EIGHT

we discharge our dreams in helium balloons

TWENTY-ONE

The desert will grind an anxious mind
to fine grain whispering sand.

THIRTEEN

Jamie told Susan to tell Amanda that I liked her
so we were going out, walking next to each other wordlessly in gym class
and then after awhile, just as silently, we broke up

NINE

Brown ground beef.
Remove to paper towel to drain fat.
Return to pan and drown with ketchup.
Serve over two toasted buns.
Play ball with crumpled napkins.
Wait until mom gets home to clean up.

TWENT-SIX

In between the holidays
I studied
the back of my hand
and watched
the patch of hair
below my pinkie finger
expand

FIVE

I was mesmerized
by the interlocking pieces
of a jigsaw puzzle
and terrified
of the soft, pink
jaws of my neighbor's dog.
That's what I saw
when I closed my eyes.

TWENTY-TWO

The apartment on Adelphi St. was very empty.
We bought a set of twelve glasses at the dollar store
and set them out, all twelve, empty
on the yellow dining table. For weeks
while I went on interviews and copied keys
and painted walls and walked and walked
and watched from the fire escape
as snowflakes dampened the city's angles
the glasses waited, empty, innocent and thirsty.

FOURTEEN

I wanted to be taken in by something
so I took a saxophone
and chased clarinets around the field.
I put on short red shorts
and ran ten miles up and down hills.
I could sit for hours at the kitchen table
and sing along to the radio
absorbed in a geometry book
while my sister's friends giggled up the stairs.
I didn't know yet how to kiss or cook.

TWENTY-EIGHT

each year
I've burned as bright
and fallen as far
I can't see anything out there
in front of me
just some distant stars
a clock constantly ticks and frogs sing
I'm afraid
if I turn the page, the story will be over
every day
is the end of my life

THIRTY-ONE

On an inflatable raft
in the middle of a somber lake
a cold breeze
as the sun ducks behind the trees

TEN

In a rented car with my whole family
on the interminable ride from El Paso to Alamogordo
I mixed up the words organism and orgasm.

Though I never heard their conversations, I knew
my parents whispered to each other, "Your parents
are getting too old to live on their own."

Still, that year, like every other year
Grandpa took us up into the prickly mountains
to hunt stones in the arroyo and drive the tractor.

He still leaned in close to build a fire
for hot dogs and hamburgers
the flames licking his trembling arms.

TWO

Dressed as Luke Skywalker
I filled my pillowcase at Uncle Joe's
(who wasn't really my uncle)
and other houses down the road
I was such a sweet talker

SIXTEEN

Brian and I walking down Lower Unionville Road.
Where the road bends, night falls
like a guillotine and our heads go rolling
down toward better reception.
I write simple letters to Grandpa Allen
in New Mexico, saying
I'm doing well in school and playing tennis,
but in secret I'm writing
an indecipherable manuscript about a boy
who almost dies cliff-diving
and decides to abandon his humdrum routine
of stifling schooldays and lonely afternoons
to chase an unattainable poetic existence.

THIRTY

A shoebox full of broken promises
a half inch of contaminated topsoil
a night sky, inky and orange
scraps of burned meat on the barbecue grate
a tunnel transporting groans and squeaks
a swallow's nest in the broken eaves
a hole in the chain link fence by the river.

I've been doing everything one-handed
stubborn and half-asleep
a thousand unopened messages
unshaven, stumbling through blacked-out streets
no car keys, no wallet
a pen and notebook in my pocket
I have no idea how I got here.

FOUR

The colossal stegosaurus
wallops me
with his armored tail

and the marker
I'm coloring him with
flies across the room

I've been given room
to roam
and time on my own

to request that all
stuffed animals
circle up and develop a strategy

the blocks lack personality
to reign in
this imaginary monster

TWENTY-SEVEN

I went and walked where I had gone
many times before, to round the park's perimeter
and get some thinking done. Without thinking
where it led, I took the path along the stream
and came to stand between two young, denuded trees.
The trees stood for two people, brother and sister,
who both had died before they completed
their second year. Stella to the left,
Noah to the right, the stream behind me,
babbling its ceaseless baby talk, my walk
came abruptly to a halt. The stream
is ceaseless, the dream is endless, our thoughts
deceive us, our friends defend us, our hearts
depend on the ceaseless belief, the season
of grief is upon us, and friends
have no say in the way this messiness ends.

NINETEEN

Obsessed with finding my best self
I'm furiously trying on new costumes
still convinced that there's an outfit
or hairstyle that will make me recognizable
as a good person.
On new year's day
I make a serviceable small book of collages
and give it away to a complete stranger.
I'm unable to tell
who will be in my life forever.
At nineteen I give things away all the time.
There's this enormous estuary
between me and those I love
where long, lonely sunsets
paint their reflections on the surface
like a kaleidoscope or a soul
who's being reborn almost by the hour.

SEVENTEEN

With sufficient sweat
and intuition, two people
can reach the point
where one hears the other say
"I feel like an E-flat"
and knows he's not entirely upset
that his heart has just been broken.
Friendship like this is something woven
from worn out t-shirts shredded to strips,
an act recorded to play back
over and over on the wheels of memory
though behind each carefully preserved phrase
lurk a hundred scrambled dawns
spit out like grapefruit seeds
by slack-jawed time, and the groves
grow thick between them.
What happens to the hours of practice put in
to a friendship that's past its final run?

ELEVEN

When we caught a mouse
in the silverware drawer
we set it loose in the woods
and when our well ran dry
we put garbage cans under the gutters
because most things
unlike questions and numbers
don't come in an endless supply.
After baseball practice
over spaghetti and meat sauce at Greg's house
why did his parents have to yell,
"Clean your plate like Aaron, young man!"?
And when will it be over,
I thought, as I watched him
shove his little brother
storm into the kitchen
stalk down the hall
and slam the door to his room
while I silently counted past a million.

ONE

I decided
surprise me
was a better motto than
I didn't ask for any of this

a fisher price record player
a sputtering radiator
the splash of passing headlights
on the bedroom wall at night

chaos, bliss, mucus,
dissonance, music you can't dance to,
darkness:
in the beginning there was this

I never tired of trying
to put new objects in my mouth.
I discovered I had toes
and I wanted to devour them.

Hungry, and grateful
with a new moon mind,
unable to sort this from that
or favor that over this.