From Plentiful, To You

Post-impressionist poetry

[fromplentifultoyou]

Poetry

As much as I would like to have multiple poetry blogs, ultimately i’m lazy. Go here if you want the good shit

[fromplentifultoyou]

A Long-Winded, Late-Night, Poorly Written Confession

As a poet, i write to make connections. I go to open-mic nights read aloud, listen take in, experience then translate the scattered thoughts to paper. In some way, i hope to convey a message or shared experience so that someone else may read and relate, or like it enough to show a friend. Yet it's this very connection I seek that I dare not make. Making a connection involves so many things, sending a message, starting a conversation- saying "hi", responding back, making eye contact sharing a space with someone, it involves being human. Human, a quality I'm so desperately fearful of making, of admitting, i write a lot about wanting to be more a presence than anything and in this I've gotten lost in the comfort of never owning up to what i really am, in the beauty of actually being human. The brilliance of empathy, the radiance in trading conversation pieces in being wholly as you are as we are. i give off a caustic atmosphere as an attempt of self-preservation when in reality to celebrate one's own shortcomings is to claim victory. it's not a promise but there will be poetry, there will be humanity, and love and relentlessly saying "Hi'

[fromplentifultoyou]

Hitchhikers

Days spent in the wood Laying between cedar trees and grasping arms, Wandering from Wisconsin back roads To river stone reverie Inveterate vulnerability Ritualistic tendency Mutual feelings of faded love Maintained for good memory, Traded photographs for sweatshirts Poems for moments Oh, We as we are, Spoke of forever and mattress matinees As if their length and definition Were equally determined By words stated

How passionately painted Was grass rising through The cracks of our souls, Whiskey encores pressed to spine Hands pressed to outcrops, Gripping rock structures Clinging for support Cartographers, Map makers Fervently in the making, Studied each other's topography Remembering only, Slightly The similarities Of a new environment Wanderlust, Wonderment, Wind blowing your hair Like it was meant to Be, In passing, A drop of rain raised the river

[fromplentifultoyou]

Goat Herder

Over prepared youth Missed intentions Longing for skyscraper shorelines Searching for pebble-peppered bare feet Caffeine consumed in clay moments Malleable timing Fresh flavors savored sweetly Soaking wet seeping from small cracks Dripping from cup to floor, Too hot for ice, So a smile is given and received Dove into the car with fervor Yelling Laughter Present tense nostalgia Reunited after a pause, A blank period of growth Shit’s changed Spring has happened, Distance between smiles Expanding yet again, A roar to whisper Buddhist radio listened to Temptation filed in lines Sacrificed meditating Objectified and taken for granted, Forever under cedar walls On whitewater, Constant shifting, Stir fry late nights, Stained mugs serving as communal wishing wells Waves for fellow friend Lake Superior sun shining Bright and riveting Hands grasping for one another, Taking pictures with different filters And Editing techniques, Shane jumps Fear of heights vanishing under Emancipated chemical veils Picking fossils from monuments In a year we’ll fill the gaps picked out, So take a picture of opportunity presenting itself Inhaling heaven and resolution   At an earlier date maybe This would have meant more  (It was more than enough) Misplaced ring- The wonder of being far away Yet so close to heart Leaped shirtless Scars showing Unbiased of appearance Surface layer or diaphragm born, Towels turned to capes Pretending to be super heroes So things like love and aging Won’t hold so much weight, It was a ten foot fall Eyes opened underwater Suspended in brevity, Bodily functions delayed Thought For a second before When everything was so Serene, Freezing, And beautiful Contemplated drowning And never returning to the surface

[fromplentifultoyou]

Any one offer some help on a self-publishing poetry collection endeavor I’m working on?

[fromplentifultoyou]

CO2

Body brush moving Graceful Like a thousand badger bristles- a streak of red, maybe violet too New moon tonight A mutual relinquishing Of identity As if everything is vibrantly overwhelming, A chill in the Autumn air Raising mountains on plateaus Of undisturbed growth, Practically visible The aluminum reflection Of a smile Is all I’ll ever know you by

[fromplentifultoyou]

Apropos

Use these rambling fingertips To tamp a fire lit and tamed Concave shape, Permanently Lost in thought What a shame it is The voice I use to speak Is dependent upon A single line of text Roaming without a lexicon, Imagine being able to read Two sentences at once Understanding each as true As the counterpart,

Inhaling a forgone ritual Of pacific winds drifting Through bramble winter lands Spiraling wisps holding hands With the still silence Of briars frozen And somewhere near snow-snaps Beneath fading frost A spot illuminated By a sliver of sunlight Filtered through foliage tapestries The impression of a deer Can be seen whispering To the buds of a cedar tree,

Exhaling braided breath So if the soft rose Glowing between these hands Was the splendor Which allowed those winds To move, What promises could be made- What promises could be kept?

[fromplentifultoyou]

Sweetened

At specific times during summer Dusk and first blush Are inseparable, Asphalt canals carrying an even current Welcome bare feet to gracefully Dance And side step ditches, Jump Over train tracks Stubbing toes on metal rails chasing The north star south To an iridescent suspension Where water shows The true nature of these reflections Moving empyrial As we do now Betwixt blades of grass And the ephemeral absence Of temporal tides, Sunken To substrate Flesh whispers like A Lake Michigan breeze Slithering through Faltered Tea cans hiding Among dandelion galaxies

[fromplentifultoyou]

A Eulogy

Clenched tightly to your chest As if to keep what fleeting warmth close, Arms encompassing A vanishing equator As if to actually hold A pair of shoulder Blades, Ephemeral under the absent light Of a new moon- A reflection of your face Glistening with the birth of a waterfall, There’s a loss of words A loss of definition Before me You disappeared At first tempted to coagulate, To hold all that remains As close as able, What space Does comfort truly occupy If it remains static and safe? A kick of dust Became a rock thrown So desperately and yet, With so Much Triumph I almost smiled at the sight, From the extension of your arm An avalanche roared into existence And a mountain melted Beneath a matte street lamp Just north of the train tracks

[fromplentifultoyou]

To Ask For An Apology

We skinned our knees Proclaiming them to be proof That life can sprout From an open wound, It was assumed that a tree would grow, A beautiful oak From each leg, Birds would nest In between branches And squirrels would dance Amongst the opulent rippling Of leaves in the wind, Instead of carving initials Into picnic tables Or wherever the surface Could be engraved There would be trees And eventually a forest, Gathering rings like kleptomaniacs, To age and acquire distance These knees would heal, So the infant seed disappears And the rest of the body Is slowly annexed First with wildflowers Then soon saplings, Sitting on your front porch, Old growth, Scraping wrists against stair steps, Remember when We were just And only, Human?

[fromplentifultoyou]

Frayed Shorts, Frisbee and The Fourth of July

Fingertips tied in grace to juvenile fascination, Prancing with parades encompassing Playing games of hopscotch Drew hieroglyphs with chalk Chewed on cheek fat Took turns spitting homesick eulogies, Writing candle-wax letters in sandboxes, Shouting echoes of sanguine retrospection Paced thoughts Painted pictures of words never spoken Pulled taut sidewalks Swinging clothes dripping wet Counting wood chips, Street numbers Swimming nude in shirt and shoes Stood facing sodden at arms length Knees showing relentless Tidal pond Distant fireworks Setting sun Voices talking, Reciprocating Trading heartbeats Syncopating path and direction, West is where the night came from But the northern shore of Lake Michigan Is where it was first felt

[fromplentifultoyou]

Fragment Palette

Wore brass pins to silver Showing smooth and reflecting Picked loosely together Attaching fabric to skin In awe of, Ingenuity has spoken Under awnings cover furrows laden, Frozen seems illuminated Raining parallel gradients- Envelop birthday candles, Shout to enter, With  reliance on one another Yet a disturbing ethereal feeling Of being never together Through brief space left in place Through bed fevers pajamas on, Slipping wood floors skating Through kitchen half empty Checkerboard decorated Playing pawn to move forward at first Then diagonal when overtaken, Slipper littered leading outside A path towards redemption Or a moment to collect What's left of it Glass empty under porch light Designating failure points Allowing fluorescence to beg for permission, Allowed in drawbridge movements of flesh unfolding Holding as one from afar Seen close One heart beats broken to the rhythm of many more

[fromplentifultoyou]

Hightide

Drown me In the scent of your whiskey Consider alcohol a sea Alluring, Send bundles Of your clothes Weeks after withdrawal has set in, The absence grows Even though I needed new pants In the first place, I don’t mind if these don’t fit I just mind That they’re yours And you’re not in them You are somewhere else And these clothes Don’t belong to you Anymore, Eye shadows My soul does not exist In the presence Of all the things you represent, Trapped by the bottle In these hands  By the ocean Surrounding I can’t Feel Can you Feel Still? Can you breathe Under water Or in the presence Of ethanol? Wanting to bathe In the ocean of Your fragrance I can’t shake this Crippling Feeling That I’m missing out on drowning If I don’t, I’m wearing your clothes To recapture the waves During a full moon, I hear cotton absorbs more Than my liver, Does it? I need to know What will bring me To the bottom of the ocean Quicker?

[fromplentifultoyou]

To See A Spiderweb

I’ll see you When I’m somebody else, Having sewn cotton sweaters To skin as if growth rings Taken from missing heart beats, Selecting design by where They’d be found In relevance To once familiar photographs, Hair grown like limestone lamina An introduction into reclamation Through loss, To be closer when further away, Continued water damage In controlled amounts To reveal fossils Under varying light, The only true change A landscape experiences Is a shift in context, Still it seems A forest will always be More welcoming than a desert And a handshake Cannot compare to hug And though these pasture shoulders Have given birth to boulders, And this chest once lined With World War trenches Has become a deciduous community - The bones of my former fauna Are still buried within me

How beautiful is that?

[fromplentifultoyou]

Palm Flowers

Perched on cobblestone wall A calligraphic sky dances With vermiculate figurines, At once like falling leaves Shadow puppets against A backdrop of cedar vistas Scrawl cursive portraits Like pointillistic novels Here, we are Dew drops embracing Shaded blades of grass

[fromplentifultoyou]

Dissonance

Stripped to bare bones Loved ones are just vessels for desertion, A place to retreat Assuming their frequencies Will wrap the body in harmony Panic makes for poor judgement Comparing long term benefits To immediate consequence A child's finger coated with concrete Date and reason acquiesced Set the scar in stone A quart of blood is better Than the absolute abandonment Of water Yet, When cotton meets counterpart Skin fails to touch comfort, How sweetly it would be To simply stop breathing, Tension breaking At the splash of a lifted weight Sometimes I think about my family Like I think about drowning

[fromplentifultoyou]

Assembling Remission

Eyes closed Shielding a field of irises From the reality of waking, Skipping footsteps Flesh seemed weightless Propelled toward plush images Receding grass moved Rhythmically beneath us, Slipping limestone Between folds in the river It's not enough to be A presence since passed Brought to the present again Even dinosaurs get a second chance Maybe nothing's by accident Standing on the bank Fire reflecting off a sunset cheek Where are we In these millions of layers? A breeze silky and soft Shows an entire life Within falling fragments of hair A dream-catcher woven Carried subtle and halcyonic The night had grown comfortable Enough to sleep alone, Wonder contained to wistful songs Cerulean flowers sang white While flames flickered- Beckoning the nature of purpose, Waiting for the world to decide Where it might belong And why