Your beauty may birth from shaved legs
red clown lips, gaudy eyeshadow
flimsy black crumbles beneath
your eyelid
You are ****-sun-kissed;
I am opaque.
Blotches of color
Lighten my smile

cheekbones never as sharp
as your words

when you leaned to take my breath
out from under me
i almost say no but
Your eyes are very blue
Your hair very blonde
and I have the feeling
you would call me beautiful

i go to
highlight the sharpest bones
in my face
color my cheeks,
eyelids
ebony eyelids
**** caked kisses
speak volumized volumes

If it were just as simple
to grow a spine

firespray
vagrant pines
little black gnats more plentiful
than stars to empty sky
reach. catch a flame.
sprawling for the day
when fire breathes its own life
not the wood I pile,
lay down
to rest
I lie here
will die here
and it is well with my soul
because on occasion there is beauty
in all that simply is

do you hear
like ringing of still bells
sound like precious silver
clinging to the flush of a cheek
The soft sobs of her soul
when you berate her
her whisper but warm breath on your neck
exhale birthing desire
“   no   “
Have your way
Have her sorrow
Shyness?
oh dear. you are mortally worn
by morning

love or lust
“I cannot tell a lie”
As I lie
Laying
being beneath you
forcing my light feminine weight above
the sun to your sky
it’s all the same
i feel false i do not feel

you compliment my waist,
my laugh;
my witty repetitoire
riles you—
a true Napoleon in this pint-sized frame
they call me pretty
I yearn to be more

you are leaving and I am numb
maybe I learn to forget
opal iridescence in my free-spirited eyes
dance once
you are gone

I scream to no one,
“must I be alone
to be my own?”

I feel as if Life
has run me dry.
Its vast Opportunity,
my Inaction,
consumed
the last oasis

Now they, dry bones
Brittle hulls of beetles
scuttle amid sameness
We starve
for color
not dripping in red.


Nothing much thrives
In these hills

when they told me:
Guard your spirit
i laughed, frilly manner
listless with decision
a water lily bobbing;
eager to cut my anchor and drift
Sinking
Sinking
drifting into deep

depth swallows my yellow.

i feel the lonely bitterness of streetlights
slink away into the city

when I think of you,
home .

Oh
You call
I cry
You breathe while I lie
with another.
You see while I eye
their skin.
who do you gaze
upon
lovingly?

you must notice
The way that I lean
to you.
The way that I try
to speak;
it’s but a conversation.
does it pain you so
To inhale
      my air?
its tree of smoke.
lively nights swallowed
like lemons.

you disregard my hellos.
how to say goodbye?

Are you
the lonely wailing on the radio
or a smile for the screen

The strings do they pull
upward
or down
poor corners of your mouth
sore fleshy cheeks

leave the bone below for your own mind
Cream teeth molded to what the you believed
they want of you

Woman or man or he or she or him or they their
We admonish expectation.

Plein air, plein air
B r e a t h e
But I crave the city

the sound it runs
among the trees
a nameless thing
Awakens

the green, such green
G A Z E
I drink the shadow
lying between

the sun it falls
below its line
The birds they cry
placate them

the time, the time
B L I N K
But I mourn the dash

the mind it stops.
see how dead the wooded can be

infinitely
small
moment.

Breakfast for two is true
communion.

Twin mugs full plates
the disshelved kitchen

My one yolk eyes me;
its sunny stare brightens
the awkward lack
of intimacy.

Sipping orange juice in lieu
of the morning after,
the passing closeness
a treasure all its own.

There was a time
when time was not time—-
For me,
For you.
The water it collects and tarries
Carries itself.

you whisper
“stay”
my thoughts linger to go

The storm drops they are
clawing, clawing
at the walls
I feel the shadows lengthening
exhale of evening

If you were a hungry dog
abandoned at my doorstep
would I still?

“let
me
in.”

I remember long days longer nights
unsung sorrows
humbling flight of night things
the grand silhouette of the sky
empty with all but
your hand in mine held above
our minds.

We lept from the ledge
Fell gracefully...


now I’ve crashed to earth

skip-leap through the blinds
ride on the moonbeams
away
But dear doll the porcelain in your skin
hasn’t set yet

a hand
a hello
an embrace
What flesh do you hold
Who does it belong
to

i feel as a doll
in its playhouse
Trudging between plastic
bright, wallpaper rooms
Daises and lavish paisley
peeling

Will I ever trust the very heart
on my sleeve
let alone place it
in your hands
Meaning is like words
It is claimed, they are said
Truth remains elusive
from reality

husks of air pass
the shelled yellow left in fields
lake water like a bath that once
washed worries away.

this dry that takes my throat,
I ask it to tickle my cheek,
caress my soul,
embody the years passing me by.

Be my keeper of gone days;
I will carry you in whims yet-to-be.

I screamed my name to the wrong kinds
until
you rolled my echo in your palm.
Vocal chords bled but in you
they dare to open,
hum a tune.

Now they sing each morning.

hand me that one—
To hold in hand,
whisper my heart
within its pores.
To share my whims:
dresses I wore
sometime long past.

I dare not peek
To peel its peel,
study the lines
upon its raw.
To see the same:
summers now soil
this time in palm.

A whiff of You on my collar,
drifting towards the door,
in the spaces you graced.

My lungs take you in like my own cells.
You understand my distant nature,
worries, faults, evening regrets
Better than I.

Our bodies hold us at skins length.
When you leave, your scent embraces me—-
closer than a hairbreadth.

So go.

I often wonder
if I am but a teacup
to your boils.
Without me
Where would you set
your pinkie
Where would you pour
your cream
Where else to discuss
the “new mortality”
but about my heated air?

dear i wonder is it you
that i love, treasure
is it the love you give me?

fresh white sails
clean air of possibility
f r e e
undoubtedly as

I cast another anchor
into the vastness of blue
tethered by that which I
cling to.
There is joy in the ebb, the shore
but the choosing
is what kills the air;
stifles my sails

I can hear the ocean beneath my feet
I can see the distant horizon

They say “set you sights”
But what if I’ve lost
the looking glass?

if morning thoughts be dust of dreams,
i amble about until
Evening,
with its spinster gown,
lays waste to all the hope of day.

What happens to the peach when June
rolling like a playful child,
succumbs July?
Have we reached the bottom
of the hill?

Or do we roll onward, yellowing to brown?
Riper but never sweeter—-
Bruises from the fall bring with them
new hues

“Write a short poem.”
there’s too much to say,
or been said
yet to be
said


So swallow the penny
no one keeps them nowadays

Love to me has come to be
a garden party
Where passing the sugar
is philanthropy
Where summer has come
and gone
again
again
Men passing like plucky clouds
on those days of sun to be spent
Flatter yourself dear. Surely you are more than
This.

did i fall
maybe i
let go
maybe i
let you slip
away

leave me
to my own being

This is not the kind of love I’d profess
on a hotel napkin
scream from the rooftops
of your parents’ house
10 dollars to stretch a month
of rendezvous
yes we live in a small town
but our minds fit here comfortably
however slightly,
I love you.

It is not your house
that is broken
Decrepit beams
may wear
but never rot
When there is little left
but scattered boards
wanton wood
Shingles
They ask you
how your eyes
could be so weak
Watery
Maybe it was the flood
pouring through them
Who wants to blink
muddy tresses
away?
Feel it all crumbling
about you.

sometimes I fear being with people
is too much
I haven’t slept my temples
Pinched
eyes weary-hallowed
is there a place where I can converse
with all the demons that walk my earth?

I am ill but mostly
sick of me.

I have given all that I love
to apparitions
i claim to care for. Sometimes I fear
they see my wil-o-wisp glow
and grow hungry for me

lost ones
come now and borrow
my hope, my vitality
It’s okay you see...
i restlessly dream
for seeping sleep deep

I am ill but mostly
sick of me.

i am overcome with joy i get to see you again
your tasseled hair
a little happy sky in the gleam of your eye
a picturesque not bounded by frame

my love.

what is it that i seek
from our correspondence

Morning to
another moment.
Open the shades, lighten the dark
with intention.

See the
little clouds dapple:
free spirit beings
of their own.

I want the shade gone, but
I lift it every
Morning.

There is a tipping point
to define
measure
when all the little moments
weigh more than they should
the long hours, their shadows
begrudge each step
exhale to monsters among us

thoughts are living
like you or me

I have the worst habit:

swallowing life experiences
instead of savoring them

then afterward,
when my teeth are clean,
thinking, “That’s it.”

And wanting ever more.

I do remember the you of long nights
fuller hair breathy words,
motherly incantations.
At the ****, obeyed its rhythm until
like my first kick, stretching the stomach lining
I spoke. Long dry at their cusp,
my lips breathed their own life.

Still weighed with wet earth,
drifted from winter to spring days
hair flyaways white laces Streaming —-
an untameable-robed-in-rough-overalls
creature (shirtless, sun on its back).
Inkling of rebirth called like the late-night
“Dinner! Wash the mud out your nails”.

Watered with pithy drops of soul,
I spit. Turn to a dried maroon prune.
****** the blossom from your cheeks.
Bury my toes deep deep deep
in the garden bed:
(Seedy little things, remind you of my infant hand).
Lament the days lost
in misunderstanding.

Each garden whim rode
between my summer scales, yet
I shed them for flight.
If only I knew my wings are in the time capsule
that you long to give me,
grounded in your earth with
hand-me-down tales,
colossus shoes to grow into,
and motherly love like a well.

We cry dry tears,
leave our throats like
filaments of ancient fireflies in a jar.
I do love you
and always will, so
let the seasons cycle back again.

to dream so heavy weight of it all slumps into icepick pains that Chill your bones and
Ache like river water
From the north.

Frost-laden blue lips forget
           to           breathe

winter birthed within: feel your body slow
and no longer grow the hope sprouts
of tomorrow

So goodbye to hair flyways lightening bugs and
running through the brush:
Seasons change like shedding of cicadas
off trees.

fleet bare feet on tile floor
cold.
liberating.
Tip our toes into mythic water
pooling
in the grout.

puddles are mere puddles, after all.