You

[A piece in the 2nd person]

You wish, as always, you hadn’t started this mess, but now you’re worried you’ll have to go through with it. There’s flour on the floor and eggshells dripping onto the counter and you can’t help but know that if you had been a bit more organized when you started, there wouldn’t be vanilla extract cascading off the table and milk puddled in the corner of the chopping block. And it kind of reminds you of the way you started with him, because just as with baking this cake it was a mess… why do you always have to do that to yourself and why can’t you plan things out before you go or at the very least clean up on your way to the next step? Why do you always see the disaster but create a new one instead of dealing with the first?

But you know that those are stupid questions; you can’t quite change who you are and that’s another thing he doesn’t understand. And some times you don't quite understand it either because although you want it to be this way, it always comes out that way and not in a good way because no one wants cookies that are hard on the bottom or bread that’s still gooey in the middle. So why is it that you still come into the kitchen when its obviously too hot outside to cook, and begin to pull out pans and bowls and spatulas just to create something that no one wants to eat anyway? And in the same way, why is it that you still call him back even though the line just hangs heavy with all the unspoken, distrust and frustration life has offered you two.

So what to do from here? Because you don't really want to keep going, except you obviously can’t stay where you are.

But you don't really know anything else,

so you’ll continue to stir the batter and you’ll still let him in when he knocks and maybe when it’s all over you’ll have created something beautiful for once. Or maybe you won’t and as always the cake will be too chewy and some of the mess on the counters will still preside in the kitchen even though you tried to tidy up. And maybe this time it will really end with loud yells about neglect and carelessness.

But maybe it won’t,

so later you’ll do it all again.

Sound

[a poem about an abstract concept]

Sometimes sprinting, sometimes gliding, sometimes dancing through obstruction.

Starting with rigor then petering out, to become nothing.

Tiptoeing or stomping- traveling in its own way until exhaustion demands it cease.

Making it to it’s destination, or not.

Caressing. Nestling in the ear,

or crashing painfully into the side of the head,

or just stopping somewhere before that…

But in it’s existence, carrying all the importance [and unimportance]

we care to share with one another.

A Poem about a Landscape

And then the sun began to steal into the sky

pushing the moon to the other side,

blinding the dark so the stars were lost,

coloring the clouds with yellows and reds

splashing momentary paint on them which always wore away much too quickly.

How was is that she could do that to the water below-

coaxing it to sing with sparkle so that shine itself

flipped and danced and hovered the way it did

What made her so beautiful that each green

on the earth climbed up towards her wishing only to reach her radiant being.

She colored the world everyday

Bringing the contours of the mountains and the lake and the city

into hues of sweet color,

So that life

could be lived just as the last and the next and the one after.