religion of the outdoors

You tell them you are a recovering atheist. The urge to believe in things gets louder each day but here you are in the flatlands where landscape is brown and green and all you want to believe in is the ability to persist.

You speak to a man called Ernie about a religion designed by a persian with the foundation of one god amongst all, but if you told him of your homo, he’d tell you to find a way out of yourself.

You become obsessed with the wings of flies and the ones who you slur into death from the smokey musk of your incense, which you are now burning several times a day.

If you ever moved here, you tell someone, you’d work in the library. Surround yourself by the flavor of books and spend your hours alphabetizing and reshelving histories.

You are haunted by the sound of your “hippie” being pulled away from your skin. An other wants to know if you are inside an identity crisis. You say, no, then yes then……I just don’t which word I am anymore.

You decide to live inside the story you are writing and feel the gentle weight of your protagonist’s hand slowly rub your back. Reminds you to remain.

You study the sky and its pattern of flight. Its pattern of storm and ominous. In this moment, the thunder gathers. Last night it shocked the sky in pink currents.

You marinate your tongue in various dialects of red wine. Rosé. Merlot. Cabernet. Slur.r.r.r.r.r

Then, the rain arrives again. Tornadoes warn, so you and the other poets and painters search out a safe spot in your “home” which is only guts, no skin. Sky is a dangerous blue. This rain, overweight and angry, is romantic. You want to make love, but you are barely ever nude here, except to check for ticks and bites.

You take cover. Create a tent from poems and memories. See how far it gets you.

when the lights come on…look down toward what shines

No one ever notices how many shades of red there are. We see a color and call it blue or yellow. But never Pacific Ocean blue or jaundice yellow. What about Malbec red or the shade of red one gets after being kissed for so long that lips have jumped inside another permanently.

We have been inside a dark room for three months. Winter has kept us hidden beneath grey and fog, but there is a flicker of light alerting us that spring is arriving. And so is love. And so is a renewal of body.

With Spring, notice the exchange of root for shiver. Exposed bodies, which have been hidden beneath scarves and chapped skin for so long. Collarbones and ears, no longer hidden beneath woolen toques.

When the weather warms, cars will honk at the ones who are walking, who stop at every red light to kiss. The sky will grow jealous and begin to rain on them.

When the weather warms, we will title the earth friendly again. We will invite it out for baseball catches and naps beneath its sun.

The days are getting longer and everything is coming out of hiding again. Like life. Like love.

a loot of land (mass/ive)

What has happened?

The clouds are resembling humans today, growling in the sky, pushing and intimidating their way across the rooftop of earth.

There is desperation to get out of here, move from one borough to another, leave darkened homes for well-lit ones. Buses are combusting. Limbs are punching others in order for a seat.

So, you made it over the Manhattan Bridge, but you are bleeding now and hurt another whose name you never learned and what’s the rush?

So, you swept up the shelves with your greedy hands and stole a bottle of pills to quiet the hurricane of rust inside your body and now you hoard the capsules like secret passwords and maybe you’ll sell each one or will you swallow and does it matter how you broke your way in?

So, you want to help restore the mass of overthrown buildings and buried car parts, then deliver your blood/ then deliver your excess/ your collection of sneakers/ your heavy coats/ your time/ your time/ there is so much time now…

So, the oil has spilled once again and Staten Island is crying and Staten Island is dying and 300,000 gallons swims over the humans washing ashore and who is to blame for this one?

I want to understand why we behave like monsters when weather pushes us the wrong way. Wind chokes away our luxuries, so we loot…so we loot…so we turn our bodies into hurricanes and we storm and we storm. Still, we consume. We consume. We binge on preservatives because we cannot go a day without eating. We photograph our suppers and brag about our living rooms. And we forget and we forget some people lost everything. Some people lost people. Some people are missing. Some of us are missing. But please tell me about your feast. We can forget about the homes, amputated. We can look past the woman swimming in the flood. We can forget about the woman who is mourning the loss of her greatest love. We can forget. We seem to be good at that.

the language of rainfall

Awake. To the sounds of a storm, bursting from the sky, bruising the clouds, angering the leaves who dream.

A drum. Of fingertips tapping dripped rhythm against windowpane and domes of water nap like bats, clinging to branches.

Attack. A thunderous bolt shatters the grey into purple and chartreuse and then a blur of eyesight.

A body slurs toward the noise. The indigestion of wetness. A devouring of weathered atmosphere.

A memory is pulled out like naughty grey hair–
like extracted pit in olive
like admittance of love for another.

There was that time you reached down to find my smallness
the rain interrupted our lips
the rain acknowledged the thinness of fabrics
the rain tied my hair into yours

It falls because of gravity
I fall because of starvation and inconsideration to appetite

It aids the ecosystem, the growth for hydroelectric power plants and crop irrigation.
I aid poems, the evolution of scattered thoughts and skin irritation.

There is a violence to this crime spree of sidewalk hammering
Puddles tease bodies, in search of a bathtub or a swimming pool or ocean to dive into.

What is our necessity for umbrellas,
rainfall weaponry?

There is a pause now between sky and triggered water leak.

I count the drips outside my window,
collecting on my thighs that I leave out just for mathematics.

I study the wind that replaces the rain that waits for the sun that is turned off by these umbrellas that hide faces and hair weaves.

A car horn.
A woman yells at her child.
Public radio stuck inside computer.
A slurp of coffee.
A growl of stomach.

Listen.
I hear you too.