looseleaf

my old coat is getting worn at the
elbows from thinking too hard, and
getting in one too many fights for
pride and all sorts of things you
forgive me for, because that's
what you do.

and you know when you're gone
i dream of hotels where you lie
surrounded by black and white
television and dream of a boy for whom
goodbye was too good a word and there
we sleep, eaten alive by napkins and
monsters under the bed but we don't
mind much for they have very comfortable
stomachs and really the daylight was
a hindrance anyways.

i love you paper airplanes, and
you love me a mermaid's silver nose
and really that's all that matters
to either of us, but i think you have
too many hearts in your collection
and we'd better make sure you're not
holding on too long.

so i'll meet you in the field at dawn,
we'll take color photographs and wish
we lived in a charming black and white
mansion that doubled as a hotel, and
i'll play the guitar and howl a bit,
saying "fare thee well" and writing
you postcards that are described by
the historians as surreal and esoteric,
but you know exactly what i'm saying
and wouldn't care if you didn't, because
postcards always remind you of back home
and the way poetry can be like a smell:
it sends you colors and stories and
shivers up your spine, but you don't
always know what it means; it's like
a dream where you meet strangers in hotels
and they help you out, just as if you were
in an old movie.

color of how

Sophia,

I will find you among the rushes and watercress; I will dig for you in the clay; I will paint you on brand-new canvas. I will not let go of myself.
I know you don't love me anymore; isn't that the way we all go? There's distance and then there's an empty mailbox and then we stop loving. Then one day we stop breathing and realize that life without loving is like water without wetness. What is that good for? So, I will not stop loving you, no matter how much my eyes crack.
I don't know what I'm saying. And it seems like all I can do is crack. Cracked cracking firecracker crack my eyes open. The color of how to bleed.
If you burn this before reading it, I think I will love you more than ever. Something is not right with me. I feel like a cloud dissolving into the great vast solvent of sky.
Sophia, your name rests in my teeth like so many leaves and I smell you in woodsmoke and you are the space between galaxies. But all my pretty phrases can't make me pretty.
Sophia, if you don't answer this I promise I will die of fulfilled expectations.
I love you, Sophia.

Thomas Street

trouble

the north wind told me keep going
south wind told me i'd better leave
west, he said he'd kill me next time
east just swore and lit another cigarette
so i went for a walk
and i went for a swim
ain't no way the wind can catch me
underwater.

hope i grow some gills soon,
else i'm good as dead.

fresh air \ hers fair

As the snow continued to fall, we settled in, consigned to our fate. Only half of the window was above now; we stared out and watched the white crystals waft like chloroform over the white ground under the white sky. The textures and edges in this old house were enough to keep us alive until the white dissolved.

For the first three hours, we stared into the fire and talked about how we wished life was in black and white, how much more nostalgic everything would be before it was even memory. I put my hand on my forehead; you put on your striped hat and smile.

Then we slept. I dreamed of white sticking to my flesh and picking me clean and black; you dreamed of grayscale trees in grayscale fields of tall grayscale grass.

We awoke and pressed against the window. Everything was the same white now. There was no telling when we would able to leave.

We stared at each other, delighted at our great fortune.