i tried to write you a letter
     once
but was unsure of the address for the heavens where you shine
     not "Heaven"
          per say
but the stars that gained your carbon as you selflessly gave it away

          turns out celestial bodies aren't listed in the yellowpages

i tried sending you smoke signals
     twice
but the message was so **** long
  and it read more like a song
    and you never much liked my lyrics anyway

i moved on to morse code
     spent night after night lying on my back with a flashlight
dripping ceasless patterns of dots and dashes into that murky blue puddle of midnight sky
     as if maybe you'd reply
with a simple "hush"
and a shyly sigh

          it finally dawned on me that you probably couldn't decode it
          that your parents probably never made you learn
               i cursed them for not teaching you how best to reach me

now
     i'm getting older
and colder
and alot less wide-eyed and hopeful

now
     i just hope you can hear me speak

the click in the back of my throat that comes with trying not to cry
the sincerity in my 'love you's
  and my 'miss you's
    and in my uncensored ungaurded love that i ash onto your headstone from the end of my pregnant joints

now
     i just hope you can taste the beers i bring to share with you
as i'm rambling along the rails of my de-railing train of thought
and ripping through that sixer i brought
          you and your cheap taste in beer

i hide the bottle caps in those little metal vases that your mom keeps filled with florist foam
     and different colored silk lillies
          they always look so nice

now
     i just hope you can read me
better than you ever could before

i hope you've decoded the lines in my palms
and the ***** of my feet
and the cracks in my nicotine teeth
     as i'm smiling wildly at the earth that keeps your ashes safe
          close to her breaking heart

i hope you can read the quotation atop your grave
     i'd have never imagined that the one permanent thing i could ever give you
          was the last line
          of the last text
          that i'd ever send your way

i meant it back then
but now
      it means so much more

"sleep sweetly, philly, you will never be forgotten"

the moment that i laid eyes on you
     time simply ceased to be

the globe stopped its spinning
and the lights started dimming
     and the heathens began their fevered singing
          and i forgot just who i was

the instant that your eyes fell upon my frame
     i got thrown back into reality again
          and i crash landed feet-first into a chair

          it was fair
     we both had to stifle our giggling

you spoke smoothly
     almost orchestrally
some sort of poetic sing-song
          heavily laced with the accent of the place that i hope to someday find you

               "chicago, chicago, that toddling town..."

i hope i find you soon
     wearing that same sleepy looking smile
     and your news-boy cap
     and that shoulder strap sack that i'd like to think you kept stuffed to the brim with college-rulled ball-point ballet

but that was years ago
     now there's more than just arrhythmias and murmurs and excited flesh between our heavy chests
now there's lines drawn between our toes

lines scratched into the sands of time with the force of lightning's strike
          
          worry lines
          telephone lines
          state lines
               lines that furrow across the face of the map

     things tend to fade out like that
the way the last track on your favorite record fades slowly to the sound of a skipping needle
          
i'm still unsure if i imagined you into existence
     or if you only existed in my imagination
either way
          i wish you'd have stayed a while longer

almond shaped eyes
     the color of fertile earth
           deep
deeper than marianna and her treacherous trench

i fall deeper into your magic with every glance

     the mere thought of your existence sends lightning bolts through my bones
you give me butterflies the size of ostriches
     and someday soon i'll take flight

astronauts and the smell of stardust

      nasa
           here we come

i can hear the static pulse of the universe in your laughter
     you leave solar flares in your wake 

you take my breath away
     a presence as heavy as the vacuum of space

not burdensome
     but welcomed
like an egyptian cotton blanket over bare flesh
     or the pressure of the lakes surface on my naked ribcage
          an embrace
with god
with darwin
with satan
and neil pert

it hurts me when you frown
     deep
          deep down

i drown in despair at the earliest glimpse of your discourse

     but when you smile
hot ****
          that smile
i shiver and shrink 
like a scalp in a glacial pool

you're strong as a sequoia
      proud as an ancient peak
yet for some reason
     you see me
in a far more flattering light than i view myself

i wanna take you
     far
          far
               far away
and make you stay forever mine
forever perfect in my eyes

poetic strengths
prose-like down falls
     and it all reads just like Rumi
classic
     timeless
          true

i can't wait until the day you admit
that you can't wait
     to be tangled up in me
          and the sheets
          and the seams of the fabric of time

i was born at the heart of a ribbon jam
      my analog pulse
tap
   tap
      tapping
out the lyrics of my fight song

since day one
india ink sludge blood has flowed
     from my dog-earred heart
          straight through to my ball-point fingertips

my DNA lays in cursive wait
     leaping from the pages
        into the light
at every aching plot twist

card catalogued depictions
   
  not of how events factually unfolded
          but of how it seems they could have unravelled
if this were a paperback i'd planned to read
   and re-read
alike

but alas
when the lights go out
     that's it for this round
          and i'll be down for the count
          no matter how hard i fight

but words...
words know not death
     solely evolution

they change their shape
   their time
      their place

a word can only fade
     like aerosol on dust colored cinder

a single word will outlive one hundred empires
   one thousand governments
      ten thousand authors
and so
   it's within articulation that my loyalty lay
   and in my words that i'll find my home

here
in the lowercase swoops and loops
   of the 'A's
      and the 'E's
      and the 'D's
      and the 'G's

...and those little cursive 'Z's that hang just the same as mom's old hammock

           yeah
           home

with every inhalation of stale inhabitation
     i'll exhale a poem

my regenerative reincarnation through catalytic creation

with well worked hands
he pulls on the sea
     like the hem of a pale skirt dancing 'round his lovers hips

it's what she loves about him most

the way that the tide ebbs and flows
     with the rise and fall of his sun-stained chest

seashells
and gull feathers
and bits of fishing net
     woven into his hair
like the threads of canvas sails

aqueous thunder-head eyes
look like they've seen the fall of every empire
      and soon
they'll witness the fall of ours

he smells of salt-cured wood and the sun
and it's the kind of smell you'll never forget
nor properly describe

he moves like magic

     like waves
          lapping at the shoreline in the calm of dusk

with an anxious tongue
and an appetite that's never satisfied
     he licks the wounds of any heart
he's strong enough to bare the weight of any burden
          of any trash barge or sea ferry

ear pressed to his chest
     like a conch-shaped vessle
          the labor of his heart valves plays like sailor songs
in an empty cabaret

     nerve-wrackingly beautiful

soft spoken secrets slice through the silence
     like coffee-breathed cannonballs
sent shamelessly into the space between
          who we are
               and who we will be

the smile in your eyes makes it seem
as if you really see me

pinned beneath a perfectly blue egyptian cotton sky
     and a lake-shore brown box-spring earth
          you stretch yourself thin
     thin as eyelash lace across a freckled chest
     thin enough to let the sunshine gleam through
          through all your light and magic
               reflecting pure stardust onto my my blank screened flesh

i've never felt as beautiful
as it is to be tangled up in you

extremities snagging one another
     in a devine blend
          of feverish feinding
               and something far more freeing

     i'd trade my unsteady pulse
     for every day to begin this way
drenched in poetry
and morning dew
and crazed, excited grinning

how about you toss me a post-card
     through our dreaming
     one of these evenings

          yes

my heart strings are singing

     this is the beging of a story
that i quite like

you kissed me sideways
in the light of a harvest moon
and i never wanted to return to reality again
     but i did
and it hurt

like a newly aquired broken bone
while trying to master the art of the monkey-bars
in a humid july
     all those sunburned years ago

i never did learn

not how to fly from one bar to the next
not how to cartwheel into your heart
and certainly not how to be your definition of "beautiful"

    i only learned how to define such a filthy word myself

so with skinned knees
and bruised shins
     i climbed
up the ladder
into the sun
where i burned off my hardness
and my hurt

into the sun
     where i shine

and find myself
     finally
lovely as can be

this is me
the freckle-faced mess
who finds the gorgeous in every flaw
every snagged seam
every falling hem

     it all just seems
so very human to me

and what a lovely way to be
in such an inhumane reality

let me show you just how pretty your crooked smile really is
let me teach you to find the magic of a broken heart
     and a bruised ego
let us dance
together
to the tune-deaf sing-song of the world that we live in
let my eyes be your mirror
     so that you'll never question your own worth
not again

every star shines its brightest
when there isn't a soul to be found
who is measuring their light

it's your turn to shine
     just like the light of that rust colored harvest moon
so many moons ago

twinkle twinkle
     my dear