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It's been almost two years since I've posted anything to say on this blog. I don't think I have much to say in the typical blog-style (not that anyone reads this anyway). But I began writing again in these last two months. This period of time has been transitional, and I've found myself getting back into a place of creation, but in a different way than I used to create. I'm not tinkering to the point of exhaustion; I'm simply creating, putting pieces together in a frame and moving on to the next project. I don't have the energy, patience or desire to labor over the details, to fix the subtle flaws. In a DVD covering the process of Ryan Adams' 'Jacksonville City Nights,' he says something to the effect of, "You can't fake a mistake like that." I've always been impressed by that idea and have never embraced it in my photography or writing. So this is the first complete poem I've written in a year and a half. It - I guess - touches on that sense of transition and incompleteness while allowing that process to be the present product.


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At midnight I woke to hands
kneading the walls,
I prayed for leaves.
I let her rest against my bed. She undresses
her hands like autumn;
she presses against my rhythm,
and we follow the trail of smoke
lifting from wounds.

Love teaches us to be limber, when we
fail and touch and crawl. I end and begin
in the same trailing sound.

I fought to unhinge you,
breaking blankets on my hip.
I chose to leave
and stay in love.
You begged me not to go.
We held the silence between us like our child,
wrapped crisp and white between our bodies.


Winter will be the sea
between us, tearing wind from bone,
giving us motion.
I hate departing gifts
as they spring lovers in coffins.
We stand, amused by the voices
that carry us.
We lift from wounds like smoke.

When dawn is on us,
we scratch the eaves of our bodies
together, and forget the errands
we promised for morning.
Our bodies cast shadows,
and ignore the limbs outside
humming against the windows.

With a parched tongue, you told me
how you pray, that you caught god
in glass panels you made in grade school.
He looks bare in the crystal
your hands shaped.
You hold him like a pendant.

You leave in the morning,
only hours left of these seven years.
You still sit like mist in the window -
eyes blue and cold -
and winter nears.

You dress yourself in smoke, smile
and hide the blue you palm.
Sunday stretches before us, casts
autumn on a line. I consider salvation,
you pray that God is still real.
You once found him
hiding in the fireplace
as your mother lit the stove.

Our bodies press lightly, damp and soft.
I hear you hum
as you catch smoke with your tongue.