beasts of the southern wild

looks wonderful. come out soon please.

later

When you are forty
I will still be nineteen
and your mustache will send
signals.

The empty space above our camp will fill with a separate smoke.

When you are just thirty one
I will still be nineteen
and my heart will measure
signals.

growth

Jungleland by Nathaniel Rich

ingredients

We are all made of stars. This is all true. And I love you and I love them. When I orbit, I want you to orbit next to me. I haven't found you yet, but when I do I am going to cry.

need a love

nice words of wisdom

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/04/why-we-love-zoos

sometimes we feel

WOLVES from Crictor on Vimeo.

earth grapplers

Trickster animals,

You make my heart sing,

and my eyes flirt with being, you.

A sneaky little path in the dark,

and a glimpse of your fearful heart.

Your fur and face are built for beauty, but are adjusted to grapple with a death, much sweeter than mine.

he became more silent

I asked her who she was talking about

and she said anyone but us.

I took him down the same path I had found that morning

and he said he didn't want just me.

We told each other to go away and never speak again

and we said nothing.

an old poem I wrote in grad school

First you love me, Then you fade away.

Sings Lindsey, as if his guitar could pronounce the word.

Between you and your own excitement, I say, speaking about myself.

This premonition ceases to disappoint, out of all of this dinosaur breath.

Beginning with the smashing and smothering together of ten thousand years before this hour,

Ending with the realization that this hour has not yet been born.

Seeping into the space that resides silently as the hills flooded with fog.

Saving it would only allow that time to quicken its split into light and dust.

Can I imagine the consistency of fermions created before the sun could blink?

But I can find you in a crowd over and over again.

Touch the sleeve of a stranger and know its you again.

Go to sleep dreaming of the escape I will commit, again.

To late tonight, to drag the past out into the light.

Those boys sweetly sing, smoother than Lindsey can.

Bottles and bottles and bottles of ocean foam.

Two hours pass and I’m still singing along.

Singing and humming and whistling Pack’s song.

spaced off

Nothing you do has anything to do with you having once lived across the street and cutting through the grass, marking the tree with your knife and taking the stakes out of the flowerbed. In your dreams you come across the fence and find me standing in the shed. In my dreams you are sort of like the property line. You probably drink coffee and pay for it with a visa card which is embellished with the name of your favorite charity on the front. If I had to bet I would say its an organization that sponsors sea turtles. Do you know what seems familiar? Sea turtles.

sipping your tea

I am sipping your tea, tonight.

Thinking about your good side,

a tendency that only speaks volumes

of my own habits or perhaps it is a crutch

to dwell on and numb some part of the cup.

wooden shoe

the car stopped, door precariously posed above the flooded

hole.

it slipped out, heavy and bound to drown.

then when we drove away, perched on the dry aluminum roof

waiting for our never return to the farm

it stayed

You came like a night storm

you came like a night storm

without making an entrance or a spectacle.

and I thought to myself, this is familiar and it hurts.

causing us both to look both ways,

in a smaller world we could have caught a train or hopped aboard,

told a white lie and escaped, eloped, vanished...vamoosh!

i'm still your favorite pick in the summer, in white.

a little bit taller

I imagine your face looks like a combination of men. Marty Robbins and Jude and maybe eyes like the brief encounter with the guy from the electronics store next to the book shop where I like their chai tea best. You are so handsome and lonely for a night like this. You are working hard for something that means something to you. Right. Like when I had to go to work really early and I would ride my bike past the Harvard Department of Zoology and I would turn to see people going in to study lions and salamanders and I would think to myself, that is really a nice solid thing to study, things that matter, things that roar and move around. Unlike philosophy or theory, these guys are pros, they know how to tag animals and dissect things to get answers. You are like that, no nonsense. Except you love my imagination and my pretend smarty pants comments about other countries. You can't get enough of my reaching out for things I can't grasp. You think its charming when I map out the universe in colored pencils. Then I make you some tea and you think its the best tea, and it is.

a penny's golden backside

The pavement is glittering with the motion of rain on it as he steps out into the streets. An umbrella is rolled up, neatly placed under his arm. This man looks like he belongs in many places like next to an old woman in a car or at the movies, but not on this street. He just ate a cheeseburger and had four or five screwdrivers, but he wasn't counting. He was there for the win. All of this youth hung around him, they were draped like parts of his life that would pass by. He knew all of their names, and all of their birthdays and he loved them. The sock in his left shoe had been bothering him all night, it had rolled up too tight at the toe, but he would wait until he was on the bus to fix it. He didn't want to waste time in the rain.

When he got home he put the umbrella on the kitchen table and took his shoes off. His socks looked scrunched up. He took them off without using his hands. It took him fifty-two seconds. Then he flung them into the bedroom. He sat down on the couch and pulled a blanket over his feet and legs. 'I wonder what the movie stars do when they get home?' he thought. He perused over the adverts in that days newspaper, but no one was selling anything useful. A 1998 Honda, red, missing tail lights. A labrador mix, three months old. A Singer machine, from an estate sale. A collection of National Geographic Magazines from 1967-2001, odd years. No baseball cards, no missing children, no decent obituaries. He turned on the game and shut his eyes.

He thought about his night and the way they hadn't almost won at all, not even close. Then he sang a few lines from Billy Joel's Still Rock and Roll to Me, 'Nowadays you can't be too sentimental' and fell asleep.

party lights

I am looking up at your window and I can see your shape at the computer. I see all of your little silhouettes framed with the springtime flowers and blooming luscious tree stuff that surrounds the yard. I am in the night, arms open to the possibility that you might come meet me, at least halfway. I would run to the bottom of the stairs and you would open your window or climb into the tree or smile back at me. All of you would come rushing out into the yard with shouts and laughter. I would barely be able to contain myself. Someone would start to play the guitar and someone else would know what to do with drums. The blossoms would float through the breeze, catching on the benches and piling up on the dark green patches and over the paths. Someone would suggest a drink and you would all agree. I would make myself something with tequila and mint. There would be twirling and whispers and party lights and cigarettes and songs. I am so glad you think this is such a good idea. Exhausted, I sneak up to your window. I smell your room and my own perfume. I lean out the open window and watch the rest of you dance into dreams.

RIP Gustav

You watched me wash my brushes out every night. Waited patiently for me to turn the light off and leave you to your tapping and clicking. I thought your little Blattaria feet gave me reason to curl my toes. Your shadow delivered the possibility of a late night encounter, it was always a deadlock. You never budged, not even a slight scamper. We had an understanding. Two creatures with nothing to lose by allowing the other a peaceful and quiet evening. Now you are nothing more than a smudge on the grey cement floor. I miss you every time I see the mark that was made between yourself and that cruel heel. My cucaracha, how I miss your taking up that space below the pipe, under the sink that I wash my brushes out in every night.

I slipped into a stream of consciousness

Darker and cooler because it was still wet from an afternoon shower. The cave stunk like dirt and earth and roots dangling down. I gripped at the columns of clay and silt and the hunks came off in crumbly appreciation. My thumbs were black. I dug further into the edge of the cave until I felt the soil change into something firmer and more resistant. The roots that hung from the ceiling were thicker here, and tangled together to form a canopy of wood. The stones that cemented the floor of the cave were smooth clammy limestone and I could easily lay across them. I knelt down near a cavity filled with still, patient water. It had never been touched. I hovered my hand, outstretched, over the puddle. I felt the air between my skin and the mineral soup. As they reached the pool, my fingers turned into roots and I understood what they might have been whispering.

never leave when you know you could

Feels like getting in the van and putting my summer shoes on the seat

Its the sunscreen missing in the cooler

The stretches of horizon getting colored in again

and my lonesome pines, my cactus circle, my rocky outcrops

just an ordinary story about this daughter

how she came to miss the road and its tolls

Feels like getting in the back with a blanket

gas station lights and an empty star filled night