Is uaísle am breid ná toll

My ability to feel
has diminished drastically
since I’ve been able to feel you
near me. I’ve been running through
the woods visiting the places we visited.

There I feel you.
There I feel.

There I can breathe.
I now exhale only in 
cliches. As long as you
inject me with these
feelings, cliche or not,
I am not ashamed. 

awry
awry
awry awry

awry

awry.

Standing in the corner
of a circular room
chasing after my thoughts
that are chasing after you.

I don’t know where it ends.
But I’m not looking for it.
We’ve just started a page
turning novel, we don’t want

to race ahead. We should
take our time and see
what this could be.
We’re Hailey’s Comet

we only come around once
every 76 years. So let’s
slow down and take pictures
of our mutual orbital period.

It’s the best kind of
natural pain you know?
Love is staring at the sun
and scraping your knee
on blacktop 
simultaneously.
It’s as concrete as the 
asphalt and as blinding
as the afternoon.

But when you
find this natural pain
you had best never
think to complain.
Make sure you hold
on tight but not by
the neck. Simply
hold her hand and 
tell her just how much.

Together in our passage,
packed close shoulder to shoulder.
A cramped, bent knee kind of sleep.

The hungry mix with the tired,
the tired mix with the sick,
the sick mix with the dead.

We delay the hunger with hope
but we’re all still hungry,
we’re all hungry here.

The potato failed with dry rot
leaving us to starve.
Then the government did too

only without the dry rot.
Let down, dejected, and rejected
we’ve nowhere to turn but the hope

in Ameri-kay. ‘They’ll have food.’
‘You’ll be safe there.‘ This is the mantra
we hear repeated. I wouldn’t know.

But we have each other and
our history. Thank God we’ve taken
our passage together.

The long voyage home
begins with living heart break
in the form of a wake.
Surrounded by family and friends
they mourn you as you try to make amends.
Mum cries, Da does too.

They will all miss you.

You are scared, but you won’t show it.
Fold it up, put it away, they can’t know it.
Stealing away moments to let your heart split.
Everyone tells you to believe and pray.
Everyone’s gone by the end of the day.

Your mother wails, your father has his pipe.
You will have yourself and your memories.
You say you’ll be back some day.
You promise.
You say, you say, you say.

In a flock we took
our solidarity with
a combined chemical
compromise. The blood
boiled and settled with
it’s new ingredients.
Tomorrow would
surely be hell,
but tonight we were
invincible. 
We fought and fucked
like the immortals of
Mount Olympus.
The next day we played
Lazarus, walking tired
and less alive than
we had been before.
You were still sleeping.
I was too, but my
eyes were open.
I was still dreaming
about you and our
long, late night.
They never heard 
about it. It was an
omission not of shame,
but out of my own fear
of my own adoration 
for you and your
freckled smiles.

Yo so remember how I got published in that anthology?

Well I’m reading the published poem tonight at the Spiegel theatre thing on campus. Come listen to me talk and then tell me how pretty i am and how talented i am when it comes to bull shit.

STROKE MY EGO. 

Never name a star
after a lover or a significant
other.

You do not want something
millions of light years away,
that is also most likely
dead, to be
a marker in
your love.

Plant a tree,
the tree will flourish
and grow before
your smiling eyes. 

I wish I could use this pen to 
arrange words that could more
accurately produce a portrait of you.
But my word choice could never
bend or blend to match the way
your cheeks migrate in unison
when you bare your teeth when
share a tired gaze. My mouth
mirrors yours, missing only a tooth.
And I’d laugh when I got nervous, remember?
I got worried that I wasn’t what you wanted.
Do you hear what I’m saying? Do you know
how I feel?
Words can’t double as paint. It’s improbable.
I can say that your multi-color eyes give
me multi-depth feelings inside where
it usually hurts.
But they can’t see those eyes.
And I don’t think they’d understand it.
So I’ll just leave this here to decompose.
Maybe you’ll like this one
maybe you won’t.
 

In the spring time
when the grass is thick
I like to take a nice handful
and pretend it was your hair.
But I’m afraid if it ever was
I’d pull it out of your head in
soft, brown tufts.
I’d fling it on the grass and
let them mix and blend to one.
I’d laugh as you wept.
I’d ignore you and turn
the music up louder, 
drowning out whatever
reality it is I’m trying to cling to.
I’d be lost.
I’m already lost, what’s the difference?

I found shelter
in the heavy rains
and persistent winds of
the moody Long Island Sound.

I sat on
the dirty shores
playing with the grains
of sand between my battered fingers.

Sitting I quickly
became soaked and sullen.
I sat and soaked in the pleasantly
warm sounds and painfully cold horizontal rains.

The lights and sounds
(the source of which I would never know or
be able to name with any kind of certainty) hopped
across the choppy waters and crawled up into my ears.

The winds eventually ceased
and for a second I swore I heard
the voice of your former self call out to me:
shrieking my name like the banshee of Connemara.

You told me to walk
into the waters. You told me
to stop trying. You told me to stop breathing.
You told me I was a waste. You told me I was done for.

I finished the last of
my whiskey. I yelled back at you.
Go fuck yourself. You no longer own me.
I am a free man.

I grew quiet and
I blushed. I felt foolish
and small. No one but my echo
had heard me. Even he ignored me.

Underneath the soft tree
on top of the sharp mulch
I held you.
And I could smell you,
as your hair inched into my brain.
Different shades of green danced
on leaves of the dream tree.
And it was quaintly quiet,
nearly antiquated.
Last night we bruised a bed —
I broke you open
and adored all I saw inside.
Tonight I held you. You were
wrapped in me as we were
wrapped in the roots of the soft tree.
That was the first time in months
I was comfortable in my own head
with my own thoughts maybe because
I was accompanied by you.
I know this hurt is to be expected
when falling for the girl wearing
a bullet proof vest which prevents
love. If only I could take that off
as easily as I unhooked your bra.
At least know that I adore
your presence and every little kiss
from your lips as soft as the dream tree.

Underneath the soft tree
on top of the sharp mulch
I held you.
And I could smell you,
as your hair inched into my brain.
The different shades of green danced
on the leaves of the dream tree.
And it was quaintly quiet,
nearly antiquated.
Last night we bruised a bed —
I broke you open
and adored all I saw inside.
Tonight, I held you. You were
wrapped in me as we were
comfortably wrapped in the
roots of the soft tree. We should
have just slept there. That was
the first time in months I was actually
comfortable in my own head
accompanied by my own thoughts.
Please know that I adore
your presence and every little kiss.

I have spent the last four months
attempting to expel you
from my memories.

The memory of your voice,
is just a persistent
migraine these days.
The memory of your taste
is more akin to a perpetual
hang-over these days.
The memory of your laugh
sounds like needles 
piercing skin these days.
The thought of your touch,
makes putting out a fire with my face
seem pleasant these days.

You ruined several relationships,
with just a memory. And in the process
 you compacted new faces and memories
on top of yours.

The concept of
a future wife
seems flawed
and unobtainable
now. But maybe it’s
always been that way
and I’ve only just realized it.
 

Sometimes I actually
think, for a moment,
that I miss you.
The moment ends
and I realize I most certainly
do not.