Are you sound of mind?
Addicted to dandelions
like the ocean is to ice.
Wait outside the blood bank,
learn how to write dialogue
and make saccharin spines.
My journal is a tangle of spines,
keep an open mind
help me box up my ****** dialogue.
I’ve always been a fan of dandelions
etching paths along the river bank,
streams within the winter ice.
Buckets of camphor ice
relax the notches in spines
as we wait in line at the food bank.
Thoughts of jawbones on my mind,
the taste of dandelions
and organized pre-scripted dialogue.
Backhanded blue dialogue,
counting the vanilla crystals of ice
blowing the smell of cinnamon into floating dandelions.
My hands handle happiness spines
with the peace of mind
of money in the piggy bank.
Let's rob a bank
shooting quiet malleable dialogue
through an altered state of mind.
Your ribs are two sheets of ice
ivy wrapping around our intertwined spines
crumbly blowing breaths of dandelions.
Second hand dandelions
build up in the river bank
muddy trenches around spines
whisper outspoken blue green dialogue.
Three pounds of dry ice,
warm water vapour at the back of my mind
Store buy your dandelions, bear in mind
that the West Bank is covered in ice
and that spines speak their own muted dialogue.
Dec 9, 2014
Dec 9, 2014 at 1:08 AM UTC
I’ve been trying to fall asleep for 17 years
leaving blue imprints of my face on pillow cases
a signature of each dream I’ve had and forgotten.
Take me to church for my medicated tongue
and butterflies on my cheeks,
in a week
I’ll rest my forehead between the pews
on thick books of medical literature
again and again,
pressing a tiny cross into my skin.
I am not a religious person;
my poetry is about the silent h’s in words,
rhetorically questioning rhyme,
sedating my hair into thirds
and braiding my fingers with thyme.
Sacrifice a rib for a sheet of paper,
write me all your recipes,
notes on world history and
a list of pros and cons of living in Berlin.
Onomatopoeias keep me up until
6am
with wide eyes and albums of expired polaroids.
Dilated voices in fluorescent hallways
mix with the whispers of comfortable shoes,
hoping for good news.
After 17 years, my hands are shaky
my kitchen counter has a S-S pillbox
and I love the sound of sleepiness.
Dec 9, 2014
Dec 9, 2014 at 12:51 AM UTC
Your brittle calcium coated voice
slides down my throat like water,
little blue gods of poetry.
Nothing to do but **** and fight.
There’s a run on sentence in my veins
whole flowers framing my bruises.
My bone quiet bruises
wait five miles from your medical voice,
english coastline of veins
covering my anatomy like large bodies of water.
**** yesterday’s fist fight
you left your apologies in poetry.
My alcoholic poetry
a blood orange coated in bruises
a history of last night’s pillow fight
catching religion in your voice.
The swallows splash in water
quiet in my dessicate veins.
Fields of goldenrod veins
make my honorary poetry
a theory of cursive water.
Leave aching vegetarian bruises
on my calloused voice
from tearing open the sun to fight.
A polaroid water fight
rolls around in my open veins
a punctuation of your raspy voice,
hospitalized my skin in poetry.
A reckless consumption of bruises
with a mint leaf in a glass water.
Soft echoes burn across the water
silver scissors in a domestic fight
running away from bruises
and mountains of veins.
My second language is poetry
giving my fingertips a muffled voice.
Empty water pleads with your broken voice,
makes me fight against pleated poetry
and pomegranate bruises tighten in my veins.
Feb 18, 2014
Feb 18, 2014 at 12:17 AM UTC
Sleep is timed to the minute,
my breaths let out lazy smoke
icicles make goose bumps into paragraphs
books written on my arms through yellow mist
bare feet in the morning on my rooftops
counting international planes in the sky.
My migrant bones take to the sky,
each moderate minute
that passes by on my rooftops,
increases the rawness of smoke
like lung-fulls of lemon mist
spewing a nebula of paragraphs.
In the murk of paragraphs
red papery ashes explode into the sky
leaving a cloud of syllable mist.
The last fragile minute
reduces my shivers to smoke,
a winter shell of shoulders on rooftops.
Double exposed film across rooftops
turn silhouettes into paragraphs,
a congregation of vapours and smoke
speaking soliloquies into the sky.
I am minute,
dissipating into canary mist.
Billows of ocean mist
make my fingers melancholy on rooftops
where a tidal minute
freezes salty foam paragraphs
a vacation from the sky,
my mossy perch and violet smoke.
Heliotropic smoke
spirals against dense mist;
fine rain blinding the sky
soaking lemonade rooftops.
My bed of paragraphs
curls into an illegible minute.
The lilac smoke in my eyes is almost minute.
A mustard mist wrinkles the paragraphs,
like the purple sky dropping over the rooftops.
Feb 16, 2014
Feb 16, 2014 at 11:46 PM UTC
The deep sighs of fall
send chills across the daisies.
My compass is sick
and there’s a sense of urgency in my eyelashes,
feeling around for the blisters on my skin
searching for a bed to sleep.
Facets of sleep
encourage the rain to fall,
cold weather raising capillaries under my skin.
I wrote the history of the Holocene era on daisies,
microscope lenses tickling my eyelashes;
dim lighting makes me home sick.
My mind is sick,
I dream of oceans in my sleep,
medicine labels printed on my eyelashes
pill bottles coloured like fall.
Tattoos of purple fringed daisies
cover my shoulders like skin.
Teeth full of apple skin;
asking God how not to be sick,
wondering if a sacrifice of daisies
will get my blood to sleep.
My hair is like the leaves during fall;
I hope I get to keep my eyelashes.
There’s snow in my eyelashes,
landscapes of frost form on skin
the cold air begins to fall,
I decide to call in sick
preferring to hide in a hot sleep
until my breaths sprout purple daisies.
How to grow Gerber daisies,
without losing my eyelashes?
My fingernails are full of sleep,
hot tea grasps at my paper skin.
The panacea for the sick
is a perfect concentration of wool sweaters and fall.
You eat daisies in the fever of fall.
Through my eyelashes I am morally sick,
but yesterday I finally let sleep settle into my skin.
Feb 16, 2014
Feb 16, 2014 at 11:45 PM UTC
You have stars in your hands
and you hold them like grenades.
The boats tattooed on your thighs
spread out like finger placements of the G major chord.
Synthetic drugs make chains
tying your first and second fingers
around the mechanically rolled paper,
canvasing your throat like too much sea water,
each breath as rough as the veins in your arms.
Close your eyes
there’s pollen in the air
spread out like imperfections on the skin of an apple.
Solar countries keep foreign coins
sewed into their cotton sails,
they put their money into the navy.
You have a comet in your circulatory system
leaving bright spots under your skin
a reminder to gather the sunshine back under your eyelashes.
Hand soap in ketchup packets
make bubble bath islands
and unhappy lips.
You’re as talkative as a poem and
as expensive as a poppy
with homemade constellations on your back,
staining your lumbar muscles with cherries.
I can’t wash off your fingerprints
with my favourite shampoo.
I’ll swim across the Georgia Strait,
dodge your dinghies and
make a home in handmade ships
where I’ll practice erasing scars from my arms
and washing the soap from my hair.
Aug 25, 2013
Aug 25, 2013 at 5:04 PM UTC
Tighten your braces with yellows,
UV lights in police cars,
your high socks and new crewnecks,
steep all your worries in the cellar air.
The kitchen crew necks you,
steps over your extra vertebrae on the floor.
Exchange Red Sox caps and collaged cards for
iron oxides and spare joints,
an apology gift for the knees of a Titan.
Gilt neckties and stockings
hard hits over first base,
infrared silhouettes waving goodbye
slip on the steep porch stairs.
Your personal marching bands
sleep in shopping carts.
Your postcards lost in the Andes
written in purple pen --
everything’s smells like guilt.
Harts stagger behind
stags that hope to tiptoe around your toes,
scouting the suites in South America.
Back roads hastily swept under dining room chairs.
Necklaces of burned out light bulbs,
players sock the suited callers.
My bird house is empty.
Your world map is crumpled,
stuffed into the left ventricle of my heart.
Knaps of your wrist bones
fill the endnotes of my biography.
Bottlenecked bus loops and
windsocks left deflated in broom closets.
Your left hand in my kitchen sink,
catches my pressed shirts,
your clothesline melts into the sidewalk like lightning.
Bracelets on marble sculptures.
After you, I need a nap.
Littoral instructions spelled out in sand dollars.
Purple sunflower seeds caught in my turtleneck,
ghosts of eyelashes begin
to whisper wishes,
sockets for wrenches and ankles.
Blue hair braces for the midnight smiles,
the low tide of flowers,
the daily newspaper full of ocean currents,
your lips were too literal.
Lumbar dimples and goose bumps,
the rubbernecking waiter waited for the lights
rubbing his eyes.
Your playful dialogue
makes my plate shake.
Your safety is never on,
eyebrows marking my fifth disappointment.
I usually hate piano solos,
your voice is unstable, charred lumber.
Mince the pages of the dictionary
to make kindling for your irises.
Necklines defined as jade stamps
at the bottoms of the Chinese paintings
above last year’s birthday card.
Connect the dots to see the ruins of Rome,
your arms after the final battle,
crude stitches on undone sweaters.
Your pockets still full of dinner mints.
Canvass the imprint on the inside of
your leg from where the stitching folds over,
your jeans, unwashed in my laundry hamper.
Still overflows from knee socks and potted plants.
Microwaves compressed into my glass of water
the high tide seashells in your pantry facing
your ego in mason jars on shelves.
You’re tired of white board marker promises,
your skin a poorly cleaned canvas.
Jun 21, 2013
Jun 21, 2013 at 12:56 AM UTC
This is the machine.
Tucked under necklaces, poppies and daffodils
calligraphic fingertip Xs
hurry across pockets.
Thursday morning job postings
markers on construction paper windows
exhausted by making parts.
Keep weddings in thunderstorms
to hide the sound of windmills in chests,
bittersweet directions to ticking clockwork.
Carbonated water can’t convince summer to stay,
musical breaths and tulip footsteps
remind me of the gears in my knees.
Always buy wallets used
daylily bank notes folded into stairwells,
the heels of my socks.
Blue collars in ochre wheelbarrows
soaking next to the white ones.
We are quiet machines.
With cogs in our wrists
battery powered bone and sinew.
Baby’s breath white in our hair,
tiny bunches piled into collar bones or concave stomachs.
You have stars in your hair
whispering in manufactured voices
to pull out your eyelashes.
Consumed by the concept of concepts
on ravine park benches,
marred with newspaper labyrinths
smelling of rolled up sleeves.
Hand held gummy bears
prompt me to check my fluid levels,
bubbly orchids in my left palm.
Sugar intakes and patterned pants
hide homemade pulses.
This is the machine.
Jun 1, 2013
Jun 1, 2013 at 12:14 PM UTC
May I write a Shakespearian sonnet on
the square inches of skin
between your thumb joint and elbow?
I’m a pretty good storyteller,
I can narrate in blank verse if you wish.
Can I write poetry on your spine?
Up and down in broken haikus,
tankas quilting along the curve of your sides.
Perhaps a sestina?
So be it.
I can work bay leaves into tea cakes.
May I write alliterations across your toes,
over finger bones and broken knuckles?
I have enough form poems to
paint my walls a matte black.
Gloppy ink blobs,
carnation stamps,
over raised red lines of a villanelle.3
Can I write poetry on your stomach?
I have soft ballad-dipped brushes
that leak cinnamon sugar.
Acrostic biographies written to a jazz tune,
papier-mâchéd into a handmade piñata.
Spider web hair pins
left in the bathroom sink spell out
another useless cinquain.
May I write a rondeau on your calves,
rising up into your knees?
Epitaphs in your running shoes
make limericks out of the hail in your back yard.
Don’t try super gluing petals back onto stems,
they’ll fall apart eventually.
Poetry is written on you like paper.
Jun 1, 2013
Jun 1, 2013 at 12:14 PM UTC
The day you leave daisies in my pocket
is the first time I wore proper pajamas.
Right-handed scissors paint
with matching lip gloss,
attempting to stick words together.
My hands lay limply next to a wine glass
containing nothing but grape juice,
unhappy compromises.
Everything felt pinched and blue.
Last night I decided to write stories on my skin
with little holes in the paper,
nineteen socks under my bed.
I tried to remember the rain,
why it was lovely.
I ended up with wet shoes,
the smell of deserted food court
and secrets billowing from cigarette stubs.
Arizona breezes
carry the taste of hushed whispers,
making phone calls in the place of poetry.
The idea of pheasants,
tiny wrists
black ink crisscrossing,
hurried ‘X’s overlapping.
Flowers grow from stagnant air
Minted antibiotic breaths.
Heart monitors printed in newspapers,
your armada of pre-sharpened pencils
accidentally drip into coffee mugs.
Autopsies knit together,
authors of the curve of your spine.
You keep myths in glass jars
with intricate wire lids.
Why do we question the recipe for battle scars?
Apr 24, 2013
Apr 24, 2013 at 10:28 AM UTC