Beat down your door
As I scream your name
You left me alone
You left me with my shame
How could you expect
This would be okay
Change my life
Then leave it in shambles
Tear my heart out
And smash it to pieces
Stomp on my insecurities
Keeping me in painful silence
My mouth sewn shut
Keeping our old love secret
I sit here and see you laugh
At the women you left
A sobbing child
I stumble over
Every step forward
While you sit an
Blow away life’s problems
I am stuck in the muck
While you watch me
Sink farther
Into nothingness

I’d like to run my fingertips through thickets of dark hair
rest my head on the soft rise and fall of your earth
plant kisses in the soil of your neck, repair
tiny fractures in your branches, grant a small rebirth
I’d like to water your roots with whispered secret words
to nourish the pictures moving through your mind as you sleep
hoping my face might materialize behind eyelids as you stir
my leaves would weave a blanket, my buds would graze your cheek
Someday you’ll wake from the wintry slumber of her arms
take timid first steps through autumn-fallen leaves
you’ll grasp at my voice whispering like the wind, race toward my charms
where my branches will stretch out, waiting to receive
For now you’ll stay encased in an ice-age dream
and I’ll wait for you just out of reach, taking root downstream.

she’s trying to study
but she can’t

there are beautiful clouds outside
and trees growing in the sun
there are people playing Frisbee
and birds fluttering in the breeze
and even just a spot on the ground
that’s a little more interesting
than the other ones

that won’t do though
her work is due in an
hour

she sits up in her chair
pulls her notebook closer
leans down, writes for a second,
then looks out the window
again

what a beautiful day
she thinks

she bites her pencil
examines her yellow nails
and looks out the window
again,
at the ground
this time

what a beautiful day,
she thinks,
but I really must get
back to work

I have basked in another beauty,
a sharp jasmine needle
that has pricked the corner
of the so-called snazzy ones.
A bright torch
in a dark blue drowned room,
crumbs on a blood napkin
and the one-tone words
drop out our ears
like heptagonal coins out of pockets
or tears,
tears onto pages
in a teenager’s diary.

And then we advance
into October air
where leaves tick and tack
as typewriter keys do
across soggy ground.
Ride, walk
and now a story begins.

Always see the world through rose-colored glasses and
The classy lady always orders the cosmopolitan
I’ve always preferred Miller light
But I’ll raise my Cosmo up in a salute to him
Always hide your Butterfinger wrappers in the fire—
“That’s where Grammie won’t find them”
A man of his stature, success
Shouldn’t have to keep such secrets from his Babe
We know she’s only looking out for him
But nothing will keep him from the simple pleasures life has to offer
Not even his Babe

When we were young he told us
Of the Fuckawee Indian tribe that settled Northern Michigan
And how, maybe, just maybe
If we yelled loud enough
They would peek out at us from behind the thick foliage
After dinner he’d take us kids on his evening cocktail cruise
(Once again hiding from Babe)
With a Gerrity mixed drink in his hand
(He wasn’t allowed ice cream, or ***** and Kahlua)
We’d cruise by the house and call out
To the tribe that settled our sacred land and
To our shocked parents on the distant shore line
“Where the Fuckawee?”

How to drive a boat and How to touch the world and
How to love unconditionally and How to enjoy every moment
How to stand up for what you believe and How to have fun doing it
How to follow the rules, and more importantly How to break them
Looking up and down the rows and rows of
White folding chairs
Watching these salty lessons dribble down the faces of those he touched
The young, the old
The Brazilian, the English who always asked for the Irishman's list
The family, the friends, and those who admired from a far
We come together, here
To celebrate all we learned from him
How to work to the top from the bottom
How to touch the lives of so many
and

Most importantly,
How to fill your heart with love for
The Luckiest Family in the World
That I have around me now,
Thanks to the Luckiest Man in the World

A simple thing to ask of me
Open my mouth
and let noise spill out
in melodies and harmonies
How bizarre it is to me
that I can control your body
with the fluctuation of my voice.
I sing those familiar songs to you
and watch your eyelids grow heavy
soon you are in another realm
but I still have you in my arms
I brush your wavy brown hair
off of your freckled forehead
and with a gentle kiss
I send you on your way.

i want head rubs
more than head

you know,
i think you
‘re
probably pretty

easy to kiss –
i mean that
it’s effortless,
something
we both

just do. me

and

you are mine

and also yours. are the bees
having trouble
kissing the flowers?
no,
that is what i mean by easy.

1.**     Plant yourself in his mind, the smallest, hidden seed,
        slowly growing roots, winding noiselessly round his arteries.
        Begin to sip from his water supply, soak up his minerals
        become another branch of his being.
        Eventually he will cling to your cancerous leaves like your roots cling to his soil.

2.     Send him on a scavenger hunt for the many shards of your heart.
        Forget to give him the map so he stumbles through the coils of your past,
        ankles sliced open by jealous thorns, neck gnawed to bits by unseen insects.
        Grant him a thank-you kiss for bringing them back to you;
        watch him as he’s taping them gently back together.
        Don’t tell him that he is nothing but an aspirin
        swallowed to aid in healing a gunshot wound.

3.     Keep him grasping at your vagueries.
        Withhold comforts of ‘yes’ or ‘no’ even as he shivers in the downpour of your cynicism
        instead slip in and out of his arms like silk sheets.
        As his weak trembling hands try to pin you to reality once more,
        remind him that you blew in like summer, and leaves have begun to rust.