Springtime Drizzle

Caffeine, dried up in the back part of my skull and aching in my teeth. The sky is heavy and full, pregnant with all our discontent, will all our folded back dreams seeping up through the exhausted skin of the clouds. When will it all open up and come crashing back down upon our insubstantial shoulders?

In the springtime drizzle, we curl and unfurl, hoping to be entered by sunshine, to be kissed by indulgent bees. What else is in the wind? Our desires are too big to be buried beneath soil, we come creeping out onto the surface, tendrils needy as infants. Show me the white underbelly. Show me the ways in which you are not a tree, after all, but a small thing, a forgotten acorn.

Despite wet socks and unrestful sleep, we come out thirsty, bones cracking for more— keep shifting the earth from one place to the next, keeping sifting through the dust of me for some little treasure, amongst the moldy tea bags, the greenish orange peels, and the slick avocado pits. Somewhere is a soul, I think, waiting to be loosened with the curious fingers of summer, with the feverish call of the road.

photo credit: aussiegall via photopin cc

Fragments of dreams and teeth.

You were standing beneath a lamp, bathed in yellow light, packing cold earth into a mason jar, someone told me in a dream.

In a tent, my head is swimming, and some big person is pushing his body onto me. I call him filthy. I call him terrible names and cry.

There's something in my mouth. I spit our four cracked teeth and realize the rest are almost all gone already. What remains are sharp shards, exposed nerves. I feel responsible, guilty, almost, as if I've allowed all this decay to form, and am only now waking up to my ruined mouth.

Headrush

 

You are an empty something (I am)

Maybe when I saw your face bleeding,

            across the room, blinking lights and my heart the same

I was seeing something ooze

from you soul (your right eye).

How can I ever judge you when my head swims with infidelity and vacillating disappointment?

What was that word you told me to remember,

other you,

some sort of crystal eyed favorite, a blessed child gone all crooked bent and stray

and still loved so wholesomely,

and how are we still sorting through and categorizing,

judgments falling jagged like bricks like

my stubborn spine like

red blood cells and all our breathy deficiencies.

Oh, sigh, trailer, take me home,

            whatever that means,

just to let me

sit

down

heavily, sighing, and rely all over you,

sloppy like the creature that nowadays seems like an embarrassing fairytale.

Choosing is always a difficult thing,

for a fickle, pale person, for an  undecided soul,

and yet when the choice is one of skin and sinew and soul,

and when the options are as vague and intangible,

abstract like gaseous memories of throbbing feet and swollen tongues

of pine trees looming like antiquated morals

of chattering teeth,

and yet…

Oh, eternal unformulated self

            what is this thing?

What are we to do, what have we done, where did we go?

Where do our unspoken words wander, and where are the words we’ve spoken

            into an earshattering racket,

fractured, bruised, do they ever find a home,

in the hollows of our unconscious?

And, and,

reverberating cries, hollow eyes,

these are all the things that make reality despicable and false,

there is nothing to believe,

anymore.

And all this is just a headrush and a cough,

and all this is just your body, a thing as disposable as redwhiteandblue

paper cups.

I am the most contained,

I am the most free,

I am your average contradiction, a pair of bruised legs and

a head full of Spanish heat and questions,

expectations and overseas airline confusion,

cat fur,

dirty nails,

dinner at 9 or 10,

unaddressed postcards, unaddressed problems,

flutters and shudders,

sweat.