It´s difficult to love when we are down,
It´s like having nowhere to sleep,
We just pretend that we have an option.
Under the bridge or on the garden bench.

Like dust, we rise a couple seconds
At the passage of the unknown
Anxiously aiming to be oxygen
In someone´s lungs
But we fall painfully slow on the ground.

Like smoke of a fire
Or fog we have an effect
A principle of being
But we just can't feel it

A cause
Or a mere colatteral accident in life?
A real pain
Or nature´s oblivion...?

If I could write the word
To make you fall in love with me
again
I would write it today
And tomorrow
Again
I would scream it from the treetops
Scrawl it on the walls
Again
If I could write the word
I’d be free as a bird
today
If I could write the word
to make you fall in love
With me .........again......

Starving for a lost knowledge,
Invisible to those with privilege,
Wanting support, needing a hand up,
Need a balance for my core, without looking for handouts.
Need acceptance, in a world where I face rejection.
Wanting knowledge to use as a weapon against discrimination.

Together under a slow-folding sky
we write our future in non-existent stars.
Each breath I exhale is warm
against the soft curve of your neck- and
your fingers rest possessive
between my thighs.
Time gathers pace, the space around us
is suddenly too vast.
Static crackles- a bad signal, through trees
and swaying grass.
Your reaction is violent, fast and hard as I arch up-
I take you hurt, I take you angry.
I take you deep- and lick and bite and scratch-
Try to sign you out
from this whole-wide Universe as mine to keep.
Yet I leave not a mark on you.
No trace of salt, or blood, or broken skin.
And even as you wash me into feeling
with frustrated waves of heat,
I look up to find my face is not
reflected in your eyes.
Long before our tide recedes
I am clean and all alone.

I've been watching the ants.
It's August and I sleep in the afternoons.
I'm single. I haven't showered in two days.
The smoke from the incense drifts.
I **** it down like a good myth.
And the ants are there, on my desk,
scurrying back to their homes
with a few bread crumbs in tow.
I talk to myself after lunch.
"Let me show you to your bed."
And I bury my head in the comforter
and the ants are feasting
and outside there's a pandemic
going on
and I read about a man with
a one-point-five million-dollar hospital bill
and I heard they've been sending
direct deposits to the dead
and something crawls along my leg
and how did nag champa become
the default incense
and I'm single and my heart is
curdled and my mom calls
to ask if I've found anyone to make it whole
but I tell her I better grab a
few winks--it is the late afternoon--
but before I go, how about an update?
My dad fought cancer last
winter and we didn't really
talk about it
and I kept thinking of the
word leisure
and everything got empty
and a little bit terrible
and a leisure suit is nothing, nothing
to be proud of,
and they gave my dad a numbered
chip and they let him ring a bell
and he said a few words
and I wanted to be there,
really there, you know?
But I knew it'd just be
a moment until the sun
got stranded on its way
to set, and I'd see my shadow
and burrow into this bed
with a nag champa halo
and a few mumbled words
to commemorate day 153 of quarantine.