What is more
fleeting than love
but safety
shelter
a home
built of solid material
a place to rest the bones
in darkness
and in light
and honey,
you are that light
built into my chest
a bountiful inside
a beautiful edifice
a commission of stars
a love no less worthy
of poetry.
Sure,
I fight
and I toil
but what is spoken word
if it is not flawed
and resistant to shaking?
In this God’s land
in this green machine
a woman’s love
is but a dark kiss
but yours is destiny
and violence
collisions of legs and sweat.
So honey
sugar baby
give me shelter
let me rest in you
I promise to be
a faithful visitor
to your shrines
and temples
and to love you
fiercely
and madly
as only a woman can.

Read the obituaries
for breakfast
and watch the flicker
of the television stars
every night now
tell ***** jokes
to your pillowcase
become a legend
to the funny
and the sad
tell me
what it is again
that keeps us young
keeps us looking
up.

what a fickle
flawed
fabled
a creature:
the woman
the wild
dark
apparition
in the corner.
what a fickle
thing
is love:
we hunt
we carve
we hunger
our mouths water
for a touch
of love
but when it sits
on our dinner plate
it eats
us:
a reckoning
of blood and guts.
It is only in the dark
that we are
fickle
flawed
fabled
with our stomachs
empty,
leaving love
untouched.

It’s 1:02 p.m.
on a Wednesday
I am waiting to take a test
1:03 p.m.
and I am willing
to test my willingness
to stay here
in a town that moves
on the back
of a razorblade.
They never say
what we are waiting for
here
in the quiet
resistance
like the eye of the storm
on the softest sheets.
I have become an antique,
a collectible,
a hollow instrument
used for my city’s defense.
I have begun
to move backwards,
erasing time
in a land where
clocks don’t tick
and lights don’t blink.
Love
here
always moves like the weather –
moving
churning
spilling
breathing
forcing
uncompromising
is the love of Mother Nature.
If I had met you
before the government won
or after my mind
became a gun
I would love you
I would love you
I would love you
better.

What is
depression -
a sharpening of
knives,
an impending
doom not so unfamiliar.
You stop
listening to the drumming
of the earth,
though you
only lay on the ground
night after night
in a soft worship
of the body
after plight -
your mind rages on
but your body is quiet.
Your friends move on
your sister moves on
your father moves on
everything you ever loved
moves on
without you.
You study stillness,
and illness
and wellness
and hold them
at the tips of your fingers.
You know
where to be
and why to be
and when to be
but it’s the how
that becomes
disillusionment
disappointment,
a siren,
a blade,
a way
to say goodbye.
But
if you hold on
to moments
on the train,
in the kindness
of strangers,
in the way
the sun always rises
even after the darkest,
most hollow
nights,
maybe,
just maybe,
you could on
to yourself.

something in me
stuck the day
you didn't come.
my eyes became machinery;
every sound caught
in my throat
and the silence
followed for weeks.
I smoked 14 cigarettes
in the car;
I burned at the thought
of stillness;
I was vulnerable to light;
I washed my body in the way
you said my name.

now I come
to the sound of leaving.
like the way a symphony sounds
to deaf ears,
I am unafraid of what
you will say to me.
we are different people now;
I am silent
and you are stillness;
we are tangled around
the sadness of each other.

I have been running
in between towns
waiting for your capture;
I am running
hoping to never be found.

How to put this
how to keep this
delicate
cleaning the childhood
out of mind
but keeping it
in mind
as I pull
up my shirt,
letting you feel
the scar
from my youth
and I'll be
seeing you soon,
I'll see you there
dirt
in our hair
and fireflies.

If I could have my way
we would only
grow younger
and not as strangers
to ourselves,
undoing all we know
cleaning the dust
off the shelf.
I know you better
in my chest,
girl as beacon
of light
of summers
in the past.

When you leave me
do it slowly,
keep me dark
keep me waiting.
Only the dirt
will know
what you're thinking,
as you sink
into the fever
of the season.
Mary,
lay on your back
with the tv
on
it lights up your dress
and turns your distress
into a million
colored lights.

Caught
in a small town
but you are
made up of the world
in your short skirt
and honey skin
only showing
in patches
when the sun touches
down upon
your window again.
In your old Buick,
a kaleidoscope
of summer
crashing down in
dreams
in the heat of this town.
A dream in which
I am turned around,
breathing in color
and looking for you
now.