a poem about … poetry. i read this in classrooms to get students excited about the art form. filmed at burke high school.

There will be a day when I won’t need mirrors because looking into your eyes will be the only reflection I’ll need to see myself.

Slippery words spill out of us and fall to the floor as we fumble over ourselves on the trip back to the bar.

I remember when love was an elusive spider – an intruder that kept trying to creep into my life, crawling between the cracks of hardwood floors before disappearing into the shadows of sleepless nightmares. I spent restless years trapped by distraction, haunted by a thing I could not catch, but secretly wanting a tarantula to […]

I. deep down, i know that you can’t take away my shine. it’s been perfected over generations of mining. my ancestors spent years digging through dirt for any sign of a gem, any treasure that can peek through parasites. but the past is so dirty and deep-rooted that sometimes i am too tired to dig […]

have you ever taken a photo of a mountain? a screen never quite captures the magic. to reduce a massive, complex miracle to pixels is criminal. it’s too simple. we do the same to ourselves.

America has built too many monuments to war. Man-made maladies mounted on Mother Earth. I’ve seen scars on the skin of our country’s landscape – blood-stained band aids covering exposed bones; a pain that has not healed. We hold hatred high on pedestals in the name of history. Birds are perched on the shoulders of […]

(for tim and elise hussey, on the birth of their first child) in the blurry confusion of your first breath, you will open your eyes and instantly focus on love. arms will wrap you in wonder, your mother will bask in the miracle of womanhood, your father will paint colorful creations on blank canvases and […]