everything is ending except the world

all of the detours,
and the airplanes,
and the searching,
and the dancing,
getting lost in Chicago
when street names turn to sketchy numbers,
dark rain,
and the drunk running,
the jammed umbrellas,
the twirling in caves,
spinning and spinning
in a drunk man's arms
in Spain,
where they search for American girls,
to devour and escort
out to tired
streets at dawn,
the spinning and spinning,
the flying over seas,
the speeding ferry,
the nauseousness,
the bus tipping over the mountainside,
and now I sink into him
as in a bubble bath,
the past buzzing
like a concert I just left,
and I'm in warm water,
the sound of loud speakers
still resonating
in my ears

November

I prayed for a sign,
                                 -and behold-
there it is
not,
the neon red cardinal emerging
from the dead, barren view
of earth,
the decrepit backyard fence,
the unpleasant sound of
dry wind
scraping the weeds,

and the neon red bird
not there.

And behold,
the absence of the sign
more shocking than its presence,
teaching me that God is not a hotline.

your head is so beautiful floating above mine, with a silver shadow of blinds on the ceiling above

I love you the best

His white pick-up truck. Passing through the green light while I stop at the red arrow, a frail winter rain, the car driving achingly slow, almost as if it were on a treadmill, moving but not leaving. It was as if none of it had happened, as if I woke up from a three-month dream or a three-month coma, and all I have as a memory is conversing with God for the first time, loving myself, and the vague smell of raspberry sangria candles. All I took with me in this dream was a new sense of self, a new identity, and I've forgotten the taste of cilantro and curry, the smell of men's deodorant on my shoulders, and the normality of it all, the security, the depth, the presence of God, as if I knew it all along, as if I had lived this way my whole life, as if I always knew my worth. His presence again, hugging on the least most comfortable couch and grazing his warm shirt, soaked with nervous sweat, as if his back were sobbing into his shirt. All of this, rubbing his tattooed back, the grazing, the familiar bulge, the hair getting stuck to stubble, and him whispering, you're fine, as I move the strands out of his face. All of this was like conversing with ghosts, like revisiting the lost memories which God had secretly archived, like secret Google searches after a missed period. It was reuniting with dead emotions and shaking them out of place, like accumulated phlegm, as the Muse arrives uninvited. I return home to a shipped box with my cap and gown inside. I return to the Stephanie in August the way we wiggle our toes and flutter our fingers after meditation, shattering our dreams, brushing them off like crumbs, and deciding that reality does not crown us, but crucifies us, and I could be wrong, and I could indeed be "fucking stupid," and God could be taking side streets, not main streets, a longer more difficult route. I wake up from the delightful dream of Having, omelets and Ezekiel bread, Ubermensch muscles bulging from tight under armor, and the power of I love you. Namaste.

the first Chicago snowfall, humble and forgiving

listening to Alt-J's "Ms"

Sleeping beside a bag you touched too recently,
and a can of Sprite.
The noise --
you're awake when you're
sleeping,
you're from Australia
in borrowed pajamas
and pillows that smell like
other heads,
other oils,
sharing a bed with mum
in Chicago