I feel anguished ; don't know
if that's foolish.
But I'll keep blowing hot and cold if you keep flipping
the switch.

Unlike Narcissus drowning,
As though in a puddle
Of his own courage drought,
Her time she gives away freely.
Like stopping her own gears;
Let it and all her mechanisms
Flow outward.


At night she seeks the glass.
Unspool her hair, she combs
Her musings, the yards she's given
To every inch-worth endeavor.
Generous, her heart and hope spring.
Gray, the world, and short, her time.
And she's never belonged
As truly as she does to her own head.


And in her mirror, there are colors
that dye the glass and allow
the best to shine in,
like stained windows in a church.
Under hers she prays.


Happy you may think the woman
Who sees what she likes under glass.
Would it could be preserved forever.
But who is to bring her flowers?
Who knows what kind to bring?


Which man can give the compliments
she’d most delight to receive?
What rites for each aspect of her visage?
No eyes could flatter like hers.
See in her Goddess Myth any fragility
to stand up to reflect the inner soul.


But you can’t put lungs in the looking glass,
And breathe air into those lungs.
Though she wants to pull
a gender-swapped mirror image
out into the world, her other half
is the man from Backwards Land.
It would have to be the reverse.
Else he'd expect to see his mirror image;
not to be the double of hers.

Thumbs hooked through jean belt loops,

pulling her to you.

You kiss.

Over and over again, you kiss:

so many quick little pecks in a row.

I hope you don't

kiss your mother like that,

but is SHE your mama bird?

It's like you take nourishment

from her kisses.

Is she dropping

food into your mouth?



So greedy,

can't get enough.

Of her time, either.

The odd purity that comes

from being complemented

for the first time this way.

How she leans against your knee,

she's the missing puzzle piece.

The crook of her neck, there,

just there.

The pressure where she uses you

for a chin rest.

During any violent-as-you-wish

T.V. show and

she'd even be

cool to chill with you when

you're with your bro's.

Though alone time is the best.



All that you could ask for,

through hills and valleys

you ride along.

Everything is smooth and firm,

smooth and firm.

Smooth, no hiccup in the road.

Firm is the belief in

the reliability of the course.

They're hot;

the heat

rushes through them,

complete.

Ain't never gonna feel

this way again.

Not with anybody else.

You two could lie in bed all day.



We're making relationship flambe.

A secret recipe of

inside jokes and

somebody finally wanting your ingredients,

lit afire by some mystery combustible.

You'd deny 'til you were hoarse

that it's only flash in the pan.



Until one day, it seems like-

how can you have

all these shared memories,

all this love,

yet it's still as if the person standing there

is barely the same person from before?



No more pulling her frontward or backward

by her belt loops,

always pulling her toward

the pulse of your passion.

But  the beat of love's life, at least,

grows faint, and she threatens

to take you out with it.

He'd seen her raise the gun,

for all the good it did.

A bullet hole in his forehead

And it's like his third eye's crying blood.



He didn't want to see

what he saw too long ago.

And he just delayed their misery.

Do you take your meat rare?

This cut's dripping in disillusion,

the animal neutralized, a dead

bag of blood and bones.

No; you're still

all-too human, though.

Alone in a room, it's all you can do

to remember to breathe.

But that's step one.

The sconce on the wall
for crackling torches left burning for a returning
resents the assumption of infinite patience.
She's attached to an old brick wall;
not by affection, but by habit
and tools of the trade of attachment.
Occasionally-replaced simple screws worked into the bracket.
The wall is as dusty to touch, as divisive
as a tome of records, of laws of old.
The sconce respects history-- wishes more would become antiquity.
Knowing every flame left ardently lit, eventually burns out.
While here she stays.

There are no more bad days.
There are moments
          of ingratitude
          of rage
          of self-pity
          of hatred.
Those do not last.
There are
          friends
          family
          caregivers
          kind strangers.
These are evergreens.
Bad moments need not
become bad days.
The song of life
plays on between them.