I hiked the mountain

I wanted to sing.

I'm balancing on the edge of a giant clay bowl.

and It's all about life.
Its all about life its all about life its all about life its all about life its all about life its all about life its all

I'm perched on the rim of a cup.  a cup thats full with houses were people live and churches where people go and there's a field below me and its empty, I'm not sure what its for except I know its for people, because everything is and really its all about life.
the only reason that woman is walking her dog is because its keeping her alive.  Like why I'm siting here on this rock, my hand hurting, getting cold.
I'm here because I was craving life,
I was craving some living of my own and
not the life that you were watching on the screen.
I'm here because my feet were hurting for rocks and running shoes, my eyes were begging to see, my voice was bleeding to sing, and I've lost enough blood already. My heart required the bleeding to stop.

I drove past houses to get here, houses with people living in them, and I didn't see a single person with a home living inside of them.  Not a single person outside in the sunshine in the grass that will soon be snow.

we are just So many people who haven't lived in so long.

So many people whose hearts are still bleeding, pounding, they're still getting oxygen but they're dying.  Everyone is dying.  Dying like the screens we exist for, like the words that cut our hearts, dead like the trees we've killed, like the stones that built our homes.

dying like the too many bleeding hearts, pumping so much oxygen without life.

Our hearts are bleeding.  They're bleeding out life and we'd all better wake up and go outside and do something BRAVE and do some living.  because if we don't, the sun that I raced to get here is going to finally set and we'll have lost.

Lets each take a bandaid.  Our hearts are bleeding for some things, for some people, for some air.

its not from a tetanus shot, this bandaid, its not because we've skinned our knees on the scooters although really it should be.   No, this bandaid is for fake lives that need honesty, hacked lives that need healing, regular lives in need of space

its made of courage, this bandaid, of hiking shoes and solitude somewhere with a view of the town.  Take it and do something brave, something different.

make sure your breaths, your heartbeats are worth something.
are worth a little bit of change,
worth enough to call your heartbeats-
to call oxygen-
to call your hiking shoes-
to say that you have-
that you are-
LIFE.

Even from here

Julia.
i can tell you're beautiful from 100 years away.
you're holding someone's gaze,

 and you don't see me.  

You're holding redwoods, rosewoods, chocolate with cinnamon and roses in your eyes,

two good beautiful eyes.

and I'm thinking of Cream.  Cream like peaches and Honduras roads

cream milked from deep blue starlights and nightskies and that is you, 

that is how you feel

in my memories of you
in stories.
Julia Eva

even from here, 

standing admiring this photograph of dear Grandmother you are beautiful.  

Your one good arm and your smile and you.  

Two good eyes to watch and to read life around you, 

to watch her grow, my grandma, to hold her close with that one arm

to sew birthday dresses with only five fingers, to tuck her into bed 

with two good eyes and only one good hand, and

to still smile roses and see rosewood and be peach and mahogany. 

Your two good eyes to close before your one lost arm was torn away,
your two good eyes to close on the torn streets of Honduras,
to blink away the iguana as big as your six-year-old self,
to cry away the Avocado trees and your two good eyes
never again to see brothers and sisters and father and your mother.  

Julia Eva. 
   even from here I can tell you are strong. Even from here, from this photograph, even here from scraping windshields free of ice and even from high school and so many years away, 

dear grandma, you are beautiful.  this photograph doesn't show your one arm and it doesn't show Honduras.  It doesn't show machetes or nights as refugees and it doesn't show stories my grandmother has told me, stories of a girl my age and younger who lost her arm in exchange for life, who survived rivers and hot summers and iguanas, coups and revolutionaries, 

but now
I'm trying to remember.

 

moon dreams

Take me up

No

why.

From where I sit I see you in the scaffolding.  You've been there for days, I think. I don't know why.

But you have.

I picked a sliver from my palm and threw it to the ground, but it wafted like a snowflake, but it looked like ash in the ebony air we sat in.

Of course, you didn't see us. you just saw me.

Cream.  peaches and cream is the color of the wood.  Peaches and cream and, heres an orange and this one's banana

you look hungry.

Planks of wood standing up straight, did they take a tree and slice it with an apple cutter and hollow out the seeds

we are sitting where a seed used to grow.

In the stomach of a whale, a wooden whale, in the rib cage, sitting in tree bones, surrounded by carcasses carved smooth and straight into lumber.

we sit in a smell of wood shavings and moonlit ladders

I didn't realize it grew cold so fast.

Frozen rain on the rafters and a flicker of your face in the scaffolding

between peeled, frosted trees.

you look cold.

hair like shredded paper strips cling to the planks,
 from your head
In the scaffolding.

starlight.

moonrise

your face flickers

a shape in the scaffolds

Take me up.

okay.

stars set, dark sets, sunrise

light flutters in the scaffolding.  orange trees, carved skeletons. Hollow 

but for the breeze.

Nelson, this is for you

I realized when I walked out of the room I hadn't said what I came in to tell you.
I came in to tell you the answer to your question in class.
I honestly don't remember if you asked the question out loud or if I just thought you did.

I'm not sure if what I told you was supposed to make you feel better. News like that... I'm not sure if thats exactly the "better" I was going for...
but
I came in to tell you that what you do makes a difference.   It changes lives, and it matters for sure.
I came in to say that what you do Matters.
learning about love and talking about life, and death,
learning how to dance,
learning about what's real,
about being hipsters
and being ourselves,
learning about what really matters,
you dancing and showing us that we don't have to care,

It helps.
It matters.
It makes me brave, at the very least.

I don't know if this helps, maybe it doesn't, maybe its not supposed to, maybe it only helps me to say it.

But life matters, and people matter, and so... even though these aren't the right words
i think i just wanted to say that things will be all right again, without those words sounding empty.    I really do mean them.
And maybe to say that its okay to laugh and to smile.
I appreciate what you do.
 I'm not the only one.

everett mills

Death the shoebox I'm not going to open

Heaven.  The word is so much better than Death.

So instead of Dying,

I'm going to heaven.

because Heaven is worth it.  Heaven is worth life and Life is worth dying.

Life 
is incredible.
look at me, I'm sitting here and I'm typing

and words are coming from my heart and they're going through my brain and out of my fingers

and into your eyes and then through your brain and into your heart

Ladies and Gentlemen, this has been Life. Can we get a round of applause? a standing ovation? encore!

I've never met a corpse that can do that.

And death, Mr. Grim Reaper I'm sorry people call you that.  If you were honest and you really cradled the Book Thief and her loves when they passed I wish they wouldn't call you Grim; that's a pretty rough task and thank you for cradling them and for bringing Johnny's spirit home, and Grandpa's, and Devin's, and Randy's. and Hunter's.

Thank you for taking us to heaven.

Heaven, where our only hurts will be regrets.  so live without them.
Heaven's a place where we won't hurt because once the pain leaves we'll be left with peace.

In heaven poetry is what will come from our mouths and small talk will be a legend and we'll speak in piano concertos and poetry slams and painting. Because small talk is not the language of Heaven.  Poetry is. 

death is a shoebox. You never know what you'll find, but it always smells foul.
But Life?  life isn't silk and its not satin but I've never seen life like the Mariana Trench, and there's always an up for the deep and there's a nightlight for every dark room and there's morning for the bad dreams, and life is incredible because even though our language isn't quite poetry, we're learning.  We're good at small talk but Piano concertos can flow off the tongue too, and painting comes with time and poetry may be a second language but some of us can speak without an accent and the rest of us are trying.  

So while you're holding up the world think about building the Great Wall of China.  Think about Abraham Lincoln and think about your mom who hurt for you and think about what you're doing RIGHT NOW, TODAY, and think Does It Matter? and I hope the answer is yes because as long as you're alive that's the only right answer and it matters and you matter and the oxygen coming in and out and in your blood matters, and everything that has ever hurt matters because its made you that much stronger.  

If I could grow tall and canopy-green and if I could rain life down on you all, to make you grow in smiles,  I would.  But I'm sorry because I've been too busy looking for poetic words that aren't mine.  

And I'm sorry because the word is Death.  

and people have been spelling it wrong for years.
c-o-m-i-n-g-h-o-m-e. death.

Life is just Heaven's absent student, and maybe she's in denial but Heavenschool is a place where every teacher is a season and air is sweet like childhood and our assignments are laughter and our lessons start never because they're just living. because Life was in heaven yesterday and she's skipping out today but she'll be back tomorrow.  Her classmates are waiting and her seat is saved.

Because Life the snowcone sometimes runs out of flavor and you can either pay the extra 50 cents or finish a snowie that tastes like only $2.50 of flavor instead of $3.00.  But it's life, and whether yours has $2.50 or $3 the first bite always tastes the same.  And the flavor comes from the same jar.  And its all just as sweet.

My shoes are tattered and torn but that doesn't change the $10 I paid for them, or the use I got out of them, and whether your life is torn or touched-up or neither someone's already paid for you and you've had some use, and you're still alive.

please, 
love golden
stay golden.

everett Mills.