Collaborative Poem

This was written in collaboration with Rachel Waggoner. It contains many of my shorter poems.

Suppose it decided not to fall.
Not to run down mountains, and
not to collect in basins.
What would I do?
What could I do? What else but sit there and wait for a respite from this dry, dry season.

My throat runs raw with things unspoken, 
Sandpaper catching on itself 
hooking the fabric of my skin on my bones 
and hanging out to soak up the sun 

It fell today, and I asked for it to fall but I don’t think I’m glad that it did.
With it brings new life, but at the cost of the current day. 
And right now, I’d rather have the day than new life.
But it won’t always be right now, and there won’t always be opportunities for new life.
So, I think I am glad it did decide to fall.

I think I might fall if it keeps going this way though
A torrent a trickle a flood whenever it feels like 
How am I supposed to know whether to carry an umbrella or a boat in my back pocket  
To float or to sink does not have such an easy answer 
When everything feels like quicksand 

A battle is won! A, not the, battle is won.
There will be more, and not all of them will result in victory.
A battle is won! This one a harder fight than the last.
Tomorrow seems to be even greater, but today, 
I am a victor, and tomorrow can think for itself.

A moment of triumph - drink up. 
When will the next time come 
When we can clink our glasses 
For simple pleasures rather than in solidarity 
When I can toast to you and me 
Rather than what we are without each other 
Rather than do what we do when we are without each other 
The game keeps playing regardless
of whether or not we’re in the same round 

Time has no stoppage. No rest for the ever clicking clock.
My time has stopped though.
My time and my time alone has halted, 
and the time of others is now far ahead.
To catch up, their time would have to stop,
but again, time has no stoppage. 
How then did I fall behind? 

Like a chess timer I hear the click
The metal popping into place against a spring
Potential energy I wish I held
Something to propel
Otherwise I think I fell 
Fall behind falling forward falling fast failing falling 
Flinging myself into something 
As if I don’t already know I’m at war with doing it right 

Falling forward, because if I must fall, 
I’d rather it be useful. 
I’d rather my blunder set up a check,
or at the very least not ensure my defeat. 
In a game where every move counts, 
in a life where every fall hurts,
I’d rather fall forward.

They teach you to catch the ground with your hands 
Because falling on your face 
Is somehow better than going backwards 
Not seeing the world slipping out from beneath you 
Not being able to tell when your head is about to collide 
Not knowing when you hit regardless 
But there’s something so scarily comforting in seeing the sky as the last thing before you do 

In the zenith, where the blue was deepest, 
shone three or four stars.
These three or four I knew, 
And in these three or four I found comfort. 
How do I reconcile the sky and the plain?
How do I bring my comfort to where I am,
So I can be at peace even during the day?

Irony is parents telling their kids to not be afraid of the dark 
To not worry about what lies in the unknown
But I feel safest when the dark blackish blue envelops me
And everything is coated in 
an equalizer
Of shadows and waves of stars 

The sun’s rays visibly parted what seemed like a never ending cloud,
illuminating the brown, red, orange, yellow leaves.
Fields of them, entire forests of these trees,
with their leaves stretching out to catch it,
Before the clouds moved to hide the sun again. 

Glittering sundrops dancing on the jagged edges of the leaves 
Twirling between the sun-dyed side and the back seam
Like a ballroom dancer switching partners as they fold themselves 
Into an origami pattern of rhythm 
I wish I could sit and stare at the side of the leaves
The three dimensional crinkly fragile thing 
Turned into a line by perspective 
And watch the light change its desires as the day passes 

Leading and following myself into a new day
filled with a baseless vigor that yields more;
more grit, more fire, more direction.
The difference between knowing and not
is what defines this new day. 
The renewed eyes from which I see and ears from which I hear
is what causes the day to be new.
And that consciously decisive step, the unnumbered one,
is what separates the new from old. 

Finding the fire-lined path to follow each morning
Something that invigorates my step 
Though sometimes I wish there weren’t so many things aflame
so many fires to put out, things to tend to, people to carry 
out of their smoke with no one to make sure I’m breathing 
fire can cleanse as much as it can burn. 
Every day can be built from the ashes of before 

One thing into the next, and then another.
All connected, yet distinct, and independent.
But dependent on the preceding to proceed.
Such is the nature of things.
Order is present in disorder, as even in disorder one must come before two.
And two must come after one. 

Night bleeds into dawn blooms into day fades into dusk succumbs to night 
And we wonder when the days became so short 
When the sun became so shy 
So much so we created a time shifting construct to handle our own disconcertion  
We try to order everything that cannot be ordered, 
Fold it way too neatly
a swan towel atop a hotel bedspread 
Wings clipped 

The temporaries we’ve come to accept,
not by choice, rather, by its absence.
It’s the permanences that we choose.
The ideas, people that we select.
Intentionally, but not necessarily conscious.

They say you are a composite of the five people closest to you 
Those who you choose 
to hold close 
To define you when you cannot 
Define yourself 
To make them a constant 
When everything else shifts 

Up to par, but what is par?
Why am I held to something I had no part in creating,
And judged by standards I’ve no interest in.
Is it a part of living in society?
Is it a result of being one of them?
No! Because I can also judge whether I’m up to par.

To judge is to hold someone against the grain
Rubbing them into the lines until they conform, be straight 
Don’t deviate 
But there are warps in the wood
Like there are curves in the characters 
And who is to force them to stand on the shaking shoulders of those before them 
When grounding themselves would be just fine 

What do I do when the season’s predicability is lost?
When the flowers bloom earlier and later, 
Or not at all?
When the leaves fall while green?
Or when it’s cold in the summer?
What does it mean now that that I’ve lost
the tellers that told me when?

When the things that used to be priority 
Have fallen off the curb, somewhere 
In the gutter I wonder if I stare long enough at the parallel yellow lines 
Of the road if they will give me 
Guidance 
Yellow brick road in modernity 
Is it the road less traveled or the one not traveled at all 

The clouds are moving too quickly.
They’re still if I don’t look at them,
but the second they have my attention,
they speed up, as if my eye
irks it. As if my gaze pushes it away.
Why do the clouds move so quickly?
It is windy, yes, but it is not only windy when I look at the sky, right? 

Flowing fast like dandelion puffs in a river stream 
I want to blow through them and make them dissipate 
Disappear and dissolve 
Into the blue abyss 
Remnants of remnants that were barely holding on anyway 
Succumbing to the elements 
To the force of my breath 

The blue abyss that I like.
Not the one that I don’t;
not the one filled with monsters and that would take my breath away.
The blue abyss that holds flying,
floating creatures that have always
been my friend. 

When i would lie on my back 
The grass tickling my neck 
In that uncomfortable scratchy 
but don’t-care-enough-to-move way
A warrior raging across 
A sailor in a perfect storm 
Endless possibilities in the drifting folds above 
Stratified by density and imagination

Impermanence is a bittersweet aspect of good things,
because our relationship with said good thing
can evolve in ways that would otherwise not be possible
if they weren’t now in the past.
The question then becomes when to allow the change to happen,
which often isn’t necessarily our decision to make.
But in a way, the acceptance of time passing,
and its subsequent prospective gaze
opens the opportunity for growth.

How lucky we are to have had something so wonderful for any time at all
Which makes saying goodbye so hard
The change is not our choice 
The change is hardly controlled 
It’s a snap of a finger or a wind blown in the wrong way 
And you’ll end up drifting so far down that maybe lost becomes your new normal 

Giving and taking in the likeness of which I have seen,
Emulating what came before me.
Uniqueness in unoriginality, 
as a copy of an original is unique.
Individual thoughts incepted by a collective,
my own thoughts because I’d thunk them.
Giving and taking, as the collective and the individual.

Spend so much time in the brain dump of others 
Brain washed or inundated or poured over 
with something akin to soul-skin 
coating my brain and my being until 
I do not know what is mine or theirs or 
something that came from the melding of us 
it is the melting pot that makes us broil 

Unsuspected and unexpected is the truth,
yet it is still known to those who suppose.
Known by way of piecing together,
intuition, guessing.
Known by way of being told,
being not told, and feeling.

So much is wondered within the irises
Things that do not escape the sticky 
filtering gate of closed lips 
but ring around the color like 
the inside of a bell
echoing indefinitely trying to 
get out from this hula-hooping.