Look Out (a very rough, rough poem taking a cue from Josh Beckman)

From the way it looks, the view from the mountain

is just as clearly showing me smog

as the trees directly below my foot.

I remember when I was climbing Torres del Paine
I didn't understand

that not all roads that lead to Rome involve trodden-upon footpaths.

Kneeling on gravel, I prayed each time I grabbed a small tree

it'd hold. The phones almost entirely dead,

we communicated through the one computer

at the hostel, where coffee was strong, and delicious.

I suspect upon the moment that clouds fitted

themselves upon those mountains that rain

poured and pounded like the wind and gave

beauty to those towers. I think I read that.

Do you read? Do you take in air in quick sips?

I think that kind of thing is interesting, like how it howls

in zigzags like a terribly disoriented fox

up steep hills and that birch tree peeling like peanut

butter in a cold, cold kitchen.

I was listening to too much Tallest Man on Earth, and wrote a song called I'm Going Swimming

(this rhymes and doesn't rhyme in parts...it's rough, and if you want to put it to music, feel free. In my mind, it is finger-picked and sung with a lilt, a little fast & folky)

I'm building diamond mines in Africa, my chest.

I doubt the workers will be getting any rest

too soon, but if I were you

I'd think about the cliffs in Martha's Vineyard and if

I were you, I'd paint them just a shade grayer,

or two. At 32 degrees

the snow will pile on my heart and leaves

will tell us stories of the wet and the blue.

If I were you, I'd head off to the south

and there I'd live without the fear

of stains of onion on my fingertips,

then touch my lips. I once heard a story

of a nosebleed that filled the world with blood,

I think it was the Nile, I might have read that

in a book somewhere. Classical literature.

Was it Dante or the Aeneid that said love

was floating above me, floating
like those glass-like bits of beauty

when we look up from under water.

And time, it is reflective of the glass-like

bits of pain, the breath we breathed accidentally again:

sometimes I can't see (x3) when I'm swimming.

One Bedroom

The slip occurs more often at night

Tintinnabulations of brick, rust-colored light

Under the moon, your eyes look soft

Night music, a resting thing

Slower, farther, more patiently droplets walk up the back

Dreams like missing criminals, books like smokers' fingers

Your neon gait as you stride forward to the sheets

The ice of our closing eyes; wide, size; talk with your hands

Brick, brick, brick, night.