I tried to imagine
that the hills were priests in
long green robes, joining hands in prayer but

it turned out they were just hills.

I tried to imagine that
your yellowthroat was some sort of
calling, the up and down a    holiness
rejoicing

it turns out, it was a song your mother used to sing
holy to you, but to me it was
just a song

I tried to imagine
there was a hand holding mine, and
I was right - it was

the left holding
the right.

little stories throughout the day, those
are the only ones I know how to end, a
moment, a feeling,  bristling tiny experiences but
no idea as to how the year will end, the month or
even today.

one day is almost as vast to me as a year is to
those well-versed in endings and outcomes.

so little, I know
so little.

But where am I going to go? What am I going to do?

Anywhere, anything.

Selfie by Steven Hutchison

Stand close to me
I want to remember us
right here
right now
in that dress you’re wearing
in this light
or with a filter
ya, probably with a filter
we will immortalize this moment
in digital eternity
put ourselves in the back pockets
of all our friends
let them see us
we will become stars tonight
and though the skies are full these days
of lite-brite impersonations
I’m certain we will burn into forevers
I haven’t really noticed where we are
let the world fit itself into the top two corners
of our rectangular existence
like it matters anyway
I need to remember us
tomorrow you won’t be here
we won’t be here
wherever here happens to be
tomorrow I will hear myself again
with those lonely songs and cold hands
of an all-too-present reality
I need you to stand close to me
if I look back and see the world in between us
it will look too much like the truth I’m avoiding
tomorrow I will need to convince myself I’m living
and this will be my arm-length testament
there was a time and a place when we were smiling
pushed close together behind nostalgia inducing filters
if we can look convincing tonight
dress ourselves in starlight
block out the world behind us
maybe tomorrow I’ll believe it
shout your picture into my hollows
before the lonesome deepens
I need you in my back pocket
for those days my lonely soul gets wordy

drawn

"The moment one gives close attention to any thing, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome indescribably magnificent world in itself. " - Henry Miller

myth: the constant ally

I like this drifting, out of focus

it's like I was tied to a post, never tried
to untie it, myself but

then your subtle hands
all over

and I was    thrust
outand

in all this
space, love ly

can just spin, slower and slow er
until I find (read: believe) that
I don't need to
find

anything
to be
free

 I just have to


be

I like when you wear red.
it puts fire back in your skin
a heat on your breathagain

Cuidado - tantas curvas y yo sin freno!

i want to know who your suicide notes are addressed to now by ari

in the swimming pool, my sister takes 

pictures of my feet ballet position,
back upright, arms on hips.
"make waves like this"
i make waves like this and she takes pictures of them. 
i float on my back under water,
three feet from above water and i try to recite poetry
i wrote a year ago 
i come up and still wonder if i'm able to hear anything but my bones cracking under there. 
it isnt long before i realize i can hold my breath longer than i could last week and 
i feel like i am seconds away from death. 

june 18th, 4 in the morning,
3,000 miles away the pills are being shipped out of her stomach and i know they've been back stroking through there for too long. 

(i get out of the pool and she tells me 
what's happened and where she's taking it from here)
i say i love her and i say it as more than a friend. 
i say it because i have to 
i say it because at one point, her suicide notes were addressed to me and i dont know who reads her new ones now.
i say it because nine months ago,
i made her breathe and only breathe and
i stayed awake while she slept on the other line.
i say it because i have been those pills in her gut but also i have been 
the days when she has been clean. 
i say i love you and i dont stop. 

i still feel like i'm under water.

The way we talk about talent, it makes it seem as if it were a consistent, driving force. Something restless and in a constant state of being. The few times I have been told I have it - talent - I doubted it's very existence. I feel I have been talented at different points in my life; I have done something exceptional, I have felt I'm doing it, whatever it is, right. To the fullest extent. But soon after I feel it wane and quiver and sometimes it is lost all together. But however much of a gift it is,or however many moments in which you reach one potential, there is always another and talent - ebbing and flowing, one moment a seemingly tangible thing, the next dissipated and unreachable - is never constant. It is another daily struggle. A worthy and admirable one, but a struggle nonetheless.

mama

I'm taller than you now - that's okay, I'll
perch my head on your shoulder like a bird, ruffle my
feathers in your warmth, share your
sunlight

some people may feel like home
but mama, you feel like the freshness in something new only to me.
an old side table, the perfect size, a goodwill find.
using a new word for the first time,
learning that you've been able to do something
extraordinary all your life, you just never knew
it was extraordinary because it felt
natural.

but to compare you to anything is an injustice.
you are a complete world in yourself.

we are, all of us, all the people that we have previously been.
we all reside in our future selves and
carry our past within us, though some carry more
than just the knowledge. Some tote it behind them - carry it to the top of that pyramid
until they realize the last pyramids were completed in roughly 1800 - 1700 BC,
and it's too late to find a new base to build on.

but mama, you somehow found a way to start building from the middle, out.
from the top, down.You found a bit of earth to dig out,
build around.

tailspin

I wish I could 

do a cartwheel, justso I could know 

what it feels like.    wish I could 

sing out loud   whenever 

just so I could let you know

I have more breath in me 

than these few 

words

"Stand up, come here."
"Well, jeez just order me around, why don't you."
"Yeah, well, you better get used to that."

"I mean, it's only a Twix, right?"

I seem to be in an annoyingly consistent state of periphescence.

wish I could push    when push is needed
keep a distance long enough and let the salt set
there is a bitter-
nesslike in the corners of my mouth
that I lick when you are too close,
your sweet becomes the air around me,
your sweet, dear

it is so much to
bear

you have a downward symmetry about you, your mouth rests a bit too deep in your
chin, so to speak, you
speak in skinlight   my eyes slow to
capture all of you at once, b eaut  iful

honey, you
could speak in deep tones, rich and creamy
hard to swallow but   just
another
bite

and yet your words bubbleout like brave
little warriors - they emerge in such
formation and
present themselves
, not to
question

oh god
just keeps in wavves, covering
my face so I have to
                                    breathe it
                                       in

so sweet, sometimes I have to come up for
air just so I am not drenched in honeydewed drama I store inside my
head.

woo inebriation

keep it
go  ing , lapit up like little
dogs, keepit  
go ing

mouths pushagainst
what you've crowded them with, it has become
daily religion to keep a lid
on, keep your self
under
the sur
face

keep your words to a
minimum, hold
on with all you
have

or else
or else?

Add film making to my list of goals. 

I'll be a white-haired film maker. 

I'll make poetry films and all I'll talk about is how much 

other artists have affected me.  

Can this be my life's goal?

I'm going to move to Arizona and dye my hair White.

push all the air out - roll me up

so that I can cradle all of my solidity(as if it exists at all) and

stay in one place, perhaps grow roots there, as well

and begin to notice the slowly things, the tid bits, the every aspect in

the every eye about this    one    place. Watch it change and mourn it’s

yesterday as if it were a dear friend.

the blue&purplelike
is brush and stroked lightly so, my sister's
painting is brand new, ev'n though her
fingers have since threaded her through continents and
many a limb once thought dead, and then there was
atinglin'

no matter where my compass points,   the north is always new, and
my sister's blue never ages; only gradually does it grow dark in some
places, only over time does it     deepen and
                                                      settlein, cozy


nice n' clean, smooth on the surface but it goes
                deeper than you
            could imagine

this description is perfect.

"..all wrapped in guises and relatively decent."

- from "Guises" by CE Green
Hello Poetry, May 8th 2013