I lived a childhood of dirt:
my beginning and end, my friend, my
frontier. Dirt was the reason why
when other kids were always sick, my antibodies
made me a demigoddess, a mud-pie,
sand-cookie, dirt gourmet
crunching lightly-rinsed carrots wiggled
straight from the ground.
It never hurt, never hurt at all.

Warm dirt under my knees and hands,
my nails blackened, feet buried like I
could root myself in the soil -- I was lettuce
with dirt at the center of each lacy skirt.
Horseradish, deep in the ground and bitter,
wanting to become something sweeter, a new
tree or rosebush or better yet a veggie,
like the wild dirt-skinned potatoes
I dug up in the yard.

But tubers don’t have moms who give
dirty looks and shake their heads,
examine your hair and your nails.
She sighs at the dark stain of your
feet, and banishes you
to a white tub, where she scrubs
the back of your neck, muttering
“Dirt, dirt, dirt,” as if
she doesn’t know what you are made of.

So give me the dirt, because I know my onions.
Always digging for gossip, flipping up
the neighborhood skirt, curious whispers
the way cornstalks share their childhood
tales before being tilled down,
becoming rich, dark dirt.
Ashes to ashes, I recognize some
for what they are, just fertilizer
for the imaginations and vibrations of others.

I may be half dirt but don’t
treat me like it, full of grit and
covered in sand from my hands to
my elbows. But what I am won’t
put up with your bullshit. Dirt is
a mother, to feed and flourish, dirt
is a woman much like me, and you
will never know the dirt under my
fingernails the same way I do.

I have been living in this apartment for 9 months
and there is a pink tree that I never noticed until this morning.
it reminds me of your lips
                                your tongue
                                   your nipples
it is hidden behind the leafy green of trees that survive the winter
and it only blossoms in Spring
and I am willing to bet
it only blossomed last night while we were kissing.
that tree is our tree, it grew in 4 hours
sunk its roots into the ground when I finally felt your skin again.
grew branches when your long fingers and chalk dust knuckles wrapped themselves around my ribcage.
buds sprouted when we fell into the lost worlds of our eyes
and flowers bloomed with every kiss.
(4 hours is enough to grow a tree when love is the gardener.)

there is a vibrancy to the world today
somehow even grey skies light up the world
and cigarettes taste sweeter
but the cold is still too much
and inside, my apartment is permeated with your smell
I want to bottle it and save it up
snuff for lonely days
because what keeps me going is not marketable
which I sometimes forget, because sometimes in love
you believe that everyone looks at your love the same way you do
an image of Perfection
memories of perfection linger in this house and it feels like
morning will last forever
but I wish that last night had lasted forever,
grown an orchard of pink trees so tall & thick the blossoms
pressed against the windowpane
so when you had to leave the petals would pick you up and carry you home
a hundred and eighty-five miles is a long way to depend on petals
so I'll thread my veins and stitch them together
(because of your love my blood is strong enough) & when you get home
O-positive 98.6 degrees will soak the petals into the ground
and up will sprout a pink tree
so you can look up and think of me
and missing each other might get a little easier
                  (if) absence makes the heart grow fonder

You, the warm breeze upon my cheek,
I , the cool touch of frost on your skin.
You, the only one I seek;
and I your only sin.
Brighter than the largest star,
Sweeter than the tea I drink,
even close your love seems so far,
only while you’re near can I clearly think
You set my heart on fire,
while in these memories I see,
love is the souls purest desire,
and pain its loyal devotee.
To love you is to kill myself slowly,
till the creatures of death consume me wholly.

I told a man that I did not know much about Pride & Prejudice
mostly because I had none,
he laughed and gave me packet of Earl Grey tea.

I wish all men did this,
all women too. I think there should be more free herbs
that you can add honey or sugar to,
I think that would make everyone’s day better and sweeter.

stripes of dawn sift through the grey departing night,
and in my home, behind those rays of dust,
furniture warms.
the freedom i love will soon be claimed by an incessant morning phone.
my heart numbs, longs for the kindness, constant kindness of the night

the music of my pulse already starts to fade,
a weight sets in, invisible grimace of so many trailing thoughts unraveled now,
to bear until the darkness-swilling reach of soul can span again...

would i fly at brightened glass in fractured urges,
bolstered yet adrift in any day's torrential memes?
rage at seeming machination's constant interruption of my highest rarity of living well?
or smile at the herdlike expectation's threat to condescend,
and at least scour remnants of the search undone... throughout the day
insufferable choice of final future origins
the mail arrives,
my forehead stops to wonder at the door,
and at that pang of hunger

running, overrun, the mind churns night in such sweet shadow shifts!
to fall, legless and dissolve into the rising light..
as if a Noh play were being heckled through to end by gaudy ads
to jolt us bridgeless from that subtle world
and wander long on lethe banks of noisome blare.
at times i stroll this nowhere stranding here, pretend, and gaze from hiding,
between a wincing coffee swill
imagined easeful face of signs,
"easy as a gentle summer wind..."
tolerant to all, to blow a "selfless" stillness into me
to wave, and smile --breathe a blanket on acuter truths
with which i meet the day enwrapped.

but quietly  i wait... for Time to die:
an hourglass to shatter in the instant of eternity!
and birthe anew each 3 am, create anew--
those  kisses,  frozen  birds  of  static  bliss  become
a moulded wax to shape the plenum love as roaming peace,
darkness-rest to calm a pointless labor,
abate the drift into an unwalled corner's only inward exit--
as whisper hands can cradle nescience
such, that grains become a world,
in which invented seas are sweeter than the toxic real
whose bitterness a cherishing of death unveils awry,
or right as winter dust.
i yearn in flight and add to fullness,
find fullness once again
to hover equipoised at love's encrusted center,
where pain gives way to peace i cannot have.
if i would have this other 'purest' love,
and for instance find the meaning once again in wartime's bated negligence--
as in a perfect silence wind can brush the lips with all of life's aroma--
and as a gentle fire smouldered long,
at Spring, ignites within the splay of tender leaves--
so archetypal solitude of being beings manifolded one, i may fulfillment find...

i may go find myself alone now,
or swagger to an ancient drinking song,
or fall into those evening arms,
to find abated also, idols of the heart in each
for what the greater heart amends...
all for yearning better worlds
the pain has sent me reeling prone--
curling at complacent murmurs,
coos of love to torment all without
wherein i wallow, fallen from all heights,
absurd escape, removed---surrounded still
by so-called metalove, abject phantasmal swoon
i grit my teeth against,
as heaving sand would send the shore to sea and drown nostalgia evermore,
as only total extrication serves to quell an everpresence such as this,
ringing in the twilit dew,
or starlight whirl--
or inverse in a heedless curse--
horizons cease in this expanse
surging at the birth and death of things