i'm practicing
believing that all I do is degenerative

i'm practicing.
my frowns which seem accumulative

i've imagined
a time without bars and smoke shops

I've imagined.
ways to transform myself into a cyclops

every time he touched me
i felt him memorizing me like a wreck
every time she touched me
i felt her heartbeat caught in my own neck

they are problem solvers.
i had cushioning companions
fuller and calmer than me.
perhaps someday i'll tell them this
if i ever learn to handle it:
the open, raw closeness.

In the meantime, i'll remember her
laughing into my legs
immersing us in the soft hair from her head
and his enchanting voice
inflating my lungs;
the simple gift of speech in bed

the moment right before their contact,
a few light-years away from being.
the moment between shine and its reflection,
just a hollow eternity to all the space in between.

company?
I starve for the long moments
that thick time of silence together
feasting on whatever he just said.
community?
I crave gazing at an orb of truth
wholly understanding one another
a vague sense of being like her family.
civility?
honoring the ghosts of our realities
and remaining gravely touched
by the mortal ritual at hand.

I couldn't deserve either of you
just promise me you'll understand
or at least try to
get the ******* my land

we were small children when we grew up

wishing our parents would talk to us about the beloved Constitution,
not at us
wishing our parents would decide to quietly invite themselves
into our ideas, questions, our favorite novels
instead of constantly quoting their own favorite parts of The Bible
instead of complaining so fervently about Islam and poor people

wishing instead of asking
scrambling instead of composing
Do you remember anything?
You were small, and barely talking
But always laughing with me, listening
pointing and nodding

we were orphaned for 3 months as toddler and tiny girl,
while they were mobilizing in Saudi Arabia,
we were stuck with a violent guardian from the family, and I remember
her biting my arm, and pushing her chair
onto mine to crush my fingers when she was mad, and I remember
mom screaming at her over the phone when she found out, and I remember
she loved to kick our dog and sleep in their bed and I remember
deciding to say nothing when I saw this
and how she never saw me watching, the narcissist that she was.

so by age 5 my parents now knew that I was certainly old enough to pay close attention
and when mom and dad were deployed to Egypt for 9 months and 6 months, respectively,
they orchestrated a sequence of 3 live-in sitters trading off every 2 weeks, periodically,
we were stuck in a cyclical round of stuffy, busy au pairs
and I was the host
and I kissed dad's picture because he would call us almost every day
and mom would not
yet it was her I remembered the most
yet it was dad that you actually forgot

When we had them back I realized
I wanted to forget him, too, sometimes.
I hated worrying about them. I remember when I was 7 and our dog died
His heart was so debilitated for months.
Soon after he was able to fling our replacement puppies
in a fit of rage, just once
He retired first, that year, while mom was shipped off to Kuwait
Soon we found out he had no friends, she was his only mate
We felt sorry for him
We ate tv dinners every day and night for 6 months
And although I do have small handfuls of memories
with his hands suddenly on my throat and me on my knees
They always end with him apologizing and sobbing
And me, unscathed but shaken, glowing but glaring

by ages 8 and 10
we were reciting the bill of rights and criticizing welfare
but still could never understand ?
competition or war or cosmetics or long hair

I would always march, I felt like a boy and a girl
and also felt like neither one, I would always twirl
I was taught early on that accomplishments
are more
valuable and profitable of an experience
than forming,
with no meaning, such fleeting relationships

I've ending up simply not comprehending courtship
I might be a light, empty holster that you cannot equip.
I've never sensed the fond feeling of an honest liaison
Except at funerals where I'm free to imagine my own expiration

there are those of us who found kindness by insight
while we were taught to play the offense and be glad to fight
Yet intuitively we knew this aggression has a cost
so we harbored it within our frontal lobes, where we became lost
Some of us have been fighting demons since
our own hearts could breathe and our own eyes could rinse,
And the real reasons we did bad things
were simply too boring, too excruciating

these children fear, then assume, their best friend won't want to play
having discovered that having daydreams may be impending dismay
these are all the people who I haven't ever gotten to greet
they echo my certainties that there are other stories to meet

we were children who always imagined being a squib
keeping faith that wizards and wands were real
they'd take us away from this place to another glib
world of feasts and friends
A house consistently without parents, a house in which we could heal

The first mistake he made
Was comparing me to the moon.
He saw a pattern in my sadness,
A floating echo, a heavy balloon,
People are not echos.
What else could I say?
He would strangle me with flattery
if it would excuse his behavior from saturday.
I will not humor him. I will not do it.
But his persistence may corner me into violence.

No, the moon does wonders
It shines, and then it passes
Hiding behind clouds of wet thunder
It moves me, and the masses

Scraping his guts off the wall, he cried
Drunkenly sighed my name
gave me all the blame
Because I had agreed to pregame
So I should bear all kinds of shame
for enduring his obsessive habit,
even a minute of it,
and for getting tagged into his suicidal ball game.

After all my patience and dedication and stories,
they're finally sold.
So, what now?
Just **** out their souls?
Egos covered in rage and big talk and
lonely, putrid mold.
Now I am just finished.
This house is finished.

Yes, it takes a thousand moments.
Yes, it takes lies and perseverance.
There are hundreds of ways to get what you want.
I might look delicate but I
feel pretty blunt.
Why should I pause for a beast I've condemned?
He does not glow,
he is not moving,
he has only loved in vain.
I would like you
instead.

I love when you come back.
You wax and wane.
You are too big for my pain.
You are the light in the night.
You are always out of sight.

there is so much grace to see
and so many ways to be
Wait With Me Patiently
Bless Me With Your Ability

the most perfect people invited me in their oddities
to their cozy crib for a night of civil anomalies.
they moved like dancers who dabbled in alchemy
and already i've created such a powerful fantasy

that i want to cancel all my summer plans
to touch their brilliance
and draw their soft hands
hoping they don't have terribly high demands
from other mollusks with failed projects
and weak attention spans

the tides within me rise,
higher than love,
roll with unfathomable speed,
crash so forcefully that i
then rise again.
i think i want them both
to love me like an oath.
i think it takes a lot of art
to grip a heart
so stretched apart.

i was introduced to these artistic geniuses
while i climbed the trees that jesus said
are made for monkeys: that's you and me
i've got it on letterhead. i have his blessing.
how slowly did you consider your discipline?
are you sure there's nothing you did not intend?
trust yourself to step aside and to pitch in.
this love is like clutching and grasping at nothing,
weeping and killing to reject my smallness.
my mark on his ***, my words in her ear.
i think i need more stamps to send ahead my gear.

fierce, powerful love erupts
on my left and right
their sudden smiles
baking me like a pastry.
lava leaks from my scalp,
thawing out my frozen eyes.
she laughs when i look at her.
she says i look just like him.
and we all gaze at each other,
knowing different things.
i feel singular
peace in my privacy

when suddenly i realize
i'm climbing an un-manageable height
on a ladder of flies
and a dozen sticks of dynamite.
there's too much to behold
among these clouds
even if they are, at first, cold
treetops cast in pale shrouds
and wet with slippery dew.
they call me to you.

holding lightning and hydration
it tears my name into pieces
and hands back all my devastation.
i could not share myself
even in our circle of small fires
i'm too huge and too small to decide
between any of my desires
i will thank them for calling me there
where it's okay to be a liar.

and if she could just tell me now
what it is her lungs ache for, and how, then
i could decide whether or not to disengage
with practicality.
i could decide whether to save or surrender
my time and energy.

i'm sectioned in itemized pieces, i'm the imperfect circle
with a small vacuum near my middle.
i'm the triangle transforming a line into a sphere
and finally finding my shape somewhere in here.

earth.
i'm the boundary outside the thermosphere,
look at us. just marvel with us.
earth.
i relinquish every ruling in my self-preserving fear
of the godly green guts.
earth.
what if i'm making it darker down here?
my teeth could break the crust.

i feel promiscuous
even when i am fully clothed
when I hear, "did you miss us?"
i feel my heart swell,
feel it split and explode
from a most painful knowledge,
what this foolish heart loves
that is; their marriage.
it is one friendship
i'd be disgusted to see die
it is one wholesome, lively thing
regressing my ineptitudes without reply.

my specialty is a destructive blast
that only hurts for a day
but for you both, i could not.
i'll just let this incense rot.
so grant me time and access
to the parts of your mattress
that you both find time to share
give yourselves a bed-rest
and I'll leave two pairs
of my flowery underwear.

There's a space
     the size of space
between your heart and mine
     but I don't know who put it there
Maybe we're supposed to grow
     antlers and dance
away, prance
     like princes and apologize
Distress was the name
     of your misery mistress
Gumbo is the noise of
     our heart and our faces
All I could tell you is that I'm not gone
     I can't even leave yet
There's a pact for us to finish,
    you agreed to it too
We set our shoulders square,
     angling our elbows to fit into
That box at the bottom
     of the glittering acidic pool

and we jumped
missing our ways of unlocking each other
and we meant it
I never expected
to be anything (besides being myself)
before I met you.

It all turns into you.
The daylight
promising me
magnificent ability
to make anything real of the hour
for I was aware of our talent long
before I met our power.

The moon does a better job than you
I crystallized the cuts on my hands
then I dripped them
on your back
How could you believe
we're supposed to stay
on one track?

Maybe I'm not as natural
as you helped me believe
But I do match myself
consistently
And I fit into people like
a circle in a square
while you are too much like
me to even enjoy the air

Generally
I think we crave
otherness