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    This site will no longer be updating.  We'll be migrating our past issues over to the new site - for now, they'll stay live right here.

    Tree-Houses

    
    Cody Deitz
     About the Writer
    Split Lip Magazine

    Cody Deitz resides in Los Angeles where he is a Master's candidate at California State University, Northridge. There, he studies poetry and teaches first-year composition.  He believes ardently in the capacity of the poem to generate empathy and effect change. When not working, he enjoys spending time outdoors with his wife.  His poetry has been published in various literary journals including Ellipsis, Chaparral, the Northridge Review, and others.  He is currently at work on a full-length poetry collection. 

                The best of life is but intoxication. 

                                         –– Lord Byron

     

    Now it’s all smoke and climbing high

    into the tree-houses of the unconscious,

     

    tip-toeing onto the longest branches

    and peering down at the turquoise  swimming pools

     

    and the girls that lounge beside them.

    It’s more than turning on a light – it’s becoming

     

    the bulb and the switch and the finger

    sliding over the wall and the static: something

     

    about serotonin I’d like to remember,

    red and blue orbs shooting gaps in textbooks

     

    and cartoons from anti-drug programs. 

    It’s not a model for us, though, it’s vibration.

     

    Going out is always leaving so we can return,

    always the hero’s journey compressed:

     

    drives out to the desert where we can breathe,

    inhale the sparkling snuff of night,

     

    out past the last dirt-covered asphalt strip

    and buzzing streetlamp orange.  We are horses

     

    to be broken, cars to be revved red and raced

    into the damp suburban dark and now,

     

    we are still together and have no way of knowing

    I’ve got one foot over the fence

     

    and you’ll be stuck, held down by the weight

    of your body soaked in chemical.  Denial is still

     

    a sitcom joke, addiction just the smell of cigarettes.

    Rehab is a reality show, celebrities from the 80s

     

    squabbling over couch cushions and group time.

    From the truck, I watch you walk back

     

    in the brush, across trails dotted by tumbleweeds

    like diodes across resistors, your shadow etched  

     

    against the black, not wondering why,

    though it’s all so delicate, we don’t come crashing down.

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