i watched the gods dip their chubby fingers into a puddle of midnight blue
and finger-paint a sky for the sun to rise in

oh how they laughed
and they danced
and they kissed the forehead of a giggling moon breast goddess

then
     you were born

a diamond of dew in spider's web

that was the day the universe learned how to do her spinning

i stay awake at night
whispering my secrets to the stars
and waiting for the sky to reply

usually
***** puts me on hold
but some nights
     she'll pick up the line

and answer my pleas
with her thunderous laughter

i tried to write a poem that wasn't about you
but nothing came to mind
so i climbed up on top of my mom's roof
and puffed smoke signals towards the moon
in hopes that they'd take my thoughts with them

before i knew it
i was counting sattelites
the same way that i'd count your breaths at night
     apparently everything marches to the same measure as your sunken sternum

"sunrise, sunset."

somewhere in orion's belt
hides the same gleam as your moonlit grin
and i'm back at it again
     twisting up sweet leaf in the appologies you'd sling
     and hoping you'll think of me
when you wake from coughing in your sleep
as i scortch my fingertips

maybe you'll be reminded
of that first campfire kiss
we shared in the sticks
     was it five years ago
          or was it six?

****
     i just can't think of anything but our tangled hips

          the way they read just like a star chart's dots and trailing dashes
     and the astrological improbability of celestial bodies managing to gracefully merge

your fingers
     stained with the grey matter
     of thousands of innocent cigarettes
still somehow managed to dance
like vagrant ballerinas
with a vendetta against my spine

a perfect cringe

our moon-baked bodies pressed together
like pages of a novel that you once read
and i thricely pretended to
     we both missed the plost twist
and twisted ourselves to sleep

i remember your voice
     the way that you'd articulate in coffee-table-cursive

your words dripping from your lips
like honey from the comb

i remember me
dropping to my knees
     to lap up the sweetness
like a beggar in the street

if my whiskey breath meant
that my tounge was slinging poetry

     how many sonnets
     are you yet to hear me speak?

frank sinatra still sings me to sleep
the same way that you'd shake me from a nightmare
     it's soothing
yet somehow reminiscent of chicago's smog

i wake half-shaken
and half ready to light up a spliff
right where i sit
     wherever it is that i'm sitting
or am i standing?

and is it too demanding to ask
that you laugh
when you've got a cameo
in my drip-stained dreams?
     ****
all i'm asking for is a laugh
     anything
          really
other than a gap-mouthed gasp

that's all i ask

well
there's that
    
and...
          maybe you could show your face
          for just one or two milliseconds longer