*Avoid Dark or Isolated Places

it was the hesitation

as you reached for the 2% milk

imagined, if not for the grocery store’s lighting

the truth was fluorescent, illuminated on the dew gathered glass

at that moment of decision, you decided the fate of the world

how one day, soon, you would come home

and everything will have gone bad


*Know Your Surroundings

 i have ruined my soul

walking the hours before dawn like deserted fields

blistered thoughts on the endless sidewalk between the bus stops of my hope and my history

collapsed in the heat of following, beside highways of regret

 

*Never Travel Alone

at sixteen, i brought a bus ticket to san francisco

with money stolen from my mother’s purse

the cops came before the bus

i told them i wasn’t running from, i was running to

something beautiful

i realize, now, there is no difference

i have become practiced in leaving, without taking a step

my son will spend his life running to me

i have become practiced in not being found

*Know Where You Are

you are the koi pond next door, the concrete marshland beside the road,

the fountained pond filled with leeches, nestled in the duck belly of two story brick homes

you have taught me to build what i lack, taught me how to sustain life, become a habitat


*Say No to Strangers

i have given so much away because i didn’t want it taken


*Plan an Escape Route

i was told, most people live their entire lives within a 30 mile radius of where they were born.

it would take 83 days, 8 hrs a day, 20 min. a mile, to walk to new york from here.

i read in a first aid handbook, once the jugular was severed it would take 3 min. to bleed out.

my favorite part of a map is the key. first knuckle to fingertip = 1 inch.

 i am five fingers away from the sistine chapel, from the fingertip of god.

di vinci understood scale.

1 inch = our arms stretching across all of creation with the hope that we will finally feel, touched; we will, at last, forget the mathematics of escape.


*Leave a Trail
i retreat like a russian

burn it all, then wait

from my mother, i have learned the skill of turning vodka into blankets

from you, that patience is the same as a bullet