How my morals and ethics lay at night,
soundly waiting on the day’s break.
I do not shake for desire, or
knocking on woods for a stranger like you.

A tender birch, stiff and rounded sharply,
I’m a whaling dog to the moons closing.
The world was one before me,
and the world will be won after.

I want to fall in love with you
like the way they do in the movies.
By the grace of the forgotten scarf,
the drifting current of situations undrawn.

Kissing you on the subway steps too fast
and follow safely into my own insecurities.
Will you still fall for me then? I wonder...
in the same ways that I guess the endings.

Because I’ve never been fond of soft surprises
But you were, caught in one moment.
Staring at your cut off black gloves intently.

I want to fall in love with you
like the way they do in movies.
By the grace of your good writing
and my ambition to act the part.

and the ground is soft as it should be here,
eleven minutes past midnight on new years eve.
you've seen me for who I should be,
in all my sweaty palms, broken stars, and pillowed moons.

and I see you for who I could be,
a kind hearted, celestial, tall glass of admiration.
ending and entering more years that could be
more ours if you'll so thoughtfully see through.

and if you'll still smell your tropical breeze best
singing in the Honda with me as we will be
in the next years I can drive you to the airport
as you kiss me down where we should be,

humming old jazz tunes like we could be,
and I'm telling you that we will be
on the hard grounds again
in Jacksonville, Florida.

He’s a tall live wire,
in a small blue pool
of my sweet subtle charities.
Picking sacred cherries
near the goals we
once made together.

How does Mount Fuji
keep her fire beneath?
Green satan kimono
lace, and overlined lips.
He’s got soft knuckles
but red palms.

If you plant a shot
you may shoot
my bowing deer.
Osaka’s shrines
sing of the blue eyed
souls they keep hidden too.

Finders of lost artifacts
lost in battles of the heart.
I haven’t cared in
a retrograde.
But I wish I could blow too,
like Fuji at a whistle.

Maybe it’s at 3am with the lights on
or 1pm in the orange gleeming sun.
When I think about dying,
it’s not after my brothers punch.
It’s the moment between feeling everything
and absolutely nothing at all.

I am eating clean, working every muscle,
and still this part of me is oozing black.
On Sunday my smile fades
like the orange sun in November’s 6pms.
Meeting my friends disappointment in me,
and for dinner my godmothers dismay.

How many girls does it take to die to make you believe their emotions are valid?
How many men does it take to fix
a lightbulb without a fuse?

I am grey and preluding. I have wounded and wound.
When I see truth I hum closer
Just enough, to swallow it whole.
I am not an angel, only mocking.
The lips of an answer, a plotted confession.
Time has been spent on your alter.
It is beating black, with blue siding. I have looked too long
I think my bloodied knees would know.
Yet flames still flicker and each ember dies over and over.

Now I am a field. A woman standing up,
Searching my corners for what she really is.
Then waving high to the doubts, out to the wines,
and low to the moons.
I see her tears, and take to them.
She thanks me in more cries, and softer verbs.
I am her saviour. Yet she hides too.
Each night it is her morning.
In me she has blown away a young girl, and in me a wiser woman
Gazes towards her day and night, like a new moon.

I wish I could be bigger
fuller than a lemonade glass,
hair waved out,
and nails painted mauve.

If you could see me
for who I've tried to be.
A tongue bitting sweetener
with clean white sheets.

Never a sinking green raft
shooting its last and final flare.
I am all too reserved,
and I am all too stubborn.

But still I've been floating,
going further, on to new,
flares burning brighter,
hair growing longer.

I wave out now to my old home,
returning to myself again.
My nails are painted green,
and I've grown just short of an inch.

With you I am both larger than life,
and steady enough to walk alone.

If we fell together tumbling
for every fist shattered.
Punching holes in ourselves
for every season changed.

We would miss all the breadth
of our own paths travelled.
Tearing apart at the new loves
we didn’t know we made.

When digging our holes
on a strangers grave.

Barely nineteen, he shipped for life.
On a cold windy Pacific shore
carrying relatives?
Old polluted tin cars,
and refugees mailing brown letters;

Silently noted
his lover of his depart.
               One July dawn,
               when the boat calmed.
He knew his biggest regret sailed too.

Later, with new wife and son,
he’d scan the lake for her scooner.
Kawartha grasses grew deeper.
He had a daughter Rosemary,
his past, only a cinematic keeper.

A smirk and a pinch meant “love”.
He ate jam on toast at 7am sharp.
His daughter wore whorish nail polish,
another mistake he’d eventually forgotten.

At Eighty, trembling his hands;
he put on the nights hockey game
        meeting death on a shoot out.
Embracing the warm uncertainty
of the son he left behind.
                     Only to set sail again.

The old rocky mountains
choose to shimmer,
the peaking suns of
my new morning.

Steaming black coffee
sits in his favourite
orange tin mug
always without handle.

On the edges of the
rich green damp tent
I twist apart a newspaper
pulling it to wooden flames.

I breath so deeply in
pulling down to my core.
That I burst out fully
into raw audible sighs.

Reaching parts of me
I’ve forgotten I own.
Peace is not this moment
but this feeling.

The sky today is higher
widening out into wide array.
My love today is stronger,
and this distance is healing.

It’s in a secret folded letter,
in a book somewhere.
Building dust in your,
crusty childhood trauma.

Words like “I’m sorry that
we couldn’t fit together”.
Maybe “I’m sorry that they
didn’t teach you to love better”.

It might say that I just
want you to finally be happy.
You’ll think that’s another one
of my unforgettable darling lies.

But the anger I’ve been feeling
is completely unforgivable.
Making no better reason
to relentlessly forgive.

Seeking lustful validation
is probably my sin.
Seeking your forgiveness
is probably my mistake.

But time is always our cruelist
and truest confessors,
and I have never been betrothed
to anyone, but the truth.

My love does not rise
like a mothers eternal joy.
It fades like the embers
of a dying candle to dawn.

My love does not sit
like a bernard at steel gates.
It’s consciously inept
to old kingdoms betrayed.

My love does not flaunt
or lure for local gaze.
It’s meticulously shifting
through stone alley ways.

My love does not slow
when the foxes catch their prey,
and the thimbles string out of
endless velvet displays.

My love does not leave
like the bay doors at wind.
It gusts for the moment
where the new gardens begin.

You’re always in my minds corner,
but just too close to home.
I’m just a few stops, from preventing us,
to being better on our own.

I kiss him by his pink thin lips,
I guess I work with what I’m thrown.
But take your shots and forget-me-nots,
because my educations better off shown.

You’re just out of reach, the edge of my seat,
out of touch with my emotions flown.
Listening to your old jazz tunes,
I wonder what keeps us both alone?

Contemporary composure,
compassion fatigue,
and the endless misery
of loving someone that
could never love you.

The rigid grey hills in-
between his shy pale arms
cheer with conviction.
As he reminds me of
how it feels to be.

Autumn’s fog dances over
the lake so calm it chimes,
as I sip its reflection,
and with it,
his small half-smiles.

I write every night
on the dark cedar floors.
Tumbling in old terry sheets.
Falling in and out of,
waves of grandeur.

Let them put me in my dry grave
with whispers of how much I meant,
and how little to show for it.

Give him red roses like my tattoo -
the same one my father had warned
would last forever.

Put bold ink in my obituary -
and let my mistaken mother
misspell my degree.

They can finally paint my long nails pink
and cover me in
compliments of untimely character.

Or my great grandmother Elizabeths golden rusted rosary's.
My papa will finally have his Rose and Rosalia in one place.

I’ll finally talk to god
and tell him my name was meaningless
I don’t need a name to know the hells I came from.

But they sent me to heaven
only for what I stood for
only after I could
no longer stand it.

I fear you -
your rights and wrongs
the small on your back
bigger than before
I fear you -
that you know my dark parts
and my light ones too
weaker than before
I fear you -
kissing another broken woman
that sh’ll fit even
stronger than before
I fear you -
in the way I fear myself
because we hate the things we are
and you’re the worst of all

Let my ******* be your soft pillow,
my green eyes your emerald riches.
Arms that build up spirits and characters
for fantasies of how you want me laid.

Down in my light pink silk sets and soft
pure velvet skins - ask me for the keys.
Plenty for one small stern lock,
but you always end up breaking it open.

Our jacaranda tree waves
with eastern movements,
and fast September shifts.

Teaching my temples
to hold on for moments -
months of abrupt melancholies
and state-less depressions.

Pouring worser shades on
brighter faster mornings.
I find my pieces in what I’ve known

All along -
an unhinged gate
to a fortress of starving pansies
overgrown and unloved.

Keeping my time full,
and my heart fuller.
Grass greener, taste sweeter.
Summer sambas and
shining webs of old pleasures.
I have taken strangers dancing,
and met the suns eternal wave.
Taking on a new me -
high risk, high reward,
and everything to gain.

A single silver diamond
hangs from my neck,
as a reminder that I have been
building myself to last.

I have built me from nothing,
but bold words and raw emotions,
laid out like cards I keep getting dealt.

I have been mistakenly honest,
perfectly wrong, and dreadfully me.
All to benefit the terrible good
you keep on feeding me.

Succumbing to willful devotions,
heavenly honours, and beautiful
crystals.
I have loved me far longer, and
far stronger.
Than I could ever love you
my green emerald.

At twelve I am the storm.
The three second delay
between thunder and lightening -
never really knowing which is closer.

At one I am the moon.
Witness to slow decaying stars
already laid to rest -
shining still and silently.

At two I am the winds.
Hallowing grey movements
sliding between each other -
never going the right direction.

At three I am the trees.
Dancing petals of soft memory,
delicate to gravel, food for though -
and home to lonely sleeping crows.

At four I am the heat.
Sticking to skins and foreheads,
rising above the sidewalks -
causing mirages to those too far.

At five I am the sun.
Giving light for the moons glow,
giving food for the trees growth,
warming up the earth - for you?

I’m not the girl you kiss on a New Years Eve.

I’m not the girl next door, just across the street.

I’m not the girl who pretends that they think you’re funny.

I’m not the girl that runs or pretends that they’re neat.

I’m not the girl that tells you what you’re suppose to say.

I’m not the girl that knows that their hot, okay?

I’m not the girl that thinks they’re good at your sport.

I’m not the girl that pretends that you’re only a joke.

I’m not the girl to say yes just because of how you’re feeling.

I’m not the girl who conceals everything they’re really meaning.

I’m not the girl who sits low when you raise your voice.

I’m not the girl who thinks that they have no choice.

I’m not the girl who’s funny, docile, and sweet.

I’m not the girl that collects pointless expensive jewelry.

I’m not the girl who lives off their parents dime.

I’m not the girl to tell you how to live your life.

I’m not the girl to leave you if you had no money.

I’m not the girl to eat kale salads with hungry.

I’m not the girl to hold your past like a knife to the back.

I’m not the girl that doesn’t know what kind of power she has.

I’m not the girl to reveal all the tricks up her sleeves.

Actually, here’s the trick...

I’m not the girl.

I’m the beast.

I am my grandmother tense,
and my mother frantic.
My grandfather suspicious,
and my father hot headed.
I am my brothers manic,
and my cousin confused.
But in the very end -
we are what we choose.

I do not have the time,
nor the energy,
to make myself consumable to you.
I am sweet to gluttony,
but sour to those who know me best.

I cannot lower myself,
in height nor heart,
to lose an inch on your ego’s behalf.
I am vibrantly tracing my path,
home grown roots of nothing less than sincerity.

I will not lose an inch,
becoming less than myself,
for your lost moral compass.
I am both the richest and the poorest,
cashing moments of free grandeur,
that you’ll later need answers to.

I should not feel bound to dance,
across the egg shells you toss,
apart from the breads I’ve broken -
I am an open book,
so I have broken more book binds
than hearts.

I hope you’re not offended.

My blue tavern house in old Giverny,
with yellow bright daisies as a welcome.
We've swam on the wheat banks,
diving in absinthe and dealing in apathy.
Kissing the swirling midnight skies in secrecy.

Dark blue cascades the midnight hills,
I've spent another night in the open fields  -
looking at hay bails like an old friend, and worst enemy.
I've met your sharp eyes at noon and known better,
with your white shirts, stained socks, and slick smiles.

I remember you told me of the women stealing jam,
east of La Seine near Clackaloze,
You said she reminded you of me,
good until gone, broken undeniably
and the way I say I could do it all quietly -
paint the shining night sky with ease and one brush.
But if I was what you wanted, I wouldn't be,
too stubborn, too jealous, and too mad, honestly.

So I may as well write you what I am - underneath.

When have I not been all of me
to soothe all of you.
Loving you past insecurity,
rubbing your back in
my small dim lit room.

I would have given you
my holy Sundays,
my boring Mondays,
and both my shoulders.
Just to hear you say,
“I Love You.”

Worth loving through
the doubts and terrors.
But I dream still,
of waking up on an August Monday.
Drinking coffee alone
feeling worth more than money.

Sitting in a green bright café,
rubbing my toes in anxiety.
Loving me past insecurity,
and still soothing all of me.

When have I not needed all of you?
I guess I’m learning to find that out.

This retrograde is always
sentimental radio silence.
Risings of the cresent moon,
shining off the suns old memory.
We have been reflections
of fires consequently burnt out,
long before we could grasp -
Orbs of celestial comprehension,
just falling short of brilliance.

Trailing rigid yellow satin robe,
you have hugged my curves the longest
and felt the way I leave the grounds running.

Traveling up and down my long lean legs,
and the lower United States too.
I am a mess they do not dare quantify.

Towering my misspoken 2AM un-sents,
the half licked envelopes of Sunday's unrest.
Over detailed lines of over stated emotions layed.

Taking a moment to mention the mourning
of my lost ability to create more than myself.
Maybe it is not what i've created, but when.

Tasking away to write more than i should know,
they tell me that I have never really known.
But what do they know?

Tenaciously giving life to words with low meaning,
streaming about the lines I weave whilst sneering.
I am not livid, but I have been alive.

Somewhere along the narrow path,
I dream of what I cannot have.
Lushes and blooms fill the gravels
whisking away at scared ankles.
Skies scream of consistent mellows,
drowing about my broken trebles.
The winds of change play their harps,
but I am singing past their darks.

I wouldn't mind
if you stayed for the night.
Telling me all of your
fears, and faults,
and vices.

It is not a crisis,
to be open.
All my cards have folded.
You have been stronger
than all my emotions.

There I've finally said it,
I've spoken -
up about our misdemeanours
I've been chosen.

Can you heal a healer?
Your lips seem to know
these figures.

Build me up like a mausoleum,
but I am not your keeper.

Have I always been
a relentless version of what I seek?
Afterthoughts of what I say,
or ignorant splendours and epiphanies?

Refuge to black ink, a loved ones right arm,
or the everlasting solace of my four walls.
Eager, Anxious, Loving, & Unapologetically
most things they’ve so often feared.

To take advice from the branches,
when the roots are deeper.
To take love from the waves,
that have been set to roll back.

This is not your tree analogy,
or your ship gone afloat.
But I am leaping forward,
and falling backwards.

And it looks all the same from
here.

Of where I found it?
Oh that is the tricky part.
It is not in my soft yellow skin,
or my angelic avalanche blues.
Nor the way I reveal their tricks -
or my perception of them.

It is not in my frontal or parietal lobe,
not my hippocampus either!
Perhaps my eagerness knows of it,
and my care too!
Between the skin on my nails,
or in your mouth - or hers,
we haven’t spoken.

They tell me it does not ship,
that they’ll return to sender.
That I’ve got thousands of synapses,
and recovery files to date.

They say you will finally find it
when you learn to stop looking.
Or when you find yourself
in a better place.
So I guess, too bad I never had
anything nice to say?

Now asleep -
When the nights fell
longer than they used to,
I fell too.

Slumbered into your arms.
Your father shrugging,
just to let me stay.

I remember how warm you felt,
our feet pressing,
into each others legs.

Is this my shirt? Is this yours? Does it matter?
What’s yours is mine,
and I am yours.

Pink and precarious,
you are green and enamoured.
I remember the blind dog,

and our blind optimism
- now awake.

Are you scared of the way
I let my lips curl?
That I think pleasantries avoid
responsibilities
to be more uncomfortable.
Stumbling into the unforgiving
fortress
of your worries.
I have had none.

My optimism
is not a scam
calling from Burundi.
It, at least, leaves a message.

Making mosts out of somes,
I have tried to find answers,
conclusions,
and a hypothesis worth exploring.

But maybe sometimes
we just don’t deserve one.
So we get 10.

I want your sweet turpintine musks,
and a sunny Sunday in Augusts ambers.

Glaring at identical indigo’s,
sitting in cognitio cognitions.

I want sharp shooter pupils,
diving for overthought opportunity.

lying in your confidence,

and my confidential feelings.

I have my suspicions
of your curiosity in me.
Do you marvel
at my wicked ways?
My velvet tongues,
and rough orange nails?

I cannot sit in awe of you,
or your forearms and good hair.
I cannot sit, I’m skeptical
of your charm.
This unbothered patience
you hold in zeal,
or in your hard earned BMW.

Mistrust is only
an overpass bridge,
I am just holding
my breath
trying to make it
under you again.

I wish I could love
in the same tender kisses
that I loved then.
These pink Sunday skies,
and your red gym shorts
too long.

I wish I could smile
through the same blonde roasts,
same blue water creases,
but I can only accept
blue mornings before work
and his undone hairs.

I wish I could give
and receive.
In the same sweet
voices and hold you
like I wanted you.
I don't want you.

I wish I could lie.
I wish I could talk to you
like an old friend.
Give you a hug,
as if it was a simple
greeting.

I wish I could know you.
But I can't.
I never could.
It's never that simple

Is it?

Cohesively graced
in soft warm browns.
Never going slowly,
but i have gone.
To see new moons,
the shaking falls
of forearms and
river bends.
I have turned in
muds like a lotus,
a hypocrite anew.
Drowning in dirts
for perspective,
for answers,
for hope,
but not for you.

your magnetic strung up
hydro fields sit in this
delicious precarious
silver storm
of my new June

your rain tethers on
into gentle purple trees
across from the NE window
where I sit perched
in May's altostratus fogs

your gliding about
the unrequited escapings
of my consciousness
or lack-there-of
my unresolved words
now tracing across lined sheets
of which I sip relentlessly

i am thriving
off unreliable narrators
to which I cannot name
achilles' heels
to which I cannot see

neither you nor I
can make sweets
out of
these bitter
and too often
extended
metaphors

Quiet Easters awake the spirit
in a shiny April dusk.
Where you call him "Baby"
by Mum's purpled hydrangeas.

Crossing many desolate fields
in hopes of finding cheerful Forget-Me-Nots.
You have found sorrowful stories
of holy ghosts arising,
and then falling.

Spilling out
of passing spring dwellings,
with trees holding far too many rings.
Strong and sturdy,
yet knocked down for a pretty penny.

I wish we could be
milled, burnt, and wrote on.
Growing out of muds
like the words on this paper.

Like mother nature,
I've been fooled into thinking
I was more than I am.
But only until man makes me,
something I am not.

Draw me in like curtains,
                   sheen whites,
holding onto
                   morning lights.
Legs asleep,
                  minds dreaming.
Your eyes are
                   forever reading
crispy morning
                     Toronto Stars.
Just a Sunday moment
                    fleeting?
Or someday a memory,
                    but,
                    i am
                    only
                    ever
            ­        dreaming.

Rural summer
    simmering and splashing
into shattered empties,
    stark parking lots,
        and suburban love triangles.
But quiet,
    onto 4am dusks -
skip every other step,
      timid wood always wakes parents.
Soon,
   play The Kooks vinyl in the morning,
skip every radio station
      into your 9 to 5 day,
while smiling in
               your dads ancient Subaru.

loving someone
does not stop
at the pain
they caused you,
or the pain
you caused them.

it exists somewhere
deep within the mind
between suffering and forgiveness -
because forgiveness IS love,
and that sliver will always remain.

I wanted him strolling through
the lightnings.
Leftover lessons ones I didn't feel
like teaching.
Ones you pick up on the way home,
at Gerrard & Church,
         Streambank & Lornewood.
"Is he gonna be the one
made for you,
         or are you gonna build him."
I never studied architecture.
I never liked small talk
         about overcast weather.
and I never thought love was built

                                    only gathered.

Not have been my saviour
without socks -
and off white shirts.
Maybe cause of her pasta stains,
or overwork.

Thin brown locks, and
thick hard words.
Cross off your lists and
dot your T's. Life might
**** us over. But it
won't take her
sharp wits. Blunt
force for intelligence,
lovely soft kindness,
mistaken for
fatal generosities.

You saw no reflection
good enough for telling
your greatest story.
The way a story
"ought to be told".

That's why you had a daughter,
who became a writer. Cause
it always ends up good enough
for both of us,
when a pen's involved.

I am made of wilted spinach,
soaking in my grandmothers cast iron.
I am craving the hot and heavy words
they feed me.

I am not your songbird,
floating high among the daisy beds.
I am jersey sheets, thick Croatian prayers,
the sharp steady edelweiss
lasting.

I am my Dante Mary’s willowed secrets.
Soft and pillowed – my voice cranked,
trying to reach further than they told me.
I am my grandmother’s angel,
but I am down on earth

crusted.

Rich rigid bricks,
your sheen green cat eyes.
Your mom’s huevos rancheros -
spilling into noons.

Fireplaces off the window panes,
crisping open a warm chest
for a bed of new delights.
Dozing in my ice sheet hands -
I was meant to be bitten,
then bitter.

Lips pushed their forgetful illusions,
His rememberable forehead lines -
tasking away at lost minutes
of too many 14 hour days.

Here between long firm legs
lying in your large white cottons,
over collections of moles,
and forests of scars.

Wondering if she hurt you
in the same ways
that he hurt me.