180 degrees from now I’ll meet my love the first time face to face
and hold him tight and feel
okay with all the space i take

i keep on making empty vows
to try my best the next time
but the pendulums are fast and loud
and clocks talk back in patterned lies

it’s 12 months in a solar cycle, 12 steps to recovery
12 pills, 12,000 lines on albums played
across the states, on tapes
or up there on the stage

the other side calls out and claims to be the greater, greener place
yet upon arrival there is nothing but more empty space

which parts are crying softly, which ones wish to be unfettered?
which ones think by staying stuck
life passes by them for the better?
we keep making empty vows
the only habit we can keep
while orange dust runs through our veins
to make our nights immune to sleep

three months from now i’m on a plane
and only 90 steps too soon
i’m grateful you’re held up to the opposite pole
allowing mass to shrink and bloom
for all i know is you’re a fragment of so many unlived days
a trap for dreams i lost
a gorgeous mask i won’t rip off. and so it stays

on east coast time, it seems, i can’t escape my haunted dreams
of being late or unprepared then missing out entirely
on the living so i’m spared
but please, 180, carry us
across the pond onto the bus
the air is crisp, the leaves are rust
let all the vapes and flours float down low
it’s time to swim across, i know

tomorrow will the new day start
of listening to beating hearts i’ve muffled for to shut them out
so let the people see me flounder now in raw and honest doubt
come one, come all, bear witness
to the true unfinished business of potential
left out in the rain
i would have flown out to your side
if you asked me so, i said it’s not too much
back roughly 90 steps ago
you wouldn’t, though. no use to rush
into somebody else’s sorrow

so we sit, anticipating life on down the line
hitting us like fumbling trucks
on west coast time i’ll get unstuck
this pole is woe
the opposite?
i don’t know
but i’m aiming straight for it

themes come back around in only half a year we’ve found
familiar echoes of a song
allow me, god, to keep the beat this time
so being seen’s not such a crime
there is no right or wrong way to imbue my limbs with life
i must let go of all this tension with a vengeance
and arrive

there is no choice but to keep walking till the day fate lets me fly
i see it now, across the cycle of ascending spirals
felt it all before it was
you did too, and all because it’s written in the very cells we curse
they keep us here, though, still immersed
today
180 steps away
endure them gracefully or plod on forward
clumsily
while matter weaves me finally into a spectacle of beauty
a work of art so very worthy
a work of art i lost myself creating just
for you
to see