He’s not the ‘forever’ type.

He’ll take you to a park on your first date and ask you to dance to hungry eyes, and he’ll say ‘gosh, you’re intelligent - you’re not just smart, you’re intelligent’ and he’ll say it like there’s actually a difference.

On the second date he’ll make you fall in love. Not the ‘real’ kind of love but the heart racing, take-your-breath-away kind that says, ‘I don’t think I’ll ever meet anyone like this again.’

The cruelest thing he’ll do is let you believe you have a special place in his heart.

He’ll call at 10am or 10pm or halfway through dinner. He’ll call and your heart will lurch and you’ll swoon and laugh and pretend it didn’t hurt when he didn’t turn up last Saturday. He’ll call and you’ll drop your ego like you drop your knife and fork, and you’ll run straight to his front door.

And standing on his porch, you’ll smooth over your skirt and hair, and bite your bottom lip like a schoolgirl who hasn’t learnt her lesson, and he’ll answer the door and say, come, meet my friend. I’m teaching her to dance.

She likes hungry eyes too.

i read
and re-read
your poems, over and over
i burn through them like cigarettes
rich, mellow, and solitary
risky, euphoric, and momentary
lots of people think they are bad for you,
ya know, that classic nicotine hate
but there are lots of things everyone does to get thru,
like loving someone in a different state...
but i know a chain smoker who is 82,
and have you seen jessica lange?
she's smokin' up in every frame
and she is not afraid
and he is not afraid
so i am not afraid
but i do smoke an awful lot these days....
and this turkish royal that hangs off my lips
has nothing on the gorgeousness of your semantics;
the genuine complexity of your consciousness
the only difference between you & cigarettes,
is that i'll eventually put smoking to rest
but my love for you? will stay the same
i could puff on your words for days,
and it doesn't even hurt

I find myself tongue-tied, and i have been for a very long while.
i'm not quite sure what i can attribute this to...
it's been a quality of mine ever since i've learned to speak.

     (where i've gone and
           the few faces along the way,
                    with eyes like distorted mirrors
                                     showing me my strange self)

i have trouble finding my place, yet i've found many places
i don't  know how to connect, though at times i feel connected

you have  me confused

                   s c    a     t       t e      r            
                               b      r a         i      n    e  d  

back and forth for so long, and finally landed separate,
fixed in each other's shade of the soon-to-be-forgotten past
because-- i don't have a because.
because i have too many becauses.

because i simply cannot

i can't place my finger on why.
i don't feel as real
                                     as i used to.
please understand


life is confusing because there are so many different ways to see it.
so one can never be too sure what is true.
about self,  reality, or other people.
there are a million different experiences of the color green.
i am seen one way, but i feel about myself something invisible.
and sometimes i don't feel anything about anything at all.

she
spoke as if she knew the world down to its heartbeat,
and could see through its bones.
she spoke as if her eyes were the only eyes,
and they saw all truths.
she was not careful with her words
and never stepped outside of her body
to see how imprisoned she was in her thoughts.
she obsessed over what she saw in others,
and what they saw in her.
for that, i think, she always wore the sun.

1 teaspoon of fear
1 pint of hope
A dash of bitterness
2 cups of shame
12 ounces of insecurity
3 unspoken words

A simple recipe
Creating this awkward situation
Between the two of us

1:45 on a Tuesday
I sit here.
I sit here
and drink coffee while watching
the world spin backwards
outside of this glass and
I am just confused about
people.
Whether wealthy or without
wicked or wonderful, we
are all here
together.

Where the saints are both sane
and insane and same with the slugs.

I sit here
across from the immigrant
service office that welcomed
our grandparents,
It has brick painted a dishonest
but happy white.
I watch happy and dishonest
people eat
and drink here.
They don’t bother one another
and nobody bothers me
here
the coffee is true and black
and the beer is even better
we are lucky
to be here,
where this glass keeps out the sidewalks and street cars.

Here at 1:45 on Tuesdays,
the saint and slugs look strangely similar.

And I am really just confused about
people.
As I watch the world spin outside
this glass and wonder why things can’t always
be how they
are
here.

I am the liquor store down a forgotten street                                
          that closed long ago,
the "NO-ADMITTANCE " sign still staring out at you
         through blank, dull windows.

                        I've been vandalized.
         My floor stripped bare, shelves broken, bottles strewn about,
    though I've come to quite like
the new graffiti of my soul.

                  All of this done at the hands of drunkards,
                                those who kissed my lips as they stripped me bare.    

               And now here we are, all forgotten.
                                   Perhaps I can only blame myself.

You remark how freely time drains down the bottle.
I wonder if you are out there now,
         measuring your life in beer cans.
If so, I'm jealous. Not of you,
          But of the beer cans.

Have you ever been as drunk from my kiss
     as I am of yours?
                    I hope so. I hope I am not the only one.

Does the sky open up for you when you look into it?
      Have you gazed upon infinity?
                If you have, let me look into your eyes.

      Briefly.

So I can fall into the Dark Forever of your windows.
    So these walls marked by unkind hands
        might know themselves again.