Nobody but Ourselves

Fingertips

feel the world like hot cold madness

running across our spines and stomaches.

My.

fingertips

gather into circles and take skin

like it's their purpose. Perhaps it is.

The flesh hangs deep and raw,

it holds our guts and chemical existence.

The flesh hurts temporarily,

quick to burn, quick to heal.

My hands are momentary, our hands are infinitely slow

during short lifespans.

The memory is thick and diluted,

like split-pea soup from Italian grandmothers

with more fashion sense than me.

Dipping fingers into thoughts is like adding

poison to the perfect pot, prepared with

care. Let's not spoil the spoon-fulls before

they reach flesh-filled tongues and stomachs.

Behind your eyelids, behind your navel,

behind the fruit flies that love the leftovers of your lunch

there are bags of delicious emotions, tantalizing

thoughts, feelings that are split between days and

nights and times when there is no differentiation

between sleeping and awake.

The dream came from the stomach aches and

fruit filled dessert you ate in the dream

about Alice and her rabbit.

I chased them deep, into the pores of

our existence and placed cannonballs

at the base, to block their progression.

Your face is solid, molded, elastic.

In ten years the stretch of the imagination

will still span your consciousness of existence,

with shrieks and shivers and solidarity peppered and sprinkled

like confections at Christmas time.

We hold our breath and dive,

clasp our hands and grin,

fall asleep above bodies of water

and outside our minds the lights

stretch on; can you touch them?

Once I touched the light and laughed

because someone once told me

I have it; I still don't know what 'it' is.

But 'it' began in our bellies and erupted like

the most devastating volcanoes, the ones we studied

during freshman year of college and pretended

to understand the consequences. What happens

when our lives bubble up and erupt from our eyes

and ears and mouths and noses-

the wold we hide behind layers of clothes

and deny separation of skin and muscle;

the Jazz music brings you a little closer to

the heart of old existences.

The light is laughing with me.

There are no answers to the greatest questions of our lifetime,

but I'm wondering: who is still asking, anyway?

We all need to read a little more and sleep a little less;

join my madhouse, my lock and key apartment,

my made up magnetic surfaces with mystical

animals and mapped out dreams;

we come together, hand-in-hand.

We're all born with the same dreams.

Looking for the Same Things

As the sun rises

we breath in the ashes

of unforgivable mistakes.

Footsteps at fifteen through the streets

of Nagasaki.

Ten years later,

shadows remain in the pages

of your mind.

I'll pass you ten papers

to extract how much

you hate and love

this place.

Carolina summers,

I'll take my peace with the rain

and mix it with our sorrows

and quit playing the game.

If you knew how I gasp

at the little insignificances of

a four year old's dreams,

or how I laugh when falling off swings;

if you knew how deep I dive

or how frantically I search for the other half,

I doubt you'd stay here.

I'm breathing in the ashes of

the past eight months, handling the

elements of disappointments and

inconsistencies; I'm blowing away

the fluffs of dandelions and laughing out

loud at our existence in aviators,

my survival on creamsicles.

And my determination to taste

another means of living.

I nod, you nod. We nod together.

On a rock above the Eno, we can't

help but watch the delicate cranes and

the light refracted off the surface.

The tips of trees tickled my consciousness

and whispered summer secrets to

my ever-listening soul.

Give us Thunder, or give us Snow.

We're all lonely, even when we're together.

Give me the bottom of the river

in the palm of your hand, presented

with sticky theories of living and

papers on dead war heroes.

Their horses are trudging on without

masters, skeletons chatter and clatter

like sticks on bones in the pits of France.

Sometimes we live it like we

write it, and sometimes I take that

inspiration and record it for

a later date.

Memory of you will fade,

but words last forever.