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his room of escape cowers dollhouse small

in this tiny tudor house.

his mother’s before him,

the yellow tiled kitchen

is tradition

more than a room.

the dried flowers placed on the wall

by his mother’s delicate hand decades ago

are crumbling.

a memory suspended by a nail,

the ghosts of roses long ago pulled

from the ground and tied with a pink ribbon.

this is now his room,

his place.

longing to be a zen buddhist

my father stands at the sink, staring out

the window, squinting against the sun.

washing dishes, water is calming.

he says he sees enlightenment.

the floorboards groan beneath his feet.

they are worn almost through,

and the gleam of the laundry room shines up.

bob dylan whines from the stereo,

carefully tuned and turned

up to rattle the purple and green wine glasses

suspended by their feet

above the stove.

he becomes lost in the music,

a tantric hypnosis, the melody his mantra

bringing him summers 20 years past.

summers of love and freedom,

he remembers feeling real.

he turns his attention back to the dirty dishes,

sighing while singing with dylan.

peace can be found in unlikely places -

nirvana at the sink.

wandering towards the river on a gray day

that could get no grayer,

i could vanish on these slushy streets.

my boots leave temporary marks in the shifting snow,

puddles that fill in as I step away

as if they were never there.

holding tight to my muse, i struggle to complete

myself against the falling clouds.

i fold and unfold myself

between the pages of tomes

and creases on roadmaps,

the lines along the highway

and the walls along the edge.

i fade into the landscape,

a tired gray tree above the frozen mud,

dead leaves piled at my feet.

locked in, frozen, stuck

i’m blanketed in cold but

the thaw must always come.

the earth takes herself back and grows,

echoing hope inside my head -

we shall have our colors again.

The tale says that angels have no memory of the past. They cannot even remember that they are angels.

‘I guess that explains it,’ he says through bloodshot eyes. And, for the first time, I understand. I understand who I am, what I was meant to do, why I’ve always had vague feelings of displacement in this flat and material world. I belong in the world of shadows, the world of the nebulous ideal. I belong anywhere but here.

And I’m so scared that he may find out, that e may realize the secret I never even knew I kept. Although aliens may understand our breed, I am not even sure he wants to know, that it is time to reveal myself to the prince from Pluto. I don’t even think he understands what it is he has figured out, or what the consequences could be.

But he has touched on a part of me that had sunk below the soul, hidden within the layers of problems and arguments. He had realized that some of us do walk among the many, not even knowing where we are headed, barely remembering our purpose, never knowing our magic.

Maybe that why so many of us end up here on earth, with only slight knowledge of other-worldly powers. We forget our wings and learn to trust our instincts. None of us can remember what our orders were, why we were sent to this place, why we must feel so deeply and strongly for so many, why we must try to understand them all. We can only go where our crystal hearts lead, trying shyly to recognize others of our kind, but we are too scared to even ask.

So we blend. We try to fit ourselves into the selfish world, try to stop feeling, forget our missions. The ideal slips away, lost until we stop to think. We will do what we were sent to do, but it will be much easier without the map. We do not know our direction, we never realize what the scars mean.

We wonder why we can’t find our keys. We misunderstand, interpret the facts, try to be a friend. We get on the wrong roads, turn left at the wrong places, close our eyes at the wrong times.

We search our memories for some clue of who we are, knowing we did not really come from those dusty suburban houses/ We only know that we are not real, we do not belong. We touch, long to be touched, but know we will never truly be. Until we find others of our kind, others who forgot who they were and what their mission was, we will wander your world.

A weekend of self abuse ends with sleeting snow on a Sunday night. The body has another four days to recover before the Thursday night binge ensues. These weekends are ruled by the family, substituting for the ones that should really be, but the bloodtypes and surnames take a backseat to a hug that is not forced./And the good times come in small doses, happiness is the last cigarettes, our songs on the radio of a beat up car, nachos for dinner on a Wednesday night. But the bloodlines keep us going, with spikes of pleasure along the way. The pen flows, the books are read. We do what we can. We get by./ And maybe we feel good behind a glass, the aging process of the brew becomes a hand held, a kiss to the soft spot on the neck. The binge becomes us. Cigarettes are enough to keep us warm on nights like these. We do not need heat, passion. We need family, alien brothers and whorehouse sisters, blind uncles and jumper-cable fathers. This is where the peace lives, as our novels sit unread in milkcrates and our left hands get stiff, with words stuck in our fingers. Inspiration lives in a bottle, exists in a stoned word in the snow. / Reruns run and run, letting us have some ghostly torch of our past. Identify, know, experience, become. The snow piles up to the window, blocking and holding. Embraced in cold, we will not leave.

this version of me is standing

somewhere in that space between

existence and being,

staring into the sunset

from the banks of the hudson river.

the heavy air is warm and smells like dirt,

she blows bubbles into the breeze

until it is too dark to see them shine.

a woven blanket lies beneath

her long and wispy cotton skirt and

her boots, so tough they feel dangerous.

she slides it from under and

lies back to connect with earth.

with grass to her cheek

and joint to her lips,

she dreams upstream

and waits for it to come.

arose with a jolting start this morning,
coaxed myself together, wandered out the door.
the air was cold and the sky flat grey,
the lung that inspires new england.
deep breath, board the train, pay the fare -
stretch out and watch
the graffiti go by on ancient freighters.
rain between the rails, tiny seas,
parallel puddles mirror the sun,
poking her nose into the day.
the clouds glow in thin white lines
spanning the gravel sky.
the train trudges on beneath.
this is the way i like it,
i can almost believe i’m at home
in this extralocal world.
this landscape embraced me long before
i embraced it, it held me
until i came back.
here i am to claim my kingdom
throw open the doors
and let me have hope.