the sound of
footsteps in the
fall and the
reflection of sunlight
off drops of dew
resonates
more than
my understanding of
happiness

There's a light inside me that glows in anticipation,
there's the constant wait, the careful gait
the looking over shoulders for to take
away all thoughts of others
breaking bonds of making face
knocking shoulders, stifling
sounds for sights to take in solitude

my toes itch, my legs jump, i sit still.
in the light are overwhelming expressions
and the shadows of repressions
and stagnant silences to fill.

the room tilts my screen into someone else's eyes,
i wish, i wish
the thought of running and dancing into cries
i wish
the ground could pound against my feet and into my heart
i wish
for sleep - not mine, but the world's
do you understand?
(i'd give up the sun to run in the dark)

i can't live with you, i can't live without you,
i can't live with myself
movements are too constrained when you
expend so much energy towards
thought

i wish i could show you the things i've sought
i wish i could show you my world
i wish i could show you my woes
i wish i could share with you my happiest moments

Don't shut me down or I'll hate you like I hate the parts of myself I don't share.
and i won't even know it, either way

There's something not right -
There's something not right --
(It just isn't right) are the stars
misaligned is the moon
too bright for the night -
The clock ticks time by and
try as you might, there is no one to
fight
You just missed a step, or a blink, or
passed over-the-dregs-of-the-things-
you-looked-past-and-poured-down-the­-
sink
without thought
.
.
The bells fall silent to mourn the death of thought

Remember that night.
The struggle with the mother... the cries, the ocean, the sand, the moon,
the friend standing by...
How terrible, to remember in thoughts from the perspective of another person, another place,
wishing for the equivalent of that stretch of beach that moment,
only here and in a different form....
a vast space to contain you in your most free, expressive tantrum
(a space to contain my rage)
to handle my feet as I run, my cries, my body as I numb and hurdle myself against walls or sand to induce feeling or feed my rage, or tame my rage...
I have no rage, I have sadness, without aim. And when there's nothing to aim it at words become angels.

Take daydreams. You let yourself float in them. Let yourself tune out.
Or tune in.
I'd choose the topics of my dreams carefully as if they would feel complimented. I'd give thought to the things I'd spend forever with. Physically, you can escape. Mentally, you can't, unless you take outside help.
They slip back in, things like a night spent crying on the beach about things you can't seem to change.
I spilled my soul into the sand, and it could take it. I cried my heart into the air and it faded, it passed.
The gaps are what cleansed me between then and now, and the difference becomes painfully obvious. Painful no matter what way you look at it, because there are gains and losses on either side.

Close your eyes, and you can change anything. Most people would change their circumstances. Maybe that's a mask for the desire to change yourself.

Hush... tremble.
Would you choose sound or touch?
Along with old colors flying
comes a familiar rush -
a face, a fight, a crutch.
You leaned too far into the
backs of your supporters - is there
no word but which comes from
blind reporters?
You're clutching cold into your fingers -
wait, wait, wait and count to
three - there's always more than
you can think-of-when-the-
situation-starts-to-sink-just-out-of-
reach

Y­our grasp is slipping, questions ripping
away unanswered
Let go, let go, let go the countless
moments-that-you'd-like-to-claim-
are-yours-without-the­-shame
of unopened doors

There's no one to blame.
You've flown off course-
There is no course, there is only
finding the rest of the pieces -
There always will be a mess
and some creases -
however long your reach is -

At the end of it all, the moments
you remember are the ones
spent looking away from your feet.

Breathe in, breathe out, look up, repeat.

When the sky falls, rivers
will carry you away, spinning,
laughing at absurdities. I promise
you, my hand will be ready,
within reach, if only you reach for
it, please -
who is saving who? Darkness
becomes light
savor the sight of it, bathe in
delight and we'll forget the
loss of blue moons-
Two moons-
I saw the ocean in your eyes
when you didn't look away that time,
and the sky rose without
hate and without crime, and my
thoughts floated freely, I longed
only for a simple touch....
Blink, you chose to slip away like
sand in the wind to fall with my sky
and an echoing cry.

Freedom.
Salt water - feet, ankles, tongue
Close your eyes.... trust -
the world to smile upon you while you
sleep.
The sky blinks.
Maybe you'll catch it a hundred times,
or maybe none.... follow -
your feet without thinking.
Swallow your thoughts, but not
before swirling them around in your
mouth and having a taste.
Embrace the pain, embrace the
weights that come without words,
hold yourself and remember
your height is relative.
If you feel small, think big. Dream
dreams.
Breathe in, bathe in rivers, freefall.
Free.
Choose your steps.
Don't look over your shoulders too long.
Don't think too long about eyes,
except for admiration.....
.....Gaze.......... . . . . . . . .  .   .   .
.    .      .      .       .   .     . until time doesn't
matter. Time doesn't
matter. Time
doesn't matter.

Time doesn't matter.

Nurture your pains and a tree will grow.
Don't think so much! Feel -
feel - feel -feel -
bark on your favorite tree.
Breathe it in.
Wade into the ocean and savor
the taste of salt.

Go, go, go, go, go and don't
stop. You're doing things.
It's impossible to stop.

Move, breathe, think, try to slow down.
It's impossible to stop.

The world is waiting for you.
The world is working with you.
Go smell a flower - you aren't slowing down,
you're just doing another thing worth doing.
Everything is going - try to wrap your head around it -
everything just changed, and so did you.

"home"
...

you could say it, sway to it, pray for it,
shake it away, it could take it.

if you stay, though, you might never embrace it.

It's the cold and the crash that strike
holes in the soles of your feet as you bash
and enfold into lichens and teeth,
and the places you breathe,
and you stop for relief

and the places, the places...
you were hanging on branches, raining long faces
singing sad praises of things that you wasted
and wish that you stayed for and felt some remorse for
and took to the graces encased in the

graves you've returned for,
days that you've paid for,
ways to pass pain over
tumults of things that you changed for

and all along, whistling a song,
wistfully thinking of a place to belong
sighing and singing of places to roam
you find yourself in this space you've been shaping
and realize you're home.

I'm tongue-tied
I've lost my words
What's to say?
Nothing
ing
ing
is not enough of an emotion to wake me up.

I'm too used to falling into nothing
I'd like the impact
Pain is at least
Something.

I'm too familiar with too many questions and tangled excuses of why and how or what to do next or cause and effect and the point, I suppose, is that
here, now
is ALL there is,
is all there is,
is all there is,
and that thought could be all you ever become, your world could be a brain and nothing else, or this poem could be your moment, or you could read this poem and think of something else and be nowhere, you could see your reflection on this screen and be staring infinitely back and forth at yourself between you and your reflection and then what? Was there a purpose?

This isn't a poem, it doesn't take talent to ramble. This isn't a poem, three monkeys could sit with a computer and in an infinite universe this poem would one day be written without me. This isn't anything to remember or forget, it just is, and isn't that the point?

I awoke from near-slumber to smile
about the color of your eyes, how
the sunlight makes them dance into a
slow stream of warm honey-
reflecting mine into pools
reflecting mine as they wander to arms
that embrace

You watched my eyes wander
and called me wanderer as I danced in circles
around you, away, returned to you
standing as shelter with
arms that embrace

Free, my skin laughs to touch yours
Melt, the sky into pools around us
Cry, heavy burdens released to your shoulder
and burrowing into your arms
that embrace me
You, the boy that once chased me
Me, the girl going crazy
Us, two caged birds set free

I fall back asleep to the thought of your heartbeat...

in it seeped from around you all around you the world grew and
you pressed your nose up against the glass to try to see it, and cried
because you couldn't see it like you did
(was it only two days, hours, minutes ago?)
couldn't touch it, couldn't move
trapped in incantations what is ego
forego free go trees grow leaves show green
no
soft imaginings
hard, sharp imagining things
too bright to see, hearing things
how do legs move, teach me,
don't look at me
you pause-
you've been pausing for a long, long time.

I am, you are...
thinking... that you know where your heart is and how
to stay out of the eye of the storm,
or how to look away from it and
all those things that are so easy to get frustrated about
                                                                ­                                screaming into
pillows falling
                                        faster into
light
dark
close
open


SHOUT: you found the things the world threw away
the light of day
                                             showered in
blood spattered
                                                       ­               men with their faces down
clouds
gray
open -
red -
close


STAND

even blind you know the world never started spinning on its own
you could sit and wait for the river to drown you
or be the first to reach out

it takes one

the wall is tipping she said
she stood, he crouched, she laughed
this height suits you she said

the world was spinning and they stood despite it
they stood because of it
the world was still they always said
meanwhile crawling
running hiking into the bleakest desert
the deepest tree-cave
now that i see no one i see myself she said

she ran
she ran like the world couldn't spin without her feet,
like the moon needed her sweat and sparks to grow again,
she ran like she couldn't stay still enough to look into
another pair of eyes

her feet collapse every night, the same every night,  the same every night, the same every night, the same every night

i've always feared patterns, she said

When I think about the things I did to you, it's like I've died and woken up at the same time
like crying for the first time, it's been so long since I've felt anything but this when your face catches me by surprise
like remembering a solemn moment of fingers slipping off the tablecloth without touching,
signifying nothing or so you (and even more so I) thought

once

many times

like realizing rain after you've been soaked through three layers of clothes, and having thoughts free of scorn even though it might be just like the rest of them to call tears a downpour.....
.......
So dramatic, and oh, the irony of every statement I could think of
like magnets, we seem to cause problems when we get too close
although you don't seem to notice anymore

Sometimes...
The world closes you into its arms and you get freaked out.
You always wanted that feeling of being held... but it isn't worth losing your sight...

Sometimes things are dark.
One wonders, while they watch
another blindly ***** at air,
what one might find if they
adjusted.

Sometimes the air is black,
black like behind your eyesockets,
filling your lungs like the tar you swore to never touch-
so deep it seems to seep from your very pores,
seep..... and harden.
So much for flying, there goes your monstrous visions of
avoidance
You are the statue, frozen, groping blindly at nothing for eternity
(not that you would have necessarily moved very far)



Still, though, your tears stain the pictures of people you miss. To you the world is boundless, but you seem to see it differently than all of them...

Still, though, MY tears stain your pictures. To me the world is boundless, but I seem to see it differently than all of you...

speaks the sepia soldier, what say you-
the grass no longer greens
nor is greener blurred through waters-
temperatures rising tasting compromising flavors
savors sun-kissed fables
staples followed Mable
Mayflower, spring strings with color
streaming ribbons gleaming
glass against fingertips
and breath- like a tiger, or a rat
frantic like the dying man's last rap
prayers echoed like-
air.
falls from the precipice to another peak,
"we never speak"
precious, precious, pretentious
quote us phrases, lay we down like concrete,
in concrete
surrounded by concrete where we'll dance and it won't matter that
we aren't dancing

I can see your eyes
trying to hide behind glasses you surmise
no tendency to free nor fear to be

I waited as an outline
watching curtains fall to further shadow
making out a hunched figure -
shaded but clear as the note
you purposefully wrote illegibly-
Look at me!

You walked away bent and kept
your curtain nailed to your head-
and I gloriously alight instead.

they were calling you some sort of modern genius and it sunk lower than the irons that drug a stranger to the ocean's depths
you were walking without shoes to train yourself to the cold, hard reality that set in when you
woke
up.
thinking about feet never solved your real problems, though, and they consumed your genius brain like words soaking in your skull coming out of the womb, like an alien language being shrieked in sirens, jumping you out of shivers and bones and whatever you considered home
at
the time
there were people all around you, with strange faces and no faces and words again, but with people the words were blossoming; yours were maybe weeded out and you spent all your energy trying to nurse them to life, and **** out all they could give you, but you cancelled yourself out in the process of thinking you couldn't stop thinking they called you
obsessed
and time was passing, passing, blurred-
all you wanted was to blossom with someone.

have you lately
maybe
rainfall will be
paved in solar reflections
twisted perplexions
frozen expressions
pitter patter eyebrows on a golden platter
frame the faces faces
going nowhere nowhere places spun on
fingertips
frozen lips
wordless have you ever noticed hips
hips thighs cries
hides denies
replies the faces faces
made up places
relief the end of
races

Dreaming of oceans, waves crash into my brain.
White noise, streaming through my body,
out my pores down my chest over my flesh
Cleanse.

I'd dream and stop living, dream to stop giving.
Run to save my wings, run to forgo things.

The minute you poke me I might stop letting you in.
Sometimes singing is more enjoyable in the silence-
.

Craning your neck to expand visuals, turning
your eyes into glittering TV screens and computer monitors,
you stopped feeling the elbows pushing into your back.
Soon enough they stuck and your feet grew into the floor,
like tree roots but less organic...
For a while you could still see the mirror that
reflected the world you left behind you, spinning
as you turned to stone, concrete filled your ears-
impervious to wind and skies and whispers, and you can no longer
hear birdsong-

I suppose you might regret that you weren't smiling when it happened.
You're a statue and unrecognizable because everyone grew around you while you never changed (except the patterns of smoke spiraling around your head, your one reminder of movement once you found yourself alone)

I see you when I feel stuck at this screen, typing meaningless things,
when the people become ugly white noise and I can close my eyes
and see exactly what I expect when I open them.
I feel ugly like your crumbling statue so I fly-
Sometimes I'm afraid to stop sometimes things can't
                                                           ­                                change
fast enough

I'm kind of backwards that way, but
I'll never take the world for granted.

Stone is beautiful, but not the way you wear it.
One day I will sigh in satisfaction and
crumble into other elements
and a tree will grow from my ashes.
Life is endless, they will find my voice like a whisper
suspended in the air, audible when the wind sweeps me up
and someone will be outside exploring the world when I'll strike them
with a chill
REAL smiles are contagious:
Find me in the clouds, I Am An Element.
(****** hippy, put on some shoes!)
(you're covered in plastic)

If you think it's worth the climb, come find me in the treetops.

How come stuffed animals get old?
You wanted to pretend that your parents weren't "cool" and you'd grown up so much that you didn't have those moments in the middle of the night where silence surrounds you and you're struck by the fact that you're desperately, helplessly alone and afraid- or maybe you did but you wouldn't need something to squeeze for reassurance.
You never asked until someone told you, and then you wanted to be best friends with your mom and the quiet, intellectual boy who sat in the corner and never took notes or made eye contact- you called yourself an artist so that you could be the millionth first girl to paint their hair and cut it short and stop sleeping except in the middle of the day.
You started to fear sunshine, probably because you couldn't see yourself and didn't want anyone else to, either. You avoided mirrors and moments alone, and you forgot what made your fingers so delicate - it wasn't the loose grip on a cigarette - and you forgot what your voice sounded like because you never stopped talking; it became your peaceful silence to dress up as somebody with confidence and talk and laugh without hearing what you say and touch as many bodies as you can - when it's only skin, they're all the same...
People move too much to hold you up, and someone let you drop, more than once... You can keep getting as angry as you want, but it isn't their lack of love that's keeping you from realizing that you've been the one leaning on people and trying to use other people's feet... They're trying to love you, but it's hard because you never stopped long enough in front of a mirror to figure out who the ******* are.
They'll always be there, and you'll be the last person to realize that you need to leave them behind.

I
NOTICED
the single snowflake fluttering softly
amongst the downpour

I know that things like
wings and roots
are sometimes invisible
(touching is better than crying-
or more sad, one of the two)

The world was never made of ice or marble
but that didn't stop you from sculpting,
not even when the nails came up like
coals and we ran faster
or when the grass came with flowers and
we fell to breathe, to feel, to laugh

You are worth
EVERY ounce of hope between
me and the sun
We are two artists: sculpting and hoping
in this world as long as this rock
holds us.

This stagnancy is a hate crime, colored red and purple like the bruise on my hip that grew and grew from crashing into the floor, until it could have been a painting made from squashed grapes and cherries.

It expanded with my fascination and my sickness. I was the hawk watching, the worm writhing, the fly that buzzed waiting for blood to spurt from the
Colors:
were my eyelids and, soon enough, my blanketed warmth, consuming me
whole.

Then the water came rushing, running down my face in torrents to hide my tears, down my spine to shock my shivers loose and away: I stood up in the waterfall and opened my eyes and
Awoke:
in my skin, alive, laughing, dry,
whole.

I still get bruises, but I'm healthy.
I don't cry, I speak:
with the words I am trying to learn.

Glass:
cold and smooth,
showing both a blank expression
and a black beyond my face's reflection:
stretches for miles from me to you, the cold
permeates the Glass
into my fingertips, saps
the remnants of you:
the warmth left tingling in my
follicles, fading
from affections, from loving caresses,
from softly wading
into beautiful sun-streaked waters
in our minds, together,
our heads locked forever,
I remember
touching Glass and staring down
the miles from me to you.

Her fingers touched at black-and-white,
caressed candle-flickering light,
glanced across a scattered scene
and picked out words, from inbetween
the spaces in her sight

The sofa screams, her daytime dreams
are faceless in the night

Trusts to fail or feel, a rusted wheel
of claiming wrong and right

Close the circles caught in knots behind her eyes,
open up to shrinkwrap sighs
grow the glowing trail of colors
twisting in the air outside: and rise
the sun is in a pair of eyes
a web of words, an unknown prize,
and hours away
a person reads, and cries.

We're taught to love straight lines.

It's this thought I wrestle with
as the road I choose turns and winds,
it's the 25-mile-per-hour speed limit kind,
it's so slow, so ****** slow and most
folks resent the view and miss the show.

Air compresses stronger than steel
at the sight of this mirror I reel
trying to find straight lines where none exist
trying to find the steps I missed.
Movement forms a breeze
of leave, and I drive.

Laughing fear away, away
Words can't feel nor can they sway
Preaching orders to blind reporters
"Stay, don't stay, and never
ever pray"

Depravity and gravity, stolid,
You can't pretend these things aren't solid,
An idea is an idea
was an idea
was once a thought
and then forgot.

CRASH

and the room is so small, so
terribly small and uncomfortable until
you remember you haven't stepped
over your front mat, you're stuck
on a door step that's glaring down at you from your feet.

and you're screaming without opening your mouth,
because the only way you know how to express
is to paint your words on your forehead
and jump through stained-glass windows.

and the night doesn't end, sunlight is a dream,
the glare on your screen is from the city lights
swallowing the sky.

Paradise walking,
tremors in a suitcase waiting,
unattended outside your locked doors.

Preachers talking,
pathways in the nighttime fading,
silence mirrored in your crimson floors.

Creatures gaping,
twilight in the trees and
burns and pleas and seeing
separate pieces
Crying on your
starlit sandy beaches as the
night collapses, dawn surpasses
pillows made of ashes
Sunlight burns your broken
body hiding in the sand
and jagged lashes
pictures fastened
memories fashioned

Soap cleanses broken lenses
Wounds heal and people deal.

Above my clouds I found
a color wheel, round
and sedentary like my body
used to be before I
claimed it as my home

Similarly, the colors spun and
swirled just like when
I walked for the first time in years:
light airy bees wings,
spiral striped feelings

And at first I fought
the unfamiliar lack of gray
and why was my head above the clouds anyway?
and what were these nameless things?
forgotten feelings?
What gave me away?


Standing straight becomes
easier with practice.

There's a glass in her
hand, trembling,
because it's the only thing
she has to hold onto as
she fights an endless reality
nightmare and can't
grip the table or turn
a sharp edge the wrong way
and pierce an inner urge
that tears her skin, stomach
writhing as her body's
reversing dying even though
she dreams of acid trying
to escape the sliding
mass within her throat;
so used to an acid coat
to save her face, her waist,
and even though her world
is shame
she cannot leave or
change her blames or
tolerate the world's flames;
she has to jump on
hot coals and turn to
steam and simultaneously freeze
and break out, sink in, learn to BE
because this pain is her recovery.

Time is where we
aim our hateful fists
and weighted tears
for rain slowed into mists
our fingers are
icicles

Slow down and see
the face beneath your head
and a pair of watching eyes
next to the heart left in your bed
and Cry! - for distance
separate chests rise
and time, slow chime
Two hearts and a beat, repeat

Fairness, none
until, undone
a child stands screaming
to be heard
Tired! - from years of screaming
and not being heard.
found.

Two children, we can laugh
and fall asleep and meet
where distance and time
are forgotten
awful things, rotten
things, forgotten.

"I miss you" is
the simple way
to "say"
it

But I know you would
understand if I told
you that sunlight in
an ancient city
is giving me shivers

Everything about this
place is tiring because all
I have is me
And I'm in this stagnant
particle of thought and
thinking and being
that I have been
avoiding

Oh, I tire, and sleep

But though I am alone
I still know none of that
old shadow named "loneliness"

And I dream through
listlessness and spidery skin
of a night and event that
sits in the center of my
heart, in
sunshine and spirit
And of you...
eyelashes, fingertips, and
things I started to feel
that woke me,
half buried,
from my grave.

They say the sun also rises
because it does
and it's a pretty thought to
cling to when shadow falls
light sparks blacken
down abysmal lanes
of dying forget-me-nots
and daisies, daisies

They say challenges make you stronger
because they do
but only if you catch a break,
because a weight will only crush
your hollowing bones to
powder and ash
and you'll be swept
away before you
even say
wait

I had to shout before I blew away
and I still could only hear static
but through my dripping heavy
shadow-clouded vision
I saw a ray of sunlight
rising, and others too,
and each with a face and
a voice and something
tangible

I'm beginning to feel your fingers,
all of you,
holding my body that's so
ready to burst
and my brain that's so
ready to
give in

Maybe in my mind people were burying me,
when in reality I was burying myself,
and all these people were trying to keep me alive

Funny how it works like that

remember fear  
       trying       time            away  
perfect  laugh  another way  
may
-be

hopeful foolish ties
       trying      time  
                                           away
pray
-be
saved


memorable words, counted counted
added up
need to be SHOUTED
shout shout
but we don't
know what we're about.

With butterflies
rise, cries and eyes
closed eyes and sighs
and not seeing butterflies

With hands shake
fear of brake and break
and never take
and never feel fingers
only shake

And isolate within
a forced grin and sin
and sin and sorrow
and tomorrow beg
for dregs and borrow
further sorrow

And open rose
and moonlight close
for shows, and glows
and mercy knows
and heaven's prose
for butterflies and sighs
and opened eyes.

Who's going to help you up after you were dropped?
Who's going to clean your scrapes? Your scars?
Who's going to give you smiles now?

The world turns upside down and you
can't even cry when you're hands are so empty,
all you can do is yell and thrash and
put on a face that hides nothing
and inject misery into your bones and
be the perfect picture of everything you didn't want to be

What, did you think it would make someone save you?

Pick yourself the **** up!


Your tears run like acid down your face
and straight through my heart,
not because you are crying sadness but because
they aren't tears; they are unrealistic expectations
And by now you should know that time doesn't
turn around
and no one will ever "unchange"
and no one will save you from your misery because
you're determined to hate

yourself


Answer: You are only alone because
you can't accept being alone

Soft against my skin: comfort
because I don't care to pretend
or put on a show, and be pretend
or put on a mask, and be pretend
That **** shrinks in the wash, too
and faces aren't supposed to shrink.

There is that supposed to
supposed to straighten up, are
you trying to stoop? are
you trying to look uncivilized?
Power creates fear, but power
is our own illusion and
How does a brain incite fear into a mind?

Soft in a caress and laugh
we'll bypass power and fear
or cover our ears with our blankets
the world happens in a whirlwind

I missed it; I was too busy
finding happiness.

Two strangers stand looking at a painting
He thinks it looks like a tree;
She thinks it looks like the ocean;
They both see rain and miss the sun.

Simultaneously they touch glass and gasp
Because the mirror squeaks like their brains
and they only just realized they weren't listening.

Eyelashes can be so crushing,

The way I look at yours and
feel them brush against my cheek
remember tears dripping off of them,
rushing off of them,
in tumults and falling to the floor
where they pooled with mine.

The way they draw me in
framing perfect beautiful soul eyes
and pull my heart strings,
and CUT my heart strings!
when I think of being gone away
with a mirror and a face you just introduced me to...

Uncertainty, unfortunately,
only gets stranger with familiarity
up to a point, where I hope it might
collapse and combine with our tears,
another color in our painting.

Eyelashes don't mean anything
except that I can't imagine
not seeing yours, and I'm scared.

Cracking shaking breaking taking
fingers touching grasping slipping
eyes connect, bodies gripping
whispers gasping particles clasping
worlds colliding, and skin
The world is skin and sin
and redemption
Love is art and finding connection
when vulnerability becomes protection
Shed material
Find your spiritual
Be your physical

Trust: unweights your heartbeats: Must.
Two become one.

Our tongues know each other like old friends
And so do our eyes.
And they speak the same language.

Our heads seem to gravitate
to the same pocket of air and thoughts
and sadnesses and madnesses

You see me in every way I
wanted to be seen
but couldn't see myself
Light feels so good after being blind!

That night when the flame consumed me
and you held me and shared my burns
I looked up and the fire danced between our eyes
and you didn't look down
and you listened to my spitting rage
and told me with your eyes
"You are beautiful."

And I wasn't clenching my jaw because I
wanted
to hurt my teeth
even though I thought so, once

And I wasn't letting you anywhere
near close
enough
even though I thought so, once

It doesn't matter how or why
it only matters that it REALLY matters

I'm happy to be a child again
because a child knows how to learn
(feelings and things that hurt)

And I'm happy to be a child again
because a child knows what it wants
(without a reason)
and I want you.

I would do it if I knew how.
I would rip this beast off my back and expose my heart, beating and bigger than my whole body
I would put rocks in my shoes so that the storm can't move me anymore
I would close my eyes and let my flesh be beaten by rain pellets, and shake as if the lightning were my soul,
And the thunder would echo with my cries in the space that stays between us
And I would stand in the storm with my heart exposed and pierce you with my eyes once I remembered how to open them


And I would remember I was strong enough to move.

Love is like pain.
It waxes and wanes
within my aching veins
and pools up in the rains.
The ground, the sky, my heart, the same.
River, mountain, woods remain.

Singing for tomorrow
and the memories that follow
shading sorrows in the shallow
Hollows of my brain.
Uncertainty, expression, life, the same.
Those that choose to stand remain.

It's these cold nights
hours spent
alone typing furiously
spewing a painting of
words of the scars on your face
and the millions of
reasons I want to hate
you
splattered on the screen

but you and i know i can't
paint worth a ****
or express myself even through words
even though they are all i know any more
because i'm too busy thinking

see what i mean

You say rock I say row
You connect and I glow
When sky alights night showers
ringing from bell towers
You smile kaleidoscopes on
my soft glimmering hopes
and I flutter on water
drops from high mountain tops
rustle down with the leaves
to your echoing pleas.

You say please take my hand
I say don't try again

But it's heavy on earth in the rain
And you know I'll give in once again
when the sky darkens up and I see
that a spotlight's on me
and the strangeness it brings
and the lightness of wings

And it's hard not to laugh
when the air smiles in star shine
and bells chime like sky rhymes
even sitting on top of a
mountain of clocks
and giggling tripping
and falling down rocks

And it's hard not to laugh
at your persistence
despite my resistance
because we rock and row
and connect and glow
as sky alights night showers
ringing from bell towers

and I would have been sinking in sand
had I not grabbed your hand.

you told me to draw you a city
so i did
and you told me to draw you myself
so i did
and i asked you what you wanted with
two pictures that look exactly the same
you smiled
and you told me that
you can always put windows in walls

just like i was hoping you would.

The rock lies forgotten under a
crescent moon, nestled in the
riverbed where dreams and
smiles flow and splash
against the bank

Glanced by toes
and dogs' noses
transitory contact

It has no name
but in its face is a wisdom
one can only find where
time changes nothing.