i am shaking.

i cannot feel
your hand around my waist
as you sleep next to me beneath the sheets.

the sirens wailing
past your house this winter night
sound so far away.

i just escaped to the bathroom--
vomiting blood and what little food i ate.
the acid burns.

i'm crying in your bed.
you pull me closer, i feel safe--
but i am still so scared.

you, with the strength you don't know
that you possess,
could teach me so much
that i could never learn.

autopiloting;
i can't think or feel a thing--
where have i gone now?

gaze into the glass
look through the universe, time;
see what you're made of

black hole in my chest,
please devour me; i can't stand
this sick emptiness

it is filled with amber,
with liquid gold;
a broken man is taking a swig.

it is everything he has lost,
will lose,
what he has lost everything to.

the gold is his,
encased in glass,
but he feels no richer.

i want to die on the road
at the hands of something beautiful
i'm not quick to
leave this sad place behind
but the beauty -
the scarce amount of it that's left
in this cruel world -
is enough to make me feel so insignificant
that nothing is really worth it
and nothing compares to it
it was summer. nights out west were hot and dry. the highway stretched ahead of us for days; no one ahead, no one behind; just us and the road and the star-laced sky above. i kept thinking that i wanted to die here someday, under this same sky, counting stars like seconds. one-one-thousand two-one-thousand three-one-thousand four..
they really mean it when they named it death valley
take one step outside
and every
last
drop
of water
every
last
inch
of hope
leaves your body
in that very instant
the sun is angry
burns every thing to a crisp
black, blacker, blackest
you ever seen the grand canyon? nah, man. not pictures. seen it. been there. looked over the edge down at the drying river below. stood a little to close for comfort, hungry condors above you waiting for you to fall. sound scary? you can catch yourself. mama nature has a way of granting mercy – whether you want her to or not. she'll catch you when you fall, baby. she always will.
let me tell you
how powerful
this world is
to die
by the hands of it
god what a beautiful thing
the last thing they see
are the rocks
and the niagara falls crashing over them
it has the power
to possess
to hypnotize
to seize
carpe omnia, baby
did you know that the most beautiful place in america is the most deadly? it's so deceptive; a sleeping god yet to unleash his wrath. the beauty with the ability to burn, to scar, to ****. deceptive splendor in pools of sulfur, deep blue like sapphire bleaching rocks starch-white and murdering trees. i saw a bison laying at the edge, the smell of burning fur hung heavy in the air. everything there was dead and it was a tragically beautiful thing.

eyes sparkling,
a smile that can
outshine the sun.

so far oblivious
to the pains and
wars and terrors
that plague the
world.

so innocent,
full of promise.

if innocence could
be kept, the world
could be changed.

if only
we
could
stay
young
always.

There is incessant noise
in the city—as if the blinding light
blocking out the sky was not enough.
They never spread their wings, but oh,
do they spread far and wide; but their songs
are nothing to shake a tail-feather at.
The squabbling and screeching
of fighting roosters, the mimicry
of baby cockatiels finding their voices,
the chattering of gossiping hens,
hawks that stalk the night
only to swoop in screaming
at the first sparrow to cross their paths,
the mourning doves who wake alone
to cry and moan their songs of melancholy.

They remain awake and call out into the night
longer than the old owl in the park.

The ****** of crows bear witness
to the clamor on this night; looking on—
as the Eyes of God—
in disgust and judgment.
These tall, fleshy creatures see fit
to complain of the calls of pigeons and gulls
when their noise is the farthest-reaching plague
that keep all awake at night.

i went to my doctor this week.

"i feel
disconnected
from everything. like i am living
in a dream--
i am numb,
and i am scared.
i'm on autopilot all the time."

she asked me questions
about my dark thoughts,
my sicknesses;
acid boiling in my stomach,
crippling hammer-and-nails-to-the-temple headaches,
sweating even in winter's bitter chill,
my inability to sleep without fear.

i'm rubbing the tops of my hands and it hurts.
it feels like rug-burn.
my hands are turning red, raw.
i will be picking the scabs for days.

"do you think about hurting yourself?"

"no, i would never do anything," i lie, as i am currently hurting myself.
she doesn't notice.

"do you ever think, when you go to bed, about not waking up the next day?"

"yes."
it caught me off guard,
i couldn't lie to that.
i am shaking.
i am rubbing the tops of my hands.
i am repeating phrases in my head.
i am shaking.
i am rubbing the tops of my hands.
i am scared.
i am scared.
i am scared.

i am on autopilot.
i can't turn myself off.
i am scared.
i am rubbing the tops of my hands.
they are raw.
they are raw.
i am thinking about the scabs.
i am on autopilot.
i can't turn myself off.
turn me off.
turn me off.
turn me off.

All is silent among a desert
of silver-grey, pock-marked with craters;
the view of the stars from here is the same
as it should be from mountaintops. But over the horizon,
cradled in the breast of a star-freckled pitch-black sky,
an azure baby swaddled in a milk-white blanket:
our home.

And from out here, big-baby-blue isn’t so vast.
How humbling it must be for your home
to be the size of your fist.
How humbling it must be to be an ant,
a speck of dust, floating around aimlessly.

Don’t our troubles seem so small, now? But when
you come home, it will all come rushing back
just like your craft in freefall. You will be left
reeling,
begging to be launched again.

Silence, darkness, and a beautiful view:
something everyone should experience.
The view of the Earthrise from La Luna.

It’s tranquil out here, in the Sea of Serenity;
Do you really want to go back home?

windows to the soul indeed
in my mother's golden brown
and my beloved's oceanic bluegreen
i see ghosts that will never find peace.

in others,
changing hazel and sky blue,
i see sparkling rays of sunlight;
no shadows, no ghosts.

i can't bear to look.

we're just dirt underneath the universe's fingernails, baby
small and so ******* insignificant,
our beginnings carved out of ice and stone;
our forefathers trapped roaming the sky above and beyond us.

i've been told that we on earth are the measure of the universe.
what a waste; egos larger than the solar system,
we are nothing but filth and plague.

god bless and disregard the truth.

i can't tell
am i shaking
because the room is shaking
or is it something else
my body is an earthquake
each fragile blue vein a fault line
the bruises are where the ground
caved in and
s p l i t
broken blood vessels of the street
i'm an earthquake
i can't stop the tremors
words don't make sense
the tremors make the words i speak
shake with a violence to which nothing
and i mean nothing
can compare
and
words?
what the **** are words anyway
say them all enough times
they lose meaning
leave a sick taste as they
leave your tongue
syllables like molasses
thick and sickening
and when i get to thinking of things
such as these disgusting words
the tremors calm
the fault-line-veins settle
the foundations of my bones
cease their rattling
and i am okay again

large hearts swell, with brown
eyes full of love; two sets fought,
leave earth far too soon.

~ ~ ~
sunday night, in fruitland township, michigan, two pit bulls were found lying dead on the side of the road near an elementary school. a man by the name of joe weaver found the dogs and covered their bodies so that children wouldn’t see them on their way to school. the link leads to his facebook page — which is open to the public — where he has been keeping everyone up to date about the dogs. when he found them last night, there were no footprints in the snow, suggesting that the dogs were most likely thrown out of a car and left to die, if they weren’t dead already. we believe the dogs may have been used to fight, and they were underfed.

my mother contacted mlive, WZZM 13 (the grand rapids affiliate of ABC news), pound buddies, and woodTV 8. two of her friends who don’t even live in michigan contacted muskegon police, giving anonymous info about the incident. over the course of the night and early this morning, this story has popped up on WZZM13, and has been mentioned on local animal rescue facebook pages. a news caster even posted on a facebook page that this case is currently undergoing investigation.

i want this to get spread around in hopes that whoever did this can be caught, and we can get some justice for these poor babies. no animal deserves this treatment. today, after joe weaver found them he decided to name them “moody” and “george”, after the military base he served at. he is hoping to get the bodies back after autopsy, so he can give them a respectful burial.

please, please, if you can, reblog this and spread it around. even if you don’t live in west michigan, or michigan at all, please get the word out so we can find whoever is responsible. if social media is good for anything, despite all its toxicity, it’s stuff like this.

(you can reblog the post here: http://blackcr0wking.tumblr.com/post/77718225228/if-everyone-could-please-spread-this-around-i )

sagittarius,
you only tell me i'm beautiful
when we are skin-to-skin
and your hand is around my throat.

my body is a temple
that you pray to with ragged breath.

if only i could destroy you
the way you destroy me.

Your soul was always isolated from
the world around you—from the very beginning. Time
alone was something you valued (as should we all)
but your isolation took on many forms—many
hungry shadows looming over you at all times.

A collision of iron and steel left you
immobile, and by the standards expected of
women, useless: your womb would never swell,
and you would never experience the pain of
bringing a child into this cruel world.

The fractures
and the wounds healed, but you
never recovered.

In the face of impossibility, you still
tried in desperation; leaving you in cold
unfamiliar hospital rooms, where all you
can see is an alien landscape; where all you
can think about is the reasons you are  here,
and the reasons your baby will never be.

It is a pain in your heart that leaves you gutted
like the iron handrail that embedded itself
through your ******. The bed is soaked
with your tears and your blood; it is the pain
of knowing that you will never hold a baby
who sees you as God; you will never experience
the love of a child, glowing with innocence.

Envy is not green but
something perhaps a little more sickening to me
than chartreuse and a spoiled ego.
Envy is when i see boys walking by,
looking down at myself again, i see my curves
and i hate them.

i don’t want them.
i want to look like the boys.

Envy is seeing other girls more androgynous
than i;
girls with broader shoulders
and with more angular faces.

why can’t I look like that?

i hear voices deeper than mine:
tenor, baritone—
and I shred my throat
day-by-day,
trying to come close to the pitch.

Envy is the aches in my body when changing
my posture from legs to shoulders;
from changing my stride
and preventing my hips from swaying.
i want to look like them.

seeing these people makes my insides feel
like they’re being twisted with a red-hot fork;
and it hurts, oh God, it hurts.
it hurts to know i will never look
like how i see myself.

oh, sweet gravity--
it pulls you right back to me;
my binary star.

violently, from
a sick, pale face, blood spills forth;
a fragile life lost

there is a hunger
burning the empty pit of
my lonely stomach

your body buckles beneath my hands,
promises whispered with each exhaled sigh;
you said you don't believe in soul mates but
you and i
are the closest thing to it

looking down i see you
gazing back at at me and
your green  eyes shatter my soul
the way you look at me is enough to make me believe
that i have a soulmate,
another half
and that here, now, in the darkness of your room
we are together, one and the same,
an individual

GOD IS IN THE HOUSE, making his HOLLOW SOUNDS;
and i can hear you CALL OUT on NEW YEAR'S EVE.
and THE SKY LIT UP over GREEN GRASS and 1000 OCEANS.

you are VENUS AS A BOY, FACE TO THE HIGHWAY.
NOVEMBER HAS COME, and IN BETWEEN DAYS,
YOU ARE ALL I HAVE. WE CAME ALONG THIS ROAD:
GOLD MINE GUTTED, THE DARKER DAYS OF ME AND HIM.

O DEATH,
IF ONLY TONIGHT WE COULD SLEEP.
WE ARE FREE MEN, EXILES AMONG YOU,
you who believe in MORE THAN THIS.
but HOW CAN YOU BE SURE?

HALLELUJAH,
to these HALCYON DAYS,
where we find peace.
GOD, SHOW YOUR FACE--
RESONANCE on the COLD WATER.
I KNOW YOU KNOW
that we are singing to your TRAVEL HYMN.
ONE OF US CANNOT BE WRONG.

(i'm going a little overboard with these)

here is THE BIG PICTURE, of the LAST LIVING SOULS
WHERE THE WILD ROSES GROW, we are ALL STRIPPED DOWN.
and oh, BLESS HIS EVER LOVING HEART,
"THE OCEAN DOESN'T WANT ME,"
as he's trying to drown in THE WEEPING SONG;
a DRUNKEN SAILOR in the HOUSE WHERE NOBODY LIVES.

my face is flushed WINE RED
as we remain here like AGED DOLLS
wanting nothing more than to TAKE TO THE SKY,
but STABILITY is what we need now.
I'LL SHOOT THE MOON if it could grant me some peace,
i'm thinking, "I MUST BELONG SOMEWHERE."

a POETIC TRAGEDY,
A ****** OF ONE.
KISS ME, BEFORE DEPARTURE.
WHAT CAN I GIVE YOU?
you're singing AN ODE TO NO ONE.
IT HURTS.

you see, IT'S ABOUT KILLING PEOPLE,
about THE RIGHTEOUS & THE WICKED,
THE UNDIVIDED SELF.

ARE YOU THE ONE I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR?
here, WHERE TWO BODIES LIE,  I COULD STAY HERE FOREVER.
on THE LAST DAY WE EVER CLOSE OUR EYES,
the HARBOUR LIGHTS will be in GRAYSCALE.

MY MISTAKE, I BELIEVE IN SYMPATHY.
sing me A LULLABY FOR THE LONELY,
and we'll HEAD FOR THE COUNTRY.

you set off these LITTLE EARTHQUAKES in me.
you're in the PASSENGER SEAT, telling me to
HOLD ON TIGHTLY, LET GO LIGHTLY.
POLARIS can't guide us anymore.

i am the BLACK CROW KING, you are OFF THE MAP.
GRIEF CAME RIDING through our souls, darling,
WHAT DO YOU GO HOME TO? GET OUT.
there's BLOOD ON  THE LEAVES,
FROM THE EDGE OF THE DEEP GREEN SEA.

WITH YOUR GREATEST FEARS REALIZED, YOU WILL NEVER BE COMFORTED.

WHY ARE YOU LOOKING GRAVE?
THE EARTH DIED SCREAMING.

dear aries,
had i known what love was back then,
we might have made it last.

dear taurus,
you were always everything
i wished i could have been.

dear gemini,
you are a fiesty, wonderful soul,
i love you dearly, my surrogate brother.

dear cancer,
i still remember the first day we met,
but i cannot remember the sound of your voice.

dear leo,
you are worth more
than your protruding collarbones.

dear virgo,
our horoscopes say we are the perfect friends,
but you are a heartless creature and i am afraid of you.

dear libra,
you are vicious,
picking petty fights over nothing,
yet you are still my best friend.

dear scorpio,
god, what a beautiful, fascinating being you are.
how i always wished to be yours.

dear sagittarius,
i gave you my heart,
and now it has two years
and eight batterings worth of scars.

dear capricorn,
i miss our late night storytelling,
i am waiting on an apology that will never come.

dear aquarius,
we are so different now,
i cannot bear to speak to you.
you are afraid of me.

dear pisces,
whenever i see you,
you take my breath away.

the skies aren't warm
like you wanted; curses laid
down leave you to ruin

your fingers carve canyons in my spine
digging to the deepest reaches of me,
and i am exposed.

you are pulling me close enough to you that
it is a surprise that we do not melt together;
your skin becomes mine; mine, yours.
we are one and the same.

you are changing my geography;
i am shaking, an earthquake.
you have broken open my fault-lines.

i have been told that bites, craters,
are lovenotes on the skin.
what, then, are these,
these canyons that trail my back?

you have left scars on me:
not scars that wound,
scars that change.

i was supposed to forget about you.

i was supposed to forget the nights we spent
sharing breath, saliva, sweat
and yet you're still here, and it's like you never left
it's like you're still more important than he is.

i can see now, the twisted smirk on your face
if i were to tell you this.
how proud you would be to know i still belonged to you,
completely and wholly.

let's be honest, darling you never lost me.

the last time we spoke you told me
there were still feelings that lingered
that i was still the most beautiful thing you'd seen
but you were never going to say it again.
if only i'd had the gall to tell you i still felt the same.

"it kills me to see you with him," you said.
i flash a weak smirk, because it kills me too.
i made a home in you and i'm struggling to move out.

every chord
on the nylon strings
the g the e
the c the a
sounds so exultant
so content
it masks
morose and melancholy
lyrics and rhymes;
and yet everyone can make it
sound more cheerful than
i ever could
everyone can make it
everyone can make it—
except for me

but don't tell me I never tried
i tried my damnedest and I am
still ******* trying
i am screaming hallelujah
at the top of my lungs until
asthma beats me down
until my throat feels pricked
with needles
and i will continue to play the chords
of a song describing
a futility i feel in my bones
and i will try to make them sound
hopeful, ******

because i need this

when we were young,
everything was bathed in sunlight;
we loved and we fought,
we thought we would live, strong,
forever.

summers spent on the shoreline,
waves lapping at our feet--
we'd walk the pier in the evenings,
jumping from rock to rock,
spiders being the tenants between the spaces.

and then we grew,
wild and reckless--
nights spent on drugs and ***,
nights spent on choices made and regretted,
nights spent on violence and self-destruction.

our town darkened like the bags beneath our eyes.
the water doesn't shimmer in the light like it used to,
the stars don't shine like they used to.
the lights in the buildings flickered out,
windows boarded.
we don't go out at night like we used to.

we're all waiting to escape before we become
the next teenage suicide,
the next dearly-departed and gone-too-young.

we were all beaten and battered,
breaking each other's hearts,
begging for an out,
only to end up homesick
for a place we always hated.

the lakeshore was all we knew.

rise from the ashes
of your alienation
and thrive in the fire.


ascend from the ash
of bitter desolation
and die in your fire.

ever since i was young,
my gaze was drawn skyward.
i could tell you the story of orion,
and how to brush bernice's hair,
before i could tell you that two plus two equals four.
i know more about our vast universe,
than i know about many of my friends.

if you are not well acquainted with a pisces,
let me give you a bit of an introduction:
we are compassionate, imaginative,
we adapt to whatever is thrown at us,
and my personal favourite,
we are unfalteringly loyal.

however...
we are full of self-hate,
prone to laziness,
we are escapists
and horrendously easy to manipulate.

i believe my horoscope today is complete *******.
i do not feel utterly lovely,
i know i will not score a date
because no one feels for me romantically.
i've nothing to flaunt.
the horoscopes are saccharine lies,
but, those traits? those are me.

my soul is ancient,
i feel the pain of struggles i have not faced,
or rather, have not YET faced;
i will split my soul in two
i will break my bones
i will give every drop of my blood
i will breathe my last breath
for those that i love.

i spent two years of my life giving my heart and soul to a sagittarius.
philosophical, adventurous.
i admired him so.
but his negatives--
inconsistent. overconfident.
careless.
he was a burning house.

my mother, also a pisces, when all was said and done,
told me to stay away from those sagittarius boys.
they're dangerous for wary, fretful fish like us,
who ask 'from what bridge?' when we are told to jump.

I learned my place quickly. See,
among the kids on the playground, I
was never fast. I was a joke among tag-players;
it is no exaggeration that I never tagged anyone.

But tag-you’re-it was the least of my worries.

I learned my place quickly, chased down
daily by a pack of boys from my class. To this day,
I couldn’t tell anyone what started it. I kept to myself:
They were wolves, and I was the rabbit they were hunting.
Run aground, pebbles kicked in my face; it was
just like the bullies in the cartoons—
But when it’s one little girl against six boys, I couldn’t find
the humour in it:
Cartoons like that didn’t make me laugh anymore.

I learned my place quickly. “Boys will be boys,”
Was the response from teachers when I came back inside:
crying, covered in dirt, shaking the pebbles out of my shirt.
“It just means they like you.” Yet I couldn’t grasp how
pushing me to the ground, kicking dirt and rocks into my face
equated to affection. If that was how boys acted then I
would rather die than have a boyfriend.

Their antics were validated on principle that they were boys,
and so their dominance in society was assured from day one.
The rest of us, the prey, had to deal with it; I would be sent to
The principal for this principle because I became desperate
and would hide in the woods just to get away.
I was reprimanded and shamed, while the boys got
a gentle slap on the wrist,
and a reminder:
“Play nice.”

I learned my place quickly.

we were young then, with eyes and smiles
brighter than the stars that we watch at night.
we did what we were told, back then, simply because
we were told to do it.

ah, but you,
you aspired to shoot down the stars,
to stick on our ceiling, ever-glowing-in-the-dark.
so we buy our guns and just go.

and then on this bitter autumn night,
lead defies gravity, with a loud bang launched into the sky.
and then the clouds came, and
our breath hung in the air like f o g .

'look,' i said to you then, 'its snowing.'

'no, look again,' you smiled, 'we killed the stars, they're ours now.'


look what we did:
exactly what they said we couldn't.

as the moon blocks out the sun
all is dark,
all is silent; the air, still.
it feels like the end, but the day
is dark only for a brief moment;
the death of light and sound,
seems un-ending but
is gone as quickly as it came

sometimes i wish we could all realize how **** insignificant we are.
we have ancient star-matter in our bones, our veins, but
you will never be your zodiac, ruling the sky— cancer, pisces –
i'll never be antares, or even the very sun we revolve around
but still, aren't we marvelous;
with our star-bones, and their burning marrow cores,
with these nebula-veins, spanning the space of
the universe of our bodies.
aren't we marvelous, with our eyes full of galaxies
that nasa would **** to see through their telescopes.


do me a favour, you starchild,
leave a supernova of a legacy
that will burn bright for all to see
for eons to come.

i crave the universe; it's expanses, outer reaches.
i want to drink from the big dipper, have my fill,
be merry.
escape with me, from the wicked pull of gravity,
leave this *****, scarred earth.
i want to inhale these scattered constellations;
exhale galaxies, nebulas.
i want to leave these silly material things behind,
we can leave ourselves in this beautifully infinite silence,
let the stars tell the stories of the great orion and cassiopeia.

leave your own footprints on the moon, on mars,
wherever you wish, starchild,
there's too much to see when you live in an
u n f a t h o m a b l e    e x p a n s e
staring into stardust,
staring into the roots of you,
of your creation,
of your nebula-blood.
your star-bones.

the night beckons, her stars call to us,
praying that their stories be heard
before fiery cores turn to stone,
and the light fizzles out;
and you'll whisper, '*******,
i've never felt so alone,'
because that's what we'll be,
out there in the darkness,
alone.

and with no stories left to tell,
we wonder what will become of us,
these star-children,
who have witnessed much in the life
of celestial bodies, compared them to our own;
and someday, our cores – our hearts,
will stop beating – turning into the heaviest of stone.

i am the stars we gaze upon at night.

i am a guide at first glance; Polaris --
but upon further inspection i am a fiery powerhouse of passion
i have burned
and blazed forth
for years; traveled across lightyears and parsecs
in my time.

i am the hunter, Orion;
Andromeda, the ruler of men;
i am Pisces fish in Sun and
Gemini twins in Moon;
and yet here i am:
still the smallest of everything

the lonely star is signaling,
crying, calling out in the darkness.
we can see him so close to his brothers and sisters,
but he cannot see them.

is he blind? we ask;
we can hear him calling out,
see him twinkling frantically.

but what we cannot see
is the truth of it -- his loved ones
have gone out, a flickering flame,
exploded into silence.

my poor beloved burning star
is scared of the expanding darkness;
left with nought but his sister's clouded blanket.

i know we're over, though you and i are not

you're the best anchor i've known, though we have
shaken, faltered, lost our place
i thank you for staying though things have changed
through rough patches and tough decisions
and i thank you for being here
and staying the same

i'm not as great as everyone else you know
and that's okay
but just know i'll still be here
and i will stay the same
i only hope i can do half as much for you
as you have done for me

We cast protective spells like a sweet song,
keep a bag of stones and herbs above our beds;
I bathe opal in moonlight all night long,
to keep myself at peace and rest my head.
On the Sabbats, we call to Mother Earth,
guardians of the North, South, East, and West;
give the ash and water back to the earth,
these rituals, from mother I learned best.
Burn sage incense to keep evil at bay,
and it helps my anxiety lessen;
We call on the Triple Goddess to pray,
from Book of Shadows I learn my lesson:
       *No matter how your tattered heart may ache,
        Never throw your love spells into the lake.

the cold fire of orion pulls me in --
a gravitational tide;
drowning in colour, in stellar fire --
i am gazing up at it:
an ant beholding mount everest
the fiery heavens are all-encompassing
with ancient flickering fireflies & dark matter & stellar nurseries
nestled in the breast of the great hunter himself
guarding, watching; stark & silent
& i alone bear witness.

the storm came for my love and i,
anxious pattering, peaceful roaring;
we watched as the storm marched forth,
an unsteady soldier.

we strode out to the air, heated with july's burn
yet frozen by bullets of rain.
we watched light and darkness battle with serenity and grace
between pitch-black and lightning-white.

it's uncomfortably warm, my feet are uncomfortably frozen
dancing in the flooding parking lot
in freezing july rain,
concrete becoming liquid beneath me.

his hot breath gives me goosebumps
as we dance, taking in nature's wild serenity,
in an instant the heat of july is nullified.

if you wanted to
**** me, i would hand you the
gun, accepting death.

if you wanted to
**** yourself, i'd beg you to
stay. your life matters.

your feelings conflict;
as do mine-- we're good for each
other after all.

it takes a village to raise a child:
to rub the rust from years of wear,
to teach him not to cower in the face of adversity
when the other boys come around with bats aimed at his limbs.
he must be led back to mother’s house;
she will take one look at his pouting lip, trembling gateway
to his muted mouth,
and she as well as the others will move mountains
to see him smile again, dimples and all.
perhaps he will not zip around the house as he used to,
as a young monkey swinging through the jungle;
but he will learn to find the forms of nebulae in his plum-bruises,
and he will learn that there is more to strength than a strong arm—
*there is more to fighting back than striking like a hammer.

you and i are fretful, wary fish--
old souls. anxious beings.
sometimes i think that you and i are part of a whole--
the two fish tied together by the rope.

as the song says,

"i wanna ruin our friendship,
we should be lovers instead;
i don't know how to say this,
'cause you're really my dearest friend."

but honestly,
i crave you in the most innocent of ways.

if i could kiss you just once,
simply sleep next to you and be at peace,
that would be more than enough for me.

we made a pact -- at thirty we will get married
just because we can.
but it hurts --
i know it doesn't mean the same to you
as it does to me

i just want to marry you someday
live in a house near the Atlantic
and the rooms will be full of cacti and succulents
the scent of baked goods will waft out from the kitchen
where we will be battling the cats
for space on the table to let the macarons cool --
vanilla bean, rose raspberry, chocolate peppermint

some days, this is all i can think about
and i could never admit that to you

man grew to love the
sea, abuse the land he walks,
and to fear the night.

even if there is
no we, no us, at least there
is still you and i