Starchild

I close my eyes and watch
the universe move within me
nebulas and supernovas
billowing in the darkness

I am a storm raging
in the silent Nothing;
deeper than a bottomless sea
at the end of it ALL

Cheers

Whiskey, hindsight, and sunsets
are the clearest paths to sobriety

A saturated sky will make mosaics
out of the most troubled minds

Where’s the white

Afternoon storm clouds through the trees

I thought clouds were supposed to be white
Like cotton ball snowmen glued to the sky
The reason why Crayola makes a color that would otherwise sit unused
in the corner of my box
Why do these look like candle wax dripped over black construction paper?
The kind you push to the side when looking for a fresh canvas to mend
with crayons and cotton balls
Even dirt in a storm is still quartz in the hand, bleached sand on a disappearing island
So what is this in the sky?
A purple bruise trudging across the horizon with Jasper edged corners
burning hot embers through the ceiling
So many colors, I can’t choose which to use first while I’m painting this into a portrait

Fingerprints

Yesterday I reached for my camera
to take a picture of the sky
and paused as I noticed the smudge
of a familiar fingerprint through the lens
I had sketched myself into the permanent blue
and made a new kind of cloud for rain to fall from
Today I reached for my camera again
because the sky faded perfectly into the shoreline
like a paintbrush dipped in water
and as I captured the scene
no part of me settled among the reeds
and no life lines threaded themselves through the clouds
I felt like something was missing
and I thought about how obsessed we are
with being clean

Orizzonte

It’s so cold here below the sky
the warmth of the sunset is in the clouds
and the heat of the sunrise is in the
cast iron sissle on its horizon

Underneath it all, where the shadows go
once they disappear in the light, I’m cold
No cotton candy, nor topaz studded
raindrops fall this far below the line of fire

I pause at the mirrored glass that
guards the living sky
Who is that on the other side?

She looks like me but her cheeks are red
instead of grey and her eyes ghost
behind the reflection of my own
soft like garden dust and looking
beyond towards a sky I cannot reach

Untitled 2

Rain looks like snow on temperate soil
Falling on grass. Pavement that boils.

The wind picks up leaves the way I might pick up the morning paper
And twists them together like finely folded pages of sooted print.
It introduces the storm the way headlines introduce the new day,
And baptizes me in knowledge
And knowing.
I can feel the earth’s breath
and her crisp unsalted tears before I ever see her cry them,
Or see her sigh them
Or see her lie them
Down on the open womb of her brown, green, and golden body
Ripe for the life giving ocean
That touches her from the sky
In wave upon wave upon wave that looks to me like the sequence of raindrops
Pitter pattering down onto her flesh.
They are small, but oh how they grow
Into lakes and rivers and tap water that flows from rusted spigots.

When the wind brings the storm
It brings the world.