I am not the ocean.
The ocean cannot fit in a drugstore at nine pm, blinking up at fluorescent lights
hearing giggling
being ashamed.
The ocean drowns the people inside her, if she wants to or cradles them but, I?
I am drowned. I am cradled. Held and held down by so many tides, so many hands,
ever-changing never-staying.
The ocean commits herself, she stays put, she holds open her palms and whispers
"I am not afraid to let you stay here. I am not afraid of you, exploring my depths."
I am not the ocean.

Even when I face problems miles high and fathoms deep
my books still make me cry.
Sometimes love in stories rings truer than any reality -
it is close to that I'll keep.

Remember Gentlemen:
Bad behavior is to be rewarded, not rebuked.
The birds are too busy pecking at one another to build a proper prison system!
(And in the meantime, their legs remain open).
Enjoy yourselves!
(While the getting is good).

I spent four hours on my knees
scrubbing bathroom tiles
working though anxiety
shining and polishing and ignoring the heat of my burning bridges
and scalding the tips of my toes with bleach

and finally after all my toil the second floor bathroom was clean -
the blues and greens and chromes and golds clear and shining.

It seemed to me, as I fell on the couch in brief respite,
the grime had soaked through my fingers and into my bloodstream
and no matter how hard I scrubbed I couldn't polish my insides.

Yet I rose, to scrub once more.

How could I forget
a clenching ache so horrible and sweet
sweetly horrible
horribly sweet.
I am afraid of what will happen tomorrow, once the shock wears away.
How could I forget.
I am afraid.

What does it matter if no one likes me
when worlds away a spider blinks its translucent eyes
and takes another step
on the branch.

I want lace and ruffles
Long skirts and demure smiles behind a dainty fan
I want a man to ask for permission
To kiss my gloved hand
I want love that burns and waits
And passion unbridled is released
When the formal skin is shed;
The beauty is in the contrast.

My heart is curled in my chest, sitting low; it can't be bothered.
You and I are both deaf. You cannot hear me screaming for you and I cannot hear myself wailing "STOP."
Even the tips of my fingers cry out and good lord does it burn;
All of this is deliciously hateful and ******* it - it should be illegal to make another human being feel this way.
We are no longer a mixture dear, we are a solution. I am saturated with you. There is no going back.

Why do I want you to write psalms on my body in ink blacker than night?
Mark me up, please.
Cut, cut, cut.
I am whining and desperate for you.
We are inextricable.
Oh, you must abhor me!

You probably understand. Or maybe you don't, after all. Either way, it is jumping around inside me and if I don't let it out soon all my carbonation will fizz up and run over the side of my glass and I don't want to waste all that sweetness.

I want to kiss you underwater.

I want that kiss to be the only thing keeping us alive. Down there we are foreigners, aliens. Grasping, I want to feel your flesh in stark contrast to the smooth wetness all around me, like a secret.

All that life where we cannot live. Exotic, forbidden, so lovely. I am sick with love.

I stretch,
my body limber,
cat-like, and spry.
The right hand corner of my mouth
turns up into a smirk
as I sing my own praises.

Until today, I never understood heartache.

I never understood that thinking about you (how the thoughts come unbidden yet so welcome entrancing encompassing dizzying worrying wonderful) -
your name
your voice - strong and low, speaking softly, only for me
the thickness of your hair, the way it feels against my fingers when I hold your head in my hands
the way your skin tastes after a night of making love
the warmth of your hands and your mouth and your laugh
your scent, that somehow reminds me of both my childhood and times and places I have never known

the feeling of you inside me, molded close and perfect, and the way you toss your head and ***** up your eyes while we're at our peak, as if I were the one who was so unmissable

- could make my insides curl and twist so hard that I have to stop what I'm doing, set down my glass or pen, stop dead in the middle of the sidewalk.

I am drowning in you, taking in deep lungfuls of you, absorbing you into my bloodstream.
The sweetest little death I could ever imagine.

i am writing poems just to make You upset
when i should have learned from the lesson You taught me
transparency hurts more than a punch in the *****
You can bet your life on that
guess what?
even though i know all that
i'm still trying to find a way NOT to hurt You


maybe I'll punch you in the ***** just to make sure

My dreams
don't have to occur in a frigid state,
where the wind blows across the Great Lakes and straight through me.

I
would rather be warm and happy
than cold
and admired
and
miserable.

So, you've read my poetry?
You've skimmed the lines and picked out words you think are pretty,
delicate, intelligent, or odd?
You understand me now, I see!
I'm yours to dissect, pick at, ****,
but never keep, of course not that.

Yes you've read my poetry,
but did you know I sometimes cross my l's as t's and often wish
to travel far and far alone.
Alone: myself and only me.
I'd adventure, danger-prone;
You would only slow me down.

So what if sometimes late at night I want to dance on balconies and feel your breath upon my ear?
That really doesn't matter
for I don't need you, and you don't want me,
even though you've read my poetry.

The highway sign screams through my windshield.
Service parts and body til midnight!

What if I entered the body shop
waltzing in broken (down) splendor?
I am here for service
parts and body
til midnight.

One night, while I waited for you
I sat in the midwest summer heat, hot and sticky
like juice from a sun-ripened peach-
a balcony in the city, a small temple amidst the headlights and occasional sweet, gasping breezes
the house was asleep, settling in its aged wooden bones
while I wrote you poetry on its back.

you never arrived, but I felt somehow better for it:
the warm and pulsing beauty of my silent night's watch.

I can feel my hopelessness in my legs
They’re all sort of settled, sinking into the bed like logs into soft loam
burrowed into by all manner of insects,
hardening their tongues into little tubes and ******* out my flesh with a mighty slurp.
I have found that I exist in a perpetual sigh
apart from every once in a while, when I pause to eat and sleep and watch a car go by with one headlight out at 12:53 in the morning.
I whisper a heathen's prayer that this gross longing exists somewhere outside of myself. I have to find a wall far away and break it down. I don’t want to get trapped under my own rubble anymore. Better to be drowned than crushed.