She was tired
of pretending
she didn't go to bed
alone.

I have dreamed of you. Branch like arms, solid sapling strength
as you arrange words perfectly on a page. I have so long been frightened of shattering the silence. Silence and I, we are old friends, can it do without me? Dare I bruise it? As the proverb says, are my words beautiful enough to make snowflake-shards when it breaks?
     Words, what are words? I can write them quietly-- silently, here they hold no decibled danger-- shout them, sing them, whisper-- silently.
     I thought my mouth an ugly thing. Sister jealous of quiet depth, woman of few words, tired of the vomited syllables that pour from others, tongues flapping. Do words live or die when spoken? I could not add a note to the melee, my head swims as it is. Voices, so many voices, inside, around, abreast, beside. I cannot help but listen. I listened so long to their siren's songs I forgot how to speak. I have mastered the silent tongue. Fluent in touch, in sigh, in glance, shift, breath. Incompetent translator, I have forgotten the mother tongue, red lips standing locked and lifeless. Does something misfire in my mind, rusty rifle whose trigger cannot be pulled but on dry days? Thoughts have scattered like leaves under my feet. I am bland, I am blank, blanched, useless, dumb.
     Speak, you say. I want to speak. I will sing, I will shout, scream, anything for you. Listen to how much you mean to me. But not just for you. For me. For the heart of hearts that cannot reach the page, the tone even the most emotive of words cannot capture. Yet fear has bound the mouth of my heart shut. So afraid of causing harm. So afraid of pain. Is the fear of suffering really worse than the suffering itself? I am frightened of the first un-eloquent strokes of the tongue.I do not want to blather, chatter, stutter on about pettiness.  I do not want my head to speak when my heart cannot. Tell me, dear heart, tell me, tired heart. Tell me we will learn to speak again.

1) October is a month for leaving
even the copper leaves
leave the embrace of the trees

2)Your ghost still haunts my bed.
If I made love to a priest
would that exorcise you
from my sheets?

3)Because I think we all have thought
about stepping on the gas
when we should have hit the brake.

I picked my poison blindfolded.
Fumbling like Jane Grey
at the execution block.
Grabbed the jar closest,
cool glass with death beneath.
It was the slowest.
Death by leeches,
who **** the spirit dry
and replace it
with lead.

It's time I fall out of love with your memory.
Admit, like Augustine, "I did not love, but yearned to love."
(Though I still cared)
I've scraped the bottom of the barrel.
Turning each curl of wood
till it crumbled in my fingers.
I could have stopped long ago.
Should have stopped long ago--
unearthing the memories
again and and again and again.
I think now,
I will let them rest in peace.

Beauty is pain.
It draws them in like flies.
They have caught their legs
in my flypaper hair.
And rip them off, one by one.
They fall like eyelashes into my palm.
They love, they love.
I cannot.

I supposed I loved him
Because he could tell me I was beautiful
without ever opening his mouth.

From such a gentle spirit
came such a harsh reubuke
and from such a verdant life
Oh, such an arid death!

What hope once bloomed
within thy breast
until replaced by a blossom
of such deep despair.  

The fates did deal thee a bitter hand
such cruelty thou suffered,
to be taken from day to night
and as quickly as thou were.

Thy life, thy soul, such lovely things
how kind thy smile could be
thou were indeed a rarity
in such a dreary world.

It seems that depression
has a magnetic pull to poets.
We wear it, our stubborn scarlet letter,
Hidden between crinkled pages and ink spattered hands.
Our fickle muse,
if he stays around too long, he smothers us,
till we cannot even lift the pen,
and the words are left to swim around in circles
of darkening thought.

Something broke inside me.
glow-stick soul
snapped
one too many times.
There is nothing here
but broken glass
the darkness remains
undefined
un-defied.

Sit nos quibus pacem

Let us have peace,
tonight of all nights.
I know Time will not stand still,
I won't waste breath asking him to,
But, if, for the few hours,
till the break of day,
the guns could fall silent
the sharp tongues fall quiet,
and hate be taught for an hour, tolerance.

Sit nos quibus pacem

I know morning will break,
with joy for many, and with pain for more,
those to which this night,
is the same as the last, clanging with the hollow pains
of hunger and heartache and war,
but if we might,
for just one silver night,
have the peace
which you meant us to have from the start
I should be forever grateful.

Sit nos quibus pacem

Life is a sea.
Strong and bittersweet.
Float while you can, sink if you must.

Treat yourself as gently as you treat others.
Forgive yourself, forgive others.
"Perfection" does not exist on this earth.
Love is never measured in numbers.

Don't keep your hands clenched to tightly,
whatever you hold tightest
is what will leave you first.
Love, to often, means letting go.

You cannot save them
All you can do is show them they are worth saving.
You cannot fix them.
All you can do is hand them the tools.

Always be the last to end an embrace.
Behind harsh words are wounded hearts,
every scar has a story.

People will hate you, they will wrong you, but
You will never regret treating someone with kindness.
We are all only human.

Think before you speak,
but remember silence is a double edged sword
do not let fear
keep you from speaking
when you hold truth behind your lips.

Don't let your memories rule you,
They are the past
and you are a creature of the future
do not dwell where you cannot live.

And remember, you are always worth more than you imagine.

You are growing.
You sound  
more like the man
I think you always wanted to be.
You emerge from this crucible
brave, unfurled, determined
and I am truly  
happy for you.

I do not know what to make of this.
these scraps of clay and paper
that were once “Us” and now are “you” and “I.”
Paper-mache remnants of lonely romantic’s dreams
you present to me as relics of a bygone year.
I know you would like to rebuild.
But things are better this way.
Our hearts have thrown enough punches in the dark.

Most days, I can fade into the cracked, plaster walls
in their peeling blue paint, smeared with oily hand prints
from wayward class demonstrations.
A prison cell? No. A holding cell? Maybe.
Where I am interrogated
through glossy textbook pages and sickly fluorescent lights
these castles of learning
are dim places indeed.

Men loosened Justice's blindfold
So she could "see the evidence" they said
She protested and tried to fix it,
but her scales fell out of balance.

Peace asked her why?
Justice cried and her tears
wilted Peace's olive branch
the dove drank the salt water and got sick.

Hope tried to console Peace and Justice,
But when she saw the blindfold amiss
and the dove sick
her fragile heart couldn't take it, and she died.

Love tried to revive Hope
but she knew it wouldn't work,
because she couldn't gather enough
of Hope's soul to bring her back.

And for that Peace and Justice
Shunned her, rebuked her
they said she was useless
and banished her to a far northern land.

So Love fled from men's hearts
and found herself with Patience, cast into exile
Patience was happy because Loneliness fled,
But Love longed for her former life.

And with Hope dead
it didn't take long for Sorrow
to smite her.

I don't believe in soul mates but
I will fall for the man
who can read my poetry aloud
translate it properly, from page to voice
without compromising rhythm, or sound, or rhyme,
With a gentle poet's brogue.
The man who sees the notes of my soul
I tucked between the lines,
and finds he made the same notations
in the margins of his own.

China Blue

China blue and snowy saucers
On the old oak table where you once sat
Alone and plaintive, dusty
I haven’t had the heart to move them yet
There’s to much of your spirit
Still in the house
It seems wrong to clear it away
When you’re supposed to come back
And drink your tea.

I went through your desk, though
It was necessary.
You never were organized
And I found myself buried in mountains
Of old bills and notes and wishes
And by the time I found the will
Paper birds had roosted all about the room
Their inked markings unreadable
Thanks to the flapping of their wings.

Your sketchbook I left by our bedside
Your notebook and Hemingway
Rest under the alarm clock
That will never wake you again
Though it rings its mournful, piercing wail
At 6:00 every morning
It scared me, the day after the funeral
I hadn’t slept all night, screamed,
Clutched your pillow
And threw mine at the foot of the bed,
The Phantom shadows of dreams disappearing
In the light of a grey morning.

I dreamed I dug a bullet
out of my own thigh.
I asked if I might bleed to death
and they said no
as long as I packed it with happy thoughts
and my mind went blank.
There was no pain, no cringing release,
grim rush to blank reality,
these legs are used to feeling.
I pressed a ***** palm to the ragged edges.
I feel better.

There is pain here.
It swells, drifts,
within the ribbed cage
covered with pale, stretched skin.
My heart, the bird, beats it's tiny, wounded wings,
in fear and aching throbs,
to escape from it's ****** aviary,
but the bars are too strong,
and it sings a final, mourning note
as the bones collapse around it.

If you fall in love with this poet, (and she with you),
Remember, she will not tell you of the words she ascribed to your name
unless you ask to hear them.
(She likes her thoughts kept secret)

If you fall in love with this poet (and she with you)
Remember, she is not as solitary as she looks
and she will let you hold her till your arms ache.
(She’ll do the same with you)

If you fall in love with this poet (and she with you)
Remember her heart is paper, and on it she inscribes in blood
the words her soul could no longer hold.
(Your name will always be written there)

If you fall in love with this poet (and she with you)
Remember the things that made her smile,
she’s serious, but needs a break from
the things that go on behind her eyes, within her soul.
(They’re darker than you think)

Most importantly,
If you fall in love with this poet (and she with you)
Remember, you will never die.
Her words will last longer than she does.
(and as long as her heart beats, you are in it.)

It is night. We are sitting on the steps among fallen leaves, looking out into an eerily empty scene. Pale blue light shines on the weathered concrete where a single white car is parked in a forgotten spot. It's strange without people, the bustle, constant hum of voices, engines, the occasional horn.
     It feels more alive to me now. The place in and of itself alive-- as it would have been if man had never existed. If our existence had been lost somewhere up among the few stars that now dare to shine through. Those few (happy few?) who dare to look upon the tragic, transient, mortal beauty of men.
     The familiar symphony of night sounds can be heard in the little line of trees before us. The wind is plucking leaves from branches. They fall brown and lifeless at our feet. I wonder if trees miss their leaves, or if, perhaps, they have accepted the perpetual cycle of loss and renewal mankind has yet to make peace with.  Each year shorter than the last, each day longer than the first. I have always loved the melancholy of autumn, its bittersweet solitude, the leaves as quiet reminders of  mortality-- tiny deaths to foreshadow our own. No, I do not wish for death. I have, but not tonight. Tonight the air is soft and cool, and the air and sky are clear. I am finding peace in the mundane chaos.
     He is next to me, thinking. Solemn, with a tinge of sadness, but for what I'm never sure. He laments the loss of our child-like wonder, and I question if it can be regained. I would like to think so. I think somewhere, inside all of us, our childish hearts remain, molten core of memory, identity, the first, the fairest of us. Who we were before the world beat it out of us.
He has a soft, deep, murmur of a voice. A tiny gap between his two front teeth I notice when he laughs. A lovely laugh that shakes through his willowy, wiry frame. His eyes are kind and thoughtful, yet serious. When he looks at me, it feels as though he is trying to stare right through, and I turn away. For all my wanting to be known, perhaps I am not ready--yet. But parts of my spirit which have long lain dormant are surfacing again, coming towards the light. Timid, they step out, unsure of where they are, what the footing is here. But so far, solid.

I loved you as man was meant to love
Selfless, quiet, as few have said
Three simple words,
And meant them
As I did when they fell
Letter by letter
From trembling lips
To meet the cold stone
Which encased your heart.

Each shattered, a thousand splinters,
The O rolled and burst
The U toppled with the I and the rest
Ricocheting back from whence they came
Sharp and piercing
Their barbed points digging
With flaming points into flesh
While silent screams
Echoed loudly in empty halls.

Bleeding, not a drop, but a torrent
All at once
No single bead, but hundreds
Till bathed in red
I stood before you
Pleading
In my hands the last thread of my life
Offering them, freely
You did not realize
I loved you.

The ink in my veins seems to have run dry.
Circulation problems, maybe.
My soul is desperate to write,
but the pen isn't working,
and I'm left to make blank indentations
on a scrap of tattered paper.

Things fall apart.
my mother will be the first to go.
Stretched between school, a stubborn husband,
distance, and a daughter she believes is dying,
and the ever present thought
that she will never be good enough.
Taught as drum leather, she shudders,
Wracked and rent by memories of lost children
and protruding ribs.
I awoke to her crying in the next room this morning.
She greeted me with feigned happiness, but
red eyes stared truthfully back.
"I'm okay," she murmured.
"*******," I said softly.
She clung to me.
I felt the burden shift on her shoulders.
crushing her,
her over sized heart beat to pulp,
it's ****** remnants clinging to her dripping sleeve.
The people she tried to hold together,
slipping through her fingers
like sand-- as her brittle bones break.
Things fall apart.
And I wish I knew how
to put them together again.

I’ve tangled myself
around an ideal,
again.
**** I, the idealist.
Someone pass me the scissors.

Saying that I didn't love you
sounds more like a truth
than the lie I want it to be.

And I do not know if this is because
my love starved to death, slowly,
or because I am malleable maleficence
and when arms are offered
I bend myself into them
automaton clay
deadly mimic
powerful enough to fool itself.

When I ask my heart
there is only static
the inoffensive murmur
I have trained myself to utter
Its voice lost
somewhere beneath a barrow of expectations
unmet.

We will stand honestly together,
in the sfumato footsteps of the
centuries of lovers that met before us.
He will christen my eyes with kisses,
weave a crown of poetry in our intermingled locks,
whisper Neruda against my cheek.
We will smile
at the way our rib cages resemble wings,
our lungs, the birds, rising on each current
of fervent breath.

I don't want to be more.
I want to be less.
So much less that I disappear
shrink, fold
rendered
to the tiniest sliver
indiscoverable.
So minuscule,
my hands are rendered too small
to do any more damage.

I'm sorry
I did not let go
gracefully.

Upon the hallowed ground she stood
The wind blew through her hair
A swallow swooped o’er the darkening sky
And the scent of rain filled the air

She heard the voices loud as thunder
Echo o'er hill and down
And warily she watched them
Ride their ghost mounts into the town

The rain now fell in torrents
Upon the hallowed field
But she moved not from her own same spot
As a deathly grip bid her yield

A hand of ice held fast her hem
Though she struggled against its grasp
She begged it there to let her go
Then from the earth she heard it rasp

‘One kiss my bonny sweetheart
the years were long since I saw thee last
It be cold here in the hallowed ground
Though I be but a memory of the past.’

‘I fought here on the battle ground
with rapier high and voice aloft
till down the enemy struck me fast
to lie in blood on the damp ground soft.’

The hand then loosed its steely grasp
And she saw her true love’s form
A cold and bleeding upon the ground
as more furious grew the storm

As the rain then pelted down around
The long lost lovers in their embrace
His bonny sweetheart spoke to him
With trembling lip and heart that raced

‘My own true love, my only
Long waited I for your return
I scorned the suitors who sought my hand
for your memory I would not scorn.

‘I prayed long for word or news
of thy well being or how thee faired,
but none e’re came to me at all
so I waited, hoping you had been spared.’

‘A truer love man never had
that would wait through tears and time
and keep the hope that I still lived
to find that in the ground I lie.

Forgive me, love, I’ve done thee wrong
To make thee wait for me so
Take my hand with one last kiss
And then my love, you must go.’

‘Nay my only, only love,
it’s here with you I’ll stay
I’ll not go back without thee,
I’ll stay by thy side, come what may.’

So upon the hallowed ground she lay
Hair damp and soaked to the skin
And by his side she lay all night
As she clutched his hand so thin.

The town knew not where she had gone
But in the morn they found
She’s gone to be with her one true love
Dead, upon the hallowed ground.

Green is my favorite color.
But I hate that shade of it.
Because it will always remind me of
The green scrubs you wore,
haunting cold barren rooms,
Where they took your bootlaces
so you couldn’t choke the dreams out of yourself.

I wore blue that day because it was your favorite color.
You probably didn’t notice.
You felt hollow when I embraced you
All strength within seemed gone.
Your eyes, my favorite shade of green, were frighteningly distant.
You were there, but it wasn’t you.
Who were you? Who are you? Who should you have been if…?
You kissed me goodbye in front of the nurses,
And I saw tears in the corners of their eyes.  
Even my mother seemed touched.

I walked in a haze across the hospital yard,
It was a bright day.
I wanted it to storm.
The garish sun seemed to mock me
As I curled in the backseat of my father’s car,
Staring at the food I couldn’t eat.
I hadn’t known
“Sick with worry” to be literal.
I haven’t known it since.
I hate that shade of green.

Looking for lost lover's names
in a sea of make-believe.
Name, what is in a name?
Roses and ******* smell the same
no matter what you call them.
Meaning, memory, response,
or the lack thereof.
I was always one to hope
for things already gone.

Here, again, a campaign of confusion.
Assaults of second thoughts
and broken promises.
What we failed to say then,
we're saying now.
But the question of casualties
still remains unanswered.

As I looked out
into the great beyond,
I, the voyager, trapped in doldrums,


Found the soul that had slipped away from me.
My quest ended, I discarded
the gravity-encased form my mother gave me,
Trading it for the light,
The soul had always longed to be clothed in.


And my soul danced,
on the dihcotomic sea of what is,
and what will be,
waltzing across the waves of dreams,
as light is want to do,
whenever it meets water.

I used to wonder
if I was going to die young. Not that I am so familiar with death
but that I could not imagine growing up.
Now, on the cusp of twenty,
the impossible age, in a sixth-grader’s mind,
those stale-******* memories fading fast,
I realize I still can’t think very far past thirty.
I’ve always got one foot in the past.

Sometimes I apologize
to silence
for the wrong
notes

The poetry is coming back.
I can feel it.
Maybe because home is so close,
and the bitter-sweet taste of leaving
is closing in.
Home? Which is home?
Some wandering blood in says wherever my head rests,
clinging to the heart-strings
I've tied round the trees here,
Or the ones I left unraveled
far away.

Nostalgia: It sounds like a disease
And it has infected me.
Worming its way through veins and valves.
I caught it
from robbing the graves of memories.
Trying to gather
the silver linings from long dead moments
dusty laughs
that crumbled in my fingers,
moulding smiles that left spots on my hands
that burned.
out, out **** spot*
I lay down in the fresh earth,
cold, how cold it is.

He offered her forbidden fruit.
She took it.
No questions asked, only glances given.
She sank her teeth into it as if it were a Georgia peach.
It was sweet, but
one taste,
and she knew why God had told her
never to touch it.
She tried to hand it back
and he started to take it,
then threw it back at her,
saying,
she had ruined it.

There are only small pains, now.
Paper cuts, hangnails,
sore arms from trash bags too heavy.
It is strange to be so free.
One grows used to the darkness,
the light, blinding.
I blink, my eyes dry,
I feel my pulse in my lips--
it feels strange.
I stare at the ceiling,
your memory resting on my chest,
lining the gap I want to fill,
but my hands lie empty.

My eyes feel heavy enough
to fall shut
and never open,
eyelids clanging like a tin box lid
with cheap hinges.

My hands feel heavy enough
to fall down
to permanent attention
and never rise,
frozen like the tin soldier
who was lost in the ashes.

My feet feel heavy enough
to fall once more
and never lift again,
bolted, like a tin sign
to a rotting telephone pole.

They closed our eyes,
with the fluorescent lights looking on,
and helping to stuff things into the cracks of our minds.
Filling up the spaces,
where imagination used to dwell,
in quiet villages of thought, all colors and shapes,
we hadn't thought of yet.
There were no more rolling hills and streams of ideas,
only strait backed rows of facts,
that expanded day by day,
stabbing the mind with iron fence posts,
pounded in by the hammer,
of crowded words on glossy pages.
Imagination shattered, and faded,
with each stroke.
They told us they opened our eyes,
but they closed them,
as tightly as their own.

Loneliness is a taste of death
Here I am, dying,
without arms to expire in.
The house is silent, as I drift to sleep,
not eternally,
yet.

I had forgotten how it aches.
Like old men before a storm,
complaining how the weather
makes their knuckles throb.
Here you are,
dredging up the things I buried months ago.
The old ache returning
as the clouds gather.

The red scarf looks best on me.
It's the first time I've gone somewhere alone
here, in months.
It's growing bitterly cold,
I understand why the wind
might hate the human race,
having blown us about for the past million odd years
and finding that we rarely end up in the right direction.
He tugs at my hair, and the clouds
as I troop down the sidewalk,
the cat who walked by herself
I think.
Something like an independent streak
that rarely rears its head.
Might as well make the most of it
while I have the courage.