If time is a circle, 

moments are echoes within its bounds. 

These moments were always a doomed collision eye to eye and not side by side. 

Never finding the safety that hides in parallelities. 

Forever locked and aimed headfirst. 

I am the thread tied to a limp vessel, 

six feet underground. 

I can always be rung if the heart changes its mind. 

But what is a headstone without its engraving, 

what does a tombstone without an inscription imply? 

Halfway anonymous hope that one will come along 

as though magnetically drawn to the plot 

and recognize the blank stone, 

it’s deference for the humble body below,

 and claim it as their own?

Chip a name into the tablet, return meaning should it have been lost at all. 

Or maybe it’s not symbolic in any hungry way, 

merely a means to mark where one should not dig 

unless they wish to marry shovel and coffin, 

metal and wood. 

Well this isn’t alchemy 

and what good would that do. 

Does the body below– 

eternally asked to remain unexpressed– 

receive the privilege of a threaded wrist and 

angelic bell? 

Or does anonymity remove the potential for 

breath, 

does it take your choice in death? 

I Pledge Allegiance To: 

the inevitability 

that progress once held. 

The pinky promise that we were headed uphill, 

towards the sun. 

I pledge allegiance to the bodies I have held, 

especially the ones I have yet to. 

To the orange and pink dripping sunsets, 

To the heaven-bent clouds that frame the rockies, 

To the face I see carved into the crescent moon: 

that stares me in the eyes and tells me to follow its 

light. 

To the spaces between cars, loaded with breathing bodies sat in trunks, 

staring at an explosive show 

together but 

altogether unacknowledged. 

Faces lit by flashes of red and blue that stream from white cars. 

A country’s ideals turned into mere novelty, 

a burly bear in a red dress. 

In pledging myself to the flag 

I gave my trust:

Now tell me, how can I know if this mercurial flag will release its hold on me? 

The Foam Of Our Mouths 

Shall we die with words in the foam of our mouths? 

And live like the chipmunks fearfully scurrying; 

never, never enough time to gather all we need? 

For every piece of peeling bark there is a woodpecker faithfully working away. 

somewhere I wake, 

gaping mouth 

that pours sunlight rather than language. 

At peace with all the sentences I will never string. 

My legs catch up to the distances I have begged of them, 

and I ask no more. 

I sit clumsily and firmly and stubbornly. 

Roots begin to grow.

The words that live under my tongue are 

only a fraction of those that ache in my teeth, 

so I spit them to the earth– 

matter returning to its original form. 

Fertilizer to the tree that sprouts from the top of my head, 

orthodontic flowers bloom 

and these bloody sockets water them. 

Growth is inevitable, 

it’s the direction that changes. 

I hope I grow towards the sun, 

in time with the seasons. 

Sleeping through the winter, 

frolicking through the heat. 

Waiting for no other than the sun and the moon and the birds that pick the seeds from my branches and build homes with my twigs and beds with my leaves and teach their young to soar from my highest points.