It's better to back
into you
with all the lights on.

The headlights
swerving
like
doves.

The taillights making devil's eyes.

The **** in the ashtray
and
its
ruby.

It's better to pull into the driveway
while your husband
is
asleep.

He doesn't get up to take
a ****
in the night.

It's better to back into your guest bedroom,
with my back turned,
the boogie man in the closet is a
****** psychologist,
and may just spoil it
if we go looking for him.

It's better to back into the bed,
because I can drink the coffee
in your eyes.

You can sober yourself
over mine
if you want to.

It's better
not to back into
saying goodbye.

It's better to dismantle the brakes
and **** ourselves
over it,
than this constant reversing.

So,
over a slow goodbye
you grind your teeth
because you are no yellow light.

I would like to think
you have thick skin,
but you wear a perfume
like burning rubber,
and I know the backing in
is not your speed.

It's not mine.

Battalions of rust
make war
on the Old Ford pick-up.

It becomes a sculpture
of
sunrise.

Judgement is not poetry.

Poetry is bird-watching
and
quail-hunting.

A poet observes lovers
preening wings,
and holding beaks,
because a beak
does not break easily,
and lovers
only touch each other
with
unbreakable things.

A poet
hunts
and feels the weight
of a thousand wings
as she shoots them out of
the sky.

So paranoia is for the poet.

Pain is for the poet.

Love is the bible.

Fear is the safety
the poet
never clicks on.

A poet does not judge these things
to be true;
judgement is discernment
and for placing value
and poetry is not a
crime
or
a
rose.

The poet knows his arsenal
as he traces across the sky
in the unbreakable mouth of his love,
and falls
by his own gun.

Write every chance you get,
there aren't many.

Write when you
have a quiet moment
by yourself.

Write when you
are
in
the
queue;
life is about waiting.

Write when you are in bed;
take your pen
and
close your eyes.

By morning
you will have forgotten
more poems than you have written
but
you will still be a writer.

Write when you are getting a haircut;
all that hair has a story.

Write while you watch a woman.

Write while you watch a woman
lugging a rolling suitcase.

Imagine what is in there,
what is so important to her
that she must roll it around
in the darkness?

If you get the chance,
write in New York.

New York is writers writing about writers.

Write when the
most
beautiful
girl
turns around
and
gives you
heaven.

Write because heaven is costly;
heaven is elusive.

Write because heaven is rich
and know that you will be there
again.

Write because of anyways, well-****-it-thens, and don't-call-me-ever-agains.

Write when there is nothing
to write about,
there is always something
to write about.

If your writing is ****
feel freedom
instead of
disappointment.

We ****
to make space
for
reason.

I feel like our relationship
was too short.

Too many times did I take
your
******* in my fingers
and listen
for the ocean.

Your stomach
was fired in a kiln,
and still tastes like heat.

In your bed
we made out,
with t-shirts on,
and I slid my fingers
underneath cotton
because I wanted to
play in your belly button
and work the clay.

I know that you like to
Dance in fields
with cotton
on your lips
and talk to God.

Talk to him
in a subterfuge
of light,
and not in the marrow
of darkness.

Our relationship was too short,
because we snuck liquor
into dark theatres,
and left bottles in the aisles
like empty artillery.

We kissed in your car
and never cleaned up.

I had breakfast over at your house once,
and met your mother twice.

And it seems the alpine
was too much for me,
because I never took you to the mountains
even when you asked.

Carolyn,
when I see you
again,
I will take you to Appalachia;
as far from the ocean
as we can humanly get.

Carolyn when I see you
again,
I will not eat the fruit
of the fired bowl,
and will not
think of playing
with clay.

I want a Monte Carlo
with woodgrain
that drips
lacquer
like liquid
metal.

How sweet is the sound
of droplets
of wetted desire
and my chucks
dotted
by the bark
of a melted,
condensed,
glossed
and
digital
earth.

My Alpine's
make bus-drivers nervous,
with their hallways
full of a thousand faces,
staring down
at me
as I crack holes
in the concrete
big enough
for a squadron of buses
to fall into.

My Carlo
should have two things
in bunches,
it should have
the smell of a woman.

The smell of her
stale mouth
that lets loose fumes
in grated vents.

The Carlo's
smell should rattle me
like fences
that jingle when I brush against them.

Secondly,
my Carlo
should
be serious
and black.

All black.

I want my Carlo to have
opals for headlights
like the smeared *** of a firefly
or the eyes
of a panther.

My Carlo should be so beautiful
that it takes me back to the forest,
to the forge,
to the hotel,
to the hospital,
to the altar,
to a place of peace so loud
that I could take it between my fingertips
only to break it in a purr.

Andreya,
will you marry me?

Will you let me make
nests of sticks
and bubblegum
wadded together by spit
in your arms?

Please say yes,
I have drifted
into *******
of your voice,
and spurn the day,
when I  cannot hear your voice
that rips my heart
to
peices.