The birds and the bees?
How did they even get associated?
Maybe it should be the dog and the fleas...
but why sit back while one does the work?

No that won't work

What about the bear and the bees?
but its not good to be at war
oh, such a tease

This is a tease

I know why it's called the birds
and the bees
Maybe because it isn't suppose to make sense
because in love, things rarely go with ease
but hey...

...*Love is the bee's knees.

sobriety is fleeting, a bird that flies in and out of my life
sometimes it lingers, but most of the time it only stops to say hello
much like the drinking, snorting, dropping, tripping, that calls to me
and for so long now i've been on this path
the one that everyone seems to see as righteousness
and yes, i'm doing right, i can see that with my own eyes,
but does happiness linger? no more than usual
and have i lost the urges that call to me, deep, dark, and loud in the night? no
they are louder than ever and i am compromised
because i am human
and as long as i have this heart beating within me
as long as the blood beneath the surface calls
to have some kind of cocktail poured directly into it
so that the brain within my skull can escape, or travel, or trip,
whatever the ******* want to call it,
i will always want for something
i will always itch
i will always ask for just one more
i will always desire escape
and i will always grant my wish to disappear
even if the moments are only fleeting, like a bird come to say hello

that year, we scrambled the seasons

so a summer yolk bled gold

into our white winter pages



leaving our islands on a plane

we watched the clouds pull a mottled curtain

between ourselves and our mothers 



in a camper van, we etched lines

into the pale stretch marks of America's belly,

littered mountains with conversation 



we built our own climate with our lover's arms

wound a thread through an atlas
cross-stitched 
with icicles and sandstorms



we entered the new year with sepia forearms

a thousand rivers gushing through our heads

stomachs rounded, full of sun

In the time of the Caesars
The Emperors played god-
although some of them were
most exceedingly odd.

The man on the street,
was dependent, for bread,
on the grain dole that started
ere Julius was dead.

The unemployment problem
in Rome was severe
- at recessionary levels
for year after year.

How to keep happy
those unemployed masses?
Put on a circus
and give all free passes.

There were Lions and Tigers
and men with black faces.
Gladiators were drafted
from men of all races.

Roman blood lust was sated
with violence and wine
and all went home content-
having had a good time.

That which made Rome great
by then was a memory .
But, thought too big to fail,
Rome didn't lack for an enemy.

There's a lesson for us
in that circus and wine.
Empires fall
and its just about time.

Oh yeah he wanted me
One look into those smiling eyes and I could see
He wanted to forget and feel good for a change
To be who he really was and not keep feeling estranged

Oh yeah I wanted him too
I wanted to feel alive and pretend I was someone new
I guess I found a way to self medicate again
One taste of him and it numbed out all my pain

The inertia of all our heartache
Just got to be too much...

We wanted to just live again and be off that sinking boat
All we needed was each other to keep us afloat

How could that ever be wrong and thought of as tragic
When all we wanted was just to feel wanted  ~  bring out all that hidden magic

There is a delicacy
to her hand falling
onto his thigh,
pale edges curving
onto the denim,
shining there
clear as glass

Her tongue
sheltered against
her cheek,
painting clouds
onto the roof
of her mouth,
she's breathing in
the thickest fog

Their fingertips
in the dust, etched
onto the windowsill --
someday they'll be
blown away,
curious children
or anxious mother
clearing away the dirt
of their past

Her dreams
poured softly
into a Mason jar,
his ideas
sifted coolly
through a strainer,
their ghosts pass
through the kitchen
faint as shadows

The bones of her hips
bowl like cradles,
carrying the grief
of impermanence,
sheltering the hope
that someone will remember
the days that have passed

Dots of paint
staining the carpet
will preserve her breath,
folding out into the fog