people say
their love burns like fire,

but mine burns like ice
which much more suits my desire.

the birds stopped singing some time ago and
i can't remember when they stopped but
that seems to be the pattern these
days and there's a candle lit that's
sitting precariously on the
corner of my bed and
somewhere in my
mind i hope that
something will
catch on fire
and this
**** hole
will
burn

d
o
w
n

i miss having somebody...
but i don't miss having you.

we spent all day at the river
you, me, and carl
it was the first real day of spring
and it was the last weekend before
the library would eat away at our sanity
it was the first morning in months  
where i could not find a single cloud
and the space above me was simple and blue
and the sun was good
and the river was laughing
and so were we
and even as your nose peeled
and my eyes stung
the river stones were a little lighter
and so was my chest
and you and i fell asleep in the van on the way home
wet and sun-tired

the warmth of the sun
butter in my eyes
a shuddered relief
with everyone of your sighs

the passion of the sun
flames that swallow
burn me from the inside
and leave me hollow

you ask me why i'm not angry
you ask me when it began
but honey i'll tell you,
it's hard to hate the dying man

you ask me why i still love him
you ask me how i can
but baby i'll tell you,
it's hard to hate the dying man

do you think i'm happy?
i just wanna know,
have i been good?
put on the right show?
do you think i'm happy?
have i smiled enough today?
have i laughed enough,
gave all my care away?
do you think i'm happy?
because no one seems to ask
what's going on inside my head,
what's beneath the mask.
do you think i'm happy?
please, god, just say no
because if you don't notice,
i'll know that i'm alone.

once upon a time
in a land far away
there was a girl
who wished upon a star
who fell through a book
who dove to the bottom of the sea
who touched the moon
who flew among the dragons
who called down the thunder
and lightning
and wind
who held up the sun

who had a life full of beginnings and middles
and a chapter in between the two
and never seemed
to have her
story
end


but what becomes of a full life if it has no ending?

the way the words die on my lips,
the way my stomach flips,
when you grab me by my hips.

what a way to live

me
        and my soul
                                 and your skin

i know i am not good
i hear it in your sighs
hear it in your heavy feet
see it in your tired eyes

i know this and more
i  know and i try
i'll stay up all night
fix the wings, make it fly

i know your hate
your resentment is sincere
i am not good
i am the reflection you fear

dear mom, i know
i am not good
i hate and i love
far more than a daughter should

a single twinkling cello string
echoes through the night
or perhaps that is just the grasshoppers
with their orchestra of breezes and rattling leaves
the sky surrounds me
and only a thin cotton string
ties my floating body to the earth
my heavy heart a magnet to the warm dirt
the stars hum and reverberate
and my vision of the heavens ebbs and flows
like a roll of film with the pieces cut out
and only the moon remains sharp
as if it is only a hop and a skip from my eyes
as if just maybe
if i stretch my fingers far enough

i could reach out and touch nirvana.

there's a boy
but he doesn't know i exist
and maybe i'm okay with that
there will be another
some day
and maybe he will see me
like no one else has

i smoke
                and i drink

'*** i thought it would help me not to think . . .

but here i am
                         after several shots

thinking all my anxious thoughts.

i walk my dog alone at night
so i can see the sky better
i walk with him and he doesn't much mind
in that serene dark of december

a middle-aged suburban mother clutches
her purse with a shiny red claw and
a child in ***** overalls chews
on the last half of an apple green jolly rancher
a twenty something shows off
the tattoo on her arm and it
reads
remember that you will die

the mother clutches her purse tighter

the child gives a green stained smile

and i'll read more poetry,
and take the dog on a walk,
watch Peter at his computer,
and the bird in the pine tree,
and i'll just continue,
doing nothing
                             important
                                                  at all.

isn't this the life?
isn't it?

i don't much think about time until i am with you.
until i am with you,
time drifts by like lazy mid-summer clouds,
the occasional tardy spring breeze sweeping them
slowly across a blue sky in a steady handed brush.
it cruises in the right hand lane on highway 101
as the truck horns call out in unison
and i am impatient in the passenger seat.

i want the big things to happen.
i want to pass from one state to the next
at a hundred miles per hour
and i want to feel big enough.

i don't much think about time,
but now that i am with you,
i must because
your laugh seems to stir the air into
grey and shifting images that
flit and disappear before i have painted them,
and the car speeds up and we have arrived before
my tongue has time to form the word hello
and i always thought that time was my one true god but
it is clear now,
time doesn't hold a candle to you.

let yourself be killed dear child
let yourself go blind
let your love get close enough
to stab you from behind

let yourself be killed my dear
let yourself bleed out
let your blood stain the Earth
your heart be cut from doubt

let me die, my love, my shield
my blood is mine to give
let me be killed, i plead of you
for to die is to live

crawling above me,
there is a bug.
he could be an ant
or maybe a small spider,
but he doesn't much mind
what I call him.
he's above me in the sycamore tree,
and I am below him,
and the sun is starting to disappear
against the horizon.
he walks furiously to and fro,
my unnamed bug,
and he seems to be saying
"look up! look up!"
"there is so much MORE!"
so I stare at the stained glass sky above me,
feel the wet earth pressing against my back,
the grass whispering around my ankles,
smell the eastern wind taking its nightly stroll,
and I turn to say thank you to my little bug,
but he has already gone.
so I say it to the sky instead:
"thank you. thank you."
"there IS so much more"

i wish i could have been a reason for you to stay.

my favorite radio station is static
i find the melody fills the space
even when i dial up and down
a song never takes its place

turns out there was a limit
to the music that i could play
i wished and i got and the songs disappeared
i thought it better that way.
i thought what i needed was static and gray.
perhaps i should have made the music stay.

i have many saved drafts
my fellow poets
and i believe you may have some too
at least
if you are a poet like me
there are many kinds of poets
for we seem to be incapable
of staying in a box
but if you are a poet like me
you have more drafts than published works
and your drafts are alive
and breathing
shaky breaths
in and out
trying to keep their heart beating
to stay written for a few moments longer
before their maker
presses delete

my poems call me cruel
and i know i am
poems are not meant to hide in the dark
even if they are cheesy and childish and revolting
an infestation of misplaced and uncertain words

even then
poems should be heard

sometimes i wish i was a different kind of poet
sometimes i wish i wasn't cruel
sometimes i wish i was kind
to my poems
and perhaps to myself

the world needs more dancing fools.

and she soon found that she could no longer distinguish between absence of another and absence of self

death is not a considerate creature

he takes what he wants
not just for spite but also for pleasure

death is a cruel comedian

the more you observe his acts
the more his irony becomes apparent

they never told me that my sadness could be physical
but this past year I started to understand
sadness can shape-shift
it hides in the ***** laundry
the empty shower
the matted hair
the bitten and bloodied nails

it's crafty
and smart
and it seeps into the unchanged bed sheets
the closed window and stale air

some people can't understand
that what they see is sadness
all they know
is that it's not very pretty

I used to play
in a great big band,
I say.
the others laugh,
they can’t understand
what it was like
to yawn and stretch and
play
in a great big band
on a misty morning field,
just beginning
to feel
the sun in your bones,
a dose in your chest
of something greater,
a golden dragon high,
the euphoria of
a musician
with no grand dreams,
just
a great big band
and the Morning Sun.

if i died tomorrow,
the many poems stuck in my head would be left unwritten,
and the lyrics hidden in my guitar would remain without a tune.
the "i love you”s i carried to and from school would be covered in regret like thick dust,
almost as heavy as the chains made of “i’m sorry”s concealed in side pockets of my backpack.
the kisses I saved for the right moment would remain in my desk drawer,
melting into a gooey mess of doubt and hesitations.

if i died tomorrow,
i would beg for more time,
and for that I am ashamed.

i wish
             for many things

         i dream
                           of one or two desires

                       and i hope
                                              for nothing at all

there is a quote from a movie i love
and it talks about being perfectly happy
the main character has completed her arc
she has finished her great journey
and now
she is perfectly happy

perfect happiness

i cannot claim i know of its existence
it might not live in my reality
i think that i am one of those people
who must venture out alone
and might never return
might never finish my journey
never reach perfect happiness
but perhaps i will reach fulfillment
and i think that would be good enough for me
good enough that I may be at peace
at last

i don't think i believe in love anymore
it's just a transaction of brief attraction
it's what the poets write of
what the poets dream of
what hides behind every locked door
they find themselves standing in front of

but dreams aren't real
and thoughts are deceiving
love is a fleeting negotiation

but here we are
still wondering why all the great love stories end in tragedy

grandma don’t remember much
but she looks at the picture on her
dresser
says she’s never seen joseph
hold mary like that before
ninety-one years without tenderness

i lie on the grass like jesus
ankles crossed and arms spread
hands open towards something
like tenderness

the mothers that come in
seem to have a fire missing
somewhere behind their eyes
their laughs are always piercing
their smiles, rotten
their hatred festers and boils below their skin
hatred for their jobs or their husbands
or their screaming kids
hatred for their brunches and cocktail hours
or their *** life
hatred for their absent fathers or mothers or both
hatred for their marriage
for their husbands that got to have both dreams
hatred for their bodies and minds ruined in carrying children
hatred that they were never told that they had a choice
that there were different paths to happiness
hatred for the box that they were shoved into with a smile on their withering faces

when i take their order at the counter
i see it all
i see this and more

and it frightens me deeply

i am seventeen soon
two days from sunday to be exact
i don’t know how i feel about growing old
i still feel like i am waiting to be young
will it always feel like this?
there were days when seventeen seemed
so unattainable
i didn’t plan to still be
but i’m here i guess
seventeen
how odd

it's past midnight now
the house is silent except for the creaking wind
groaning softly through the rusted vent in my floor
the window is cracked open
i can never sleep with it closed
even though the frost bites at my toes
but i like to hear the sighing of the trees
and the cold reminds me that i exist
my headphones buzz the harmonies of strings
the sound will soon leak into my ears
and drown out my incessant overthinking
or so i wish
i close my eyes and hope that sleep will take me

i would write just a line or two

i think it could be that i had much less to say
or maybe i didn't know how to say it
or perhaps i didn't feel as deeply
or cry as desperately
or smile as sweetly

sometimes i wish for my shorter poems
but most of the time
i am happy

i have grown

there's a wizard who lives down the street
who vowed to fix the hole in my chest
but he filled it with dirt and dark and dust
and told me he tried his best

suburban tears
followed me here
tropical days
cloudy grey haze
hot summer breeze
take this heart please

there was a time
when i was enough for myself . . .
and i do not remember the exact moment
when i decided that i was no longer good.

the man at the bus stop used to write me short poems
while downing a glass of liquor

but he smashed the glass
and now he writes long poems

somehow he's gotten much sicker

It was a good life.
For sure, there was no doubting that.
there were parties,
and fun and excitement,
and adventures and lovers and affairs,
and everything anyone had ever wanted.

But that was before.
That was before he met her and his life changed,
and he no longer wanted to aimlessly
but charmingly stumble through the rest of his life.
He was so busy running from one place to the next that before he could stop himself,
she was gone.

And now,
all that was left was a memory.

the poets are up late at night
we love to see the stars
something is hidden in them we believe
and we spend forever looking upward
trying to find what we are missing
trying to find the last puzzle piece
trying to find
something
amid the velvet expanse of the night

there is a boy
and we meet in his car
and he has a sweet smile
and we go pretty far

there is another boy
and we sometimes lock eyes
for just a burning second
i can't tell if they lie

and when we brush past
i swear i feel thunder
just a slight breeze
but it brings me under

there is an air in his ways
and i struggle to not stare
i long to hear his laugh
to run my hands through his hair

and although we pass briefly
although it wouldn't seem
the latter has more heat
he's the one in my dreams

my grandfather didn't speak much
he barely asked any questions
besides a quiet "how are you?"
he sat in his chair with his newspaper
a grimacing statue
the center of orbit in the house

my grandfather gave me icecream
without me asking
a clinking bowl with sweet vanilla
would appear next to me
and no words would be spoken

my father gives me icecream
without me asking
a clinking bowl before he fades back into the shadows
and i think i'm starting to understand
how we learn to love

i hope i will do more
than give someone a bowl of icecream

i do not kiss you in my dreams
i do not feel the heat of your breath
nor smell the honeyed perfume of your sheets
nor taste the bitter salt of your skin

i do not dream of falling asleep in your arms
tracing the silhouette of your body with my fingertips
and i do not feel the of the burning of your palms
nor hear the sound of your breathy sighs
nor savor the smoky baritone of your laughter
nor drink in the lavender of your warmth

i do not dream of this
i do not dream at all

there was once a man
with a pocket full of rainbows
and some were sharp
and some were warm
and some were in between
but they were all beautiful
and the man would pull them out
one at a time
and feel their reflection in his chest
and he would know he was alive

but one day he reached into his pocket
and found that a color was gone
but he had so many more colors
so he thought nothing more of it
and felt the reflection of his almost full rainbow in his chest

yet more and more colors went missing
and his rainbow got smaller
and thinner
and its reflection was not so bright as it once was
and one day he reached into his pocket
and all that was left was blue
and his chest felt hollow
for without the other colors in the rainbow
the reflection of blue was nothing more than grey mist

but blue was all the man had
so he held it tighter to his chest
and decided to never return it to his pocket
out of fear that he might loose the only color he had left

so the mist surrounded him
and dyed his skin grey
and turned his eyes into cold diamonds
and fashioned his feet into stone
and the man was afraid
afraid to let go of his blue
and discover
that it was the only thing left
anchoring him to the earth.

for now i'm a wallflower
i've run out of words to say
seems so long since i felt new
for now it's all the same

for now i'll keep my heart whole
no need to answer the phone
seems so long since i took chances
for now i'm fine all on my own

for now i'll keep on moving
there's bound to be an upswing
for now is not forever
who knows what tomorrow will bring

and i can feel it pecking underneath my skin
with prickling feathers that reek of disgust
its wings are stagnant
and all it can do is keep

pecking

pecking

pecking

and it laughs at those who don't know better
and it scorns the ones that think they do
and it shows me the disease it has spread
but i am too melancholic to **** it
and its feeble wings sag around my heart
but it never tears them free
so it just screams
                                  and screams
                                                         ­       and screams