Sometimes I will
my consciousness to slip
and it wont,
like it has some tacky life of its own
or it doesn’t fit where it used to.
In the mornings
It has this graceless dance it does
as it comes back into four walls, some sheets
three dimensions,
slow and formless
as if to say ‘sorry for last night.’
It settles into the backs of my eyes
and checks its size in the mirror
like it had a body
that’s different from yesterday
some form of excess
that doesn’t settle
into its own shell.
The season shifts a gear
as I pick up
and realize it’s been some time
and only now am I settling on
this one shadow.
Seems by some unfathomable violence
Fall arrives early this year
and in a darker costume.
I guess if you look hard
good starts to be
absent-eyed.
And I guess I didn’t even know
I could watch
seasons shift gears
for a few boys as they take
one too many falls
and two lives
to leave a late summer
feeling like a hard fall.
Rails
Graphite on paper
2009 – Sommer Smith
Time, carried away on conversation
Evaporated from my eyes to condense into salt on the terminal floor.
The taste of morning still fresh on lips,
eyes swollen sleepless remember this–
love comes in a landslide.
The ground is condemned to change.
And though time might try to steal away today.
This is not his to take.
And so what happens when the landslide calms?
Is reality quite different than we had thought?
You’re landlocked, I’m buried
The silt is in my blood.
Its not the wind but the water that can remedy my faults.
And so soiled love, let the river run its course,
And wash away all this remorse.
Sometimes we rush, sometimes we fall,
sometimes the oxygen seems like its not there at all,
But we go on.
And love comes in a landslide.
The ground is condemned to change.
And the silt is running fertile through my veins.
Its like an echo, an echo of your name
So care for me and carry me through the ripples of your mind.
Take these waves for what they are, a wrinkle in time.
And in stillness reflect on the surface.
Your image will grow fonder with time.
And love comes in a landslide,
The ground condemned to change.
And though time might try to steal away today.
Like he did yesterday, this is not his to take.
It is nights like these I feel that metallic stuff
settle so heavy in my stomach
it weighs the rest of me,
my heart becoming
a muscle tired from lifting
such heavy lungs.
It is this same dust that makes
sunsets so impossible to breathe.
And instead of driving west on the highway
I’m finding him.
Ten states away
in his Mother’s kitchen
with two years worth of afternoons
wrung up.
I wished time would give
this edge of loss a brittle lightness,
but an attempt at forgetting
can only ever sting
so much
as driving headlong into the sun
realizing it is most brilliant
because it sets.
somthingood 