Cutely stumbling, 
fingertips fumbling, 
to say you are,
you are it. 

Backward snapback, 
magazines thumbtacked. 
You know you have,
you have me. 

Lilies and paper sharks, 
camping out in the yard. 
Come here. I want,
I want it all. 

Watching fireflies, 
ten AM goodbyes. 
You know you have, 
you have me. 

That tobacco kiss, 
this heavy happiness. 
You are, 
you are it.

Paper Sharks

I put my hair up pell-mell. 
You pocketed some Pall Malls 
for the road. 

The tires tracked deer carrion. 
I asked, dear, can we carry on? 
Can we carry on 
knowing what we know? 

(x) Shotgun, front seat, 
looking so sweet. 
I'm never one to take the wheel without you. 
Shotgun, front seat 
like Thelma and Louise. 
Kid, it's me and you. 

Once more with the albatross. 
I swore we'd make it half across 
the canyon. 

A coffin from a Thunderbird. 
The desert coughed our final words, 
never to be seen or heard. 
We carried on.

Thelma & Louise

I'll meet you soon for fish and chips.
We'll talk of all the trawling ships.
I'm only a float, a rope-broke buoy
when the radar slowly blips.

Let's sneak into the orrery.
Each star, Virgo, is a flowering
avens, a plume of prairie smoke.
I hear the teen cashier breaks hourly.

I met you at the bus stop bench.
You had two fogged lenses and a dress drenched.
At the end, an ellipsis. Was it more or Morse letter 'S'?
I would bet six times ten of my last cents
on you.

Ooh, ooh, let's meet up soon.

(You met me at the taco truck:
Seated at the cedar with a cider jug,
donuts half chewed into sweet horseshoes.
L, you see, well, I did it for the luck.)

Meet me near the Sandhill cranes
with a hatchet and a handful of grain.
(We'll be red masked bandits, fast as foxes
once the traffic flocks in)
from their standstill lanes.

Dot Dot Dot

Under the streetlight stars, 
we know who we are. 
Under the streetlight stars, 
we know. 

Tonight it's pitch dark. 
I hitch the CATA home. The data shows, 
run the numbers. If not spring, then summer, sipping some. 
His cat a calico's a bag of bones, out on the patio. 
It's all fun until you can't catch up 
to the braggadocio. Don't you know 
it's why I keep a bat at home. The catch is y'all can't 
catcall from deep inside the catacombs. 

I'm not the anodyne. 
Thought at the time I was a mastermind. 
I lacked the tact to ask and kept it tacit, kept you gaslit. 
The actor's lines are asinine.... 
but I will go south like Anaheim 
with an appetite, calming as calamine, 
balling like Valentine. Well, 
I wouldn't, but a catamite. 
I need a grip. Not every slip is mine to analyze, 
to patronize, I'm putting down the pantomime. 
Said I'd keep you wet like Adam's wine, 
salty, falling a lot like Adam's wife. 

Under the streetlight stars, 
we know who we are. 
This town is easier to leave 
than to love. 

Back in my hometown 
around the capitol, the scaffolding, 
with a sixer. If not fall, then winter, missing her. 
My bag is full, casually slung over one clavicle. 
What a high, the time a kid can buy 
with this minimal capital. We're just unjust animals, 
filthy and happily fallible.

Hometown

I'm passing the bar 
when I spy the new high-wire act. 
There are shoes on the line 
some high-schooler probably wants back. 
I don't really get this city. 
I don't really get this town. 
Cracked bourbon bottles are just urban fossils; 
but the rent's still going up, and it's bringing all of us down. 

You're passing the bar 
and maybe the buck now and then, 
while I drop some dollars 
just to drop out of college again. 
I don't really get this city. 
I don't really get this town. 
Coke bottle glasses taking Rhode Scholar classes. 
Everybody's on their fixies, but nobody wants to fix us now. 

Maybe I'll find a place 
where nobody knows the law 
and all of the gym shoes 
are on somebody else's block. 
I don't really get this city. 
I don't really get this town. 
I'm getting prone to falls, getting nose to nose with all 
the streets, but I just never gain the ground. 

("Sometimes I think I'm going crazy." 
"You just hate every single guy on the face of the earth." 
"That's not true. I just hate all these extroverted, pseudo-bohemian losers.")

Gym Shoes

Sipping open Coke cans. 
The corner stores are closing, 
but it's my dime 
those neon signs are running 
on. 

I'll wait, but I won't anchor. 
Two J's, out of paper. 
Weight without the razor. 
I never wanted to be useful. 
I just wanted to feel 
used. 

Back behind the old track, 
slapping up a new tag. 
Pack a bind, it's all drag, 
and your eyes are round as the rims 
of firefly jars. 

I'll wait, but I won't anchor. 
Like lace between the vapor, 
I will learn to be delicate later. 
I just want to feel 
something, something, something. 
I wanna feel it all.

Feel It All

Hilary and Margaret is a lone-person band with one ear toward folksy power pop indietronica and the other ear toward that thing your ex-girlfriend said six years ago and you're still not over.