My nails are glossed in pink
Just like my mouth, glimmering
Tapping on the white linen-dressed table
In dim evenlight. Crystal glasses
Catch the shine in golden rings
Leaving kisses on champagne flutes
Hairspray mingles with Noir perfume
The fragrance of merlot and flame
His smell lingers on my sleeve
Where his arm, his aura brushed me
Swirls of crimson and black velvet
Jazzy chords crossing grand piano
Warm breath weaving whispers
Tickling the ear, reddens the cheek
His finger brushes silk from my eyes
A tress of curled brunette
Tinkling silver, muted by the mood
Like a stage, painted by a master

I am not good at "letting"
much less "letting go."
I am not good at "forgetting"
the ways things "used to go."
I **** at "simply setting" -
most miserably so.

"Let go and let God"
"Live and let live"
"Let bygones be bygones"
"Let's forget and forgive."

This "let" is a word
that I've no easy knack
If you let me, I'll grip you
'til my fingernails crack

"Letting" is brave -
so it is, so they say -
it's trust and it's strength
at the end of the day
but I'm not a "letter"
not by blood anyway.

Yet however intensely
knuckles tighten to white,
there are things that will rip
out our hearts when we fight

some creatures will claw
'til we let them take flight.

So sick, so sick of the digital age
The clock is looming, and in rage
I wrap my arms around the hands
And **** with all my inner man

I want to pull it back, pull back
But the tower won't even crack
So we gaze at old creation
Us artists of an artless nation

Look back on the past and cry
Meanwhile the music left to die
Those of us who still remember
All the real-ness gone forever

Cellophane on new CDs
Music  videos on MTV
Friends that actually called
Before Twitter stripped our gall,
Global markets stole our soul,
And Miley called herself rock ‘n roll

I'm going back to 1990. Goodbye.
Thanks for the memories
Love, Generation Y

I lost my marbles*
he cried, lingering
at the garden gate
hands in his pockets - what
a terrible thing to lose. I miss
him desperately from ten feet away. I wish
I could pluck star after star
and crush each between my fingertips
like a grape, dripping starlight
for him to lick
and shine behind his glazing eyes
and press the skins
into gems
for him to flick
with nimble wrist
like he did in our childhood
by the garden gate, where
we first met.

my skin tingles, overstimulated by the harmless cotton sheets
my stomach leaps, awakened to the enfolding silk of your skin
we flit in and out of consciousness
like drunken butterflies
my head pounds
I realize
the lamplight
the golden haze of "last night"
swirls of a memory
of ecstasy and an oil black record turning
and stopping
and my hand
reaching to flip it over
only to halt, relax, and slip down the nightstand
I strain my eyelids
remembering the forsaken B-side
every muscle aches
every inch of my flesh is spread with warmth
I reach for you
like I reached for the satin vinyl
but like last night
my hand slips into air
the potency of the illusion, the sensory explosion, the ache of losing
cling to my cold sweat in a bittersweet perfume
in the waking hour

so love,

you left me hanging after all

we all think we have something like no other
we all think "no one else has had late night talks like ours"
      "kisses like ours," "*** like ours," "a love like ours"    
we all think ours will not leave us

and when they do

we all think no one's pain can rival our own
we all think "no one has ever felt loss, tragedy like mine"
      "aches like mine," "benders like mine," "tears like mine"  
we all think we'll die alone

and when we don't

we all think we've hardened and learned our lessons
we all think “I'll never be that person who does it over and over again”
      “be loved again,” “abused again,” “betrayed again”
we all think we’ll never fall

and then we do.

Never ******* apologize
   for believing the liars

Never ******* apologize
  for loving the loveless

Never ******* apologize
   for the darkness

Never ******* apologize
   for deserving better

   for you are a luminous being
   you are a beautiful soul
   you deserve every kindness, and
   you will see it done
   even if you have to do it all yourself

Never ******* apologize
   for hoping

In shades of midnight merlot
Sweetly I dream
Bittersweet velvet warmth
Running down the throat

Sweetly I dream
Like repeated kisses
Running down the throat
The liquid golden red

Like repeated kisses
The liquid golden red
From the flute, twisting tongues
Swirling against the glass

The liquid golden red
Leaving tears down its globe
Swirling against the glass
Taste of earth, humming heat

Leaving tears down its globe
Bittersweet velvet warmth
Taste of earth, humming heat
In shades of midnight merlot

The milky threads of calm, wound less neat
tighten their spread and tangled nets of heat

split seconds post an apocalyptic maelstrom
here rises the silence before the firestorm

furiously raveling strings of energy to a fiery knot
compressing all matter until it burns white and hot

molded and collapsing in its own gravity
the folding and re-folding of infinity

all universal light, crunched to but a single ray
explodes to birth the stars and break the day

an interstellar consummation of luminosity
until all is, yet at once, will cease to be.

You were all the chemicals I crave
A cocktail of all the elements
I couldn't refuse
Tall, dark, and nerdy
That's how I described you
To my best friend and she laughed
Those eyes
And a penchant for swearing
And American Spirits
A bad boy
A light-weight
And a snuggler
Co-existent in a Starcraft lover
Creating covalent bonds
At the bar over whisky
Losing ourselves in time loops
And infinity
I corrected your grammar
And you grinned
And I fell
Knowing that the Force was strong with this one
Too strong to resist
And I swallowed my heart
Like Ms. Pac-Man
The first time that we kissed

Go figure that a Jedi
Would fall so hard
For a Sith

Magnetic
down to every cell.
No, deeper.
Every atom.
Deeper still.
Every quark
vibrates against mine,
creating friction
creating heat
creating static
in my head,
electrical storms
in my skull.
Strings pull back
release
and resonate.
Particles spin
scatter
collide,
creating a universe
as matter
is unwound
and I?
I am undone.

I remember the first time
I felt panic, I
Had been raised in a beautifully-constructed world of my mother’s making where I could
Take my time and step from subject to subject like hopscotch or skipping rope because I wanted to know it all
Drinking it all in, soaking in knowledge like a bath
Learning everything there was to learn
Leaving no stone unturned
No one told me I couldn’t
Swirl my fingertips in acrylics, read books on horses having *** at age seven because I wanted to be a veterinarian, hit the soprano notes though I was an alto, crush dandelions into healing potions, create a world on a stage with crying child actors, nick cardboard boxes and clocks because I knew I could move time backwards

Then I grew up and
The grown-up world was not so forgiving
Examinations, papers, time clocks, meetings, expectations I could not meet with the excellence my soul craved
I can’t breathe
Fear had a choke-hold on my throat
My mouth would dry, then wet as my stomach swirled and groaned with nausea
My hands turned into ice picks
My heart screamed like a jackhammer in concrete
Every possible worst-case, best-case, win-win, lose-lose, lose-win scenario would rush and overthrow my amygdala like a union mob besieging an abusive factory that never closes, never lets them rest
I didn’t realize it was because the only way to do it all and be it all and hit every deadline and finish every task was to sacrifice perfection, to become average, mediocre
Assimilate

And I learned the truth
That that was all the world expected of me anyway
You see there is no patience for anything else in the real world
I can’t breathe
I have no emotion, only thought processes
Paralyzing, debilitating clash between suppressed desires to take my time, create, innovate, learn and the overwhelming need to
Focus, decide, move faster, work harder, be on time, be better, please everyone, be everything
Be nothing
To where the only choice is let go of that part of yourself or go insane

So I shed my skin like it was a sin I was leaving behind
Just to survive
Without the headaches, the heartbreak, ripping my hair out over stupid little mistakes
It’s taken this long to find it in my closet again
To not be afraid
Of the soul it takes to
Perfect

Pride fills your chest and you feel anthemic
Your thoughts are contagious
Pervasive, pandemic
Phrases like lasers
Searing gazes
At empty stages

But in the background
A playwright bleeds out on paper
Everyone told him fear is not real
But the lie burns acrid
Tastes like acid
What idiot would back this?
Grappling with ghosts
Only gets your *** kicked

Ignore it, and
It becomes a rope around your throat
Choking love
Choking hope
It’s a gag dipped in vinegar
Tightened over tongue
Wafting in your nostrils
Water in your lungs

Embrace it? It is sound and fury
And makes you question
That you have any questions left to ask
Or any words left to say
Any poems meant to write
Any battles worth the fight
Any gifts left to give
Any life left to live

Poet, Fear has a body
With a thousand different heads
This is what it looks like
This slimy source of all your dread
It's your mother when she told you to get a "real" job
It's your bills, it's your rejection slips
It's the "Sorry, not the right fit"s
It's the superstars
Without your scars
Whose work reads like ****

Fear is real
Don’t ever let them tell you differently
It’s real and it’s homicidal
it's maniacal and it's wild
it grips a butcher knife
and it comes to carve out your heart
cut away the playwright's smile

So, poet, posture cat-like
Beckon the foaming dog to bite
But bite you on your ground tonight
"I won’t pretend you aren’t there
so you can shadow my back
dagger between my ribs
**** my dreams in their crib"

Come get me, Fear
I smell you
I feel you
I’m ready for you

If I were a spirit
I'd be ***
Bittersweet
Or an elf child
Light of feet

If I were a dye
I'd be red
Smoldering
Or a yellow
Emboldening

If I were a bird
I'd be a sparrow
Quite plain
Or an arrow
Restrained

If I were a rock
I'd be iron
Steadfast
Or a tear
Long to last

If I were a gem
I'd be broken
But blinking

If I were a word
I'd be spoken
Not thinking

Hello. So...

I see you're writing - good -
of love and nicotine in ink
and ****** threads, like vapor
swirling down the sink
of dreams and dying hopes
and burning for a drink
aching lust for perfume
that leaves a ling'ring stink
of epic love and romance
chained with iron link
of standing in a storm
or skating thinnest rink
being on a bridge
or breaking on a brink
bemoan that no one listens
but don't say what you think
a soulful galactic pull, or
stars suicid'ing wink -

tell me how you know so much, poet...
      when you've been here but a blink.

The match strikes
Scrape, crackle, hiss
Wisp of smoke
Waft of flameful bliss
So, too, you ignite me
With but a single kiss

I kept my hands clean today
No unholy things for me today

I snubbed my neighbor twice
For twice the heathen greeted me
I gave him barbed advice
For each time he had cheated me

I kept my hands clean today
No unpleasant things for me today

I went nowhere where one could find
Sinning folk or those in need
I chastized a beggar who was blind
Accused a friend of pride and greed

I kept my hands clean today
No ungodly things for me today

I avoided adulterers and ******
And gluttons, thieves, and tools
I gave a penny to the poor
And two cents to a fool

I kept my hands clean today
So God, why didn't you bless me today?

We are all planets; orbited by moons, gases, comets.
We fear when they escape our gravity.
Why? Suns fix our revolution, not they.

We each consider ourselves the martyrs of our own tragedy.
We think our pain is paramount -
that no one else could possibly understand.

We might be less anxious, more content, tranquil
if we realized we are satellites.
Not stars.

Knuckles break
With whippish crack
So much to take
The quiverous wrack
And the injustice drives me insane

They say not to bite
The hand that feeds
But I do bear spite
For the one that beats
And sometimes they are the same

Her alabaster shoulders shamed by
scandalous spears of searing light
crashing from the frame of oak
that broke the smoldering night
a whispered confessional of sinners
plunged into passioned plight
Juliet y Angelica accost by Romeo
and he no rapier wit or steel to fight
nor they the kissless tongues to plead
or frozen feet to take their flight

only hearts to bleed.

"Save me, Sabrina fair.
You're the only one
who can."

Are you Linus Larabee?
Am I Sabrina Fairchild?

I fear I cannot be
the savior that you ask of me.
You see,

I cannot save you
But I can love you
And love can save you

You stamp me out
like the **** of a cigar
vanilla swirled cumulus
fogs my throat
clouds my neural pathways.

I smolder and sputter
glow dimly red
only wishing for your lips
to breathe life
into me again.

I gasp, I wheeze
as you squash my heat
on the deck railing
wring out my last sparks
until finally

         my light goes out.

Torch flame and red wine.
                          I'm doused in paint and sweat
                          Stomach curdled in hunger and irritation.
He is late.
He usually is.
                          The wine was for me.      
                          Nevertheless, I let him sip from my glass.
           We argue. Pardon...discuss.
                           I win.
                           I usually do.
           We watch the bottle vanish.
           We recline.
           We muse.
                           I relax into my own sore muscles
                           including the muscle in my chest
                           tell a story that sharpens its ache.
He stutters.
                           I startle as
he kicks his chair out from under him.
            Tears flicker in torchlight.
            Hands clasp too fervently.
            Questions.
                           No. Actually...
                                  
...just one.

                           I knew the answer, but was
                           left
                           utterly

                                                        ­                                                                 ­                                     
                           ­                                                                 ­                                                                 ­ speechless.

My dry, swollen lids flicker open
a gust of sulfur and ash dries my tongue
clogs my narrow throat with chalk.
The concrete under my ribs is warm
still vibrating from the detonation
wet with gasoline or oil or...my blood?
My hand reaches to brace myself
I collapse gasping as the pain ignites
my flesh, and all I can see is meat,
a mangled sinewy stump where an elbow
my book-carrying elbow, had been.
Black smoke belches and plumes
the street that was pregnant with screaming
now still as a newborn birthed dead.
Sirens shriek, television crews scuttle
in hopes of burning our blood into film, but
my skull falls back, eyes roll, lashes fall, and
as my skin drains of heat and fluid, I realize
all I wanted was to go to school today.
That's all I wanted.

That's all.

Maybe you have a bigger vision
Maybe there are things we don't see
Factors that bind you
That make you do all this crap to us
But we are the community
This is supposed to be for us
Don't you read our messages?
I'm sure you can spy on the Pub
From some cyber-crack in the walls
Can't you hear the chatter bubbling
Roiling over furiously
Foaming at the mouth
Like a hundred starving stomachs
Hungered until cannibalism
Becomes the only option
You should be listening
To the lynching mob
The drunken crowd
With pitchforks
Listen to them coming
For no other reason
Than to run the other way
You're next
Whether justly or not
Your silence has made you guilty
There he goes everyone!
Most hated man online

You chalk my slate with questions
               and wipe it blank again.

Brown eyes, almost black -
lackadaisical?
Calypso, but male -
malevolent?
Lent me your cap -
capricious?
Using my heat -
heathen?

You chalk my slate with questions
               and wipe it blank again.

writing with a broken pencil
how pointless
when the only connection I had on Valentine's
was wi-fi
and don't the vultures in this airport know
only one carrion allowed?
and no fresh fruit - so no pairs.

it's terrible, I know
but puns are my coping device
and you [every bloke in my youth] should never have tried to juggle
when you had no *****
but you left
so I'm all right now

and I amused myself
with silly strings of homophony
until I found someone
whose puns are even worse
than me

because you can't take a joke
that doesn't belong to you

it's all mind.

Nanoseconds streak naked like
rebellious starlight in spacetime
responding to no sentient's censure
striking hot the wired constellations
strung about my fingerless grip
they slip
retreating
eternal
into
The Void.

Do you know me?
You see me everyday
Bustling in the street
Answering the phone
Sexily glossing my lips
Do you notice?

I’m trying to catch it
But your approval
It’s so hard to snare
Like a firefly
So I starve myself
In hopes my thighs
May shrink to acceptance
Can you tell?

Fishnets curve to my legs
Maybe business slacks
Or a plaid jumper
My eyes can’t hide it
This longing, deeply cut
Like my shirt’s neck
Do you see me?

Hypocrites
To tell us we are free
To be anything
Liberated, ******
Powerful, worldly
Who are they to say
We are free?

Only so long as we give
Relinquish emotions
Harbor no expectation
In favor of carnality
Unchained, as long as
We seek not to be loved

Will you love me?
Will you try?

Poor, broken creature
To wrap her heart in barbed wire
That defends from the enemy
But tears the flesh ****** within

One look at you is all it takes
An injection of your kiss and glow
And my will just breaks
I think you know

I was a liar before I met you
Now your tenderness makes me weak
How can I lie so near to goodness
When I cannot even speak?

Stained glass coffins
Crystalline mosquitoes
Death that masquerades
In silken flags and floras
Languorous beauties
Graffiti of red and violet light
Sirens kiss the bullets
As they scatter them
To burn holes in sepia dreams
Watercolor ghosts
Casting out wildflower candy
Attics that hide under
Strawberry dust and lemons
That melts into mildew
As they pass down the gullet
Layers of ashes in the belly
“But you told us to swallow!”
Masses of children howl
The pretty ghouls hiss back
“Cannot you tell a lie by now,
By the sweetness of its taste?”

I used to press my shirts
  bleach out stains and dirt
  laundering can hurt

  when it's all you ever do

When I was a kid
  that's all I ever did
  behind the lines I hid

  the sterile and the new
  
******, mismatch the dress
  let go the loneliness
  settle for nothing less
  
Than the beauty of the mess

Someday a watch will tick
Night away to dawn
Someday warm will pool
To signal shadows gone

Someday stars will touch me
And sap away the pain
Someday suns will nudge me
Til my eyelids rise again

Someday I will wake up
And find I wasn't dreaming
Someday I will realize
I never stopped believing

Narcissists
All of us
That crawl the saturated cyberspaces
Howling like shriveled
Infants doomed to die
In the womb, unheard

Be my friend
Follow me
Like me
Quote me
Share me

Favorite my poems
Repeat my tweets
Rank my posts high
Comment on even
The vaguest written word

Subscribe to my channels
Connect to my feeds
Stumble upon
My tumbled thoughts
And filtered photographs

Do you know who I am?
No really. I'm not angry.
Just...do you?
Because I am afraid
I'm afraid you never will.

I scream until my lungs
Collapse upon themselves
But still the shrieking noises
Around me, voices
Surmount my shouts.

I demand your attent
I deserve your loyalty
For no earned reason
Other than
I exist
I am Me.

And who are you exactly?

I live in a world without faces
My friends are screen-written in black
Via virtual reality, we speak
Through computerized smiles, we laugh  

I know what each one is doing
Every second of every long day
My own moves are ripe for the viewing
So, too, the great thoughts I will say 

We chat and we email and text
Rarely catching a voice on the phone
God knows whatever comes next
Will leave me busy, but wholly alone 

The experts from so many places
State we gain more, with time, than we lose
But if in gaining, I lose only faces
Then I’d trade for the olds, all the news

What is
  happy?

Chasing...
  retrieving?

Knowing...
  believing?

Feeling...
  choosing?

Loving...
   losing?

What is
  this word
  a noun
  a verb?
  a tense
  a sense?

God, how I hate
  and want
Happiness

SPRING
Like a bull, she charged the dandelion hill
Her child-sister a pack on her back, until
The braves swarmed from the wooded rill
She shouted to her comrades to lie still
Among the sweet grass and the dewy chill
Wild girl

SUMMER
She clutched the bark skin of Hawthorne trees
Skidding down, then pressing in her knees
Mop of chestnut hair blowing in the breeze
Which smell'd of hot soil and sweet peas
The sun above as close as she could please
Wild girl

AUTUMN
Page after page, her blackish eyes devoured
Tales of elves and warriors, from her tower
Where real-life through the faery-glass did sour
In presence of such phantasmal power
Of all the leather-bound leaves they flowered
Wild girl

WINTER
So it was, she crafted bricks of blue and red
Into cathedrals and creatures concocted in her head
Riled dragons to hear the tales they said
Climbed mountains others would not dare to tread
And did it all before momma called her to bed
Wild girl

You
Yes, you
You’re not supposed to know
About the parts of my body that shiver
With pleasure at the purchase of a glossy Spider-Man comic

And
You
You’re not allowed to know
How I want to dig my fingernails into
My brain matter when it’s racing light-years ahead of my emotions

And
You
You’re a stranger who shouldn’t hear
How I jettison ideas like bullets, poetry like shrapnel
In hopes that it will hit someone’s beating heart and make it bleed

And
You
You’re not obliged to absorb
My metaphors for how martyring it is to be alone
And truthfully how much more terrifying it is to belong to someone

You
Yes, you
You’re not allowed to read this
Barrage of brokenness if you found it under my bed, only
When I whirl it in cyberspace, shotgun-like, to blast you in the face

Yes
I said
You’re not allowed to read this
But truthfully?
All poets lie.