Last night the sky exploded, 
and I’m the only one who knows.

I heard it from my bedroom 
and peeled the curtains
back to watch it tear in two,
an ...

At some point someone convinced me
that honesty was not only the best policy, 
but a conversational swiss army knife, 
capable of fixing any situation, but I can’t...

During my daily web browsing, I found comments
in a news article by a man who referred 
to an airstrike over Africa as “target practice,”
acting as though the bir...

I’m fine, things are alright. 
I finally found that new job. It’s OK.

I sort through cardboard boxes full of medical supplies
and wear black scrubs that don...

I told my friends I wanted to love a girl who was literary,
so I pulled novels from shelves in bookstores, rubbed
their spines and indexes all over my arms and neck and 
wait...

When you asked if I wanted to ride along, I didn’t mean to say “sure,”
it just left my mouth a bit quicker than “hell yes,” in a rare moment
of normalcy I...

(I wrote this a week or so before Joe brought up the RE: Love collab again.  It seems to fit.  I think one of the tricky parts of love is still finding a way to care for those who ...

I've written plenty of short stories in the past and decided to give a short script a shot. It's far from perfect, but I felt inspired and wanted to give it a try. In my mind I see this as a s...

You said you needed some space, so I cut holes in your ceiling at night to let the starlight in.

(reworded it a bit)

The monster couldn’t sleep until his father checked the bed above, making sure there were no children on it.

Every raindrop falls in hopes of building an ocean.

After I built our dream home, I put a fence around the yard for the sheep to leap so you could join me here sooner.

(I'm hoping the somewhat pun/deception of "drea...

I sometimes wonder if my imaginary friends were just imagining me.

I rolled the moon
between my fingers,
below freezing
and thick layers,
with one arm above
my head,

my mouth a chimney,
my chest full of sm...

The park was sweltering,
sliding beads of sweat
across my brow and below
the bridge of my nose.

I wiped each clean
with the back of my hand
whe...

Beside the natatorium, beyond a chain link fence,
there are girls playing soccer in the rain,
the stadium lights are bright above them,
the stands mostly emptied by the cold,

For every eyelash that falls out, I make another wish....that my eyelashes would stop falling out...

There are times
I enjoy the thought
of being forgotten, the notion
that you’ve removed me 
completely from every
memory. 

Make a ghost
of...

You said you loved
the night sky best, and traced
constellations in my palms
from memory,

so I swallowed the sun
to keep the night alive
for weeks at a time,<...

I dreamt we owned a porch swing
overlooking an orchard
full of Chinese Lanterns,
a place we shared together,
spending every night swaying,
listening to the birds sing

“It’s just a nickname!”  The killer whale pleaded before the jury.

I watched a couple roller skate across
a museum floor made of marble
and can now only think of how graceful
we should’ve been together, as though
you alone could’...

Sun and Moon had a habit of always just missing one another, despite their shared affection.

“I hear he’s quite bright,” Moon reflected.

“They say...

If my ribs are cut from the same mammal bone
as whales, when you laid your head against my chest
you heard the ocean and perhaps for a second
you thought you were drowning and may...

The moths throw their bodies 
against the glass at first 
sight of warmth, not caring
that the light may singe their wings,
beating themselves senseless 
...

I have a habit of remembering every day I spent with you,
from the grocery store parking lots to the late night movies, 
and I have an even worse habit of retelling the stories

In an old classroom where the windows never closed
properly and their tint was peeling in the corners,
Professor Holden asked us what heaven looked like,
unconvinced that it was j...

My grandmother was a very independent woman.  She was the kind of person that never wanted anyone to make a fuss about her, even when she needed help.  In her old ag...

Being born was my cat’s retirement party,
from that moment forward, everything he’s known has
been furniture for him to sleep on: the couch, 
the table top, the t...

(I've had a single line of this written for awhile, but was still trying to figure out where to go with it, after reading through Joe's lyrics to "Nothing Big" again, I got inspired and knew...

Her mourning breath lasts the day
and has me night walking among her kind
just to get some fresh air, the danger of doing so
always the better alternative.

I stuff her ...

Trick and treat me, honey,
shake all my bones funny,
cause that’s all I am anymore,
a moonlight marionette,
an ivory toothpick terror.

I rose again, undead, ...

You are and always will be beautiful. Never forgive me
if I don’t tell you that enough. This world can be unkind if
you’re young and female,...

At a young age, my grandfather had his polio twisted leg 
corrected by a Russian immigrant using massage, hot towels, 
and my his failure to b...

Yesterday, I danced through puddles
too wild for the soles of my shoes,
soaking the bottom of my toes and heels.
it’s the closes...

Radio talk show hosts, the newspaper, and internet homepages told me that 11:11 on 11/11/11 is the luckiest time the world’s seen in the last hundred years. It’s a time to make wishe...

Don’t think these red lips came
from autumn wind and grey 
Novembers. I just learned how 
to direct my blushing. I use...

I saw you dreaming and fell asleep too, hoping to join you.

I wrestled a bear and rescued a princess instead, they send their regards.

He holds her in his hands,
his fingers around her hips,
trying to turn them until
the colors line up, figure out
thi...

The man on Walnut is howling.  He has been for the past 6 weeks.  On his porch, barefoot, in long johns that end halfway down his ankles, and a plain white t-shirt.  The neighborh...

I’ve been building poems beneath the hard backs
of park benches, on the insides of their legs, 

on the spare tire beneath the single ru...

I thought we were falling in love when our first date
summer outing ended in hundred degree weather and 
neither one of us mentioned the other&rsqu...

When I was a boy, I slept under starlight every night.
I built the big dipper with my small hands, all of it plastic
green glow and sticky tack gravity....

NASA has confirmed the existence of
a “super-earth,” an inhabitable planet 
600 light years away from our own,
and 2.4 times larger. Kepler-22b.

On Kep...

"Excuse me, miss, have I seen you somewhere before?"

"In your dreams..."

"Last Tuesday's or Friday's?"

"Tuesday's"

"King Arthur's Court or the gro...

Stop wishing you knew what you know now
back then. Back then you knew the name 
of the monster beneath your bed, and you 
kn...

said her heart was full of antlers, 
oak spider webs reaching for the 
right keys in her voice box,
but they always came up ...

The tallest tree in the parking lot, more full of spring than every other, emptied first. Its petals were removed by an abundance of wind and rain. All the cars looked like parade floats, ...

He always had the look of broken, always 
had a hole in the sleeve of his suit coat, had a 
car too messy, had a smile too big, took two ...

If Regina played “Us” at a concert I was attending,
I would marry a girl in the audience before the final
chorus. I would chew an awkward ov...

We slept on the roof, our legs knotted,

tangled in cosmos, letting the wind kiss

our hair to dancers.  We didn’t wanna

move here, we hoped our bodi...

At night, I am a crimefighting cosmonaut

very much in love with you.

By morning, I am unemployed.

See, there’s this diamond they talk
of that makes all their eyes big.  You
only hear of it from grandfathers w...

My chest is full of branches.
They are woven together in a
basket of black mud and asteroid.
It’s a nest that still glows with

Tree available:  Climbable, reader friendly.  Song birds welcome.  No smoking.

(31 - M - Brooklyn)
Your name was Laura.  We talked about poinsettias
and blizzards in the hospital cafeteria.  My face 
was as red as the sleeves of my flannel....

All your talk of mountains and lakes,
though you’re yet to walk through these
ribbons in my hands, this garland
of sunflowers an...

I had a habit of falling in love with every woman I encountered.  When a waitress would ask what else she could get me, I would request salt and her hand in marriage.  For two ye...

“If you hold that shell to your ear, you can hear the ocean.”

“It just sounds like someone sighing forever, like my mom.”

“I found it on the...

My friend Matthew said his daddy was a mountain.

I think that makes Matthew a billy goat, but his name’s Matthew, not billy, so maybe, like, a Matthew goat, I think.

all my gravity lifted,
my bed sheet limbs unraveled.
I climbed the echo of your staircase,
stood beneath the sunlit window

trying to gather all its warmth
in the ...

Who the hell are you?

A senator, or a fireman, or Grover Cleveland, or a bathroom attendant, it doesn’t matter anymore, man.

You’re in my car.  I'm drivi...

8 years old, and one evening, such a pissed off barrel of Donkey Kong tossed fury I was, I ran away from home.  A brown suitcase in hand, housing only a turban wearing, Hammer pantsed Aladd...

The morning following our first orbit,
you called to say it took only 3 hours
to rinse Orion loose, after I pulled whole
constellation from toe to arrow like
a rosary in my f...

I live so much in my head

because I imagine the rent is cheaper

At last, Fall fell for Autumn