Confession I: I want to be with you, not just around you. I want to lie with you, gently tracing the thoughts from my head into yours. I want to follow where your limbs go, with my lips, like a map or the north star leading me to your most beautiful valleys and mountains. I would collaborate with your collarbone and back to mine, allowing a skin bridge, a focal point, to show how inherently beautiful you are.

Confession II: I want you out of my head, but not out of my life. I have teased myself into a conditioned state, a procedure that no one should ever live through.  I tripped over myself, and then over you, and I just want you the feel some electricity gathered at my fingertips, nose tips, please just kiss me. Kiss me like you would with your bent out of shape, looking for escape, lover. I could show you a thing or two about pleasure and how to love another woman just as much as you could love a man.

Confession III:  I hope to apologize in the kindest manner, see some of your exposure – I’m trying to lift composure out of ten thousand gallons of saltwater.  I know you have collected nothing but bitter – I just want to be sweet to you.

My alacrity scares me,
like the electrical figurations in your head
that create valleys and mediocre love.
Sometimes, we love just to prove that we can do so,
because our lungs breathe effortlessly
while possibilities are fleeting
and slipping through our grip like
the missed first kiss and futile attempts
for you to notice me.
The concaves of your skin,
wrapped tightly around colliding bone and ligament,
the barrier against me learning you –
the twists and lifelines leading me to something
greater than your chest rising and falling
in the haze of the night.

I want so badly to believe in something.  I’ve stripped myself down from all the filth and cotton.  I have untied the skin and bones and ligaments to find truth of my structure. I don’t know if I belong in this encasement.  I’m out searching, coming to grips with my fingerprints.  They are my own. Do I deserve the skin enclosing my organs.  My esophagus burns with revelation, but my eyes still don’t sting. My heart is on fire, but yours hasn’t left its roots.  I’m out searching, coming to grips that I am grounded in these cells.

You spoke through light fixtures on Peach street,
gave my bellowing laughs the spot light on Sassafras.
I told you the voice in front of us was as
smooth as honey and you called me crazy.
I should have asked if you’ll call me maybe,
but I couldn’t rearrange my position or
work on my posture long enough to wonder
whether I was talking about the voice in front of me
or the one speaking into my ear.
So, we planned to go to New York City instead of
talking about warm, golden honey that thickens voices
and shines through your iris or the infectious
grin that gathers in your laugh lines.
Rivers of honey spread warm in my belly,
as we pass street lights on Peach and Sassafras
and I hope that you will call me tomorrow.

“May I have the knife?” I said,
as we were cooking with garlic and dough
in the heavily scented kitchen
where your mother grew up;
deep salty waters and high altitude slopes of
Halkidiki.
You set down the knife – just from good manners,
and slide it towards my floured hands.
“Why didn’t you just hand it to me?”
I sounded unsteady and young.
“Why, we wouldn’t want a knife fight, would we?”

Your nails stain my skin like Alaska,
grains beaten into my elbows from riverbeds
and the crossings.
“Have a drink with me, my treat.”
I remember you from way back,
listening to Dave Matthews Band
while we emptied out veins in the front
seat of my Volvo.
Revolting, we voted independent and
we decided to never come back to the night
where Alaska was even a possibility.

A kaleidoscope of plastic, drafted in the
layers of trash.  The sights of a landfill,
the smells of hell.
Containers filled with grime, broken recorders
in baby dolls, apple cores, a slew of condoms,
paper products, burnt out computer parts,
bottles that held night life, while diapers full of
tired mother’s yawns; light bulbs that quit working,
family photos that hold too much, dog shit.

The things that matter most are torn,
purged, and poignant with purpose that we’d
rather forget the existence.

Elephants are the only animal species, known as a fact, to die of a broken heart. Their tough, leather skin can only guard so much; breaking blows from predators and using their sturdy bodies for protection.  But surviving instincts and dealing with sadness are on the opposite sides of the spectrum. Social constructs maintained by female elephants, emotional seeds developed from birth; no wonder females are powerful, at least in elephant herds.  The social constructs of human species, inferiority is an expectation. Motherhood and career balance, sexualization, acid punishments for justice, “Voice for Choice” since women shouldn’t take their bodies in their own hands, rapes unidentified, and youth more beautiful than souls.  Sometimes, I wish I was an elephant.

The fine light slanting through the windows outside
hit upon the shadows in the dusty corner;
corners cut by the butcher's son
leave little left of the slaughtered voices.
I cradle his red stained hands,
leaving the untraceable pleasure under my fingertips.
With the time ticking away,
why does all the time travel to some sort of silent retreat?
We all feel pleasure in being guilty.
I start to yell, like pussy willows on fire
to let my own voices recover.

I'm sorry I called you a pompous conservative,
and I'm sorry I'm not.

I'm sorry my focus is not on your intellectually cultured
examples of real life moments -
your 1988 Mercury Tracer taking its last gulp
of oxygen,
how nothing pans out to be,
your narrow expectations of others.

I'm sorry I don't fit in that canister.  

I'm sorry that others do not gravitate to
your beck and call.
your call is imperious.

I'm sorry my integrity flows in me,
rather than outwards.
I've never been one to exhibit my prizes.

(I'll just write about your buzzing blurbs
and your pick up sticks that amount to
your arrogance and pride.)

I'm sorry I'm a target
and my voice box turns into knots
when I turn the volume up.

I'm sorry that when I find nerves and pulses,
my body wants to notify you that you are
a bitch.

I am sorry that I didn't.

eggplant skies and zippers,
this collect call counted.

My buttons were tacky,
and you had the liberty to
push them;
you unraveled them instead,
as i was pushing the ones
of your house phone -

i spent quarters of my time
on you.

Dear lover,
Remember the tattered throw rug we laid on,
when I discovered your birthmark shaped like a tangerine
on the back of your knee?
We were velcro back then.
You told me I had eyes of indigo
and the corners of my cellars smelled of sweet
honeysuckle in the fire months of summer.
That summer, we marinated in our fresh air
that filtered the stale, standstill atmosphere.

Now, the toolbox on the broken shelf,
the set your tired father provided for you,
is rusting at the hinges.
Like you and me.

The saltwater my indigo sight produces, confronts
the bolts and twists,
corroding anything it touches.
Lover, this can be reversed by binding
our loops and hooks together.
Lover, the tools have not yet been used
and only you and I can discover
each other again.

Always,
Me.

Call your truths.
The creator called in sick today,
leaving lessons and sessions limping from the skinny
behavior pumping through the day.
Pull up your britches.
The bumbling from the windowpane
fed the starving wind its own tiredness.
I guess it is homesickness in your head.
What happened here in December
could cross bellowing seas and could crumble
in the concaves  of your bones,
but what happens if you do not get out of bed?

the future intent to touch constellations
have begun to run parallel with my knees.
rip tides have taken sand from my porcelain.
i am now in the in betweens of bruising and airtight
pores leaving nothing to the wolves,
with the pushes and pulls repeating in history textbooks.

indians had the right idea,
respecting the ground they walked upon and holding generosity
as a badge of pride.  we have lost that,
searching for solutions to continue youth and shortcuts to succeed and
disconnecting anyone who may create an obstacle in our regular lives.

we are cowards, ignoring responsibility to feel good for a day.
we are selfish; always receiving to benefit solely our wants and never returning the favor.

i have no future intent to touch constellations,
only to revoke my thoughts on giving up on humanity.

the world globes were given at Christmas,
the creation in my synapses that i could have what
the childhood singalong claimed:
the whole world in my hands.
what a weight on my shoulders,
pulling me beneath my self.

i began reading horoscopes on each
country, with the ambiguous reflections
encountering consequences.

i used to find that fun.

We never cry together anymore.

I used to see my body as a ship,
wood and nails and dirty hands keeping
me afloat -
Gathering speed from the sails,
salt in layers on the bottom of my body.

Folks once said that men would cry saline liquor
above the waters
for their loved ones when they were
missing out on the sea.
Now, the salt is a natural part of the water.

But now, my bones are
docked on the bottom of the floor of
the forgotten sailors.
Ship wrecked, the water replaces my marrow.
They are sick, those bones,
eroded into sand;
Just another fact on
the earth and we never cry together anymore.

I was compared to an animal today.
I know we are all animals because our instincts take hold at desperate times.
we know what we need,
when we need it,
and how it affects us directly and
indirectly.

I need you.

I will not struggle for affection,
I will not accept anything less -
unlike an animal I have a voice,
I deal with daily hassles,
and exert more energy than most.

don't give up on me,
don't take me for granted.
I can find what I need elsewhere if need
be.

we brought home this puppy,
black fuzz with caramel spots -
he has german flowing through his
small bodied, big pawed liveliness.
he is already wise like a shepard,
he lives up to his breed.
the boy that i love, his affection has
bloomed for something so stealthy,
so strong;

all he needs is his dog.

i thought i was just irrationally thinking,
but,
he only grazed my skin, kissed my lips
a total of four times today.
maybe tomorrow, it will be five.

we smile like sunflowers,
spitting our seeds through our teeth.
they taught high winds to swim across
glaciers onto my skin, backstroke,
trying to shiver down my spine.
Indian summers save my hydrophobic
structure from the flooding.
i like to drive recklessly under the
speed limit, leaving a sense of
significance tanned inside my lip.
today feels like Indian summer
and your sunflower leaves keep
me warm until the next northern
attack provokes, down my backbone,
where the shells are where we left
them
sink.

we are bystanders at heart.
you always thought fools gold was beautiful
and we knew how to reach for highlighted
books in tattered low lighted bookstores
where people used to show compassion for
the little things.
old men croaked in these heavy feathered seats
but that didn't matter much.
it gave the place some history it never really had.
we would read each other excerpts that had no
significance and you would think of me as
kind of beautiful.
some nights we would drink wine, but then switch
to spiced rum to try and knock out the
thoughts that left bad tastes on our
swollen tongues.
i'd end up too drunk, and you'd find your
fingers woven in my hair that was too soft to
hold on.
sometimes you wished it was like wool,
keeping your hands from rigor mortis and
keeping me close to your bee hive body case,
busy with engulfing my bystander heart.
wool quilting to your shoulders,
you wouldn't give this up.
we may be patch work and hungover,
but at least we can keep each other warm.