Tourist, who gave her eyes
to the fishes and the sharks.
Ingenue queen of the lingering darkness.
Tourista, chain smoking in the rain.
Perfumed winds blow from her mouth
dizzying the Phoenician sailors with longing for her shores.
And the moths circle,
searching for her cable knit heart.
And I will go back to my darling,
my darling tourista,
when you my darling are gone.
Us being strangers of the night
and enemies in hollow places.
Tourista prays to ooze juicily
at last round the bearded lips of God.
Tourista swallows sleep
and swallows deep.
Tourista lost in translation
between valley girl slang and punk rock idols.
Pushing pushing pushing, push em.
Tourista of the long white neck, neglected.
Free of love nibbles and nicotine kisses.
Though she longs for their ghosts
and strokes the scars of their cousins.
Her screaming, rolling head full of tinder and ready to ignite.
Like the loveliest of hand grenades.
Tourista who's heart swells and empties with the tides,
all Jackson Pollucked up inside.
The punch line of every joke. The object of every desire.
And tourista rattles with wheezing.
Tourista vacant. Accepting reservations.
Calling dimly she prays to the highway dogs
and hound dogs and squealing pups.
Tourista of the pure soul, sprinkling ****** lamplight
like vestal seeds.
Though she implores every living thing to dampen the flame.
Hold tight, says tourista, happiness is surely near.
But she hides it away in her bedside table and hopes she will forget.

Boys (all of them) are blank (and impossible to read (unless you know Braille (because touch is the only thing they respond to))) when mania strikes, step back. The words come flying off pages and peeling off the most beautiful greasy hair (catch yourself here or you'll regret it)(catch yourself here or you'll send away your pride via text message). Timing will always be off (and always your fault). Boys (all of them) smell like cigarettes and pine needles (even if they don't smoke (especially if they do)). Boys (all of them (all of them)) are delicious and contagious and a few hop steps (up or down) from a puppy (moderate hop steps). They'll disorient you with a maze of charm and a good bit of ignorance (until they don't buy your coffee (not that you wanted them to (but an offer would be nice (it's just polite)) because it might break your heart). (You might be overreacting though, so don't blame it all on them (all of them). (but it's your struggle (theirs is to resist your perfume and dainty ankles (or whatever they like (they've never told me))) to be frustrated and in awe all at once). Tell me (boys) is it torture (to be (correct be verb) so hyper aware(while we're on the topic I should remind you (all of them) this isn't spiteful (it's regret))? To be your own defeat? I've never felt this way (it's a matter of contradistinction). Cocky ******* (all of them).

This morning breakfast was two coconut macaroons
and a novelty- sized pecan pie.
All from the cafeteria.
       When you’re going it alone, it’s the small things.
I can still hear the echoes of sleep as it recedes,
8AM, throaty yelps - panic -  
and it slurps down the drain.
        ****, I’d give anything for a drain snake.
****, I’d give anything for black coffee
and a hood on this ******* coat.
Just above the below and below the upper,
        I’m hovering somewhere in midfield.
But we didn’t cover this coordinate system in geography,
or what to do when you’re drowning
in waves of self-righteousness and the desire to be hip.
       I need that hood. And probably new shoes.
When your roommate is an egg-shaped vampire
optimism can be hard to come by.
Her munching marks the stroke of midnight,
       and I reach for the sleeping pills.
Oh for the perfumed winds of personal space.
Oh for the prairies of carpet and private bathrooms.
Oh to have hot water at 9PM.
        Sing sweetly of home ye golden-thighed youths.

Hold tight to your half of the sky.
Wrap it in pretty charms if you like.
Give it lipstick and an 18’’ waist,
if you choose.
Leave hollows of neglect and pools of ancient shellac
in its heart.
It’s your half of the sky.
It probably deserves it.
Leave pearly clouds hanging
From its foggy lobes.
Fashion a lapis lazuli corset
And whisper sweet nothings.
Kiss her puddled neck.

Stepping out into the hot breath of night,
Is broiling clarity.
I’ll show you fear in a handful of dust,
terror in dusty eyes.
You call her the hyacinth girl,
But she’s the hanged man, sheltered in the shadows
Exchanging joy for a sip from the well of liquid eyeliner.
Half the sky
Is half too little.

There goes Morris Stonework and Ramada Inn which makes me think of Ramadan which reminds me I’m hungry. I can’t decide if I’d rather reminisce about your eyes or your ankles. You have cute ears too. I’m getting closer to you through money – give it a few more years and gird your ***** - it’s entirely possible to have one’s heartbroken even when one is expecting it. A surprise goodbye, almost mythical, with an audience of produce, I never recovered the breath that caught in my throat. Flying through southern North Carolina and fast women (the green hair. “Punk”) and the breath is beating out in pulses and centuries. It’s 38 miles until I lose everything. You can’t **** something that’s already dead so leave my soul alone (please). Sorry, I’m over reacting. “We quiver we quiver,” the grass says to the water. But I don’t know the riddle and the answer isn’t online. If you were wondering, I wish for you every day. My heart is an idiot (I’ll never take responsibility for what I can hide behind personification). Maybe I’ll start charging him rent. Looking for something to break? Dude, you’re a ***. And my thoughts fly apart- Shall his sins be forgiven? Ice skating on frozen parking lots with army surplus coats. Mostly because we want the passing cars to say – how cool, how young, how willowy her thighs – But see there’s a problem, are you just in my head? The tinkling gypsy rhythm is carrying me away. Urgently comes the pad of bare feet and the swish of soft wrists. Coconut oil drinks me up. My stereo whispers, -the magic of ignorance is never knowing what came before these cookie-cutter houses.

It was just like Christmas,
A sunny star - far in the corner of the sky
Hiding as a small child, curled in a ball all tucked up and warm.
The hills were decorated with evergreen eyelashes
and the pounding red screen of eyelids.

It was just like a schoolgirl's daydream
to fling open the car door and grasp your sunny face like the jaws of life,
- you know I'd been growing out my nails ? -  
to feel your porcelain skin beating - to rub the delicate china scenes
under my fingertips, and feel the silk robes of time gone by.
Some things are breakable.
I didn't know you were one.

I was young when I conjured you up,
when I mixed equal parts bone-running shivers,
and raised eyebrows.
I shimmied across my living room
and out of my nightgown,
like flipping a switch, I lit up your eyes.
You got me lipstick for Christmas that year.
I wrapped up tired metaphors, and said - I wish I could stay.
Sometimes I lie.

We started out as a quiet superstition, but I forgot to water our roots.
I wanted to give you goosebumps, but I forgot they leave scars,
and tiny webs married to my villainous fingertips.  
You were angry - red like your tie
And I hid as a small child growing younger through the years:
The curious case of an anemic soul hiding in the curios cabinet -
you'll have seen it in theaters.
Too bad we weren't a cactus.

there are too many tricks I know.
I didn't realize the voice in my head could talk back.
Like I said,
I was young.

He smells like redbull and cigarettes.
He’s a quaint New England cottage
On a Paris street corner -
Crude smoke licking at the window panes
And cheap nylons stretched
Across bright stucco.  

He’s the reason for a nice pair of underwear.

Sing oh muse!
Of the heavy-hearted
And her quest for elbow patches
And tortoise shell glasses.

A cloud of confusion from a whiff of cologne -
These are the moments when the crossroads
Is as plain as freckles
Or lipstick on a wine glass.
Propelled forward on roller skates
Called desire.
And white teeth gnawing on broken lips,
And we let desire swell and rattle around inside -
Until we will never be rid of the bruises.
Brick and clouds and red lace and muddy laces
And bruises.

If your voice were rain,
it would fall on my ready lips
so I could taste your drawling syllables,
and press my hot breath against
the mirror of your easy vowels.

If your eyes were two street lights
In the pregnant sleep of midnight.
They would be practically unchanged.
Though I would miss
the fringe of butterfly lashes
and the steady planes of your face.

If your legs were two rolling mountains,
I would climb up,
to sit safely in the valley of your thighs.
And with curls of your beard
and old, earthen magic
I could build a cozy mountain home.
Preferably with a wrap around porch
to admire the view.

If you were mine,
I would read you this poem.

We are both quite majestic
- if you think about it.
if you think about arrows mid-flight
and pretty white windmills
and the smell of biscuits.

Can I tell your fortune?
let pearls roll over your love line,
and sweat fill your upper mars.
-The hanged man
with one inverted eye
amid the tall grass,
amid hissing black beetles,
and a strange green glow -  

We are both quite beautiful,
and perhaps mysterious.


We become half human
(if we were ever whole)
Below us the forest grows
dewy and so new Gaia forgot the price tag
but we are old souls.

He is from the land of old souls,
from the land of the willows and ****** beer
that spills over
in manifold growths like old men's beards
or the **** that covers my living room -
a damp jungle for nightmares
and someday the final battle.

He is from the land of disclaimers,
and disbelievers,
and organic fruits.
Haikus they called pop
and he calls my eyes his muse.  

The wine is self preservation
for he is from the land of do little, very little, wrong.
Where they grow the hot clarity I breath in
and weave the milky wanderings
through everything at once.

And I think of the orange lace,
like a 70s ******* bunny.
The crystal goblet that caught the light
and my lips -
but mostly the lace.

Nothing but hands and feet escape the ****.
where bodies are ****** in,
limbs are free of this pagan romanticism.

He would destroy it all:
The mucus pearls and thickening **** of tassels,
the mounting of cymbals through temples.
he would cast aside his wide-eyed diamonds
to **** the ripe flesh of the girls at his mercy.
He has time to hear their wails and harden his heart
to watch the contortion: a circus of sorts.
His rubenesque pony riders and acrobats
twirl fitfully to their deaths among the common throw pillows
and marble foot paths.


Reclining in zeal and pink lips,
the silken king.

Porcelain astronauts waltz across the cosmos
they gather stars in their skirts
and twirl to the beat of heady pagan drums.
Filmy petals unfold beneath their pastel feet
and chanting begins as the heavenly cords quiver,
with manifold breaths.

The respirators hum
surrounding engines that putter along
with the crashing of wagon wheels,
who carry these fragile seraphs,
these willowy cherubs  
- no longer cherubs but voyeurs -
along stardust trails and porous bone bridges.

Enormous broken knuckles swell to cages,
dust marbles the starry effigies,
and a slightly hallucinatory green glow pervades it all.

licking orange juice off fingers
like lizards
like primeval and primal beast
who hunt the roaring raw oily rind
and slaves to the lonely sweet elixir.

the slaves sit ready
trenched in greenish mossy muck
and ****** doorway-banging repetition
among the peachy stupors and the ill-humors
sat the two.

a swing and a time
for circles of hands held and secrets sold
and I have none
and you are mute
but tell me everything
among the biscuits and the stale cookies of the young
among the blood and the bleach and the smoke.

we are fertile and ripe for the picking
we are irresponcible, irresponsible
there is no authority in the world that we would emulate.
they are the young the banged and bruised and trial-tested
they are the heirs to her secrets, they are we, and we are idiots of the first order.

words are trite
nothing is new

In the dark velvet lining of a humid gilded box
is a little china doll:
a delicate charm for her grandmother's gold bracelet.
She lies languid. Her sinews are chains and her bones glass.
Light swarms through her: a mess of wispy snakes.
At noon
it bounces wildly like the pinball game
she's heard so enthusiastically described
in a wildly raucous rock and roll song.
Tentatively she reaches for the stars painted through her hair
raised a bit like brail and hot to the touch.
They're made of fire billions of miles away.
They have halos radiant at midnight.
At midnight
the humid gilded box
is damp and muggy and she twists and wakes
sullen with panic and covered in stardust.
The grime of the moon coats her gingham dress,
collected as she skidded to home plate.
Precious Darling,
Bless her heart,
for unbeknownst to her the humid gilded box
is within a teapot,
upon a shelf,
within a cupboard,
beside a grandfather clock
that chimes at each curly hour and rattles the gilding
so that as the hours pass - as the days disappear:
her darling little precious box
dims like the tapestry her grandmother hung
to mourn the grandfather clock.

sometimes I think,
sitting in the sad girl seat.
sometimes staring into clouds
into pebbled, light-footed blush
upon the abundant tortured sands -
there whistles hope through hair
and love past whorled ear.
Fate be not proud for thou art wicked expectation.
sometimes I think that thinking is too much.
**** me it will. like the buzzing of filmy insect wings
as if the pressure of that spectral pregnant light -
were the candlestick in the dining room
with Madame Sosostris.  and april is the cruelest month
and depraved may and june and july. and august is just too hot
and september is lonely.
the snake gray seat and the sad girl eyes.
when the pine trees pass
in hundreds in thousands,
along miles and years
and sometimes thinking stops
and sometimes circles back
and I feel small and young.
There was a time,
when legs akimbo and arms
snaked soft, shelled tight, and snailed with hunger
were satisfied and glory held tight
all the multiples of content.
I was old with the heroism of
a mine-filled maze and melting wings.
the temptress, the knave, and the ******
I drew parallels with watery finger paint,
and words fell as if monsoon season
were rescheduled for february -
the cruelest month.
and I rode toward the land of adults,  
the promised land for the moderately free,
triumphant in the high girl seat.
and sometimes I think
that truth is sad
like the day after Christmas.
is sad like the lost boys and
the glory never satisfied
and the sad girl eyes
mocked for their youth
forever dried to  
the sad girl seat.

Raw is the word of the day. Got it kids?
Kids, what’s raw? Roiling mass of grabby skyward hands.
What’s meat? What’s vegetables?
What’s vulnerability? What’s red and broken and softly, wetish pink?
That thing you feel and touch but mostly feel.
It’s edges and rough. It’s war spelled backwards.
Pummeled hearts and purple kidneys aren’t cooked. They’re raw.
That dusty light that filters, spectral and beyond any grasp.
What’s the sinews of the world?
Raw is blue and pink and red
And coarse and irregular and lovely.
The loveliest sort of striking

Tiny red pins slip under my skin
Angry and sullen and precocious and settled.
Don’t wake them, they have my blessing.
Like a postmodernist painting
You could analyze them to
death.
But don’t.
Just let them be
They mean more that way.

little button eyes
little wrinkled burlap skin.
limp string hair
and matching flaccid smile.
a simple dress,
in triangle style.
a simple heart,
full of holes.

You dragged me tensed and hyped from my winter's cave
I was jittery
and giddy
and ready for spring greens.
Frightening black evening precipices came and went
smoothing themselves and smothering frown lines.
There was ringing in my head when it was empty of you.
I prayed this would stay. My warmest of winter coats.
Never my boldest and bulkiest of thorniest  fright.

and days passed.

Belligerence met our tepid introduction.
Red, and raw, and worrisome were their reactions.
Holding tighter you began to
f
a
l
l
I fought (no longer scared).
Fought to keep a warm January day turned to February, to springing mid 70s.
To keep out of my long musty cave,
but whipping wind from their mouths pulled eagerly backwards.

and days passed

silent. steady. always ready. no demands. only wishes. only fondest hopes.
and it was all yellow
and everything hurt.

and someday passed

When it was warm, when you were ready
you let go
and held me tighter
weak/faint/smoggy/dust to ashes to life/dawned understanding
at the mouth of a blooming cave
I thought perhaps you were mine
for somewhere along the way
I became helplessly
[entrapped]

Let me show you
Let me hold this tangled hair full of insecurities for you to study
Let me shove in more doubts, perhaps then you'll see.
Fondness.
Cherry coke.
Learn to be
to be hale and hearty
and love with only what you know when you hold me.

Tongueless
Breathless
Restless
In this
Lightless
Nightless day

There's numbness.
Fingerless,
Stifling coughing
Ageless, noiseless crying

Witless, Senseless
.Lost.
But not for
Lack of trying.

Listless.
Falling.
Deeply Sightless
Devoutly faithless
Evenly devoid
And purely dying.
For wet whimpers
Through thickest walls.

And the earth was
wide
and flat
and we
and we were two
simple clay beings
surrounded by monstrous empire,
bombarded by spiny insults,
hurled by the unknown
and flying now,
through glassy oceans,
under galactic mountains.
dandelion wine on our lips.
heavy hearts
and heavy arms.
sweaty hands grab
clinging in the midnight still
waiting just for the pad of a thumb
to rub away all but our fantastic fantasies
our frolicking, secluded everything
our joy and wrenching, potent way of feeling.
nervous hands never fall away.

The bitter taste
that brings back greasy dread
and aching everything.
limbs that fall shaky
with your bitter taste.

nuzzling coarse whiskers upon my panes.
with your bitter memory,
nestling coarse whicker inside my brain

I can feel all that I believed.
when the back of my arm
rubs this stain from my red and smacking maw
it's in my skin.
it is my skin.

biting black. cutting coffee.
dripping, tearing down my throat
sanding off my lips with coffee grounds.
And all this for a warm belly
that can heat only my flesh.