out of my element.

I turned around

in the doorway; blindly

finding myself

in a place that I did

not find familiar.

the sunlight shouldn't

be in this place

and I feel more than taken

from what I remembered

as a comfort zone

hands wandering

my sides, feeling severed.

In the field outside

I could hear the bees

making conversation

amongst themselves

ignoring the world around

them, and wondered

if the bones scattered

throughout the wheat

had names, and if the faces

of the bees held the answers

to the questions they asked.

Somedays I feel

like I have fallen

six stories and a hair

waking up cold

in another world,

keeping with the

tradition and a smile

that I like to spread

around, brown eyes

in a blue world,

hands awash with the

consequences, just remember

that I love you, and

that I am the harsh equivalent

of all my best intentions

gone horrifically awry.

this year has been my hardest

and im afraid im not gonna be

stronger on the other side of this

im praying for spring and the

heart to not feel like i deserve

to have what I want most just

because of the goodness and love

that i have brought into peoples lives.

this is no way to end a decade.

I let lou reed's voice just

settle in, cold and silty like

a cloud and my stare goes soft.

my fingers still work the

keyboard even with no focus

and I am typing from a

daydream somewhere

inside the tornado. I do not

know the way back, and sand

is all I can see for miles and miles

moving like the ocean at a

heartbeat like pace in full moon.

long way home

All I saw was lights on the fence,

bouncing up and down and spread

out in small intervals like morse

code letters but with no real pattern

to be found. Just before I heard the

subway doors close in the station below,

I could smell it. I knew that in the next

few steps around some dark alley corner

it would be there, some five foot tall, seven

foot wide piece of someone still dripping

with colors not found in nature. A crime

with no victim, given birth by a generation

with nothing to do, too much time on our hands.

That smell always takes me to other places,

places where my breath would show in the air.

Places where the sounds of trains comforted

me and rocked me to sleep late in the night.

In an effort to search I broke my path up

into steps, zigzagging across town like someone

trying to get lost, or maybe lose something else.

This was the first time that I had walked home alone

in what felt like years, the air beside me absent of

laughter and dialogue, I had to fight the urge to

talk to myself. The words biting the inside of my

mouth begging me to find someone to introduce

them to. But in my current state, I was in no shape

to speak to strangers

So I sang to myself instead.

where do you run

when everything has lost its name

and the things that used

to be familiar aren't anymore

and when you reach for

things they aren't there

the gaps widen

and the terms have changed.

I'm drunk and stumbling
and these words are not
what I should be writing down
in this frame of mind.