read,
A time shift
From finding earrings to
Standing next to his bed and
Staring
At a lifetime of earrings sprawled across it
And trying to decide
Which ones had the most value
The most memories
But of course none did
It wasn’t about one pair
It was about all of them
It was about having a lifetime
To find them
A lifetime
To drive to this side of the mountains
Or maybe that side
To find them
A lifetime of weight
In his coat pocket,
He would say,
A lifetime of driving.
Reduced to
A pile of earrings on a bed
And one man
At a coffee shop
Reading from a cheap notebook
He picked up
At a cheap gas station
Smack between here and there
Stopping for a cup of coffee
With his granddaughter,
The one with pink hair
The one he doesn’t quite understand
But tries
Because his wife understood her,
He says
A coffee shop smack between
Where he’s been
And where he’ll go,
He says,
A break from a long drive,
The only company an old truck,
an empty seat next to him.
As he travels to the next rest stop
Driving to nowhere
Looking for a woman,
He says,
Always on the Last Frontier
