I feel myself full
Of beautiful things
My fingers hum electric
Songs of spark and secret
The taste of forgetting your dreams
Like being hungry
Like the back door is always open
And the moths fly at my eyelids, because they know
My fingers hum electric
And I feel the way the sun is
But darling you are thin as the moon
Shining back at me, how you turn
The light in me to heat
Too far away to touch, but our bodies always know
The smooth rush of flesh on flesh like a world
Between us
Still I reach for you again
Apr 28, 2015
Apr 28, 2015 at 12:39 PM UTC
The sky turning gold in the west
Is the color of the place below
Your belly button
That tells you
You want
And when the winter wind goes soft
And the days grow warm and long
We take all our clothes off
And lay burning at the sun
Don't worry, child
The things you want will come
Like comets and hurricanes and nothing
Like you thought
And the best way to get to the places you're trying to
Touch, so you can touch
All the beautiful that you want to touch
Is to get rid of everything you think
You own
And the best way to find
The fire burning through your bones
Is to lay yourself bare
And shine gold back at
The sun
Apr 22, 2015
Apr 22, 2015 at 10:01 PM UTC
There is a chord at the center of me, braided
Of all that I've been, am, or even will be.
And I am built around it, eye
The I that you see.
I don't know what it is that you're trying to hold
When you hold onto me.
But I think you should know at least, what I'd like to be
A reminder, and not a rope
A door, but not the whole house.
My love is a thousand separate sentences
Perfect in their rhythm and their grace.
They do not know each other, each
Is a sovereign story
With its own shape and taste.
Moments outside of time and place,
Pressed into the page.
Like the night you met me at the door of the bar
You filled the whole space.
And I did not look away, though I could not remember your name
I stood still in your gaze, it was full
Of words outside of time and place.
When we said goodbye
I curled myself into your collarbone
A lover's embrace,
And remembered your name.
This
Is the shape of my love
Brief moments of grace, living
Outside of time and place
Pressed
Into the page.
Apr 6, 2015
Apr 6, 2015 at 3:22 PM UTC
It is all of value.
The days when I am wrought through with tired fear, days like bogs,
Bed, a big dark hole I cannot lift my body from.
The days I forget myself, days I can't get comfortable inside my body So, restless, I shift and slump and hide it away,
Afraid that I am defined by it,
Defined by the way it is sometimes unbearable to be in it.
It's okay. Sometimes it's hard to be here.
Sometimes I get lost in helpless, exhausting anger at the way
I can still fall into the same old holes after everything,
Even after it all.
But it's okay.
It is all of value.
Maybe I didn't know what I was getting into when I chose this life,
Maybe I just knew that I needed to be here, this way, this place,
This time, in a place and time defined by place and time.
Where I was before was not like this, so of course it's been hard,
Hard like
Being something I didn't remember I was inside of something I didn't know how to be.
But it's also been a gift, being so new to all this
I don't have to pull the roots of time out of me,
Don't have to peel back the sticky dead spiderweb layers of history.
I can take what I need and give everything I can.
I can write my own path,
Walk through all the doors I allow myself to see.
I can do my work, work my love, sketch my heart across this life.
And really, the beauty of it all is breathtaking, blinding.
Beauty like sitting in the park, like the first rain of spring
A sweet fruit held loose in the sky, sun hanging halos through the clouds,
On a hill with sisters, sisters singing songs to the people passing by while two young boys play behind us,
Shy shadow dancing in the background
Without admitting they are dancing,
Disguising it in whoops and leaps and clumsy limb-ridden grace
Until they are accidentally in front of us,
Until we ask them to sing, until they sit and sing,
We are made of sound, together we are music.
Beauty like how every ordinary moment is filled with extraordinary perfection,
Just waiting to be seen, sang, heard, danced.
Beauty being the fiber of reality, waiting to be felt.
Beauty like that.
Mar 13, 2015
Mar 13, 2015 at 2:06 AM UTC
When I go I will go far
I'll follow the sun from the riverbed of my childhood home
To places where the mountains hold no snow
I will sing my freedom song to the birds along the road
I'll braid sweetgrass through my hair
Cup my hands around the moonbeams
And sleep out in the air
When I go I will be
The stars in my own eyes
Wool blankets, blue crickets, battered books, tall trees
I will be strong legs and bitter tea
The climbing of the mountain for the diving to the spring
I will be art out on a blanket and poetry sold for free
Abandoned cabins and agates on the beach
Cold water in the morning, apples eaten to the core
I will be anywhere I need
I will be everything I see, and then a little bit more
When I go, I will be
The sun in my own eyes, the sand beneath my feet
The ocean in a cup, for it takes salt to make me clean
I'll be the moss on every tree, a moving prayer on folded knees
Whispering bliss, singing praise, thank you for this day
Thank you for the sun, my heart, the sea
When I go, I will go free
Jan 29, 2015
Jan 29, 2015 at 8:35 PM UTC
Your voice is like a snakebite
If that snake had smoked a thousand cigarettes
And only spoke Spanish, or Italian, I never could tell
If it had hands
That were always covered with dirt, rough like rocks in the river
And its venom were smoke made out of honey
Your voice is like a snakebite, I can feel it in my blood
Your voice is like a snakebite
I want to **** the poison out
Apr 17, 2014
Apr 17, 2014 at 6:17 PM UTC
Today, we do not have a panic attack,
Because we've learned how to sit, how to breathe.
Today, we walk on the shore of the vastness of humanity.
With our eyes, we drink up the sea.
In yellow kitchens we sip wine with our grandmothers,
Toast to safe travels and the soft passing of time.
Today, we are not tied to anything but the beat of our own hearts,
We owe this world no debts
And we have no excuses left to hide behind.
By now, we've learned to pray to the trees,
The moon,
And the sea.
Tonight, we pray that we might sleep.
Mar 13, 2014
Mar 13, 2014 at 1:11 AM UTC
I don't take up a lot of space
I am only a little bag of my own histories
White cloth tied with thin red strings
My little bag, full of my little things
All around are a thousand different stories
And the world, it is a very big place
Mar 13, 2014
Mar 13, 2014 at 12:31 AM UTC
I like the thought
of the sweet sound of breathing.
I like the breadth
of time spanning shoulders, tanned hands
and sunshine on irises.
In the sun you can be more than what you are,
just like in the dark.
I like the thought
of a lover to roll through me,
like an anchor or an avalanche, a new start.
I imagine I'd like the taste of devotion.
I imagine it would taste like the the ocean and
sound just like waves crashing-
a paralyzing undoing, rewriting the land.
I like the thought of making love like art,
but the sun can be cruel
and things fall apart in the dark.
So I think
I like rain the best,
the way it makes the leaves sing
and my eyelashes cling.
No, I never could complain about the rain.
Mar 5, 2014
Mar 5, 2014 at 11:31 PM UTC
This is what it means to be out to sea
If you fall in she will eat you
And she'll spit you back out as driftwood and pebbles
To make sure you know
That nothing can live without eating the dead
New willows sprout from decayed redwood trees
And if you fall down the ground here will eat you
And spit you back out as a fern or a bloom
Of lilies or mushrooms
This is what it means to be with me
If you fall in, I will eat you
And we will die our deaths, little and sweet
And no one here is sorry
And no one here writes poetry
Poetry is for ghosts
It is a trick of the light, the grey chatter of rain
Blooming magnolias and mist in the morning
It is the salt smooth smell of wood tossed to shore
And the way everything here feels just a little bit more
So I fall into my head, and spit me back out in strange rememberings
I drag up old lovers, plant words in their chests
They are my stories, my little deaths
The carious peat from which I grow
And no one here is sorry, for I know
That this is what it means
To be out to sea
Mar 5, 2014
Mar 5, 2014 at 2:54 PM UTC