An upright abutment in the mouth
of the Willis Avenue bridge
a beige Honda leaps the divider
like a steel gazelle inescapable
sleek leather boots on the pavement
rat-a-tat-tat best intentions
going down for the third time
stuck in the particular

You cannot make love to concrete
if you care about being
non-essential wrong or worn thin
if you fear ever becoming
diamonds or lard
you cannot make love to concrete
if you cannot pretend
concrete needs your loving

To make love to concrete
you need an indelible feather
white dresses before you are ten
a confirmation lace veil milk-large bones
and air raid drills in your nightmares
no stars till you go to the country
and one summer when you are twelve
Con Edison pulls the plug
on the street-corner moons     Walpurgisnacht
and there are sudden new lights in the sky
stone chips that forget you need
to become a light rope a hammer
a repeatable bridge
garden-fresh broccoli two dozen dropped eggs
and a hint of you
caught up between my fingers
the lesson of a wooden beam
propped up on barrels
across a mined terrain

between forgiving too easily
and never giving at all.

happily wander
soaking in the world
and every other option.

seducing
innocents, they drink it in,
**** them in

with illusions
of happiness and
dark eyed children, but

i see your
dark minded
soul.


happily wander
with assurance of
self, but

your
lust is
blinding you, as

is the world.

Having known war and peace
and loss and finding,
I drink my coffee and wait
for the sun to rise,

With kitchen swept, cat fed,
the day will quiet,
I ******* fifty years
here in the cup.

Outside the green birds come
for bread and water.
Their wings wait for the sun
to show their colours.

I'll show my colours too.
Though we've polluted
even this air I breathe
And spoiled green earth;

though, granted life or death,
death's what we're chosing,
and though these years we live
scar flesh and mind,

still, as the sun comes up
bearing my birthday,
having met time and love
I raise my cup -

dark, bitter, neutral, clean,
sober as the morning -
to all I've seen and known -
to this new sun.

I just cant explain

the way everything is what it's supposed to be

even when I'm in pain

I am unadulterated. I am free

It gives me shivers

so deep in my bones

my soul decides there's no time to give up

not even when I am at my most alone

this life gives me goosebumps

Sometimes
it all seems so real
     Like this reality weighs heavily on my chest and I can’t breathe.
my stomach jumps and sends this cold fire throughout my body and I feel it.

I feel the world boiling in my consciousness and there’s no release that could possibly be worthy of this feeling.
Then I tell myself I'm just being dramatic and I tamp that feeling down with my fear and sadness and a yearning for eventualities.
Sometimes I’m not sure what I mean.
Sometimes I make stuff up.
But really I’m just an awkward almost-twenty year old who wants her life to be something.
Extraordinary
But.so.is.everyone.else.
And isn’t that right?
Isn’t that rich?
That we are all one.
A vast ocean of “ones”.
I’m really just a wave.
And it is alright to be a wave.
Because waves, they move.
It’s alright to be dramatic though. Why not?
I have this mind that wants out and I keep suppressing it. At least I’m pretty sure I do. Maybe I don’t. Maybe it is only on occasion that I tell it to shut up because it all is just too much.
That’s probably it.
Who am I really?
I guess I could list all of my traits and that could be who I am. Or what I have accomplished in life, and presto, you have…me.
Then there’s this consciousness that sits inside this flesh and controls it. That could be who I am. But that consciousness is just the acts it has achieved and the traits it has portrayed, is it not?
So I guess what I’m saying is.
The I that is me has not achieved satisfactory on my scale of living by which I measure my worth.

Not yet anyway

coffee stained breath
two spoons of hazelnut creamer
three packs of sugar
how intoxicating
this invigorating kiss

drenched with caffeine and passion
your tender lips
wrapped around mine
in youthful innocence