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

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 tried to write a poem that wasn't about you
but nothing came to mind

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

run into the crested shorelines where the greatest empires have fallen,
and kiss the tides of the salty sea in hopes of calming your clumsy pulse and flippant thoughts.

stretch your legs.
limber up like a prideful little boy before a rigged game of lava-monster...
and run!

run like your shoes will never untie and your heavy feet will never misfire.

run to the reams of yellowing pages you cling to,
full of ball-point memoir metaphors and pithy,
expressive descriptions of the beautiful women you've trained yourself to hate along the way.
don't get friendly with your paintbrush when you reminisce this time.

run.
full-fledged, snot-nosed, scared-shitless-grinned
sprint.

run to itchy cotton bedding drenched in the stench of day-dreams and nightmares;
peppered with heaps of insight they've yet to diagnose,
and one cold pillow
that can never seem to lull your static head to sleep or fully support the weight of your heavily burdened shoulders.

run like it doesn't mean anything for once;
like a wide-eyed kid who's never seen a map or compass,
he just zigs and zags through the seemingly limitless emerald velvet at full speed as he navigates the backyard in pure and honest bliss.

run to sun-soaked golden fields where the night sky tints itself purple to reach the perfect shade of darkness,
and your breath hangs low on the tops of the tall grass like the fog hanging over a prehistoric low-land,
and the stars shine like slicked-up pebbles about to let you decode the mystical secrets they hold...
and everything comes clear
and clean
and calm.

run free
and wild
and nameless
like it's the only thing you've ever known,
until you're ready to run back into me.

winch sinched grimmace
hung at half mast
in an attempt to hold rebelious bicusbids in their place
     but they still wiggle like a bobble-head jesus glued to the dash
     every time that you laugh
so i guess that's why you're giving it up

your arms look like a road map
     riddled with pin-***** ***-holes
and with routes to hell and back marked
by distressed vasculatory flares
     so you ask to borrow my sweater
     and another fourty bucks
with no explanation why

for once
     you didn't lie to me

the waves break like the days that chase them
and our hardened layers fall down around our ankles
and sacrafice themselves to the edges of the shorline

it's the sunshine season

we don our freckled, olive, summer skin
as we slip into our cut-off shorts and boat shoes

the winter blues melt into their tributaries and take off for the sea
leaving us to blush and bloom like budding tulips

work stained hands toss the rule books aside
making room for a cheap can of beer and an ancient dog earred map

let the dusty two-tracks point you back
to your abandoned spirit of adventure
and your neglected hiking boots

let's go

let's run off towards the sunset
and the lake bed
and get to the heart of what matters in the middle of nowhere
let's get lost sunburned
drunk
and young
it's time to be better again
to be happy as children again

i'll meet you out there
somewhere along the edges of where the water fades to mountains
and the mountains pierce the skies
i hope to see you there...
with a smile on your face and your heart on your sleeve
i promise to bookmark a place for you

let's go find what they are all missing
nurse our hearts
and our spirits
and that primitive instinct burried somewhere deep inside us
that begs us to chase the sweetness
to play
climb
dance
and grow
let's go

but first
a toast

here's to you
and to me
and to every skinned knee that eventually led us to learn the ropes
here's to the countless hopes and dreams that we've had to reconstruct
in order to shape our own realities
here's to sunburns
moonshine
and all that we can be
beneath these summer skies.

i get lost,
now and then.
i confuse my here with then.
trade my "how i feel"'s for "how i am"'s.
yeah,
i get lost,
now and then.

until i'm found.
then,
my pen becomes my vessel,
and my tongue becomes the sea.
i tread it softly,
from you to me,
until your thoughts become my words,
and my pulse becomes your "me".

you found me,
once.

pressed between the yellowing pages of where i've been,
and where i'll be.

you found me.

untucked me from my paper sheets,
and set me out to let me be
m e .

free,
and untethered.
just lost
forever.

you found me.

and let me be
the cursive poet-tree i'll always be.

i knew you meant it
when you wrote me free.

oh, sweet mistakes
how dear you are to me
i'd never know success without you

every skinned knee brought the eventual feeling of restoration
every heart ache whispers of future empowerment
and with every black eye - the promise of beauty returned
one must feel their weakest at some point
in order to ever fathom true strength

i've found myself in the heaps of rubble
left behind by what i'd never wanted to become

in ruin we are reborn

so let the levy break
let the water wash away what we've made
let the words evade me
let the type-writer's keys stick
let the ribbon jam
let all of my thought-out conceptions of what will happen
         never be
let it all go to ****
and get lost
and crumpled and bruised
let it all snowball out of my control
so that i can let go
and let it be how it's meant to be

let me rise from the ashes
dust off my wings
and cling to the hem line of the ever-twirling skirt of the sky

let me fly

it's been so long since i've tasted the freedom accompanied with the abandonment of the flight-plan
how i've missed the adventure of being lost
and the undeniable sense of self-worth acquired by finding yourself

i am new

if i could
i'd lasso the wyoming wind
and ride it like a wild mare to wherever it is that you now call home

you'd find me pounding on the door
     with a bottle of whiskey in my white-knuckled fist
     and a bubble machine eating the paint off your late model car
     and how far i'd come to find you would instantly become irrelevant when you'd smile
          it's been a while

i still catch myself wondering if you catch yourself wondering about me
and the places i've seen since i last saw you
     lacing up your boots and diving head first into the blue of early evening
you didn't even tell me that you'd be leaving

but you did tell me a thing or two
  about the birds
    and the trees
      and the sea
        and your heart
the way it missed beats like i miss stop signs
and you'd once said that it was scared
     always waking you up in the middle of the night
     and telling you that it's alright to want to run
you sure did seem to be good at running

so i swish scotch between my teeth
and atop my gums
to make my tounge believe in singing
and i climb to the tops of the palisades to slingshot siren songs your way

          "oh won't you stay,
               just a little bit l o  n   g    e     r..."

then the record skips
and i slip from my dreaming
back to a shoreline where the washing machine squeeks
and i can be found grinding my teeth
like a lost little god in the grotto

oh
     where did we go to
     when we left to get old
and brittle
     like a tree no good for climbing

we dissolved our youth within the golden glow of nostalgia
marked on a calander long since dead and torched
     that fall when we learned to feel
     and burried each other beneath the heaps of rotting aspen leaves

"until next time, my darling."

it took me twenty five years
to realize
all i've really wanted to find in life
is a gentle man
who knows just how to behave
      when i rest my rose-hipped lips
upon his peach-fleshed lobes

          and whisper

     "i'm afraid."

after enough ***
     i could fall in love with anyone

after enough whiskey
     i love myself too much to want to share

if looks could ****
     i'd be slaughtering the masses
and if these walls could talk
     they'd probably never stop laughing
but if that ***** of a mattress should crack
and leak the secrets of mine that she keeps in her chest-
like tightly bound metallic coils-
     so help me lillith

i'll burn this house to the ground

     i'd rather see all that i've built turn into ashes
than to hear her voice rehasing all the whispers i'm slinging whilst fast asleep
     or how i cry in bed for weeks
     or the way i flinch when the sun crosses my face
like a shadow i can't name

     i'm a mess
a natural disaster with whirlwind hair and a lightning strike pulse
     in a second-hand dress that doesn't fit right
          i'm fine
     i'll survive

but should you be the boy i find
     and i bring you home tonight
just know that i'm better than alright
          know how very much i feel alive
regardless of the subconscious soliloquies you unleash in your half-silence
     divulging secrets whilst you slumber

          i wake like the waves lapping at a fallen empire's shoreline
     and quest to test your lyrical limitations and the possible personification of your breath
     and your chest
          heaving like the sea himself

the snow falls sincerely sorry,
like a pale yellow skirt at the foot of your bed-
i always said, "i didn't mean it".
but i meant it.
it's that time of the year,
where you'll wrap yourself in wool and leathers,
in hopes no one will feel just how cold you truly are,
but i can feel it.
you drink your whiskey straight,
yet feel too inhumane to rest your lips on the same bottle
as the only people who've ever loved you drink from.
your glass gets frosty.
you blow hot, pungent air between your teeth like steam,
in hopes we'll see you as some frightening machine,
instead of how you really are when you forget
that you should be holding up your fashionably unfashionable walls.
you're just another washed up actor,
who somehow lost the ability to differentiate between being on-set,
and being alive.
so you lie.
frantically,
frivolously,
and frusterated,
that nobody you trust can trust you to be you.
the scenes that you build get muddled and confused,
rendered too busy by your lack of attention
and over-use of the exact same hues.
you used to seem so beautiful,
until i found your pallet
under your worn-down mattress...
you only paint with grey.
oh, how you tried
to hide the colors that i am under a tweed cloak of comfort ability,
but i don't fade,
and i most certainly do not run.
i change every day,
and when i begin to hate the direction that my masterpiece is heading in,
i change course entirely.
i abandon the compass,
and the guide books,
and stampede across the pages,
until i become the new and improved version of who i was yesterday.
stop pretending,
and just be.
you wear your "fight" face everyday,
as if you may have to chase a pride of giggling hyenas away
at any given moment.
put down your knife and act right,
no one here wants to hurt you.
you hurt me,
you tried to hide me,
and you lied to me.
still, 
all i want to do is teach you.
teach you to let go of your charade,
to embrace the life you've made,
and how to paint the sunset as a sunset-
not a eulogy.

sometimes
the moon stays full for days
like just maybe
it's been burning daylight feasting on the waves
filling it's belly with fuel for our fires

it's the hardest then to sleep
i lay awake counting the ways to wish for you

in my nightmares
you're always just a crest too far to reach
i wake in fear that you might never find me
but you know how
i promise

i shout through the fog to your shadow
as it dances across the moon
"third star from the right, and straight on 'til morning."
you howl back
sometimes

the piano keys weep
as i stir their fondest memories

sometimes all it takes is a touch to send anyone spiraling back
through the years
and the fears of everything haunting that's built us

the dark sneaks its way in 
in our sleep
so i try my best to always stay awake
out of bed
and out of my head

the piano and the storms have become my greatest friends
more than happy to join the ride 
as we bide our time

i sing to the ashtray and cry in the sink
and the things i must ignore slide past my apartment door
stubbing their toes as they stumble down my stairs

maybe life still isn't fair
but it works
**** it

sometimes
i lie to myself
i trick myself into believing that it doesn't hurt
when it really ******* burns
sometimes you just can't give pain a chance to set in

i'm always warming my hands way too close to the flames
now
i'm covered in scars
it's our roadmap back to the stars
to a space where time slows down enough for me to love myself
or at least to remind myself that moving clocks
in fact, run slow
i've been on the fly since the day i came to life
i just gotta remember that physics have always given me the choice to stop time

at the drop of a dime
i can keep life from restraining me
so i don wings
borrowing flight from the things i dream

i am built of what i hate
but it makes me
it makes me strong
and courageous
and once again beautiful

sometimes
everything around you changes enough
that you're forced to muster up the courage 
to bend yourself back into the shape 
of what you have always wanted to be

sometimes
you've had everything that you've been searching for
all along

these solar flares and northern lights
have been reminding me of the way we used to fight
     wild and alive
     beneath the absence of light
          cascading from a new moon

i pressed the moon to my breast
and took light to heart

now i see clearly when i fall apart
     and pull myself back together
with nebulous lassos

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

there's such a strange feeling brought in by sunday mornings.
it's as if you can feel the calender resetting,
a groggy haze of transition between one row of boxes and numbers
and the next.
the dates themselves adding line-breaks on type-writers,
molding the ever-changing scripts of our lives.
the day gets claimed for resting and resetting -
we recharge with early beers and late lunches
followed by a hefty dose of sweat-pants.
at least 'round here,
"sunday's best" has never been anything classy.
it's paint-stained denim, muddy boots, and over sized thrift store sweaters.
we don't own church shoes or pressed slacks,
because we've never needed ornate buildings to silently give thanks in.
we need the wind,
and the wild,
and the dirt.
we set out with the intention of getting lost,
for the simple joy of the instant that we find ourselves resurfacing on the face of the map.
we give thanks any time that there's nothing between us and the sky
and our wind-chapped faces are covered in smiles and sun.
desert dwellers need the sun.
we greet her daily,
wildly and emphatically as the frozen layers of earth.
sundays are for defrosting.
we bake beneath grandma's home-made quilts,
and in the arms of good love;
thawing enough to ensure growth without cracking our foundations.
"sunday's best" is just a good place to be.
it's a refreshing state of mind in an augmented pace of time,
where we slow down,
and step back just enough to see what really matters
and what never has.
and when the alarm clock howls like a rabid beast come monday morning,
we'll rise reflective and refreshed;
strengthened up to continue driving forth towards the lives we're living for.

she used to have this way about her
     a magical capability to hide her deepest secrets in the center of her sentences
     leaving you unsure if that's how she really meant it
          yet somehow certain
          that you walked away from said verbal exchange
          with far more than she would ever know
          that she was capable of giving away

i gave up on writing
the first time i heard you speak

now
     even my own words mean nothing to me

no pen could procreate the sweetness slung by your tongue


what's left to be said
     hasn't even got a proper spelling

there, in those strawberry fields of dreaming-
those blooms of a season long since dead and torched-
     i swore i found you
and you were speaking sweetly in a smokey room
with a crescent smile
and a cheap long-neck bottle
and a blue ball-point pen
that you'd only pry from it's waltzing
     to chuckle with (and charm) the bartender

an older lady
with muddy-water curls
and poision ivy eyes
     and...there's something about her that reminds me of my mom...
then the moment's gone
and now, all i can wonder
is how it is that she's counting change when she hasn't got any fingers

the captain must be on the mic again
with bull-**** banter about the weather
     or our eventual destination
     or something about the turbulence to calm the unfortunate un-drugged
his monotone monotony
sneaking through my sleep to me
     and coming through like the voice of the radio host
     as my head's beneath tepid bathwater

your ellegance uneffected by his audible intrusion
into my sub-concious dellusion
     you pull at the tides of your brew
     and wink
then back to a busy pen

     i have to get to you
you've got to remember
  
come back

but dreams don't work like that

it's as if my feet don't match my body
or my legs are facing backward
or i'm in that godforsaken hallway scene of "The Shining"
     and i'm finding this to be far more frustrating
     than remaining concious through the flight could have ever been

and again
somewhere over nebraska
the ride gets increasingly shaky
     not obnoxious enough to wake me
     just enough to take me to the part of the nightmare
     where my teeth start falling out
          like precious little gems of vicodin and nicorrette
               t a p p i n g out my fragile skull
and now i'm wearing some ******-gummed grin
and that charming lounge is feeling like "From Dusk Till Dawn"
and all of the friendly faces are gone
     except for yours
          and you look horrified

how come now i've got your attention?

touchdown at o'hare
and i wake in the window seat next to a vacant chair
     alive and well
except that you're not there

and to think
     when i was a kid
          my nightmares all had fearsome beasts
then i grew up
          and found the monster to be me

it was a dry winter
he sang "*** and candy" as i braided my hair
we'd never dwelt so far apart
oceans between us while sharing a bed

he bought me rain-boots for christmas
desert dwellers have little use for rain-boots at the end of december
but i smiled because it didn't matter

he could never see me
only aknowledged the static space i inhabit
his empty eyes sang symphonies in the silence

we were young
and the world refused to cease it's spinning
despite our sea-sick cries while faking love

even the rustiest carousels chase their tails long after the waiting line is rendered empty after dusk

the secret to life inside our discarded cigarette cartons
the history at the bottom of the beer pitcher

it was our hell
our own private galaxy doing pirouettes on the sidelines of time
we aged like newspapers hidden in the hedges

but we meant it
or at least we thought we did
whatever it was
we meant it

the way that one means it when they say they wished they'd died the morning after dollar beer night

it felt right
no matter how bad it always hurt

i used to cradle her bleach-cracked hands in mine
and decode the stardust resting within her fingerprints
     up until the day that i lost touch with the art of reading braille
     and she stopped slinging tall-tales for me to fetch
and rest the plot-twist at her feet

often in the post-script
i'd find my train of thought highjacked by the sunlight illuminating the rainbow of earth-tones ablaze
in her frizz-ridden curls
as if she'd been washing her hair with the damaged case of beer
she'd gotten for half-price at liqour depot
     she never did quit drinking
          but neither did i

at least we tried

though sometimes
in the middle of the night when nothing was alright
and we'd barely survived another fight
her face would catch my glance
cast aglow by a flood of lava-lamp light
    
     the sea of freckles resting at the crest of her cheeks
     rose lips perma-pursed in half tilt
     her resting heart-rate so high that i could almost see it
          pirouetting within her chest

it was then that i'd love her best
     amidst the ruins of who we were
     just moments before

if i could write anything beautiful
that didn't have a thing to do with you
     i'd have written my way to the moon and back
on a path built of college-ruled yellow lines

i dropped to my knees
digging deep for water
     and felt the clay take shape beneath my fingers

this place
     this is home

so from the dust i sculpted doorways
          and windows
          and halls
     lifted up walls
and made myself a castle out of the sand

now i drink beer at the edge of paradise
and ask the thirsty to come inside
     and play in the shade


i never ask them to stay
     but neither do i point them towards the door

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

your lips unleash melodies while you're asleep
and it sounds to me like a lullaby
i've spent a lifetime trying to teach myself to sing

she exhales in outcrops of lilies of the valley
and cries with the echo of a landslide
     but when she laughs
the sun himself rushes to brush against her burial mound cheeks
and pretend he was was the spark that launched her into bated birdsong

mooshed up stubs of cigarettes swell in flooded ashtrays,
like fishies who gave up swimming to skim the surface,
belly first.
everything looks ancient when the sunlight is a muted grey.
this is not my home.
clouds part momentarily,
and a slice of off-white jet stream gets enveloped by a crying sky;
someone said, "you won't grow if you don't weep."
well, don't weep for me.
the smell of wet dirt,
wet leaves,
and wet concrete
waltz in through the drafty windows,
leading the parade of nostalgia breaking me down.
why in the **** did i ever grow up.
now it's rent checks,
passed-due notices,
and borrowing money so that the dogs can finally eat.
this isn't the 'me' i once loved.
i was a fearless leader of the rain-coat regime,
leading a fleet of one-thousand wax-paper sail boats to victory
over the tyranny of the rain gutter.
i was brave then.
a renegade cowgirl of the final frontier,
adorned in costume jewelry and mud stained over-alls.
i built ships to shred the sky,
and bring home my mother all of saturn's hula-hoop rings,
and every bouncy-ball on mars.
she always said my treasures were worth millions;
but i didn't want the money, then.
i wanted adventures.
with dirt roads and ***** toads and sandwiches smashed to ****
by rouge apples set in the cooler.
i wanted to hold the map,
and the compass,
and feel like the captain of our red-desert sea.
i wanted to see for myself everything that the horizon had to give me.
see,
at that age,
i knew i'd live forever.
but at this age,
i know i'm bound to slowly die.
i'd give every penny to my name
to get back to the days
where even the rain didn't stop me from playing.
to when "dressing like a princess" entailed mom's red apron,
dad's harley davidson cap,
and little brother's rain boots.
i haven't felt like a princess since.
i just feel like a failure,
and it hurts.
i don't even know where i learned the word,
but i promise,
i regret it.
so i'll wish on this cheap bottle of whiskey,
and the glass that i'll drink from,
to go back.
to be five again.
to be set next to my mother's type writer,
whispering the words to the newest tall-tale i'd woven,
and watching her type out my dreams for me with her perfectly slender fingers,
one sticky key at a time.
it always sounded just like rain drops.

i once dated a boy who found it "adorable" that i know how to change my headlights
     fill my radiator
     change the oil
     and notice every stopsign as i'm halfway through it
he dumped me via text

before that
there was a boy who loved my lack of first person capitalization
     my over-use of metaphores and similies
     the way i personify the night
     and practice preforming poetry in the shower
he took off into the sunset with my journal in his shoulder-sack

and somewhere in between
i stopped asking myself what it means
threw up my hands
     and learned to enjoy the ride

i've written a grip of confessional love poems on beverage napkins
strung them together with a dissociative understanding of time (like dental floss)
     wrung them out and hung them up to ripen on the line

mama always said not to name things that are only going to die
and i lied to her face when i told her i wouldn't

          i gave it a name

and i was going to send it your way
as if maybe seeing it all spelled out
would make you change your plans
     and stay

alas
     i'm quite certain that i blew my nose on the winning sonnet
and burried the rest with what was left of my tears

now i don't even write
     i just scream at the stars all night
as if my life's become a sailor-song
and this desert
          my decaying cabaret

the scent of your flesh was the same as the smell of the aspens
after a fresh sprinkling of snow and dust
    
      the best things haunt our dreams in scenes of the forrest


your touch made my heart sing the songs of the ocean
that you'd always wished your land-locked lobes could decode

     more often than not
          the magic lives in the mystery


your favorite game was the chase
the way the wind slides through your curls at a sprint
the taste of the sweetness as it tries with all its might
to evade you in the night

     if you love something enough
          it will never really escape your grasp


still to this day
you're the only one who could make me blush that way
as if all of the sun's rays were magnetized to the apples of my cheeks
solely to play a part in my school-girl reaction
to the cabaret way you articulate


     *fate may be cruel to lovers
          but nothing is as cruel as we are to ourselves

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

diamonds and navy strung together by a row of brass buttons trailing up your chest;
your flesh is the night sky,
and i...
have always been a clumsy astronomer.
tumbling through the footnotes of books i pretend to have read-
searching for applicable knowledge and definitions that at least begin to pay you homage.
blissful in the sun beams and sullen in sudden rain-storms...
though,
you glow,
regardless of the natural disaster trailing in the wake of jet-streams out your window.
you translate the smoke signals trailing from the tails of our cigarettes,
and the morse-code transcriptions of my off-beat heart.
such a beautiful transistor of the divine gift of speech.
such a handsome mystic.
make me magic-
paint me natural...
leave me stranded in your starlight.
a tidal metronome to my unsteady pulse,
composing arrhythmia's barefoot in the night.
tap-dance with me in the graves we're digging deeper with every passing instant.
in comparison,
this could be penned a bad decision,
but those seem to be the only kind that the creatively maladjusted are ever capable of making.
perhaps we're cliche...
but the only person i care to find in a crowd is you,
and you stick out like the sore arm of a spiraling universe.
pearls and coal grey strung together by a row of silver buttons trailing up your chest;
your flesh is the night sky,
and i...
have always been a clumsy astronomer.
let me study your pulse through a fogging telescopes lens.

arriving at a peak in the valley
     i've never once proclaimed to the hill i've climbed
"i have conquered you"

i've always seen it the other way around

"i am yours now
     mountain
your treasures and secrets are yours to keep
i only ask that you share with me your view"

i chase my jameson with the best of intentions
and each of my cigarettes with ****** tension

i guess i'm the best
at ignoring my own lessons

i've learned to trust each exception
     and never call a moment home

that's when i grow

in the universal record skip of an instant
that reminds me to question
absolutely everything i know

when i mouth my secrets to the cliff's face
do you taste the carbon in the space i take
the heat i obsolve in our sacred states

     do you note my silhouette


          when my profile aligns with that of the moon?

i wanna feel like the ink in a pen does
as it crimps and curls and dances its way across a naked page

i wanna feel like the page being filled

give me a pulse like a double-time war drum
     thudTHUDDing towards crescendo
     with a cymbol-crash ache
and flesh that winds my spine and river bed curves
     like a stretch of highway on a midnight drive
     that fades into the face of the moon

gimme some of that star-stuff sparkle in my pete moss eyes
a few of saturn's rings 'round my hula-hips
and a solid kiss
     right on the lips

               yeah

when i grow up
          i think i'd like to be in love

i curse my nightmares
for stealing away precious moments
that could better be spent
     dreaming of you

the earth spins sweetly
like a turntable in a sun-lit living room
or the hem of a long skirt in july

the best things in life are free

the sing-song laugher of the birds as i sip my morning coffee
the smell of fresh rain and wet concrete
the curve of the sky late at night
as i stare emphatically into the stars
hanging low to the wyoming plains and sage

how fantastic it is to simply **be