Poetry

I am about seventy-five percent sure my father is having an existential crisis.

Synesthesia lens brekadrown of poem from years ago 

Circus is orange, a bright orange

That’s why it is best friends with chartreuse because they have fun together

Today I

ran through the rain, hair

newly cut and weightless even though

it was drenched; I

ate strawberries dusted with sugar while

doing homework, pencil

tracing neat letters across math homework I

Exhaustion

Like a blanket

It makes it hard to stand straight

Or say what I believe

It gets you sick

With mistaken beliefs

Because your courage to fight them has gone with your energy

Snow melts, ice cracks.

Winter’s hands let go; relax.

So run, and feel the gentle breeze on your face

Find a sunbeam to stand in, and grin from ear to ear.

Along the alleyway lined with beech,

(Near the weeping dogwood)

A procession is beginning

Filled with sound, high spirits and good mood!

On these days

I look back,

Watching those sunsets

When I knew I was mine

And I knew I could be 

Anyone I wanted 

Before innocence gave way

To planning 

I scroll

My fingers disconnected

As my mind reads,

And yet

Does not comprehend

Cease-fire?

My heart leaps

But the words after bring my spirit

Down

Tenuous

It won’t last

I am thinner than I thought:

Though my scale says I'm not,

I can see the sour fruit I've caught.

In the spring, the flowers call

Like I could be King of them all,

Burning in the sun before the fall.

I'm the same me across everywhere

everything

every universe 

every dimension

fragmented half truths

whole lies

purple

some things never change

I adjust but I don't change

rock

The city doesn’t wake to the sun; it wakes to the grinding of gears.
January seventh.
Minneapolis is a landscape of salt and exhaust,
and Renee is just a mother in a Honda Pilot,
the ink of her own poems still fresh in her mind,

The boots don’t walk, they stomp,
a heavy, rhythmic bruising of the asphalt
under a sky that has forgotten how to be blue.
They arrive in the gray hours,
the color of a storm that never breaks,