canonr3b3l

[canonr3b3l]

I wanted to have the picture of me and Alex, the Quincy Adams Station Ambassador,

A friendly guy with a young personality and long blond hair, whose red jacket and red beanie and smile and kind and innocent rambling suit him perfectly

When I remembered you had screenshotted it, when I sent it to you—you, the reason I’d taken it in the first place

You had found him completely charming and adorable when we happened upon his hospitality over Thanksgiving, and then been lucky enough to happen upon it again

I so look forward to sharing such appreciations with you

G.K. Chesterton said

“Humility is the mother of giants. One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.”

[canonr3b3l]

I always want to microwave my popcorn for 2:15

I always want to boil full sticks of spaghetti

I always want your eyes, and the smell of your hair, and your tender spritely love to be the san jose diridon station of my heart, the ultimate destination, the home

where all the evidence points

where I no longer need

where I belong

I want you always

[canonr3b3l]

hello my love:)

you are enormous

you mention an elementary school setting in one of many dreams had on just one semi-restless night

in your voice of sweetest sugar in a recording

and I imagine the interior of your body containing such detail, such space

you are enormous, and I am awed by the process of learning any little thing about someone so magical, and rare, and singularly lovable to me

I cannot wait to hold your breathtaking, divine, small and cozy enormity of a lovely, strong self once more, soon as can be,

I love you I love you I love you

[canonr3b3l]

you are on a plane

I am in your room

moments,

limp

and wince along

in this place

without your face.

[canonr3b3l]

I’m glad I remembered this

I wasn’t going to interrupt it for writing, we were in bed and you between me and the nightstand

on our backs

you in my hoodie

we’d just got done joking

I think it was your story about the Wild Wild West, and Roger the Cowboy the girl with brussel sprouts growing out of her tits

it was just after we’d been joking about something

but with our shoulders together, and heads together, laying side-by-side, on our backs, looking up

a feeling seemed to come over the both of us

wordlessly

and silence the room for a noticeable moment

“this is my buddy. this is the body I miss like a limb. we exist together, and are equal beneficiaries of…

…all the best one can find in another.”

[canonr3b3l]

there are two engines on this plane

to approach one on foot as it casts an automobile-sized shadow of moonlight on the runway

would be to find one’s field of view engulfed by it, and one’s chest convinced of the unwavering physical superiority of this

thing

and its power

over, onself

and one would get a sense for the fear that engine means to inspire when it spins, until spinning is an inefficient descriptor and it does a better job than you ever could of mimicking a black hole, demolishing through a strange invisible beastliness

and were one to walk straight by it, on foot

were one to walk up the airplane stairs

past the happy passengers

to your assigned seat

one would find one’s phone

and on it

Emma 💚

and in that

I EXPLODE THE SKYLINE BEHIND ME WITH A CRY OF BEING ALIVE

[canonr3b3l]

there was something keeping my skin soft

all day long

the shirt you gave me

I’ve washed it a few times

I dressed in it then layered a hoodie over

so I didn’t notice until pulling it off in the dark

that it was keeping my skin soft

and my mind quiet

and the lonely spasm of my conscience trained to a drooling stasis

and my legs together beneath me

and nothing wrong

and you are my heart’s panging desire

all day long

[canonr3b3l]

my chest

and this room

and this state

and this half of the country

are in the way

there’s something

something like a superpower

a surrender

a huge force

which stays just where it is and which is a little bit like heartburn but maybe how an angel feels heartburn

it really does expand from within the left side of my chest

you really are there

in an aura, so bright

all around my heart

I really need you

I really really need you emma

you’re not mine like I own you

that would ruin it

you’re mine like one magnet calls another magnet his

you’re mine because I was made that way, to find you and be with you and be gentle and listen

you say all the best things

you look just right

attractive like gravity, to a little leaf that spins

and here’s me spinning

[canonr3b3l]

[canonr3b3l]

have you ever driven home from the doctor

and patrick’s safe and happy

and emma, though a dream, stays with you

day

after day

and your body doesn’t bicker

and your clothes fit alright, and soft

and your cup overfloweth but your hand is never uncomfortable in the streaming overlip cascading fading

oh I hope you do

[canonr3b3l]

there’s a feeling

only felt by two

by others: seen in grins

strange feeling, as though

only up from slumber

does the dream begin

[canonr3b3l]

many things are true but none as true as my want to be in your room, with you.

[canonr3b3l]

the whole long

esophagus

of that stretch of el camino

we walked

we laughed

we were in each other’s company in that place

that rectangular prism was there to contain us

and we filled it with mirth

with giggles and lingering looks and desire

and the perfect hospitable comfort found only in the the eyes of the one you let sleep with their arms wrapped soft and firm around your heart

we went to safeway, we got our food

we resumed one of many extremely precious nights, just enough of the wick of something nice and entertaining

to catch our flame

interrupted writing this

suffice to say I want you with me

I saw that parade road the next day and heard the sight of what we’d been, and what we’d resume being when we resumed to be in one another’s company, and resumed to be what we make each other, such a beautiful sort of person feeling deep care and feeling a finger lift a chin and help that care spill out into a pupiled reflection

and it took my breath

[canonr3b3l]

emma, I miss you

I can’t tell you, because you miss me

and it’ll make you miss me more to know you miss a me who misses you

just this very instant

just this very instant

I had the thought again

that you, on me, on the skin of my soul

are a warm, bright, rain

I knew I needed something

an I, a knowledge

deep under darkness

but only lately have I adjusted

to raindrops pelting

kissing

melting

watching

gazing

cracking into the loveliest cream of smiling

into the wittiest, the most specific, the only emma eyes in the world

the only eyes worth a damn

you are a warm, bright, rain on me

and I am painfully dry

when you gave me your gift

when we hugged

when I left

I was stunned to be so close to crying

[canonr3b3l]

I’m poet laureate of the present moment

I have a handful of final assignments badly needing doing

some possibly past due

but I can imagine what will happen in those worst case scenarios

and there’s something worse between me and those images

an absence of something

a reluctance that shrinks from view when I touch it

I feel finally that it is getting colder outside and once again the real sun rises on the little kingdom I had all drawn up in dust and it is a hugely daunting figure

with dread accumulating on my teeth I can still praise

this world which is never done

[canonr3b3l]

this is awful but oatmeal raisin cookies are in my stomach, and coffee and my thoughts are floating in mess pieces at the surface of some lackluster ceramic tidal pool like pieces of, well

so

stool sample, lmao:

obligation

discomfort

competence

the thought I should scoop thoughts immediately reflexively

how poetry works

god

eh

who the fuck knows

first thought best thought may have been an ambitious missions statement but I’m feeling free, I have speed, I have direction momentum and inertia in my current state and I can feel an oblivious breeze licking my ears so I’d rather look front and keep the entries coming

even if they’re excessively selfishly inarticulate

even if they end up overwrought because in their creating I attempt to redeem them and rehabilitate them into something slightly more cogent

this is just the view out the passenger seat window of a long car ride I wouldn’t very much love to be on, especially with her back where I left her. I’ll see her soon

[canonr3b3l]

I call so many little animals “puppy”, “pup”

squirrels

little rhinos

anything the term fits on

and seeing jasper, holding him in a big hand and a spacious lap for his tiny size

his hair and sweetly smell a slick reunion to the senses

his features perfect

“pup” slipped out perfectly

an accurate terminology I use with and without awareness

the right response, conditioned into thoughtless and automatic reflex

by love

I hope when I greet god it is the same