FledLast

Greasy pizza strolls Illegal ice cream drives Big fat buzzing bees High on grass Balancing on swimming pools Shouting from windows Sleeping in churches Spiral stairs and kicking chairs Embarrassing crushes Shirtless hilltop views Little light up towns Scraped knees, bent notebooks Insect sex and banging tunes Audio books and moon flowers Lost pocket knives Football fields vandalized Fresh morning dew Harassed construction crews Morning medication Alone in the common room Biker poems and interruptions Summer deacons and fruit salad Feeling rejected and desired Confused, belonging Too depressed to shower Too happy to die slow Little feet under construction cones Best friends going where I can’t follow

Errant knight apocalypse By a thousand flowers On a grave we lay A weary warrior And her wizard of late Too many battles have left me War torn and silent Your singed robes flutter In the breeze And the body that you left behind Cannot answer me I feel like a new born leaf Razed by a cold spring breeze A tender shoot that too soon Took root, and is stuck now On a rocky ledge Two weddings and a funeral Mark my latest campaign And now my coat of arms Bears another coffin

Off to a stuttering start These matters of the heart Leave my footing unsure And my breath out of reach I remember how green was your couch And the chestnut canopy How vibrant the stained glass When it caught the sunbeams The painted blue ceiling And geometric rug in the lobby The radio I would turn off When my head was throbbing The physical things are easy They tied me to the earth A manifestation of safety A small reminder of my worth The conversations are much harder Your face is shrouded in fog I would know your voice anywhere But the recall gets cut off

Information pours in from every source That surrounds me, endlessly astounding All my senses, until I’m breathless Hanging from the edge of tomorrow Tasting infinite possibilities on the wind Like a familiar scent long forgotten Only just now rediscovered In the chaos of your existence And I didn’t think I was here for a long time And I was never able to be here For a good time, until now Can we just take a moment to bask in the glow Of feeling so close to something that couldn’t be Further away, intangible seduction Convincing me to keep dreaming Past the horrors of my early life Into some wide horizon of new hope Where things are beautiful and complicated And I could never take them for granted Because each motion is brand new Growing up in reverse has its perks If one of them is you

It’s a day built for deep reflection Rooted in terrible dreams and premonitions Somewhere between the rain and the thunder There’s a dark cloud that’s pulling me under Until all I can think of is things better left buried Restless in their damp cemetery, my skeletons chant As their brittle bones begin to dance It’s one of the oldest songs I know A wordless dirge, that leaves me scourged And reeling in the undertow

If the spell can be broken with a single word What will two more do? Transport me back to your greenest room, This is my greatest wish. Summer has her claws Deep in the lush farmland All around me, Stroking my hair with her cooling breeze. The purple wildflowers That grow by the side of all the roads here Are almost as richly coloured As all my midnight confessions. Churches rise from the swamps In the shadow of a dozen herons, Stretching their way towards the sunset In an homage to your languid form. I can almost smell the horse chestnut Blooming late, it permeates The darkest corners of my mind, as I unwind.

I wept into the warmth of your carcass Tears matting your fur and lacing The edges of your feathers Before being plucked away by an ill wind Your shimmering flesh disintegrated As soon as it started to rain Carrying around your bones I still do not know how to let go Of something that shaped me So profoundly, pushing all boundaries Your love, bittersweet, molded me But with your parting, and your rotting You took a little beauty too

Somehow, the dreams of you are even worse Coming back every night to watch again As I fail to reconcile our differences Bitter truth mixes poorly with false hopes Turning to poison when the day reaches its end Nothing I say seems to matter, You’ve made up your mind And even though I knew at the time All that would come after, it’s still a shock To the system, that you are nowhere I can find False prophets make poor bedfellows As do fallen knights, and I made my bed With resignation, in hopes of keeping you alive Whether or not I succeeded, I’m haunted Doomed to wake each time with tears in my eyes

Late sunlight Mostly melted snow Little drops of white On stark green grass A spring storm Taken by surprise In love with The unpredictable State of Nature And of you Buried branches Bouncing back Throwing leaf buds Light as air A celebration To returning warmth

Elusive, this feeling I sit with It weaves in and out of my grasp Intrusive, this sensation on my skin Constantly urging me to snap Maine is calling, but half of me Is still asleep, dreaming of Walking through foreign woods Or drifting down a river That’s brand new, one where I’ve Never touched the water before Have I been away for long enough Are the ghosts that drove me out Still waiting by their graves Is the ocean that raised me Still looking for me every day Did pulling myself away from you Break something beyond repair Will the mountains recognize me If I return only partially aware Of the world beyond my doorstep Or should I take the reins completely And breach deeper into the unknown Risking any stability on the chance That I would be far happier out there Because I am too afraid to come home