WHY'S YOUR DADDY GOT BLUE EYES?


it was never so much a question I heard
as much as one i thought, why's my daddy got blue eyes?

i used to peel this picture out
of the floral decopauge box
a sepia toned senior photo
of him in a varsity jacket
a wide spanish grin and
my full lips,
leonard scrawled on the
back, and why's your daddy got blue eyes?

I have always felt alone in this
body, a bit of my mother and none
of a father, have always
hated this brown
this skin filled with
shade, in the shadow
of girls with lean limbs
and long hair the color
of satin flower,
viridian eyes
that smile without tryin'
and long slender fingers
that'd be good for playin'
with children and kissing--

i have never
seen myself as anything else
than muddy water
always heavy, full
of sand, steaming earth
in the grasslands, dense
and bitter like orange rinds
too round, too full,
bubbling with all a manner
of pith and marrow
quick down in the mire
fixed into the silt

I have reached for the men
like the one in the photo,
dark and ethnic, pleading
for affirmation, that there
is beauty in brown, in
dusk, that I do not
have to be Rotomairewhenua
clear and effortless
that I can easily be
fresh and still
full of depth
and darker
hues.

why has my daddy got blue eyes, I wonder?

i like to remember that
waves still form in part
due to ocean basins

that my intuition
skims along the floors
and only reverberates
all that it finds to the top,

so maybe if I better
understood the reasoning
the seat of my heart, the crux
of why I am, this turbulence
would come a little easier,

the combers,  though heavy
and unyielding--predictable,
navigable, waters I can
sail on.

i went back through
my old pieces

and it all became so
bleached,

white sugar, white rice,
skim milk, I used to be
so rich, cream, honey
oak sap,

I wrote and it felt
natural, saw in
words and coffee
hues, tastes and
teaspoons clinking
bowls rolling, counters
covered in  flour
batter running into the
sink and onto my
feet, i could bake
bread on my palms
leavened and without
yeast

i wrote like everything
was alive because it was
because it is


because I am.

lately when it rains

and it pulls at all
the earth, humid and
oaky,

i wonder if it brings
the same out in me,

summer sweat, the
whos and wheres
buried down deep.

i am tired of chasing
the people that don't
exist and feeling lied
to far after the fact,
so long down this
road that I no longer
have the right to ask--
were you, did you?
did she, was she?
i am hurt by all
the moments I allowed
myself to be involved in
that only served to show
what a silly fool I was
for not discerning soon
enough, for not saving myself
preserving something I'd always
held in high regard and now
it just feels stolen or dead
and I am ashamed to
wonder who could love me now
after that, after he,
after


after.

I miss you
you don't know how much*
the rest is incohorent, he keeps
saying sorry, over and over.

I guess I understand why, now.
the apologies, the childlike way
he'd turn and burrow into my
shoulder--something he'd
hardly done before

maybe I didn't understand
the reasoning behind the things
he would have liked, but the pain
was always so palpable
a heavy ache, a lonesome ache--

I hope all the blackest things
are the farthest from you,
and that you recede from
the places that only bring
temporary comfort,
i hope that you heal,
that all the ways you
have frozen over will
thaw, not a bitter thing
to be found,

i hope that the bees
find you sweet, Matt
because you are and I did,
you are not a body of
the things people have said

breathe, in and out


in and out.
with me,
in and out.

when you are making love and he cannot
call your name, his body covered in gashes
and half of them are not even from your
teeth,

after you have shown up at
two am to cry into his shoulder
blades, driving him wild with
your tears that he believes unjustified

to not know what you've seen
until days later, realizing the
dark haired girl was not just
any dark haired girl

if you are holding his head
while he breathlessly mutters
secrets, you have given your
heartbeat up as a lullaby
leaving at midnight
like the dirtiest cinderella
so he will not have to feel
ashamed about the
blonde hairs all over his
bedspread

you leave quietly
and close the
door behind you
when you are off work
when you lock the house
when the moonlight is spread
out across brush hollow and he
says you are ruining everything

close the door.