I        people easily.
  lose

I hope I rise like yeast
like dust as
Maya Angelou

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.

people only knock

for the warmth, outstay

their welcome,

i've never wanted to

love quickly

i want to lay each

brick, caulk every corner

and be

*sure

I once wrote about an independent life
in a reality where I supported myself on
letters from the cute mailman, salad and
eggs, where although time was constricted
my heart wasn't, and I could be happy on
a diet of keen understanding and wisdom.

i finally told him
I want to try.
with you.
I want to try, with you.
I want to be with you.
I want to be with you.
because it's been there
at the forefront of everything
Waiting to be said
okay. okay.  like a sigh--
I had been trying all night
From the moment he threatened
To drive away, standing insolently
In front of his headlights--
but he was quiet and
all i could do was smile
and say, but that's not
enough anymore, is it?
no, it's not.
but I know why it isn't,
and why this poem is
short with so very
few
words.
because decisions are
yes or no, but some yes'
are too
late and
some no's
follow in suit.

For a while i ignored what everyone said
you were my best friend
I stood
I sat
I waited
for you


and in the end you didn't wait for me.

i always fall for boys with broken trucks


who track sod into the living room
and smell like cattle and cologne
with knotches in their hips from
tying dollars 'round their waists
strung from welding rigs and pipelines
bad backs, torn hands and ripped
ligaments scarred over and healed
with whiskey--

those men that cause a raucous
but attend the song of every whippoorwill
who take peace with them down in the
holler and carry sunlight on their backs
they've got bones so cold you'd think they'd
crack but they've been bucked by bulls and
motorcycle seats, and are quieted by the sounds
of a woman breathing--

softly, slowly, in and out
softly, slowly, in and out.


how do you not fall for the broken?


softly, slowly, in and out.

I find myself apologizing for the
music that I like and the way I talk,
letting people know that I say one
hundred wrong and I'm constantly
saying words with the wrong tone
apparently I say theater like an old
man and I'm sorry that I don't know
a lot about the pixies I can't fix these
little things about me. I will never know
more about john frusciante or IGN, I'll
never look into video games on my own
whim

I'm so tired of putting my radio
away and being afraid, that if
I play my music everyone will
walk away. That I have to make
the rhyme obvious to see, that I
have to split these paragraphs to
make it more easy. That I have
to censor everything I say, that
I have to stoop to a level that was
never easy to reach. I thought things
that were higher were the standards
to vie for but bending down is a task
i have fight for.

There are these christmas lights in
my room, and for a time I was bothered by the one
blue light that was out, and when I
had friends over, this friend,
she said,
Oh, but there are many lights out,
don't you see the one over there?
And here, above my head?
The one by your bookcase?
To be honest, I was a bit heartbroken to have not seen
the others, and now I can't help but notice
to count, and realize that so many of them
are dead.

did you think i was a dream?


oh, how I tried to be.


thin and watery, made to


fit around you so that you


might say I were the crepuscular rays


sheafs of sunlight held up like


taut ropes tied to the ledge


of heaven.

it's abut 9pm and I decide I don't want to be alone



there was a car crash earlier that day up west towards Salida--
some Kansas man who was killed by a driver trying to pass
in the right lane, declared deceased on scene, another man
from Monument who was air-lifted to St. Thomas Moore,
no critical injuries.

I tend to ask God for these big signs, signs that I'll recognize. I tell him
that they need to be something I'll notice because you know me, sometimes I can't hear you. Anyway, signs, crashes. A Kansas man died.  It's 9pm and I pull on some jeans and leave the house.

I'm supposed to be at a rodeo dancing, but maybe I wasn't supposed to be there after all. I have this white dress in my closet that you can't even see, tucked between everything else because it's so thin, lays flat beneath the aztec smocks and cream cardigans. I take it out and brush it off, thread my fingers through the open lace--

10pm. When I breathe soft enough the stars look like they're hanging on strings, like I could reach up and snap them off,
they'd be no bigger than dew drops on a spider web
so light they'd drift up in the night breeze and
set up in my own natural atmosphere.

What good would it have done me to be there? I only ask
myself to assuage the warm fear i've been feeling since Friday
night, a lingering umbrage I did not think would stay--
I can see the white stitches in my jeans that look
like they're glowing,
smells like rain out here.
I wish I was out at Chaffey
for a quick moment, enveloping
someone else in this chanel perfume
makin' someone else envious of the
way another man got to spin me out--

I'm trying to be all these people at once, an  
audience of crowd pleasers piled into one body
It's so quiet, I'm so quiet up on the sideways knoll in
Florence, tired of letting people down easy off the sidewalk
curb and being tossed off the bridge over the state highway myself,
I can't help it, I want to say aloud.

I can't help that I am this way, collected.
calm in hearty hysterics, anxious to tell
you about how I've been fixed,
that warm fear growin' hotter
a coal for every man who suggested
I be less than who I am by pourin' more
into my cup,

I'm trying. I'm trying.

you listened to
Ricky Gervais
podcasts and
harry potter
audio books
to help you
sleep. I
remember
when your
hair was
brown.

I have a hundred diary entries
that start with your name and a
hundred endings asking for help
a hundred theories on why your
response was so crass, a hundred
scenarios where I only say I'm sorry
I'm so, so sorry a repeated thought
where I despair over never being able
to talk cordially with you again, I don't
know why I care, why that photo struck
a lofty chord, why your beard bugs me so
much, see: June 2013.

I realized just now that some day you'll
stop loving me for someone, some one
something, some thing,
will creep into your head, with thin fingers and undo the
knots I tied between your ribs with my tongue
she'll hose down the paint inside your heart that i threw
in buckets, angrily and with a vengeance
hang up her own art that will look better and hurt less

you'll slowly edge away and forget why you were
so passionate about staying, with less words that I'll miss immediately
even though I never reply but to you
to you
you're walking farther away, to come back
although at one point the sun will go down, you'll
sleep on a road and wake-up to find
you could go further
you could walk further and
somewhere along the way you'll turn back

because wasn't there someone you were supposed to love?
[me]

when you arrive i'm surprised and
you fail to recall the part of you that was so deeply enamored, he's
gone.



i realized just now that someday you'll stop loving me