Nail

a nail stood tall
in the threshold
of the doorway
the door couldn't close

Personal

The things that others
can't see
don't know

You and Me

Its like a rock
in a crashing ocean
a tree in
hurricane wind
you sit still and certain

i love u
like home

It Happens

It Happens
like sunshine behind
light rain
you may not notice its heat
right away
you may not notice the light at all
but there it is
making diamonds
out of every drop

It Happens
like color
that splashes
onto a wall
changing plain
to magnificent

It Happens
Slow like
the pink the grows
and shrinks
behind orange and blue
jagged lines
a sight you could miss
if you looked away
or became distracted
for even a second

Dripping slowly like fig jam
soaking through toast
It Happens

If you asked me before
or if you asked me after
the answer would be the same

that tender
taste of
love
is sweetest
when its ripe
and falls
on its own

My Ode to Ashkan

 There’s a guy

Who I’ve known

For not even a year

Though I’ve seen his curls

Wiggle to the sky

And his smiles

change the traffic lights

There was a morning

When I was so sad

He sent me moving pictures of him

In the basement next to the pink box of detergent

A boxy black and white instrument

In his hands

Up and down sound shoot through

Computer speakers

And suddenly

There’s life

Green is growing

Maybe a sun is shining

And hidden from under

A mound of Emptiness

Is a smile

Previously lost

In a pocket

Of a coat

I thought I gave away

He told the Richards to shut up

Certain and stubborn

So I did too

His heart is rare, like a stone

No one knows the name of yet

He’s a quiet guy

Though they think he’s loud

He’s cooking ideas

When others are sleeping

He’s loba

and he is very important

like a badge that gets you into

some awesomeness room

Concrete Summer

Concrete the foe.

I stopped after a minute of my walk home. Went into the bookstore because I couldn’t, just couldn’t, bear it any longer. The heat was like creepy guy rubbing my arm.

I blame the concrete. Walking on concrete in 105 degree weather is like pouring gasoline over a fire to put it out. Concrete makes the heat no longer heat. Instead it makes a web of slime, a wall of bad breath, something your body must walk through not in.  And the heat, the texture, the weight, its not air, its something else. Like walking into a blow dryer, or drinking a glass of water somebody used as an ash tray. You just know its not okay, its not normal. Good things are not happening as you inhale and walk through this substance.

You don’t really notice concrete until it’s this hot. It’s like not noticing car pollution until you’re standing in a city stuck in a valley and the sky is black and smoky. Then you start to hate concrete like you hate cars. I mustered my courage and walked out of the bookstore onto the sidewalk. I looked at the concrete as I walked, wondering how, scientifically, it was adding to the equation of wrongness.  And then I thought why do we have this concrete. And my gaze fell upon the cars parallel parked on the street. We have the concrete for the cars. And we have the cars for the people. So we have the concrete for the people. No. The concrete is not for people.

Then I start to conjure up solutions, urban plans, materials that are more natural, to comprise sidewalks, like the stuff they put in playgrounds and around tree roots, flexible, soft, and more able to ingest and cool the heat, like the path in a forest, made of old trees and grass and mud. Mud. Mud is cool. Mud.

And the sun. You could make a videogame out of us pedestrians, trying to dodge the sun like it was a space ship with a missile. The sun becomes a strange radioactive burning laser that makes concrete meaner. And suddenly the lack of trees all around is apparent, like we are in the last phase of hunger games with nowhere to hide.

Death

Death is sitting by the pool
watching the orange light
through the lazy swaying trees
until 9 pm
Everyone I loved was fine
somewhere
being themselves
Knew that I loved them
All the cities in the world were
just being too
There was no where to go
Nothing to seek
No dream to feed
No one to know
Nothing to resolve
No hunger to fill
No one to miss
Nothing wrong to fix