blunt tips of bent cigarettes
were incisive as razors -
sliced wrists weeping
bright red sentences,
spattered unborn to blank paper
and turned into statues
so the dead would always remember
what they did,
never safe in the graves
in which they'd took refuge

but blue on blue
was ever her color;
blue on blues
seeping from old sins,
deep, hidden within spidery veins
that traced pale, soft *******,
finally filling mute lips as she slept,
subsumed in oceans of color,
blues that gave stories, as waves to shore
subsided, reclaiming their pain,
and cleansed sand once more

What end to life!
a collection of furies like stone turtles
arranged on the mantle -
just a few dozen last words
tucked among ads for
Old Spice and Polident tabs
unread, used to line
litter boxes in Cambridge
or wrap fresh fish at Hay Market;

then, someone pausing to wave at the sky
missed saving the drowning woman
by years, if he'd tried,
finding questions in every answer;
child curled in hard lap of his mother,
her cold affections of words
blew from dead lips like old wishes
without tender touch or wet kisses;
but that life continued,
if lived only blue on blue

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,

and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.

Insanity Is the comfort of a pillow, used for suffocation.
Insanity Is the warmth of a gun, used for a death shot.
Insanity Is the enabler,
The barrier breaker,
The undertaker.

Insanity Is a safety zone.
Insanity Is a shield.
Insanity Is a guard for all to take part in it,
All who brush with it,
All who dwell in it.

Insanity Is the abstract thoughts, the rotund ways.
Insanity Is the thought that you can do anything.
Insanity Is the fact that people can question, can insult, can pry,
And they never seem to affect you,
And they never will.

Insanity Is a soft room, padded with cushy walls.
Insanity Is a group of people, who try to figure out what's wrong.
Insanity Is not quite knowing what's going on,
Having that privilege,
Having that power.

Insanity Is engulfing, a single being in itself.
Insanity Is the process of losing yourself.
Insanity Is the way you go when you just seem to snap,
Lucky enough to see nothing,
Lucky that everything goes black.

There are days when I can feel you,
I can feel your mind working around me.

There are days when I read
your writings, so elegant and seducing.

There are days when I can't help but wonder,
'Are all these words meant for me?'

Then there are those days when I am certain
that to you, I am just a memory.

I have waited my entire life
to disappear when a truck rolls
by in front of me.
One day I will vanish.
I'll be gone and no one will
ever know of my exploits after
my stage exit. No one will ever know
because when the truck is gone
so will I be.

I want to fix this small world
we share. Dig out all of it's tiny
problems and over blown drama.
Work so hard to break it down and
build it brand new and better.
They will all want to thank me.
Praise my altruism.

But the truck already rolled by.
They will wonder if I'm somewhere new
fixing other people's worlds
and expecting nothing but a sudden
and final exit.

But no one will ever know.
The job is done.