if you bring forth what is within you
-Gospel of Thomas 

let's start with the
soybean fields & the onion
grass tucked behind your tongue

i'm pulling us out
by the neck 

i'm going to try 
to be honest with you

but it's hard with all 
this is pollen in the air

i've been having to handcuff
the clock to my wrist to keep
it from turning into a morning dove

did you hear that?

that's the sound of 
the wood pecker making 
a home behind our knees

let's walk around campus
one more time

i want to finally read
all the little memorial plaques
where dead people were stamped
into stone & metal 

their ghosts watching us
from benches & from 
the branches of sapling trees

some find each other 
& learn ball room style dancing

i remember how you
always wanted a boy to dance
with you like that
& i kiss the back of
your hand & promise to learn

promise to brush all my skin
with oil paint &
step into a portrait when 
it is time

for tonight we'll help them 
step down

old deans grinning with
their hands behind their backs

college president's with mouths
pursed shut like the cracks 
in the sidewalk down main street 

where the street lamps 
mistake out crowd for 
phantoms

i point to my wrists to
show the blue in my blood
& they with like bread ties

i've avoided telling you
that i'm graduating tomorrow
because i'm not sure yet what
that supposed to mean 

i asked the statues on campus
& each of them threw their
head back wildly & laughed 

i tell you that i studies english 

& you ask where  our plans to
become a psychologist went

& i say 
the best laid plans of men
often turn to mice

last night at baccalaureate
the organ grinned & 
kissed us in the only
way it knew how

i wish when i opened my 
mouth that it could sound something
like the big pipes over
our heads in the chapel 

the preacher quoted 
thomas & said 
if you bring forth what is
within you it will save you
& 
if you do not bring forth 
what is 
within you it will destroy you

& i saw me & you 
sitting by the old foundation
they tore down two years ago 

tossing in pennies 
& holding hands

i'm telling you that i know
bringing forth isn't 
like pulling weeds

like when dad & you would
kneel in the church garden 
& tear out those prickly
green plants

roots dangling & full of
mulch & dirt

i imagine bringing forth is
more like drawing the 
string of fake pearls 
from the back of our throat

one bead at a time

where did all of our
left earrings go?

did the oak trees eat our 
claddagh ring?

or did you make off with
it when you knew i 
was taking you somewhere else?

did you build 
a fifth floor to the library?

where you can sit with
your easel 

painting a picture of
yourself in our 
favorite pink flower dress

bringing forth yourself 
on the canvas

the act of disembodying 

i'll hang the painting inside 
the closet of our first
dorm room where only
you & i will know where
to find it

bringing forth can 
mean small deaths

can mean eating soup spoons 

& leaving the door unlocked 

i do not become
a man to save us 

even though i want to

i pulled it out of me

roots dangling

soil under nails

what is destruction then?

the fountain's ghost
is hungry

i made you into 
a penny-- heads down