Dear warmth,

May you rub your back against my shoulder
‘til the windows mist with condensation,
and we fall back into youth, hiding
away from the older.

May your temperature, rising to the point
of red cheek puncture, provide an oasis
under the sand of duvet’s cover.

May your hair whip around like every
flame I’ve ever seen, no agenda or judgement,
just sheer ecstasy and  excitement.

May you conjure up that lone shower feeling,
that one where for a brief slot in time everything
you know and have become floats away through
that extractor fan, out into the air- climbing higher.

May you provide that gasp of heat that
hits the cook in the face, after opening the oven’s
gate in hunger and haste.

May you be that holiday sun I always seek.

May you be the metal womb of  a car when
outside in the myriad hospital world
where it’s cold.

May you be humorous and humid and
totally lovely to be with.

May you be a heated conversation and argument
and disagreement, that torment of words
I need to hear.

May you be my laugh that bubbles up
from the volcano underneath.

May you be the heat caused by key
and lock, that one that stops
others from coming in and making
for ruin.

May you be that first sip of  ‘the
most civilised thing in the world’, as
Hemmingway put it, and let it ignite
a dance below.

May you not judge the mixture
of my grape and grain, and my love
for walking in the rain and my waiting for
ex-girlfriends every time they call.

May you always let me bed down
in that manger in the snug, though
Steve doesn’t know I borrowed his
blanket rug.

May you forever toast that bread
at midnight, just before bed.

Yours faithfully,
The Cold.

She denied the note
with a wave of her hand,
a harsh slice of the independent woman,
right there next to the bookshop stand.

I could tell, you could tell,
the whole ******* shop could tell
that this couple was very much in love.
It was the constant kisses on cheeks and
that rubbing of the palms with thumbs,
that gave their game away.

Tucked beneath wet raincoat pit,
a brochure protruded and hit
every close contact enemy.
It was a bible of new houses;
psalms of yet-to-be-wet-feet-on-new-lino-floors,
prayers of neutral-coloured-baby-room walls,
proverbs of shall-we-frame-this-poster-or-just-BluTac-it-up-and-hope-for-the-­best?.

They left the shop back into the rain
to the sound of several sighs,
thank goodness for the gray
dangerous clouds of the sky.

Like glorious autumn follows carefree summer
You make me want to love again
At this moment I am on the upward arc of my heavy sine wave,
And all troughs, crests, and in between coexist
To predict would be to build a separate reality
An alternate timeline where logic follows the limited patterns of human rationale
But the sun's fingers on the treetops write minute programs into the corneas
And I watch them roll around my field of vision, shifting back and forth in unease
I smell old times that never were
How could that have been me?
How do I forget everything?

I'll live forever in this instant
For past and future emanate infinitely from now
And every ounce of effort I spend anticipating
Draws me down the arc to suffering
The impermanence of bliss, death's painful degradation
Even now it festers sharply in my right *******
Despite my calm certainty that I'm
Staring out into the infinite synesthetic landscapes of jazz and poetry

But the forces of control over us do not blind us
We ride fleeting waves of glory because in their brief moment they are all
Rising above the moon in the ecstasy mere words grasp impotently after
Mere human me never gets the satisfaction of disintegration for he fears his death
But powerful energy me
Eternal and all pervasive
Shall know for certain the bliss of abyss
Even in the mortal kiss of a few seconds' carnal joy it is death which ties us together

When our dichotomies are satisfied is victory true or do we in fact separate ourselves further from the ultimate reality?
Oneness can never be desired for to wish for it is to destroy it
The implication that there is something there to wish for oneness
Contradicts the very idea
But these differences are mere illusions
Contained within the singular presence of all that which there is nothing without
Nor even existence at all
For it encompasses the totality
It is the mere fact that anything ever existed
And it is the void into which shines no light
Enters no soul
It is the ground on which our entire dramaturgy stands
WHAT IS IT?
Will there ever be an answer?
It can't be God, though it is what is meant by "God"
It can't be defined because it is the substance of definition
It isn't the place we go when we die for it is all places
It is place

I can cast out my net into the whirlwinds of conscience and substance
And feel that I've latched onto it
And it can never slip away for it is all I've ever been
But I stir the ocean of love and the sediments are suspended till I can no longer see it
Like a fish can't see the ocean

In metaphor, in narrative, all is truth

I hardly have my eyes
open while I'm driving
anymore.
I will not swerve,

baby, I swear,
I will serve you.

I need you
at the day's end,
pull back the
pavement for you.

Goin' down

tail end.

Not a statement
concerning you.

*You said you like to make love in the dark 'cause it's a lost art and you told me to calm down, to relax, you told me that it's okay to explain things the same way 'cause being too original used to get you killed, and you fed me jazz and you licked my lips,
you drew two hearts, one on my car, and one on my hip.

my mother's strength
could rustle tree branches,
knock down houses and
push through walls.

and her hope,
that feminine aching
for things to be better,
she shows the rest of us
what it's like to be warm
even through her shivers,

my mother knows
the soreness in my knuckles,
she asks me every time,
my mother strikes a chord in me
tender and careful, she carries
the child i will continue to be
even as i move on from her

the way she holds us,
her arms are temples to me
i've never known another
shelter so holy,

and every time she cries
i want to open up a wound
within myself, so i can cry
along with her, i walk beside her
so she'll never be alone,

my mother
never deserves
to feel alone.

this forest heart
will go on longing
for my mother's open skies.

in some way
maybe the milky way
swirls rose pink,
i'd like to think
this flower petal blessing
might have come true
somewhere, so far away

space to me has never seemed
quite empty, to me it is full
all the words i send through my chest
all the ones i don't pick for my mouth
they make their way there, hide
among the stars until i select them again,
compliments for someone else, ones
the last one never deserved

somewhere in all that space
there is a hollow made for me
my niche is not buried in the earth,
a cavern beneath the surface --
it is open sky, open stars, i belong
above the universe looking down
that way nobody can ever look down on me,

and when i can't catch my breath,
there is a planet there
who exhales for me, gifting me
with a strength only something
with that amount of gravity
could ever hold

my gravity is small and i huddle
against the dirt, wishing i were
small enough to float up
through the clouds
and join my brothers
and sisters
in the black

The car in the handicapped space
of the parking lot with the
Iraq Veteran bumper stickers breaks
my heart. I wonder if the sand in his boots
can hold the pedals down. I wonder if the
visions in his head can grip
the steering wheel. I bet some nights
he remembers that a hospital bed can be
a prison cell.

That hospital bed was not
my prison cell. It was a welcoming back
to the life I thought I had before, it was my anthem
careening through the dark. I heard it in the spaces
between their words. Their words were holes
drilling themselves into my muscles, I felt them
spinning toward the grenade that was my heart.

Once, my muscles were strong enough
to cover me like a blanket. I remember how
they sheltered me. I remember feeling proud
to wear the covering of my skin. I was a tiger
when he touched me. I prowled in darkness,
I slept during the day, some nights I remember
that a bedroom door can lock me up, my parents
locked me in a tower, they told me I'd be safe there.

Maybe I should have stayed inside. Maybe
it would have kept me from the car, the hospital,
it would have kept him from the war, maybe I'd be there
still. Maybe he knows how it feels to hold
an animal inside your chest, maybe he knows
what it's like to feel it shaking in your bones.

Maybe this man in the parking lot
can tell me what a gunshot sounds like
between the windows of your ears. I think
it would sound better than my own voice
singing me to sleep. Some nights, the lights
outside my window are too bright. I bet
he could tell me what that means.