I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

I watched you make one of the coldest moves in front of our reflection. You plunged through billowing smoke into areas that lacked any expression at all. I saw you shift away into various shades of pictures then run shrieking using all that you had seen as an excuse.  While all the while, I was arranging to tour the fields of you.

I saw headlines printed in places so that they became more than just this morning’s declarations. I really liked how you always understood all the tiny little windows you said they held because this is how you knew everything that was happening.  Yes, you knew it all.

There were hundreds of experiences I could hear asking me why you were making the coldest moves.  Yet, you acted as if you never heard them. Still, I saw the look in your eyes the minute they approached. Somehow, I could tell you knew that what you saw smiled and looked forward to not hearing what we both needed to say.

All I could do was shake my head and begin to face more puzzling hours filled with only you and your insistence that I adjust the temperature of the air you had frozen.  I wondered how anyone could stand and look at you and not be startled by who you are.

Blurs of agitation too strange for even me to identify looked over my shoulder with excitement.  They were not there to inhale my perfume only to seek out my scars. The scars that visit my heart from time to time to remind me they can still hold my arms back from reaching out to you.

Even though you laid right next to me we could no longer find each other in the billowing smoke that issued from our breath.  Ice had begun to form between our hearts within the coldest moves.  There we lay in the darkness both of us looking for the best place to hide.

Take my word for it, as this was not an illusion.  I swear I saw cold clouds hanging over the bed laughing at you and me. Because we didn’t have the faintest idea that the darkness wasn’t real or how close we lay to what could make us warm again.

Here from the hilltop down towards the dell
I'll wander till this evening, I don't care.
An afternoon all fertile with the spell
Still calling me: be still and drink the air.
And so I'll pause, and ponder as I hike,
I'll take my time before the valley floor,
And meditate, and maybe, if I like,
Climb back again and walk the path once more.
  Full twenty years I've walked this hillside trail,
  And every time it makes itself anew;
  Unveiling as I head towards the vale,
  A flower unseen, an unexpected view...
Again I lose my footing with a scream,
Fall forty feet, and drown beneath the stream.

this poem has been a long time in the making,
it's not easy like stating, how the sky is blue,
or the grass is green
it's more like how I feel so BIG,
but never seen,
how I loathe that girl in the mirror, and her taunting, nasty screams
she is evil
as she pokes your sides, laughs at that belly you try desperately to hide
calls you chunky, just look at those thighs
girl in the mirror, so full of self hate
your mind is such a powerful thing to waste
on thoughts solely existing to enforce doubt and a need to keep pace
with those matchstick, anorexic figures
always shoved in your face
when it comes to beauty, when did less become more?
when did real, wholesome girls get traded for the *****?
when did your self worth become something you could pay for?
when did being beautiful become dependent on if you shopped at 'that' store?
they used to say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder
and I've noticed as I've gotten older
that you cannot quantify beauty based on what we see
'cause this world will look a little different to you
then it does to me, and there's no cookie cutter
labeled "beautiful girl", no molded shape to uphold
so big, tall, slender, small, dressed in rags so fine, or dressed to the nines
you're all gold
so long as you're sold
on the fact that you are beautiful!

Hello?
Are you there?
Can you feel the wind pushing our bodies together?
Lets cut off all our hair and **** until daylight
Listen to our favorite songs until we don’t even need to sing along
I’ll let you trace my body on your sheets so you don’t suffer from bad dreams
If you’ll teach me how to run away
You’ve always been the best.
Lets carve new patterns in your palm
Like a maze keeping you in the moment
Lets allow the smoke to tear our lungs
Lets sing jazz and dance to silly love songs
Lets get high and dream up a world of our own
Lets kiss until we can’t tell the difference between our lips
Lets pretend that the clocks have stopped.
Lets embrace the imperfections and be honestly in love
Lets hide where no one will find us,
Because you’re the only person that I still trust.
Lets forget the ******* who didn’t believe
Never cry and keep a smile on your face
You can be the melody
I can be the bass
We can write our own reality into the night
We can finish each other’s sentences
And our history will be engraved
Into melted marble.

the black crimson of atmospheric and feminine smoke gloriously moves around
like tainted belly dancers in front of the pyramids
luring and incredibly terrifying
singing to me in the tongue of Orpheus, balancing
like dark ballerinas gathered in Arabesque stance
protruding brittle and shaking emotion with grace and
extracting all mind pollution
drenched in a feeble state
lurid/ashen/grim with transcending desire to fulfill itself beyond natural depth
I delicately move my fingers around, I want this to wrap around me
as slow as possible
I nestle my head into my shoulder, and rub my cheek against my warmth
I adorn the fumes
I kiss them  

ghosts and humble gatherings pursue me on this deadly night
of a deep fright and tender delight
crazed anonymous lovers kiss on their balcony somewhere in France
a fog dies out on some highway in mid Arizona
while a young woman smears red lip stick on her tainted mouth
she tries to gather her hair as it blows in the wind in her girlfriends
1975 convertible Chevrolet Caprice classic    
this desert is heavy she thinks to herself
as the thoughts of authority and being thrown into a jail cell
slowly slip away through her hallucinations
she casts the bottle of brandy to her drunken tongue
I am human she thinks, more human than I have ever been
a smile makes its way to her lips adjoined with tears
and childhood memories of lime aide on Saturday mornings
and the smell of chlorine from the old pool in the backyard that her mother
told her to never jump in

I trail my finger against the heat that has made its way to my shower door
and print some lewd drawing that brings a tiny bit of laughter to my gut

I remember the way you would analyze your face in the mirror
judging yourself so harshly, when orchids in spring would never compare to you

remember the feeling of having a butterfly rarely land on your hand as a child
nothing could have been more magical at that moment
when your heart explodes with mystical wonder
and then before you know it its set free again
things so ethereal are not meant for captivity
human hearts should learn how to relate
live freely

that is how I feel sometimes
when life brushes on my skin like  6 billion beating hearts
when I find ways to connect with those poor women in Kenya,
and tap into the rarity of their happiness
when I find ways to breathe in that same toxic air of the unfortunate civilians
of the city Chernobyl in Ukraine
when every child that has ever been given life breathes in my heart
when I connect and feel
alive.