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.

When ember fingers linger near
And braise a child's skin,
You are quiet, still,
It burns until,
You become the sinner's sin .

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.

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.

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.

You might put the past behind you,
but even when the sun is on your back
you can still feel it's heat.

Pressure in the palms.
Lifting flesh over flesh to breathe
In unison, quickened.
Frevored pace
As the window darkens beyond
Luminous eyes shutting
Lips parting
Dampness of your palms
Press into me
And I fall into sleep
And you fall into my arms
A place you call love

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

privileged and dismissed.
the beige of the spectrum,
clothed in a flimsy dress
peeling off my hips
in a mint-walled motel.
matte irises examining the dingy sheets
where I sink,
saturated by sweaty palms
and the mildewed ceiling
is crumbling around us
at every tremor of the mattress.
we evaporate
into the musty air,
mingling with the mists
of the hourly guests before us.

and maybe I sauntered
from that room
a little rosier than before.
maybe I left there
a few shades darker.

Our eyes wide open.
Observing the threads between us, holding, binding us up
In warm sheets together.
Arm in arm,
Taking your face near mine,
Our  breath,
The same in my lungs
As out yours.
Dusk peeking through the blinds,
Tucking in behind the hills
Rolling past the window.
We let time
Slip.
Because we knew,
Knew that there was more than breath
Being shared between the pillows.
Though we didn't say it then,
We felt the jolt,
The surge of energy through our organs,
Like the vibrations left wafting in the air after
An orchestra,
We lived briefly in that moment,
And we fell and crashed and burned,
And flung our charred bodies into each other.
In that moment,
Before we finished blinking,
Before your eyelashes parted,
allowing the luminous glow
of what you had felt reflect back
in my eyes,

I knew.

I knew.

sudden downpour,
on repentant shoulders,
licks clean.
As if weather knows.
As if weather sees.

rain forgives.

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.

When my skin splits in two
I finally feel whole.

she wore dotted patterns
draped over the bare of her dotted arms
a frill in the hem was the purity
the white sheet sheilding dotted skin
a bright virginal white against
her hair.
it tickled her waist
where rivers threaded seams
pulled taught against freckled hips
****** chasms from the strangulation
of the chaste garments
rivers where she was bathed as a girl
as a virginal sapling
now full and weeping under layer after layer after suffocating layer
of linens
to keep dotted skin from breathing.

Loose and black and peeling,
Hey, hey
Chip away
The scabbing on your brain
Find a smoother way of dealing.
Let gray eyes roll
back in your mind.
Find that passion
One more time.

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.

New Year's day chases us towards the dawn.
'Stick around, will ya?'
But I fear the light behind his fresh eyes
is nothing more
than a temporary stain
of January sunshine.

i used to wonder what those lights were in the sky
i never knew stars
before i saw your eyes

I washed the window when i left you
I forget you
whats your name?

****** sheets still on my bed
the window is ***** again
please forgive me
did you forget me
Where is home?

I washed my hands when I left you

He was careful he was kind
Don't look back now
the sheets are *****

There has never been a place that I have felt safe from memories

I locked the room and now I never enter
I forgot you
where did I go?
He has held me closer than a mother
holds her baby
And the window is fogging
it's filthy

If you come to find me
please shut the door behind you

rushing wind will come and blow your hair
thats my last
caress
I have left

I have left
the window open for you

I looked through my window.
I looked into the sun.
I asked her if the shadows
long to feel her scorching tongue.

You can leave the past
behind.
But even when the sun
is on your back,
You can still feel
its heat.

If I were to sail past days and years

to ask of you what we once found here-

If I were to char the hearts I hold

to chance this bliss and gamble the gold-

I wonder if your hand would reach

past time and space and sea,

or if those eyes would soon be blind

than fix their sight on me.


I've given thought to what I've lost

and gained through growth and reason.

the waters yearn and churn with frost-

we've long out-grown our season.

A soul must reminisce on if's

and leave the shores of sorrow.

It was only fantasy, you see,

I wont love you tomorrow.

It's warm
There is no sun or fire
Just your fingers on my arm

I've taken off the scarf
Around my neck and I pace to
The window to check
If the snow has melted yet
Almost

It's nearly warm again
Letters in the mail bear
Good news from over there
They're doing well
Oh well

I'm alright here in this
Purgatory season
Caught in between the realities
Of seeing and believing
In what I've found here

It's been a cold year so far
But my heat, here you are standing
Before me
Your flames are all I see
In this dim corridor
I'm passing through

I hope the snow melts away
Real soon

I forgot how to write
I forgot that words can be sounds can be oceans
I forgot that oceans crash and swell and roar
I forgot that words can, too.

Maybe the Earth grows cold
out of longing.
For he has drifted so far from the sun,
and misses her warmth
on his aching skin.

I think we all need someone we can spill ourselves into when it's four a.m and we can't sleep.

Wind ripping through windows
sleeping silhouette shivers inside
Dark. Dark walls
streetlamp glow far below
The window screen
The wind screams
You sleep
You sleep
a draft in the sheets
Body heat
Hair tousled by pillow wind
Blowing gently
Blowing ferociously
Will the window break
The shutters snap
I lay silent
awake
Beside sleeping silhouette
You dream
You dream

I never sleep

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.

from a corrosive cloud
i was
a solo interlude in the quiet
where i am liberated
alone
but still so full of sound

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.

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

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.