We don't remember the sun
for the blisters on our skin
but for the way it sets
in beauty and grandeur
on a fiery horizon,
with surreality and colour.
We remember the sun
for the climactic ending
to a short,
passionate life.

Some days my body is a trophy.
a dusty display in which I placed all recollections
of sorrowful evenings and birds with broken limbs I collected from the porch
Some days my body is a trophy
a tribute to my skin having smoldered
and made stony by fire-polishing
which may have brought on blisters and a chorus of
"i can live, I can live, I can live"'s to erupt at the mere thought of heat.
Some days my body is a trophy
it is for the one who says
"i went so far beyond her expectations that she lost sight of me"
i cant see him, my vision is hazy after spending an eternity with dust on my corneas and curtains drawn across my forehead,
I hid in myself, detaching skin from muscle and using my armor like a blanket in which I could block out the peering eyes of strangers
Some days my body is a trophy, because
instead of cutting away my blanket like I had,
you folded me back into a swan and I was no longer
crumpled rice paper that had been incorrectly origami-ed
by a fat fingered hurrier.
I was an image.
I am  your trophy to the world telling them all
I restored a masterpiece that had been mishandled and cast away
Some days my body is a trophy
That I hold up high
that says
I am worthy
and I will not be left behind

I am not that
not a storm before sunrise,
awakening the slumbering seaside
with sprays of churning ocean,
watery elemental
breaking against the bluff
with every exhale
- quickened heartbeat -
pounding the shore with
black-water fists
I am not that
the master of nature
calling the mountains to rise
and the rivers to run
Planting my flag
in my earth.
No.

I was strong once.
When I kicked from the womb.
Now I lift my hands
only to be held
by another.

once, I got a letter in the mail
I knew it was for me because the handwriting was illegible
and the stamp had a middle-finger
instead of a queen
whoever wrote it knew me well
because the sealed it with a
*******
and a big, bolded
go to hell

Mama can sing lullabies to the baby
for 18 years
and daddy can come and go,
leaving the garden with a message
for baby:

'You have a river inside you.
white water and grizzly bears
chasing salmon.
the world is wild, baby.'

Green-eyed child stumbles away from the nest
with a head of butterflies,
soft hands.
She didn't see the meteor
when it fell form the heavens
and struck her baby face.

She saw clearly
for the fist time
a world without mother's song.
Millions, billions
of men and women,
digging a pit in the cold earth.

'To the world, dear baby,
you are but flesh
and working arms.
So pick up a shovel'
said the man in the suit.

'Start digging.
We're going to hell'

I wish you would look at me.
I wish
you saw me.
Reassured me, with just a glance,
that it wasn't all
a mirage.
I didn't concoct memories and
feelings
while I slept.
I can't account for those months
that you
and me
were somewhere between
falling and waltzing,
All I see in m mind
is a spinning record
and the inside of my heavy eyelids
with a hand in my hair.
Just dreaming
Just screaming
but
I need to know
that you remeber
that you fekt it
and that this echo
of you voice
is
mine.
look at me
and erase doubts.
Share every moment
in that brief glance,
the void of your pupil
is swallowed
by mine.

look at me

so I don't forget

I forgot my name.

Those syllables chosen for me at birth
by people i had never seen before,
strangers I had never met.

I forgot the sound the letters make
when slurred together on someone's tongue,
squished against the backs of their teeth

What was the noun they used to scream
when they needed a scapegoat?
What was the noise they used to cry
when they needed a hiding place?

What was that odd combination of letters
they always took for granted?

I don't remember.

That isn't me anymore.

winded and chilled.
did your feathers get ruffled
as you flew in from the storm?
molting on my carpet
take a bath, birdy.
cleanse those wings
and wash your bony knees.
I don't want to see those nasty bruises
so cover your skin
and fly away again.
let me see those eyes, birdy.
have you a cold or
did the bitter cold
leave you blind?
better for you,
to see not with eyes but with frail
birdy fingers.
don't hate your world, birdy.
you're no more
no less
than any other ******
who shoves past you in the supermarket.
we all came out of a filthy ******* ******
so climb off your high horse
and get in line.
we're all just waiting around
til someone digs us hole
or lights us on fire.
so birdy,
if you can help it,
don't be a *******.
out you go,
into the cold.
smile birdy,
be glad for the sun in the mornings.

Fell for you, died on impact.

I longed to be here.
Forgetting how much I loathed these walls
till I found myself inside them
again.

I fell away from myself for just a little while.
Creeping through the rye
and sleeping in the foxholes scattered through the hills.
I pushed away the ideas
of satisfaction
and romance.
Wafting through the air,
I was a perfume of the mountains.
Pine and wet earth, I let nature reclaim me
while I waited,
slumbered inside my skin.
When my mind had cleared,
the fog of the valley,
lifted,
a stranger found me sleeping beside the brook.
And with a calloused hand
and a rough voice
he lifted me from the dirt.

A friend for the spring,
possibility lies just over yonder.
Sing with me a while,
while we find our way.

.
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.

We all could use a little faith
in our diseased gardens
and frayed robes.
We all could use a steady hand to hold.

You're my secret.
My secret keeper,
my safe, my lock-box.
my trunk in the attic.

my shipwreck on the sea floor.
my sails in the wind.
my shade tree in the spring.
my warm fire, my cleansing river.

You are love incarnate.

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

Drum ta dum drum
That head on the floor
Spit spraying like a misty roar
From the jaws of
Hell
"Do you want some more?"

Four times the size
With half as much brain
And ***** widened eyes
Sitting on his chest
"I will lay you to ******* rest"

Wall shaking
Back breaking
Brain quaking
Bruise machine
With a filthy dream
"You're ******* faking"

Hey bone twisting mama
Take a shot at me, trouble maker
Your dressed up sweety
Keep fist flinging
And daddy comes to take her
"Shut up or ill keep swinging"

Send him out
To the mills to the hellhounds
And I keep locking my ears
Drown out the shouts
Bury my head in the ground

Pray you **** him before
I **** myself

i'm wearing your gold on my finger, it shines
in the light of your sun as you linger in mine
sharing a space that is no space at all
and the sunset would reason 'too early for fall'
i kiss and i whisper to someone in dreams
I don't know them but they know me, it seems
fear of a wandering tongue that speaks
and breaks the vows we vow to keep
I disavow,
now weep.

When did you last lay in breezy orchards,

naked, sunshine glazing your curves in amber,

heaped between fallen apples, tickled by alfalfa,

peeking through a tangle of someone else's hair.

When did you last lay beneath starry sky,

afloat in empty fields, grain waving like oceans do

peering above, your vision consumed by an expanse of stars,

two bodies shivering under one blanket.

When did you last hold your breath,

struggling to slow time in that one aging moment

and you would gladly let the world grow old without you.

Freeze.

Still.

Forever.

Just five more minutes.

'love and miss you'

Oh lord! The skies have cleared,
I have seen the sun at last!
Such a touching message from
father to daughter,
a letter of unconditional love
for your offspring!
All faults must be erased and
we have reached forgiveness at last!
Alert the community!
Assemble the clergy!
Release the doves
and ring the bells!
The world must hear of your
love and sacrifice
for a daughter a thousand miles away!
We rejoice!
May the children dance and
the people sing,
we come together in celebration of
love and life!
The deep and concrete connection
between two generations
of one family!
Call down the angels!
Bless, with your heavenly fingers,
the man who has the audacity
to express to his only daughter
such honest and heartfelt emotion!
To give his heart
to the girl he sees just once a year
and calls every six months!
How he must love her so!
And may she reply with a simple message:

'you too'

for it is all she can manage to say
to a man who is all but
a stranger.

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.

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

The symptoms on the flimsy blue pamphlet
read more like my own biography.
And the sable gems of your eyes
were spilling over
with an emotion
all but unknown to me.
I felt
dim.

I guess it's my turn
to take a dive into
the little orange bottles.
Maybe this time
I wont resurface.

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'm going to set myself ablaze.



                                                      ­   Flare up with destruction, creation.
                                                 A whirlwind of carefully placed imagination.
                                  An inferno of memememe
                  I'm again ravaging the hillsides in a furious, hot mess.
                                     Scorching your eyes and heart with my scarred hands of charcoal
                                                            and flame.
                                                           I do it all.
                                                              I write with magma ink
                                                   and paint with gasoline.
                                            Then I burn it up.
                   My soul chasing the fruits of the Earth with a fiery vengeance
                                                     an­d a blackened desire for passion.
                                 I have set myself ablaze, follow me with your
                                                       kindling souls and oxygen.
                                                         ­                              Fuel me.
                                                             ­                                 Feed me.



                                                 Set your life on fire.

                                        Seek those who fan your flames.

Coercion of thighs
Under  the persuasion of a deserted road
And  the weakness of your knees.
You may cry out for the cleansing of your womb
From  the filth,
The  residue of evil
That  infects you from the inside.

"You are a murderer,
worse than a ******!
You stole life!"

Could you plead and longer to
Whatever lies above your matted hair
And shaken shoulders
To tear out this grudge
That  feeds off your fear?
It blooms with a life so
Tainted.
For an unwanted kiss
Is unwanted nonetheless,
No matter how gentle
Or sweet.

Could you gaze into the mirror,
The visage of charred innocence,
Swollen  abdomen,
Bursting  with life from inside,
A  life you fear to resemble
Your  salted stranger
Who took the light from your eyes
And fed it to his gluttonous evil.
Sever the ties,
The umbilical chain of memory
Leashing your pleasure
To the filth of dominant lust.
Begin from the mud on your knees
Where you fell to the asphalt
Where the Baby's Breath grew in the cracks.
Sink into cleansing waters
And release.

Forget, but do not forgive.
For you wish for the freedom of this birth
Like  an animal,
Caught  in a trap,
Wishes  to gnaw off it's own leg.

Now go.
And when the time has arrived,
Blossom  life within you
With  a heart so red and swollen
From  the purity, the tenderness
Of  a welcomed hand.
And it will be love's face that you cradle.

i made love once
once while I slept,
while i slept off the whiskey
slipped off my clothing and
stepped off the curb.
and awoke to the smell of
something musky
dank - rusty?
i made love once
over the course of a week
i made love to four bottles
and me.

We all wear the skins of our worst enemy.

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.

If you pay attention to the flowers,
the blooms in the hollows of your cheeks,
buds hanging from your jawbone,
bowing to a somber reflection,
Overlook the wilted edges
and the mud above the roots,
perhaps the petals won't fall.

If you sing for the meadow
lush in your temples
and between your eyes,
green with the vibrant flora,
light will fall over your eyes
and the growth in the soil
will be alive with allure.

Continents of
the flexing spine,
shifting behind the lungs.
A forest spanning dips and curves
from shoulder to hip,
the sway of your midriff
under the weight of
mountain peaks
and the valleys between.

Your own eyes,
holders of the grandeur
of what is molded around the bones.
You must prune the roses
with love of your warm garden
and the birds with flock
to your trees.

when you're 18 going on 9-5
and you watch the volcanic birth of the rest of your life
rise from a still ocean
you almost wish
there were resignation letters
for living.

Death is a filthy temptress,
but a beautiful one.
Anyone who disagrees
is either dying,
or in denial.

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.

There was nothing more alluring
   than observing her gallop through the evening,
      swimming along the riffs
   as they sailed from the stage.
How could I look away?

Where could I run?
    to escape the strangulation
        of her arms coiled round my neck
    as if I was all that anchored her to this earth.
But I grew accustomed to her passionate demeanor.

She was one of those dreams
    that ended as they began.
        In a state of delirium and confusion
    heavy limbs, fatigue of the bones,
an intensity that felt liquid, fading.

And like a dream,
    I recall only a fraction
        of the dances, the hazy bedroom scenes.
    the curtain of unconsciousness
has saved my tongue from insatiable avidity.

She pinched me.
I awoke.

I'll give you the gift
of my skin on yours.

Youth distracted from youth
by ideas of a love
that fuels the sun
and crisps the skin
with yearning,
lust.

You are youth
with future
of seed and rain storms,
soil tilled
by child's play
not by fingers
in hair
wrinkled
bed sheets in your fists.

Embrace the sunrise
and do not rush
the twilight.

We walked through high desert.
High,
and feeling deserted.

We sped down the interstate,
barefoot and dodging oncoming traffic.

I guess it's a miracle we found our way,
never strayed from the path
as it wound through swamp-land and quicksand

And soon we were strutting up the driveway
proud, our mascara running like warpaint
our feet had blistered and cracked.
But still, we arrived.
and still, or journey never came to a close.

After the crippling exhaustion of finding my way
to the threshold of home,
the maps were being drawn all over
so I fed myself with the knowledge of bandaging wounds
and repairing a flat on an empty road.

I will come to terms
and hear-out the voices of ****** and despairing,
who tell me with voices like roadside ditches
that the destination
is to become a memory.

to be a worn out engraving on a marble stone.
to be rotted beneath your feet,
deserted
and maybe high
up in some sort of heaven.

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.

I am a tangle of hair
a rustle of branches
against walls
droplets streaking
down windows
stillness of wind
before the new gust
felt heard seen
but yet a ghost

Crooked smiles.
Sinister eyes.
The mirror gazed back
at me.

My lips, my chin,
My hollow cheeks,
Not me at all.

Was this the outside looking in?
My soul beneath the frigid glass?

Putrid air escaped it's lungs
the lingering scent
of a rotted mind.

Choking on the stench
of corrupted thought.

Pounding the glass
with bruised fists and
split knuckles.

And I was on the inside
looking out
while the sickness inside me
walked free.