yoooo guys these wings my dad made look INSANE i can’t wait to try them tomorrow

Sons Of The Labyrinth or The Things Our Fathers Do To Us

That's the peculiar thing about a second go On paper, it looks like a first shot (or how the first shot should have gone) Using words like  "try"  Saying things like "We'll take it slow" and actually meaning it Foregoing cruise control altogether To take the path on foot Talking about Seeing this through As if we haven't already screamed down this tunnel From either side Referencing endings Like we don't know the sulfur taste of that abyss As intimately  As infinitely  As every hope we ever had leading up to it That's the peculiar thing about a second go This time, I don't want to outlive it.

Pedestrians /.w.m.w.

So you’re the one they say spins the world Do you just sit here in the dew of glittering stars Your trousers damp, your eyes watering Moving the world only when it threatens to stop? No, I haven’t come to mock. Sorry. That was rude I had a reason to see you. I need a favor I was wondering if you could let it stop this time You see, I can feel the rotation slowing and I’ve seen the shadow of your hand, lifted to push but you always do this The horizons approach the slowest when you want to embrace them and the moments I try to cling to, vanish like they were never there It’s like how you always know where to find your keys until you have to look for them So really, what’s the worst that could happen If you could let us sit still for just a little while? Forget the deaths, the births, the flowers and tides of the next rotation Just let me breathe without every exhale screaming the impending of good things ending, young things aging, familiar things changing Can I please have this one moment and not fear that I might be wasting it? Thank you. That’s all I ask. But I understand if it’s too much. I understand if you have to spin the world again. We all twinkle and glimmer like stardust. We’ve got to make something of our spark before it fades. Really, we have so little time. But that’s all we have.

The One Who Spins The World (via deerborne)

I seem to only be depressed when you put a pen in my hand

which is really quite lovely

I can bleed onto all the pages so they stick together (you’ll never have the patience to pull them apart without tearing, destroying whatever secrets are inside)

once every page is stained and my fingers are drained bone white, I can put my pen down, toss my hair, and flash a smile

when you ask what is the matter I can tell you it’s fine and mean it

because it is fine

until the next time I drop my gaze to empty pages knowing I am the one to fill them

like the flesh-eating plant from a tongue-in-cheek show at the 5th ave, my notebooks have a very specific appetite

I seem to only be depressed with a pen in my hand

-when you point to my words and ask me if I’m okay, how can I explain to you that I am and I’m not /.w.m.w.

darling if you wake up in darkness and don’t like what you see then do whatever it takes to let the light in

-it really is that simple /.w.m.w.

punctuate the black quiet with your fists, already battered or your words, harsh and untamed splash the night with bits of light like crinkle-cut stars of glass bits sparkling on asphalt curl your fingers around that pen and do not flinch from the lines and swirls it puts on this page you aren’t the only one who is lost here

–The Cartographers All Are Blind

dust devils

they will try to make you feel small when they discover you are incapable of mimicking their apathy but no falcon ever coveted the dirt 

grief is patient and inevitable as winter

delayed onset

when solitude was restored to me and I made time to rest there you were, in the jagged wet of my heart demanding to be felt and then, the temptation, and then, the weakness  and now, the pain 

How could I forget that the unfamiliar the distraction the desperate pace of survival performance work wallets calendars and moving moving moving moving moving are the best anesthesia and so I moved and moved and moved and moved until 1300 miles later I put a key into a red door and fell into a room with a thousand books and a wall of gold lamplight and spent dim mornings in the pale glow of my own room on my own bed and I started thinking about open endings and you

it lives in your closet and doesn’t mind waiting until you return /.w.m.w.

and when your songs came on, I politely skipped them, and I felt no pain

Whether by miracle or malfunction, walking away from you on a Thursday morning didn’t break me So I put my head down and threw myself into what was in front of me until I was 1300 miles away And still, there were no echoes of your name in my heart in the moments of truth just before sleep took me

there was no burial

I tensed for impact it did not come My heart didn’t wail with breaking and since it didn’t speak first, I didn’t ask.

October brought the first bone-knocking chills Every shiver is an earthquake So when my ribs are swords clashing between the tremors, my left hand a stranger to the right, this is sparring on level ground. Well met, well matched, the contradiction. A stroke for blood kisses a perfect parry Sparks, sweating brow The shriek of iron and steel and bone and the agony of ambush Stalemate. A ballet, petrified. So tell them, when they ask, how I turned to salt when I looked back to my inferno city even as my feet flew me away

Ado, Ambidextrous /.w.m.w.

kicking up dust out of the gate fever and sweat to stay ahead of the curve it’s coiling at my heels

forgive me my stammering this is not the poem I came here to write if I had known it would be like this, I’d have written fewer songs about teeth and waiting  and avalanches I would have practiced, instead, with poems about dust motes,  and the books I lost myself in before I even knew I was lonely about the tire swing and the tree in my backyard I used to climb higher and higher, until the branches were skinnier than my thumbs I would have written about the trick my stepdad taught me the winter it snowed up to our knees-- you can use a bucket as a mold for bricks to build an igloo. you scoop it through the lake of white in the yard till it’s full, then you pack the snow down, and you turn it upside down with a good thump to shake out the frozen cylinder. (like the white-wrapped hay rolls you always see on fields from the freeway, that look like giant marshmallows) and you won’t even notice that it got dark so early,  or that there’s snow melting in your boots where your toes are already numb. the light from inside is orange glowing on blue winter, and that’s always been my favorite color combination, and god I wish I had written more of that-- because then I’d have words for how it feels to make you laugh.

The oceans I would cross for you would cleave in two to surrender my passage The mountains would lift the train of their skirts to become tunnels And I would hold my breath running through them and knit every wish into dandelion fluff for you Birds would shed their feathers Tumbleweeds would thunder like chariots The woods would become wings And I would fight god and men and myself to reach you Bruises like badges in full decorum I would rip the canopy of night from the sky so all that remains is the glory and light of a billion naked stars, If you wanted. If you wanted, I’d be a sword I would cut down armies and overgrowth to make your path I could be a shield, and no bullet of hail or roaring vendetta would ever touch you I can be your fanfare, your runaway train, your tropical storm that levels skyscrapers. Your alchemist, your confidant, the one who tastes your food and sips your wine to test for poison, your compass, your bodyguard, your sinkless ship. But do not ask me to be your lover. I don’t know how to be soft.

Achilles /.w.m.w.