i love you for your contradictions—
the tuned dissonance that hums
past midnight lips,
brushing my ear when you sleepily
draw me in closer.
i lie in the curve of your heartbeat,
thinking about concrete abstracts,
but mostly about how you warmed
my foot with your hand,
how you seem to smile the most
by the way we walk in time,
and how i always miss you
when i have you.
(i like how we always have to
relearn how to click together,
and how it takes about
thirty seconds, the awkward space between
fingers interlocking.)
you leave me with tear-slicked elbows,
and i hurry our goodbyes.
Oct 9, 2011
Oct 9, 2011 at 3:54 PM UTC
sun-warmed hands and
tongue-warmed teeth;
she chews on a wingless idea,
stilted by an upward momentum.
maybe she doesn’t grow,
but she stretches, expands,
taking entropy with her.
and she knows
(she knows)
that when she’s reached the top,
she’ll be at the bottom,
and the circles
of mind-numbing thought
will bleach her ribs white.
Oct 9, 2011
Oct 9, 2011 at 3:53 PM UTC
you stranger,
you becoming stranger,
your voice the
heart-beat spindle’s threadbare pull,
pulsating in green-light chorus,
washing me in and out of the shore
of an intangible reality
that i think you not only live in,
but that you’ve created for yourself,
cloth of blood and crystalline light
and layer
upon layer
of memory
that may or may not have happened.
i dream of having my own palace in the
inverted sky;
i’d be the taste that
you try to swallow away,
the flickering guilt of
the candle you forgot to blow
out when you left the room—
you left me in the light.
i’d coax that tendril of
half-thought half-baked
slightly-worn
feeling,
weaving it
through the syllables of my fingertips.
the drumming of my hands
across impatient countertops would
keep the time,
and you’d grow in rhythm.
i’d smile,
the smug, gap-toothed knowledge
that comes from molding the inarticulate
summation of
yourself,
you, who i have never met.
our eyes would meet across the infinite
cliff of a space between words,
and that would be enough.
i’d like to be able to leave
the sound of my voice in the
crook of your elbow,
jarring your step as
you try to look past the horizon,
and only see my
tower of
words—
i want to be your babel, baby.
Oct 9, 2011
Oct 9, 2011 at 3:53 PM UTC
this isn’t love.
this is another
addiction.
and that’s what i tell you,
conventional facebook wisdom,
from a mountain range away.
i can see the crinkle of
spontaneity in the folds of the
bouquet you bought her,
the red and gold and pink
of the sunsets i left behind;
they wilted when you put them
in her car while she was at work,
the unspoken knowledge of an
unlocked door,
shutting in a touch of
pollen and hope, dusting her
rearview mirror.
i wonder if she’ll be able to drive and
see clearly.
i know you have an addictive personality,
that you cling and destroy and renew with sadism and intelligence and love,
but this isn’t going to work.
this isn’t going to solve
half a year’s worth of her saying no,
and a year and half’s worth of a repetitive, vicious cycle,
that she was all too right to break out of.
no amount of flowers will bring her back,
even the largest bloom will not be enough to be a
sufficient metaphor for your renewed passion.
all you have left is the receipt of ashes
that you left in the driver’s seat.
Oct 9, 2011
Oct 9, 2011 at 3:51 PM UTC
you cried and i didn’t,
because why would we
ever do anything that
adheres to gender stereotypes?
and even though i wasn’t crying,
i could hear myself talking
in an endless stream of cliches
that pulled me through whatever
eddy of frantic panic
of dislocation
of petrifying disorientation
i was feeling,
and pushed me into a remote
grey
corner,
where i couldn’t feel anything
but how your sobs mixed
with the static of
horrible reception.
(and that was crying enough)
you said
“i don’t know what to do,”
you said
“what should i do?”
and **** me if i knew,
because i always know what to do,
but i’m not you,
but that’s why this has worked
for a year
and six days.
so i sat next to my chemistry textbook
on a rough grey slab of stone,
on a day that seemed like it couldn’t decide
whether to shine or not,
and listened to you
gasp
in air
like the words you had to say
but didn’t want to
were multiplying,
a cancer in your throat
and i wanted to
leave them there,
let you suffocate,
so i wouldn’t have to hear them.
but i’m the rock,
and i felt the rock,
and i couldn’t feel anything else by this point anyway,
so i said what i thought i would have to say,
but what i thought was the product of an
overactive imagination.
and this wasn’t sealable,
this wasn’t something that could be cemented into
the bench under my feet,
holding me and my invisible tears
and my chemistry textbook.
because i’m the rock,
but you’re my rock,
and everything was breaking
into something
that cut.
and you didn’t know,
and i didn’t want you to,
and you asked me,
and i didn’t know,
and you didn’t want to,
and i asked you,
and you smiled again,
and i disconnected in the cold of
a shaken faith.
and sat, and watched the grass grow.
Oct 9, 2011
Oct 9, 2011 at 3:51 PM UTC
i
because instead of slipping away,
i can feel you
stretching away
through the lines of electricity that
used to run from
hand to hand finger to finger
seamlessly clasped and lightning touch
but now, the distinct, archaic
electricity wires;
through the state line that makes
144 miles
2.5 hours in a car with traffic,
3.5 hours in a train with horizons
seem like the years that we spent
not knowing each other;
through the lines of shadow that
keep me up in the middle of the night,
pulling me down when
i’m short enough already, thanks;
through the line that was once binding us,
which was only there to make separate forms
somewhat distinct—
the line which now feels
like us dissolving
thinning,
holes becoming gaps becoming gasps,
then melting into
tarred and feathered feelings,
and the knowledge that even
poetry
can’t make me feel what you felt today.
life line, my ***
ii
some days, i feel
like a ******* camel.
not only because i have to
stumble bleak miles over
thankless tundra under the
blue sky of distinct impossibility
that in reality is heaven on earth,
but in reality doesn’t have your smile;
not only because i have to do this with
memories of you stored
like water in humps—
the way you look when we press up
nose to nose and laugh,
the way you feel like something new
and something never-ending
the way you conduct lightning though my spine
and make thunder sound in my ears
all of which has faded to a distant sloshing;
not only because sometimes
i see a mirage, that
palm tree lake luau oasis,
that glimpse of the curve of your jaw or
whisper of the sound of your voice
that makes me turn around
but is really another sand dune;
but because when i see other couples
with their hands interlocked and their
eyes aligned and their feet in step like
their life is a stage and their world is a musical,
i want to ******* spit.
iii.
but sometimes i realize
that stretching is growth is elasticity;
that because the kinetic momentum of matter
is the fusion of what i want to want
with what i need to need,
it doesn’t matter
because either way,
i can’t complain.
that because i’m at home in the sound of your voice
and because i haven’t been homesick at all, but
lovesick and yousick and
healthier than ever because of it—
it makes me smile whenever, at the end of every conversation, we say:
i love you
i miss you.
Oct 9, 2011
Oct 9, 2011 at 3:50 PM UTC
i can lose myself in your eyes—
no, actually, that’s not true.
i have an excellent sense of direction
(up down around the contours of
your spine,
between the frantic pulls of
your breath,
across yet through the rise and fall of
your chest;
always with the certainty of
you)
though i do usually become waylaid by
crossways,
intersections,
and boulevards;
by unspoken daydreams,
unseen words,
and misplaced thoughts;
by the
fragile temerity
of an allusion at midnight,
and the
convenient paradoxes of
endless space
and finite time.
but you;
you, i can find.
because though i will never be quite able
to steer myself by
stars, portents, or street signs,
i can feel the way across your fingertips
as surely as any sailor
and where the
stars, portents, or street signs
direct, but do not guide
it is your warmth
that means that i will
never
get lost in your eyes.
because i’ll always be
found in your voice,
and the taste of
your touch.
and while i’ll always have to
carry a map
and still have to
stop three times to
reorient
redirect
and ask for directions,
i’m not too worried.
because lost
is a frame of mind,
and found
is a destination
that I am constantly
leaving and arriving;
an infinite loop
wrapped around
your little finger.
Oct 9, 2011
Oct 9, 2011 at 3:49 PM UTC
i could feel the crushed hourglass,
trickling down my hand,
melting my fingers as it
oozed downward with
steady nonchalance.
so i reached upward
to the ageless, abandoned cathedral
of searing blue truth
that pulled the seconds apart.
and i knew
(as my elbow was lost to time)
that i could not move mountains
but with the push of a sigh
i could destroy whorls of sand
into new empires
that with an intake of air
(the rise of my collarbone
disintegrating all the faster)
i could feel the tide
breathing for me
and that was enough
as i dissolved into the impossibility
of something.
Oct 9, 2011
Oct 9, 2011 at 3:47 PM UTC