You're stronger, maybe, but stubborn
like me
It's not always a good thing.
All I get from you is a
coldness that radiates like I thought
only heat and love could.
I couldn't forget those, either, in
case you were wondering.
I'm not angry, but you have enough anger
for the three of us.
If I touch you, I think you
might sink your teeth into my scalp.
So I'm keeping some distance.
Maybe if you recognized me you'd
stop growling
I though you wouldn't let this
skin hide a familiar heart, but
It's not the first time I've been wrong.

He off-smiled
and she off-laughed
and they held hands and
walked through a Christmas-card-town
perfectly straight, perfectly perfect
legs perfectly in sync
leaving Kenneth Cole footprints
in the perfect snow
worthy to be captured
worthy of being envied
perfectly perfect.

They walked and were
perfectly off-happy
perfectly deceptive as they
simultaneously, wordlessly
wondered at happiness.

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.

he said what do you feel when the wind blows
eyes out like the sun, back bent straight
coffee dripping in corners like moons in the nighttime

all I want is wine and poetry,
but especially wine
I said
thinking of kissing fingertips
and fingertips in my hair
and learning how to breathe

you get rusty, with the wind
I'm rusting in the wind
Even my fingers
breaking off and becoming dust
in the wind

I am not me, I am the monster inside me
My words are fake, my eyes don't see straight,
I am the criminal and the crime.

Today I was beaten and broken
and someone revealed me beneath it all

I am trying so hard to stand in the ashes,
but there are more on my back,
I'm burning perpetually
in the ashes of my own burnt skin

Standing up here, I'm so close to the sunlight
closer than I've been in a year
I'm so anxious to see it, but I can't jump
and if I look up the ash gets in my eyes

I have to keep trying
I fall

I need to ask for help
I need a hand up
but a monster doesn't help and doesn't ask for help,
and that's what I am.

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.

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

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.

"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.

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

I see you while you are in your deepest blue
slipping in your daze
here a ribbon, here a shoe,
here again forgetting, too
haphazard in your haze.

I see sadness in a city
sleeping through the day
missing beauty, what a pity,
sunshine never seemed so pretty
untouched, unseen in every way.

I saw redemption and I smiled
fleeting as it may be
here acceptance for the defiled
the raging rebel wild and another unborn child
love in all simplicity.

I see your eyes turned vibrant, bright
I see your face once more alight
I see broken bones repaired
I see purity in those who cared
enough to themselves forgive
enough to again live.

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.

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.

There is no pain in a picture
nor growth

Watch the sky move
constant change
the rains

Pain, release, growth
brings the rain
I am a cloud.

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.

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?

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.

This place is spotless like your hands
after you washed off all the blood
maybe you didn't want it to dry, to stick on you
maybe you thought that it would be harder to
leave
if that happened
maybe you knew that if it dried, the color
would remind you of rust
I know it does for me...
like the rust on your truck
that's still in our driveway
maybe someone should cover it, or get rid of it,
since no one likes to look at it
well
they all left
but I don't like to look at it.
I see it all the time up here
because I don't sleep, I only watch.
I guess I'm happy they didn't see my blood.
I wish I could stop myself from seeing hers.

I'm still thinking, I have never
stopped thinking, thoughts
are clustered in my brain.
I'd call myself fragile, but
everyone is.
no one is.

I'm soaking in words like bullets
that shattered the windows in
my paper house
because they did and it needed
to happen and I knew it.

When the walls were crashing down
and when my skin sizzled off
layers of colors
I found a circle.

And i cried and cried
and needed no reason why
and it felt so good to feel
something so familiar
because all of it's true,
anything you or me ever say
to each other is true,
the sadness and madness and
dark and light and joy and everything
inbetween rays of sunlight and blades
of grass
whether or not they thrive
or burn alive with horrible screams
like terrors from my dreams

And as for absolution
I care more about thanking
the sun for making the ocean warm.

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.

I was lying on the floor thinking, listening to the raindrops outside,

I was living in a memory.

Hairs stand on end at the chill of a lost touch.

Sighs drift into silence in contempt.

The sun is gone for hours more, but I don't miss it.

We hide in moonlight and white noise;

we hide in pure sight.

Thoughts echo and repeat and it's the same scene

running in my head.

i don't know why i
do the things i do sometimes
i don't know how to try sometimes
i only want to cry

i don't know how my head works
i don't know why so many things
hurt i can't think i can't
speak the rains that sting me
can't communicate across the gaps
between we

sometimes
sometimes i don't want to be
sometimes i wish someone would break me
sometimes i don't know how many times
i can't count seconds but i can count smiles
because there are so few sometimes my thoughts
are circles and knots that can't be unraveled at least
not by me but no one else is keeping track either and
i'll lose myself and keep losing myself and keep
coming to places where i don't know what to do with myself until i

fall

A shadow:
some great bird of the
now clear sky

Where
are the clouds?

They have no home

I have no home

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

It's me, my skin, my bones, my mind
it's wrong, sick, distorted
Warped is the world seen through these eyes,
felt as it seeps into my pores
suffocating me, drowning me in acid
A moment is wrong and it's forever
I'll cry into the darkness,
"I can't hold the weight"
It echoes, reverberates, distorts and disappears, unheard

When darkness is my forever
and a struggle is a war that doesn't end
I am just a casualty

When life is a drama
and happiness is bitter and transitory
I am just an actor

Everything is real and nothing is real
Actuality isn't actual
The walls are bleeding
Barriers are breaking; or were they even there?
Secrets are painted on the bleeding walls
In a fleeting moment life is a war
How long can I fight?

so close to freedom yet
im putting up bars that dont let
in any light im losing sight
cant tell left from right
or wrong
wish i could sing it in a song
but i cant hear a sound
i only feel my heart pound
and my shaking cry
aimed upwards at a blackened sky
my bodys pinched from head to toe
and theres no room to grow
i cant even feel but for fear
and its only been a year

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

So this is the one thing you'd talk to me for
to say you have enough scars
and don't need any more

I wish you'd throw it in my face
instead of sending it sideways
I wish you'd scream and yell of all your pain
that I've caused you all these days

Spit in my face, I'd be happy for the contact
and I wouldn't need to react
I want to hurt and let you see it
Don't care? I don't believe it
I don't believe our lives aren't meant to touch
Neither of us can really walk without a crutch
I miss having you to lean on; it wasn't much
but it was everything at the same time
Nothing compares; not even  small crime
(the excitement isn't so sublime)
or reason or words or perfect rhyme
(and I can't even rhyme worth a dime)
Life makes no sense in this trench in
a constant state of pain and tension
Waiting for a word or  healf-hearted glance
to break me from this wretched trance

I wish you knew I was hurting too
But you'll see me trying endlessly
and running into trees and breaking my knees
and crying as the sun sets on my chaos
because it just doesn't end, it only morphs
and lately I'm so alone that nothing matters
Love can't stop the wind and rain patters
and darkness may swallow my mind but
I might not care to ever find
myself again
and hurt myself again
and hurt you again
and make no sense again
But I never made sense...

Despite all my uncertainty I know I can't be
the one who lets you slip away from me

So I have a response, to your message
that I received today
(from a friend, in your sideways way)
I want you to know that
I see your sadness and pain
I see your scars and fears
I'm filled with shame
I'm disgusting and deserve
the nasty names
Yet I look forward to the day of your forgiveness
when maybe I'll have cleaned up this gross mess

I'll keep looking and hoping for us to lock eyes
Every time I try my fear amplifies
Sometimes I wish for a disguise
but I'm done telling lies

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-
.

The night

is for discovering by feel
instead of sight

There are more things to wonder
about

reflections in the surface of a
rock

moonlight

footsteps echoed in the
starless sky


The clouds
Let me be in the clouds

He has a heart that
is pure
despite that day long ago
when his light was stolen
his heart broken
his reason for being gone,
leaving a hole in
his soul

He'll still eat dinner at eight
and cry into the late
hours of night

He was there when
her body fell.

so natural
to laugh the way we do.
so right to
look at your face,
imagine what it would be
like to touch,
imagine you close your eyes
and breathe softly,
and me, asleep beside you.
Why should I turn away?

sometimes wish you knew,
sometimes know you already do.
guess you don't say anything
because nothing can happen, but
I know that's not true.

moments, seconds, minutes
listening to your laugh ring
in my head
and feeling your breath on my neck
being happy
because I smiled
because you smiled
because I can imagine
your fingers in mine, and
the smell of your collarbone.

Kisses are only kisses;
wishing for tendernesses
and soft caresses in the light of
the moon

to wish the way i do
get lost in laughing with you
the way we always do,
so natural.

s    o        p

s        t          o        p



( s  to p ........)

s
t
o
p




s  t  o   p           . . . .               a   t                  s  c r e  e

                                                           ­                                  n
                                                               ­                                     s




s    t   o    p          l   o      o    k     i         n            g           .......

.
.
.


stoplookingatscreens and go be

STOP looking at
screens and
go
be



STOP LOOKING AT SCREENS

There's a whole world of real things
to see


Go on, go



Sincerely

there are moments between breaths
and pieces of air between
strands of hair

and times when silence speaks

but really, your mind is
just used to being shouted over
just restless and lonely and
fogged over

there are seconds
and days and weeks
and years

and there are those periods of time
with no name
between pencil touching paper

echoes haunt the silence

I'm going to walk towards her
because I have this problem
that I need to face

I'm going to look up, and she will too
I know it's difficult for both of us
We are both afraid of strangers

We'll move in inches and crawl if we
must, and reach like
***** (is it pointless?)

Today I press my palms against cold glass
But one day I'll feel sunshine
and fingers.

no home in one place

You have the kind that travels with you:
a heart

spoke the stars to my soul.

The sky
speaks my spirit.
Look at the sky.
Look at the sky.
Cool wind, high clouds
framed among moons

Why
is a cloud?

Why
is my soul?

i can trample grass and
step on bugs and flowers
all in an innocent evening
of lying in a field thinking
blinded by starlight
in my own company

but if i were to close my eyes
and if the creatures ceased their songs
and leaves ceased their rustling
and city sounds faded into my thoughts
then i would be left with myself

who then shall take me
if i am such sad company
to only me?
i make no difference for
stars or trees
or birds or bees

easy to arrive at the thought
that loneliness is less a problem
than living

It's true that
Love is everywhere...

but She goes cold when you turn away from her.

When you recognize Her,
the answer is to embrace...
to lean in...
to let her pull the glow back into your eyes,
the rhythm back into your pulse,
the heartbeat into your neck,
your breath.

There is no other way but to slowly die again.

When she shows up, it is a gift.
What a cruelty to let the ultimate gift pass by...
What a cowardice.
Her Beauty splayed before you, and your answer...

"Let me think."
"I don't know what I want."

As if there is anything in the world at all to say yes to,
greater than Life Herself,
full force.

A million writhing snakes, eyes glowing red,
gather in the shadows of your lack of action.
Warmth can become cold. Dread. Anger.

It would be wrong to say "I am angry"
and more true to say "The Goddess is enraged."

I, human, can feel her growing her poisons
for a woman scorned can become a
weapon of great and swift teaching.

Love is not to be dealt with lightly.

She demands Bravery and Immediacy.

There is NO more important work than to face her honestly.
She, who gives you the Truth more plainly than a mirror.
She, who cuts through the false ideas of the mind
with cold clarity.

And I, simply a channel, opening.

Great Mother, how do I show him? How do I do my part to bare you to this world, not only the beauty but also the terror?
That thing that scares great men into little boys, yet inspires boys to become men.

I can only sense it. I wish not to hide.
That thing that fear tries to put in a cage,
suffocating the world.

It is said that

Love is patient,
Love is kind.
Love sees only the truth, and leaves the past behind.

Love is only in this moment,
only and always in this moment,
through and through,

Love is the light that shines through the brick wall between me and you.

Where are you hiding, Oh Lover?
Behind a pile of rubble and poetry.
But you know, deep down inside, you can never escape me -
Me -
holding a memory of the truth between us
the moment where you saw me, and I saw you
and we saw each other, together

and in that moment,
there was a Spark of Life.

And I fell in!
And I went blind.

And it could have been the best experience of all time.

And then afterwards, reveling in the memory
but you, in a daze,
returning to your old ways.

How long will I have to wait for you to remember the truth?

The truth, that is the light that shines THROUGH the wall between me and you

But all I know, as long as I have to wait,

Love is patient.
Love is kind.
Love only sees the truth, and leaves the past behind.

I bowed to Saturn, and took a long walk up to the edge of the world:
A special place that takes good old-fashioned ****** work to reach.

There, I met the ocean, raw and wild, where she engulfs the tip of the land with great glee,
throwing herself repeatedly in ecstasy at the rock.
Birds flock and all kinds of life burst with soul at their meeting.

And me, walking... I felt my own universe inside me, full of stars, pooling with the dark liquid of the womb. I felt your baby at my breast.

The next time you see me, will you see me fully for the woman that I am?

The breath of the mountain fogs around her as she flows over mossy rock. I have to duck to enter the grove of manzanitas guarding her banks. Crouching, I enter a womb-like space of moss-covered rock beside her calming, swishing, gurgling banks. I climb the rock and sit, reaching my toes to the surface. Cold and clear and rushing by, the water touches me and sends shivers to my spine. I bend, bringing lips to the surface, and drink. Lie back.

Only five minutes' walk from home, this secret place quietly lives.
I haven't told my... partner.
It feels too sacred here. Like the inside of the womb. I feel that I can come here to escape, and to rest, if I carry reverence in my heart.

The creek refuses to take my loneliness, though. I offer my tears and she swallows them. I dream of becoming a river creature and diving into her, being carried away.

What is that perfect sound? How her water is shapeless yet becomes circular as it moves around the rocks, sending bubbles to the surface; somehow together the water and rocks ring out a sweet song. A softness that catches silence and invites listening.

The river is like the rhythm underneath my heartbeat. The song of my bones.

I can feel it, and a drumbeat dances out of my hand to my chest as I sing:


My body is the Earth
Mother, I can feel you crying
My body is the Earth
Mother, I can feel you dying


My voice has picked up the richness of the forest's dank soil, the mustiness of the moss and decaying manzanita leaves, and somehow too the clarity of the stream itself. Tears roll down my cheeks as I sing and drum to an audience of trees, moss, and creek, where my voice feels heard and safe and my heart is cracked open, one with the forest.

The hardest part is leaving, though I am more whole than before. I give my thanks to the water and crawl out of the mossy creekside womb, emerging at the edge of a gravel road in Southern Appalachia, North Georgia. Gravel crunches beneath my feet as I make my way homeward.

I never share my song with a human.