Forward

Feet planted in the shadowy abyss
I square my shoulders
Set my lips and grin
What optimism never lets me miss

I glimpse the pinholed
sky, there's hope I'll win
I know
so I write.

22, babe!!

And we sat
under a tree
that rained
caricatures of spiders
And there I was–
my chatter putting so much distance
from the gun's firing
And there you were–
listening,
your words with
a deliberation
that always leaves me
straining
for that unfinished phrase–
there we were,
here we are.

This is harder,
babe,
this writing something for you...
because a sonnet
won't cut it.
You'd shatter it
in a single
glance–
hell to flattery
and its friends
Don't bother
saying it if
all form,
no
substance...
and lord! the
glass that has
hailed
the sidewalk
if I could
put us into words,
as we sip our
bitter drinks,
it's who we are,
and what we do.

To think that
you've driven me
even more
spontaneous,
while pushing
me to defend
to the diction
my words which
are sometimes less
of thought...
to think
that I can't
yet
even
pinpoint all the effects
of our vibrant ship...

Jessica R. Daniel
meine Lieblingsfreundin
I see a beautiful girl
caught
bemidst
what should be
and what isn't
far too wise
for most to know
Ich will nur dein Glück
and passion
can't exist in a
vacuum
Nothing exists
in a
vacuum.

Eile mit Weile
It's your eternal motto–
you just
don't know it yet
in those precise words.
Time without the hurry
all-consuming schedule...
time to be.
What the world needs
and what we
will
always give it
as night falls
and we escape the
city
of our captivity
the headlights
pave
a country road
speed
narrated by
the music
emblazoned
crosst our souls
Meeting once again
with
the thrilling Unfamiliar
in a mad
culmination of...
für immer??
Only to us.

I love you across the mountains, seas,... past that brilliant horizon we are ever watching– the sun's getting brighter, babe. Here's to 22– your brightest yet!! To a badass year and one hell of an adventure that's right around the corner. <3

always dwelling on light

we walk the fine
bright city line

our dainty heels dig spikes
in the puddles of spilled light

shall we cross the glitt'ring bridge?
or continue to the ridge

am i in my rightsome mind
is intigue as yet a bind

when did they coin it blind?

how fitting

the spotlight came on
in class
when we started analyzing religion
in The Monk

the church is just a backdrop
which enables them all
to do wicked things

Hark!
critical thinkers!
let's throw light
on the shadows.

current context of my being

I am but currently defined
by an eclectic bagel, banana
peel, three binders,
and the solemn imposition
of time
so solitarily confined

They are not,
three generations
joined manifestly
by the arches
of their
throws
the young soul
running blithely
in his tiny
cap, tiny
red shirt
matching his dad's

Allein ist gut
aber zusammen
besser ist.


(written in the last day gone by)

architecture of the plot

She says,

so it be to quite useful

as always parallels of these.

And so it was–

the familiar and the safe–

warm, soupy, languid stretch'd

the bulbous orbed lanterns

stringing magic in the waning

summer

light–

and so it was, at 4 years

those spots of lumination

pitched into black

and I, out of breath, out of sorts

am terror

hung out on the empty line

fronting ravaged skies–

as I watch, with tears in

my eyes,

the turbulence settles,

mid grainy charcoal,

through most begrimed

lens of mine,

a single red lantern

luck fleeting

severed from its ties

a lonely, lonely sight

Where did our summers go?–

and I fall into my mind

I remember a time

on a bridge

in firecracked night

cider-scribed water bottle–

and I glimpsed, far,

far away,

a red lantern

but then

I broke

as into

infinitely happy.

Then it was a token

that thing I keep

calling

Magic–

You never expect

what's beneath

your sanctuary,

or question on what

loopholes

it presides.

This is how the plot unfolds–

though of absolute abhor

principles of this kind–

as it unfolds, what

is its design–

and that is why I threw

it back to you–

you, who know

who you are,–

You left first, and

I watched

it fall away–

Jetzt

I will not again

sacrifice myself

to the

architecture

While you study the foundation,

I take to the sky.

all I have to say

I thought the wanting came in waves...but then it just fucking stopped.

"new post"

It could be about anything
once the button's hit
he was driving, my
seventh grade math teacher
and let it fly out the window
my Chapter 7 Test
pre-composed
undisposed

It's not about him or that,
it's about this feeling of
grappling with the moment.

You have to be willing to improvise.

To give it up to whatever the universe yields in turn-
and good,
bad,
let someone else be the ogling judge.

walking home

it's not a denial

or a denseness

to which place

in mind

is place of real

I walk

and it is not

some godlike

sense of security

for I'm aware

of should'st be a shiver

where there is none–

I know but to know

is not to be–

it is not the lit

buildings, guardians

of nigh,

or the eyes of the streetlamps,

witness to

all wayward

journeys–

or the light in the window,

a curious

will o' the wisp?...

No.–

It is the moon

illumination awash

laked shores

the compass'd sky–

the Moon,

she lights everything up

like day.

Re: bad days

You're quite funny–
you think you know bad?
Try being sick, or crazy, or mad.

Look at you,
you know nothing of this.
You needlessly yearn but have nothing to miss.

You're inventing problems
your strawberries froze!??
I've never eaten one of those.

bad days

My strawberries froze
my friends are upset
the walls know
the coroner I met

Hibernation is over
the blue bells run dead
the battering red rover
has left us in shreds

The landscape drips oil
our ever blunder
o'er wasteland we toil
and defeated, fall asunder

I must bring myself to say
Sometimes I fear these are very bad days.

Magic exists,

I discovered in a soft pink room

in a 20-minute dream

fuzzy heart trace gracing my head

prisms of sunshine falling from zzzzzzz

I awoke restored in the province of fairy

knowing the world magical to be.

And to that girl,

Makenna Rose,

who makes me believe magic exists–

Clad in pink, clasping to spires

She looks to the open sea

Sun a tangerine orb of fire

From guile affectation she's finally free

That which fizzles here on planet's castle

The institutions of music it pervades

They mistake beautiful for fragile

Forgetting her heart is of the glade

Let us together the three sing

in full-lunged triumph to their glower

speeding night to Muse we cling

They forget that warmth, kindness, are power.

to my gorgeous friend, happy late birthday

let Tolkien's light again this year forge your way. <3

Limoncello

A bottle, geometrical glass, its mystical contents contained by wax dripped seven years past.

In it there's brusque matching dresses, white foldout chairs rows upon rows, the beating sun.

An afternoon slathered in sunscreen, swingset haven to our exhilaration.

Crisply: "Be our DJ," and the radio propelled in and out of midday traffic.

Sometimes I wonder where they went– 

and if there's no way of getting them back

what happens when the seal is broken, the bottle empty?

Flat

I can brush off rude remarks.

but I am so unduly tempted to stomp our interactions of late into the ground, to grind them back to where they are alien signifiers disembodied from their gritty reality.

I wish that our interactions could be reduced to a common denominator.

That they could've happened over a wire, with no one to witness.

That they were flattened a good dimension.

That it was a phone call, and that I had the freedom to defend myself with a healthy "Fuck you."

Embracing Truth

Let's go
and
stand in the sun

and face its brilliance

till we're forced to squint through our eyelashes.

Till it permeates our skin
minds and hearts

Till it banishes all
the messy cover-ups
all those pointless games
of hide-and-seek–
because that's all they were
anyways–

games.

Till the light covers everything
and we can finally call ourselves human

without cringing.

Please, let's go now
and declare ourselves to be –

They Ate Pretense for Breakfast

Smattered across the city
like dabs of paint
they woke up
rubbed their bleary eyes
threw on
their outer shells
and opened their fridge doors
BANG
nothing good to eat
but a nice bowl
of arrogance
they gulp it down
and so
they ate pretension
for breakfast.

Laugh it off
and take it
with a grain of salt:

When you can see clear through
to the other side
it's so
beautifully
ridiculous.