I can't handle the caffeine as it rushes through my arteries.
When you know you need to keep moving
but the taste on your tongue is bitter with
swollen memories grown to large
to shelter in the heels of your feet.
Slows you down with the weight of every jaded moment
you ever thought about the vacancy
in your own lungs
or sinking your  hands in icy water.
So maybe you're the one who's drowning,
Maybe you need a break from tracing maps with your eyes
looking for the safest route back to the banks
of the river you lost yourself in as a child.
And can you call me when you're feeling well again?
Let me know sickness is the only obstacle we have to conquer
before our world erupts into fire when we come together at the close.
With our bodies braced against the walls,
we awake into the dawn's light
where our weary bones
ache no more.
And all I needed was a cup of coffee
to keep me up
till I saw you again.

I dry out on nights like these.
When words and phrases elude my lips
and I'm parched,
thirsty for a good verse.

Can
     I sleep beneath the willows in the garden
     In the shade of weeping eaves
You
     Planted deep in soft mulch
     above the hallowed canary grave?
Breathe
     Out  the eerie recollections of
     a marrow chilling orchestra
In
     the confines of
     the white wicker cage.
Song
     I cannot hear
     but I taste in the sap of the willow
As
     it sobs softly
    on my heavy shoulders.
You
    spread a quilt out on the grass
    and whispered to the weeping branches
"Do
     you hear the canary  choir
     ringing through your roots?"
Oxygen
    expired from my lungs
    and I wailed a yellow-bird song.

Adorned in flowers, you will look to the sky.
Garnished with clovers, your body will sigh.
A breath to the aspens lining your road,
shading your skin in the sun of the grove.
Come down silver hands from the aerial realm
and you recall the words of the old St. Anselm.
For he argued that 'Being is greater than not being'
And you are no longer frighted by the hell
you are seeing.

And what an awful feeling it is
to be homesick
In your own home.

Hurry,
Fall in love with me
while my eyes are sealed in dreams,
my defenses shackled in sheets
I have thrashed to the floor.
Fall in love with me
in my fraility,
while my bones are weak
from rattling,
before I shove your
ship from the shore
and scurry to the mountain tops,
shadowed by lingering
'almost's.
I sing no more.

And what is a first 'Hello'
But a bitter-sweet reflection of how
ruinous the final
'Goodbye' will be?

I thank the sun and the stars every moment
for carrying me wistfully
from cradle to grave.

'I'm no poet.
Just an unfinished verse.'

and he replied,

'I believe you are both.
A poet
and a poem.'

Honey sick and sweet in your hair
as the morning sun does back-flips off your golden flax strands
and I can watch the lightening dance in your palms
when they trace the window panes
pretty pictures in a foggy field
and a flurry of white beyond the decorated glass.
Frosty eyes, they wrote songs about
the gap between your sentences.
He made a movie around the
crease in your forehead
when you asked me
if I ever jumped off a building
if I would face the sky or the pavement below
and that was when I knew you were a force of nature
and a love
and a death
and the incarnation of a stable soul.
So I follow you to the greatest darkness these
****** eyes of mine have ever been blinded by
and I trust that my hand in yours
will find it safely
to the other side of nowhere.

I lay beside you
to touch you, to hold your hand.
cold marble replied.

Cradled by the rock floating round the fire,
nursing the infantile species into god-fearing beings.
evolved from millions of years of careful formulation
discovery of galaxies
exploration of the depths of the sea
and all the fury of nature
scaling mountains and glaciers
drinking from the freshwater spring
trickling down summer's neck.
the domestication of the wild
the birth of nations
and the love of a brother.
We have lived and we have died
here on our Earth.
Must we believe in all our passion
and our funeral ceremonies
to pay respect to the dead,
must we accept the idea
that in all our glory as mankind,
our lives became so insignificant
to others and to the solar system beyond our sunny skies
that life means
nothing?
Have we evolved into the most
complex beings
in known existence
and have we loved with the marrow of our bones
and the iron in our blood
only to die
having never stepped beyond the pavement
to peek at the roses beyond
the garden fence?

She sipped her coffee even though it carried a faint hint of nicotine.
She smiled back at strangers even when their eyes said:
"I won't be kind, I won't be gentle."
Her skirt hugged her hips
her blouse hung from two silken threads
around a pale skeleton, bruises blossom around her ribs.
Still, she walked beneath the moon
hot breath on her neck from a unnamed man
whom she knew only by the taste of his lips
and the green Jackson's stuffed in her bra.
She begged for the dawn every night.

I thank you for bringing me here,
swaddling me in foil and casting me unto the embers
to burn slow in kiss of the flame.
I thank you for saving me from hunger,
for showing me what McDonald's tastes like
at 1 a.m when we escaped a daddy
who wasn't daddy anymore,
a daddy who flicked his tongue like a serpent
into an empty brown bottle.
I thank you, dear mother,
for dressing me in roses and velvet,
and kissing me on the forehead where wisps of my hair
tangled with yours
and how it was the same shade of amber.
I thank you for letting your tears drench my shirt,
how you showed me it was okay to be weak,
to be a shattered mirror,
and you bandaged my fingers when I tried to gather
the shards of your skin that cut into mine.
I thank you for sending me to school
where I met people who taught me what love really meant,
and how daddies were not all monster's inside.
I saw fear and I saw trust in the eyes of strangers
when they talked about their families.
And i am sure they saw emptiness in my eyes
when I spoke of a little house on the hill.
My ninth home in four years.
Four years running from daddy,
four years of you tasting the forbidden fruit and
following the familiar scent of his cologne.
But I can go now.
I can walk through the embers on my own two feet
and I will ******* own fruit
and pray i am not like you.
Though I love you mother,
very much.
You have weathered my skin
to stone.
You found a new man for me to call daddy.
He is okay.
You are okay.
I am going to find more than okay.
Thank you, mother,
for showing me all the wrong ways to be loved.

A young boy short by a dime
for the cookies in the window.
An officer,
unknowingly
short on time,
"I'll pay for them."
"What do you wan to be when you grow up?"
He describes his dream,
rushing around on the court,
and the rhythmic bouncing
of an orange ball.
"I want to be a star."
The man smiles.
"You need to work hard."
And he promises
this man of the law
with generous hands,
He promises he will work hard.
And the man walks away, out the front doors
and not a second to react,
he lays on the pavement
unmoving.
face in the asphalt, a wasted man.
And in reply to the last request of an officer,
gunned down on the street,
this boy made a promise.
And he makes another one today
not to waste a dead man's
last words.

I told her
Do not wrap your hair around your fingers
and claw at the nape of your neck.
There is no zipper in your gorgeous flesh
and no laces in your spine.

Break your fingers and
stare too long into the sun.
I pray you stand on the porch and
smile at the oncoming storm.
I will chase it away and catch your breath
when you are winded
from running out of time.

I was perplexed by your
martyr complex
when you followed the red roads
searching for that which I have hidden
in my own skin.

And if you feel you really must
find your way to the dead end path,
You must first carve
the map from my own flesh.

I will be your guide.
I will not let you go.

A few kind words
a few worry-some questions
maybe a motherly embrace
and I would be sitting in yellow patches of sunlight
dancing across the kitchen floor
gorging myself on baked goods
not a scraggly girl with empty eyes and stomach
begging for attention
from all the wrong places
and attention is one thing I received
But they led me to believe
It was all I was good for.

I was yanked from my childish day dreams,
plunged into a cess-pool of evaluation and judgement
before my 15th birthday.

I have yet to venture outside my own country's borders,
yet to feel unconditional love from eyes unseen,
I can't even cook my own dinner.

They ****** me into the hot seat,
where are you going?
how will you get there?
Where do you see yourself in ten years?
Maybe eating olives on my balcony,
crying over wasted years and broken fingers.
And they tell me
'Study hard, your future depends on it.'
as if my future revolves around
letters on a piece of paper,
teaching me that percentages
and values
define my self-worth.

Subliminal messaging.
Grades before morals.
And now I look at the scale and the digits
line up
three men to be executed
by firing squad.
And I was taught from the age of six
that these numbers represent
my life.

I am numbers
on a scale
on a report card
a g.p.a
a percentage on a test.

Society looks upon me
as a resume.
A collection of fake numbers and symbols
and they decide,
based upon this ****** little game of
calculations,
what life you deserve.

A content life is looked down upon
much akin to how
a crow looks upon the ways of the moth.
'Why spend your life
chasing what eludes you
only to persih by it's hands in the end?'
asks the crow.

'It's the brightest light I have ever looked upon,
therefore the best,
and if I find myself beside the light
I shall be happy.'
retorts the moth,
it's eyes aglow.

The crow looks on at the
vain attempts of a common insect,
lusting after the blinding hand of death,
glittering, buzzing
above their heads.

'Why don't you join me, Crow?
We can chase this light together,
maybe you will find it's glory as well.'

The crow peers curiously at the moth,
addled by the enthusiasm
of chasing such an obvious,
insatiable pleasure.

'I prefer to fly.
I can see all the lights in the world
from above.'
He gestures to the window.
'I have all the fruits of the earth
spread before me.
Mine for the taking
at my leisure.'

But the moth never looked away
from the enticing, electrical bulb.
It buzzed and flew
and smacked against the hot glass.
With one final effort to enter the light,
it popped and found itself on the earthen ground,
lost in a graveyard of conformity.

The crow shivered at the sight
of life wasted on material things
and gaudy glory.
He spread out his wings
and ventured into the evening air
to watch the sun sink behind fushia hills.

We are born not of flesh
carved from the visage of mother and father,
We are born of nebulae,
of a symphony in the snow and
the seeking of knowledge we never acquire.
We are birthed for
good.
We are grown in
evil.
Our lives nothing more
than the squealing of wheels
as they spin in our
sempiternal filth,
a footprint in the dust since God said
"Let there be fear and malice".
Faces of dead, liquored men,
shovels in our piracy
digging for hidden treasure in the graveyard.
So we crawl in the holes and
cover each other up.
Insulting the demons who pull us through,
blessing them
with good tidings.
We go at our passing, to face the Devil.
God as our jury,
your hamartia plays witness.
I am driven only by my fantasy of tomorrow.
What a way to live.
What a way to die.

Infatuation bought you time
to infiltrate the delicate tubes of her heart and organs
with pretty words
and the stroke of your fingers
dancing along her collar bones.
She was a violin wailing sweetly
in the broken silence,
wisps of your hair in her fist
as you demonstrated to her your lustful
affection.
She clung to you.
knowing she was an instrument,
never admitting to warfare in her blood
that boiled in fervor.
White blood cells facing a legion
of your searing kisses
that swam through her veins
till she bled them out.
Your lips sang in harmony with hers
as they pressed against her neck and shoulders
moving urgently from place to place.
She lie there beneath the weight of your body
seething with guilt
while you thought only of the girl down the lane
whom had never felt your touch.
Uncharted territory , you thought.
And you left.

Lock the doors,
leave on the light.
Kiss the children,
'Nighty night'

Lie in the sheets,
Don't fall asleep.
Cometh the Devil,
thou soul to reap.

Your sable heart
has long been dead
for the Devil dwells
inside your head.

In hushed rooms and empty corridors
I counted my heartbeats.
One, two, three.

Some days I was more alive than others,
stepping in tune with the pulsating muscle
in my chest.
Slow and uneasy.
One. Two.

And one day,
After I had paced the corridor seven times,
hushed the children
and silenced the banshee,
I found it.
Quiet.

I heard the last thump of my heart.
One.

In the monotonous ringing of silence
and in the empty hall,
there was tranquility.

She spun a scarf to hide her shamed head
from a silken thread of equivocations
that led her lovers into walls.
She ate from a spoon of clay and earth,
saturated by her tongue
mud in the depths of her bleeding throat
and the towns people said
'May her mendacity lead her into hell's bastille,
may her sins bury her before the breath leaves her lungs.'
and she was silent.
While her judgment day had arrived
and she marched on quietly towards the grave
of the rogue,
I felt her eyes catch mine in the crowd
and I tasted the humanity,
I smelled the anguish.
Sentenced to death by the thirsty fingers
of an un-dead society,
feeding on the remainders of true, unyielding life.
She walked on towards the land of slumber,
a conscious antithesis
of justice.

Gray skies
Gray eyes
And a chilly smile
in the empty
afternoon.
What will we do?
Where do we go from here?
I only follow you,
gray eyes,
I only wish for my
gray eyed
love
to come near.

Fell for you, died on impact.

Whatever lies beyond this life
shall suffice for me.
Forgive my simple mortal mind
and may my soul be free.

When we face the gate of fire at the end of our journey,
and the creator beckons us forth,
what enchanting tale shall we regale him of our spell
spent on his land?

We will speak of the wandering souls encountered
on the pathway to the next.
Tell of the ones who abandoned our wreckage
and whisper of those who carried us on.

Weep at the thought of the ones who went early
to dwell in the land of spring.
Recall their ways and faces
and know we shall see them again in time,

Reminisce on the wild and wondrous adventures we had
and beam down on the memories shared.
The Earth still spins without us there
but our mark was left in soft song and kind word.

Whatever lies beyond this life
shall suffice for me.
Forgive my simple mortal mind
and may my soul be free.

In the light of the streetlamps
I looked upon you
as a sailor looks over the sea.
I watched the fire in your eyes
flicker and burn.
It called me back to
memories of waking up
on your couch,
the smell of syrup and rain
on a Sunday afternoon.
Suddenly I feel
your silk sheets sliding
off of my cool skin in the summer time,
hours spent enveloped
in the folds of your body,
tangled in your hair,
a soft auburn forest .
I felt the lure of your scent
as I fell at your feet
pledging allegiance of my sable heart
unto this
goddess
before my filthy hands.
Crumpled in a heap before you,
you stepped over my weeping soul
and into sturdy arms.
Arms that never dreamt of your skin,
never went sleepless over
the quiver of your lip.
Arms that never felt weak and worthless
in your absence.
Not how mine did.
Those arms are strong
they will strangle the warmth
from your bones,
leave you shivering in the road
where I shall find you by the light of the streetlamps
only recognizable by the dying fire in your eyes.
I see your darkness now.
Your miserable wallowing worst
I pray this time
you shall see
my light.

Leave your concious mind
into vivid dreams
fall into the sheets
to watch stars capsize
beneath a distant horizon.
Cling to their brilliance
swing from their beams above the fields
call farewell to the
antagonists
who shoved you too far
Whisper into the vacant spaces
words of reassurance
tell yourself
'it's okay to follow the light'
an escape
beyond the reaches of your lifetime
into the heavy darkness.
let the stars lead you
so readily
beyond.
So forlorn
is the echo
of your final goodbye.

My bones creak like an old house
that has sheltered the darkest memories
a hundred
forlorn people.

I sway in the wind,
groaning, whining,
settling my foundation
in your soft earth.

The sable skies have passed on
and I rest on your shoulder
beneath the sun.
This old house
lays still and peaceful.

i am torn pages
from a book
gathering dust
behind the shelf
just broken twigs underfoot
of a marching army
and only gray snow
piled along
i-84
going straight from Phoenix to
nowhere special
i became the wind at
5 a.m.
and the moon
at noon.
i went  unnoticed
this long
i can make it
to the end
without further incident
perhaps the coldness
of crippling exhaustion will be kind
and leave me numb
in my dying day.

.
Drinking straight from the bottle and
kissing with the taste of
Jack and Jim
on my lips.
Jose
wanted some, too.
.
You got the leftovers
when I forgot the difference
between you
and that lamp
because you both
kissed me
the same
empty way.

You saw me in my black boots and leather jacket
white smoke rolling off my tongue

You offered me a steady hand
and calmed my shaky one.