A Noun Needs a Verb

Even the shortest sentence

has two simple needs: a noun,

a verb. A basic formula for

endless chance 

to build or deconstruct

any infinite version of reality.

Always, always

two basic elements to complete

a thought. Noun, verb.

Separated, even maintaining meaning,

it's partial. 

A piece missing, an idea -- dangling. 

But when connected, there's satisfying

conclusion. 

Resolution, understanding. 

     I am a noun. 

     A person first,

     often a place

     and sometimes a thing.

     I give you context. 

You are a verb, all

movement and action and

infinitive.

Giving, trying, being.

You offer action, you

provide purpose. 

Joined, we turn fragments into sense.

We share words with similar intentions

but different executions.

Words like: 

     Shelter. A place; to protect.

     Love. Affection; to feel deeply.

     Peace. A state of quiet; to calm.

I am, you are

noun, verb -- together, whole.

It's that simple, that complex.

Two elements, part of one.

We are complete, 

necessary, complimentary.

You don't fit into sentences.

You don't fit into sentences. 

It's untidy to contain you between a

bracket of punctuation;

                              You run on. 

I imagine you nervous when contained,

stuck before such finite constraints as a period.

You need space -- room to slip over syllables

or sprawl across ellipses ... 

You don't see a question mark as a silent end,

but an invitation to begin.

You are rambling words strung together

quickly, breathlessly, carefully, continuously -- 

a sound that begs energy and holds attention.

You wait for correction, unafraid to be called a mistake. 

You stand a challenge for any red pen to revise. 

I can't imagine an edit that would do you justice,

that would reel you in so that you'd fit within

the rules of this language. 

You don't fit into sentences. 

You are a series of stories, being written still.

How does lightning form?

Your father belongs to the sky.

He skims the bottom of clouds and keeps

a watchful eye on everything below.

Sometimes he spreads thin and you almost

cannot see him, or he dances just out of view

on the breath of the wind, but he’s always there.

Other days, he’s large, dark or bright,

and people can’t help but

lay in the grass and watch, imagining, guessing

at what he is, at how he takes the

insubstantial and makes it something

remarkable.

Your mother belongs to the ground. Roots and

Earth, solid and constant—but not immovable,

not invulnerable to tremors and collapse.

She has spent years looking up and imagining,

guessing at what life would be like without two feet

firmly planted. She has climbed mountains and trees,

skipped or jumped to taste a moment of flight.

She reached as high as she could stretch for the hint

of such excitement as the sky.

One day,

the sky (remarkably)

reached back.

And then there was you.

You are l i g h t n i n g,

born from the stretch between clouds and Earth.

A flash of bright in the middle of a storm.

You are electric, charged—a sudden boy with flashes

that people count down to.

You are the taste of static in the air and the feeling of

every hair standing on end. You are impossible odds and

chance, warmth so unbelievable it could be nothing less than

fire, racing through veins and leaving a shock of shining,

purple scars in your wake. Tracing them feels like a

memory of you.

Have you ever seen someone struck by lightning?

Just look at your parents and the buzz that hums through them,

every time you smile.

You Feel like Poetry

You feel like poetry.
The spark of a half-formed sentence
—not incomplete, but better—that
makes sense because you were written for
me. Your rhythm,
rhyme, timing, pattern
familiar.
Your stanza, my reminder to breathe and
sit in the silence
 of a     pause, comfortable. You are thought,
challenge,
question,
promise and prose
that leaves me full of music.

Acorns (To Laughter)

For our friend, Mason. x

Learning you left was a helpless kind of pain -- 

a fresh-out-of-the-shower in December,

hair-dripping-down-my-back, I 

forgot my towel in the other room, so

I guess I’ll just stand here in a puddle

on the icy tiles as goosebumps itch across

my skin, painful. It immobilized.

But it was warm; it was September.

The leaves were barely gold. You lived

so much too quick, you left October crooked.

What could we do with all the you 

we still carried?

In a treehouse those two meticulous

hands of yours helped build, on the torn

edge of a river you once swam, a 

Sunday sunset shivered orange across

the sky, and the horizon 

rained acorns.

The first, kicked from the floorboards.

The second, flicked off a railing, and

grief found its playful side. Between

the rafters of branches arced acorns, right beside

sworn dares and regrets and promises

no one thought we’d have to make for decades still--

Still.

We swore. We held. Acorns dropped.

All of us, there and not.

You, there and not.

And somehow -- impossibly -- we remembered

that even the worst returns to laughter.