Spare me the rhetoric
Your transparent lines
Trying to get me
into your bed
Can’t decide between playing
a hipster or a
corporate American
Your new tennis shoes remind me
of the first day of school
I was just looking for a cup of coffee
Honey
Better luck tonight when you hit the clubs

The aura of your spirit precedes you
Calling out insight and energy
It swirls around you, hanging above
Like a singular beam of light
And you tread on instinct;
seeing with your eyes closed
Universe amalgamated;
a conduit for its voice
And you tell the tales of your old soul
And you tell the tales of your purpose and journey
But a broken hearted boy haunts you
The one who ran away and no one cared
So you tear at your feelings
as they hold you under
Gasping for air in the oxygen of escape
But it wears off
It always wears off
And you forget how exquisitely you are made
But one day, you will make peace with the boy
And suture the bleeding holes in your heart
And the footsteps of this nomad will climb
to see how much bigger your world can become
and that some dreams are built very far from our homes
Because at this moment, living inside of you
is the energy that makes a good night a good night

Four years of hopes flung into the sky like clay discs
of a ***** shoot and foolishly, I think
that they are real pigeons with wings colored
in iridescent shades and cooing softly to me

“I am coming home.”

I do silly things, like clean my house, buy new
******* and his favorite foods. I push all other
men away and wait, so I won’t risk rejection or
inflict wounds by betraying this man who

does not even belong to me.

As the date approaches, the estimated time
of arrival becomes more and more obscure
like the day he left for California and never
came back. And the innumerable

broken promises every day thereafter.

“I won’t be here a year” he says. But year two
hides him safely in west coast crevasses. “No I
won’t come to see you” declares year three
“they confiscated my electronics,

I am not supposed to talk to you.

I beat myself in the head with a golf club, don’t
you see how much I love you? I am coming back
for you in year four; why didn’t you wait for me?
In rushing water I stripped naked  

37.83 N, 122.54 W and carved a poem

about us into a rock but I needed to prove that
I am normal, so I loved and ****** the autumn
haired girl. Why won’t you talk to me? How
could you hurt me this way? My song set

tells the story of you

but I cannot let you hear it because you have
abandoned me.” One by one, the hopes are
shot down, “pull!” cries his fears and erratic
behavior, because I broke his silent contracts

by moving on with my life.

How many times will I scold myself saying
that I never should have answered the phone?  
If your muse is tragedy, you must continually
feed it. Now is it he or I with the spoon in hand?

Mounded spoonfuls of clay pigeons.

Phone kept close
Watching the clock
Maybe somebody better
will interrupt
Darting eyes
Incomplete thoughts
Words bounce and ricochet
off the side of your head
Mix your messages
Feed your ego
Pretend not to notice
my wilting enthusiasm
Don’t text me when
the next girl threatens you
with conversation

I could cry making love to her, said he about me. He took me
through the countryside where he endured and at times, enjoyed
life as a child, met his father; surprisingly winsome and caring.

Showed me the clearing where dreams of wedding vows reside,
wildflowers and sunlight and the smell of the wind. Said he could
not wait to kiss me inside the threshold of his new house, could

not wait to make love to me on the new bed that he bought to
contain the exclusive bonds of our two bodies. He said time and
constancy would prove his devotion

I am here.
I am not going anywhere, said he to me.

I scanned my instincts and found incredulous peace, my own disbelief
was the only recognizable fear, and a reason NOT to be happy would
need to be birthed by ignorant spontaneous invention. I felt beautiful,

loved and secure, with laughter and poetry, singing and guitar,
tranquility and passion and rain on our first kiss, cooing Hey Jupiter.

Undone. My head is throbbing from smashing against the proverbial
windshield because he slammed on the brakes and slipped every
thing about me into reverse tragedy has taken his mother away and

sisters and brother look to the eldest for help his 3 year old daughter
has just returned from Maine.

Too- much- at- once, he gasped, I am drowning! Take my hand
love, you are not alone, I will sit beside you, I won’t say a word.

But he wanted nothing of me from me or for me because my sea
colored towels recently hung in his bathroom have been speaking
auditory hallucinations “She has come to steal your autonomy” and

he felt shame for this, after all it was he who asked me to put my
toothbrush in his cabinet. No need to over-complicate; he thought
he wanted a relationship, until he remembered all the things he

can’t stand about relationships and now my form represents all
the things that [and] he cannot stand, and the face in the mirror
said to him “Don’t listen to the towels, you coward! You are afraid

of letting her down. Just let her down now, get it over with and
then you can pretend that she never happened.”
He listened to the mirror and to the towels and declared,

I am here.
I am not going anywhere.

Thus, he got rid of those ******* towels and the woman who
brought them into his house. Life is too hard to include you, said
he to me, just accept it; this has nothing to do with you.

Hey Jupiter, nothing’s been the same.

he says my beer reviews read like ****
that liar
he said he wasn't into ****

tree once was i
tall straight and true.
growing reaching
grasping for the blue patch of sky.

felled by men, all called Jack.
taken, stripped, naked
and beaten till no bark left on
my back.
slashed at torn shredded,
beaten to a pulp.
no way back,
to fresh air and blue sky.

flattened to skin's width,
stretched, rolled and dryed.
thirst, a memory of blue and
pearled sky.
blank without leaf or seed
barren and denied.

tattooed with wisdom deep
and scribblings inane.
cut into pages, windows
for enquiring brains.
words, that penned by
poets speak of forests
mighty,
of oaks and acorns,
growing.
places of intimate knowings.

tattooed, on my flesh,
stolen, rearranged.
reminiscent of recalling,
times of grace and falling.
book now i be.
but,
rather,
tree standing tall
and growing.

Popsicles on lips,
eyes, filled with wine, whisper
Their love should be young.

I was unprepared for your lack of self-awareness
and the way you approach life like a
kid running the wrong way with the ball
Sometimes I feel like your mother
sending you to your room so you can tantrum
Other times I feel like your daughter
when you lay out my pill as if I can’t take it myself
There is a difference between being creative and indecisive
between sensitivity and overreacting
You have to find who you are, and stop lifting so many lids
your anxious energy is clinging to my calm like a parasite
eventually, you need to find a calm of your own
take your spinning outside inward, where things are still
I want to help you, and I will, because I love you
but rarely, rarely, do I feel like your lover
partly because I don’t want to anymore
I don’t want your touch, I don’t want your kiss
your hands are annoying me, please let me sleep
I don’t want to gag and choke on your tongue
just rest for a while, so I can figure out how to do this