Not for all North Carolina. Not for all my little words.

Lost Boy
(For Falcon Heene, the Balloon Boy, who almost escaped, but not quite!)

In the end, he did not
Climb into the creaky basket, brown
And tempting as chocolate,
Or blow to bursting the sour metal bubble that would bob
In a slapdash dance away from the whispered growls in the kitchen
Where monsters stayed awake plotting
All night long…

He did not rise above the stale gingerbread houses
Scattered like forgotten crumbs between the mountains
And the valleys. He did not drink
The bright blue wind in with thirsty lungs,
Or laugh in cahoots with the conspiratorial stars.
He did not even turn to glance
At the ocean puddles in the corner of the parking lot,
Their ecosystems of tire-squashed worms,
Cigarette butts and bottle caps.

He kept his feet on the ground. When the long blades thrummed
Through the clouds; when a thousand suns exploded
And drove the monsters from their dark hiding places
He did not break their unspoken laws.

But if he had fled, bled
Into the night sky with the birds and the bats,
They would have welcomed him, the others,
Those dying young adventurers who are
So lost to the world, but who find
What remains to be found.

At the end of the longest day, I always end up in Roethke.

"I fear for my own joy;
I fear myself in the field,
For I would drown in fire.

Father, I'm far from home
And I have gone nowhere." -Excerpt from "Love's Progress"

Little Poem After A Deep Sleep

I’ve wasted many a starry dandelion eyelash waiting
Among the ripe abundance of summer, but now
Fall approaches with necessary cruelty, and I stop
To observe the last breaths of things, to take stock
Of what remains in the pantry, its meager tangibility.

Homesickness, or: A Slightly Less Tragic Variation on Donald Hall’s “Without”

I scrape myself into the corners of this place
Like the sighing black bear surrendering itself to its cave:
A cyclical empty necessary waiting room
I cannot breathe in without
Hills rising and falling and cradling
My home without storm symphonies or bird bands no
Horizons no blushing forests no polite coyotes no
Scent of wet fire curling down my throat reclining from
No beds of damp sweet leaves just

Glass gravel garbage ground
Into flat defeated grass without
Clover without rabbits without apple
Trees without water songs dripping after rain I am
Drowning without tomatoes pressing wine onto my tongue and
Blind without the sun in the morning
And the afternoon
And the evening and

No light no wingspans no thaw unbearable
Nomadic homeless monsters screaming
Smashed moonlight huddled into clogged gutters
No cinnamon no cattails no chicoree creeping
Sky blue against the willful river no fog rising
Away from the clouded quartz surface at dawn no
Frozen silence fragile as glass

This winter without mercy an imprisonment this hole
No seasons no sleeping no sound the wind it suffers
Without snow without sediment without space
Between my fingertips I longed for a garden wilted
Without thistle without milk without amen
Without warmth without footprints without nests

"We're all mad here."

If you are a person and you are reading these words, there's a very good chance that today is not your birthday.

As it turns out, today is not my birthday, either. In fact, there is an astonishingly high 99.7% chance that any random human being exposed to this website will not be experiencing his or her birthday, unless it the year 2012 (it isn't) or they are a Jehovah's Witness (who, lacking birthdays altogether, cease to count for a number of standard human characteristics entirely, such as love of piñatas). As I am enchanted by both stories and near-universal commonalities (due to their exceptional rarity), the title for this random collection of wanderings seemed only fitting.

So sit back and relax. Put that cake away- you have no reason to be celebrating and you'll just end up getting it all over the keyboard, you obesity-endangered hooligan. If you simply stumbled upon this place because you wanted to find out what you have in common with others, I suggest you go here. If not, well. Enjoy the insultingly small complementary bags of pretzels.