If I'm quick enough to smile
before you do
at me,

you straighten,
then relaxedly
soften
to touch.

I love you so much.

Regret turns me
into a wilting paper flower
Good for nothing
but to write down what I love there
for another

I've never been the type
to let my heart burn a hole in my pocket.
I never needed to be told
not to spend it all in one place.

But you,
you are an investment.

It's all currency-
our time and attention,
affection and joy.

I'd like to spend it all with you.

Up in Appalachia they say,
Don't drink the water here.
The rashes on my body aren't enough
to stop my shower beer.
I've been drunk for days,
so ****** thirsty from the green I smoke.
If this all makes you nervous,
have a sip and take a ****.
They say,
they're sending help to all us
deep up in the mountains.
They can keep their water
if they bring me 40 ounces,
'cuz everyday's a party
gettin high on toxic fumes!
Hey Freedom Industries,
just keep doin what you're doin.

a brand new
atmosphere
to breathe in
made of
whispers
from my dreams
lifts my heavy
heart to light
new stardust
decorates
the night

brand new
air to
fill my lungs with
scent of nectar
to collect
and lubricate
our twisted
tongues with

brand new
sweetness
like a wholly
different
world bloomed
to become it

burning all my candles
completely at both ends
to be as close to you again
as quickly as i can

it’s all static if I can’t hear you.
all the same volume, meaningless

I am looking all over to grasp you,
— tell the others I found you

my only-ever prayer
to you, I love
forever.
(amen)

I had dreams that stuck with me
     They stuck with me.


I had a dream you love me
Lady, love me.
      Love me!
     love me,

H-h?hold and
You can touch me

Kiss me (lightly,
(Lovely (lovely)

Softly
        ugh

she’s all Complete and i
Could never get enough

(!) please
Put yourself above me

Lush and comely,
Lady lovely

Your perfect love is a sunrise
to my cool and easterly heart.
The light you bring seeks for me
after many nights chasing the moon.

With dawn, I lose sight
of what the orb ever meant to me,
as you drown its scant light
and silence the stars.

It's cold, always was.
You're burning, for me.

The vibrance night stole,
you restore and replenish
with every slow tick of the axis.
Color floods fields and valleys
I'd wandered deep in darkness;
dew steams to scents of summer
as I watch treaded grasses spring to life.

It's here I sit.
Lost on tangled paths
I was sure were meant to lead me,
I forged another, alone,
and built a home.

You shine in through its windows,
seep in past my walls, and,
as I watch and wait for you,
you quietly reach for more of me.

all I have to offer are these ugly, ragged breaths.

They had your funeral,
there was no eulogy.

there’s a half-life to our interacting.
and I am a scientist, scrutinizing it.

a certain proximity, and I
am irradiated, by you, anew,
every time.

I am burned up.
frayed,
and right here, on display.
taking diligent notes on the fallout
today, in this wasteland.


I search the ground
with my hand and
an eyeglass.



I shouldn’t like what I find.

If I'd ask you for a dime,
you'd just toss me a nickle.
If I'd ask for your advice,
all you'd say is, "Life is fickle."
You like to keep me wanting more,
thirsty while you hold the cup,
so when I head for the door,
I always leave without enough.

If patience is a virtue,
I could be its patron saint.
I canvassed my whole life with you
before you smeared the paint.
When I hear your off-key chorus,
it gets hard to keep composure.
I know where the door is,
but the window is much closer.

I don't want to be leaving,
but it's clear I shouldn't stay.
It's my fault for believing
all the things you had to say.
What's the use in grieving?
Nothing to lose, anyway.

What comfort in knowing,
wherever you're going,
the path is left
up to your willing.
What safety in saying
the life you are paying
is spent upon
only your bidding.
Your sense of control
seems so admirably droll
though, in hindsight,
it did the misleading.
Because life has one cost,
earned at death, then it's lost.
Rejoice: life is only
your meaning.

I imagine you'd kiss me,
take my hand, read my note;
smile for the words that I,
weeping, once wrote.
Unsure what to do,
I know one thing I can:
No one can stop me when
"I have a plan."

just cuz ya
want it
don’t mean that
ya get it

& just cuz ya don’t
doesn’t mean
it’ll stop

It’s love!
   or something

   it’s probably not

The world is very vicious
violent
cold, and quite alone.

And so to find something so gentle —
that gentleness, I think, is bliss.


Not sure.

I’ll let you know.

The leaf and the petal
Earth elemental
Rich soil
from which spring sprouts spirit.

The honey and metal
Forged in a kettle
Will whistle
for all who will hear it.

They meet in the meadow,
this lady and fellow.
Ignite, and catch flight
on the wind.
Stardust and cinder
from fusion of splendor
return to the ether again.

it looks like it is raining
where i'm walking.
i'll know before i get there
but i'm going
out for coffee
for a triple maple latte
at the bakery,

out for coffee
i no longer buy on credit,

a triple maple latte
because i'm learning
when i ask
for what i want
is when i get it.
next must surely be
learning what it is to ask for,

but i am getting better,
so today i'll have
a latte
and
could give or take
the rain.

Of your flowery features,
I am student and teacher.
I am learning to love you
like deep-breathing ether.

You pick me a peony
and cite similarities—
colors and frills,
and pretty, apparently.
You tell me,
regarding
its duo
of shades,
what tempted your fingers
and called out my name:

The lighter of petals,
the curl
of your lip.
The dark, all your freckles
and dots.
I have fallen
in love
with your features
just like those
of flowers—
Please forget
me not.

It's thrilling and it's terrible,
it's wondrous while unbearable:
the piquing mind
which seeks to find
the riddle in the parable.
Traverse the universe
like it is yours
for the unwrapping--
the only thing
of anything
to ever free its trappings.

It's thrilling and it's terrible,
it's wondrous while unbearable:
the piquing mind which seeks to find
the riddle in the parable.
Just when you think you've caught a glimpse,
your eyes will make a trick of it.
Elusive and seducing up until you have to blink again.

Seeking out solutions
to all of the wrong problems.
Powerless to the hourless,
oh, how could you hope to solve them?
Traverse the universe
like it is yours
for the unwrapping--
the only thing
of anything
to ever free its trappings.

A specious speculation
to a quiet congregation,
got you searching your thought corridors--
all you see is already yours.
If you're thinking life post-mortem
could be anything but boredom:
Try to think again.
Create your own Eden.

When what is real is relative,
and yours is unlike mine,
could you say how well I live?
Your virtue is my crime.
Traverse the universe
like it is yours
for the unwrapping--
the only thing
of anything
to ever free its trappings.

pop visions,
ever-present
pop visions
cloud my dreams and nightmares,
follow us into the bathroom mirrors
where we powder our noses,
vibrant and tired.

energy, channeled
from the TV channels,
transmitting waves of hate
below perception.
Speak in subtle undertones,
control all of the animals.

pervasive, invasive
pop visions
warp my form and leave me
listing
for something so
familiar and foreign.
my best friend and most
threatening enemy.
And though I denounce it,
what would I be without it?

it seems there's no escape.
things have always been this way.

even in rejection,
all too fitting a reflection—
all consuming,
all consumed by
pop visions.

•

I spent the vacation dissociating.
wish u were here


As far as I could go,
my thoughts do follow.


An echo reverberates
til it rattles the canyon.



meanwhile

I domesticate insanity.


Xoxo,

stoically emotional,
preconceiving notions of
a starving population
for an unfaithful devotion.
while you're bending over backwards
just to bear the burden's weight,
you speak unspoken tongues
like you've been bitten by some snakes.

heavens, lord have mercy,
you're the only one could hurt me.
righteous, turn to your concerns
and leave us laughing, crying, cursing.
and oh, my goodness gracious,
there's just not a thing could save us
from this semi-static state,
no suit nor armor.
so keep on speaking to those snakes
'til you're their charmer.

i've neglected to notice—
may as well say 'ignored'

only ivory nails
scratching emery, bored

but then every-so-often
it catches my ear

and it says the one thing
but with two things to hear

ain't it so hard to find sometimes

pleas and hints
l'éveil doux du prince
I'm convinced
que je connais sa langue.
que devrais-je faire,
si, oh, au contraire
and too late, I realize I'm wrong?

I don't know what to do with it:
the way everything's making me sick.
I want some semblance of control
and not its dark-matter twin.

It all makes me sick,
to my heart and my stomach.
I can't seem to quit
and I can't overcome it.
So self-inflicted,
(or maybe it wasn't?)
The thought makes me sick
so I'll think nothing of it.

Looking back, it's almost comical
to think of times I've sought shortcuts
and found myself fumbling
into dead-ends and dark alleys.

I did not know you can't cheat time.
I did not know I was trying.

Looking around, I'm still in this town,
and all roads have led me to now.
On this route, I've been mugged
for all that I had
seeking the easy way out.

I will break my own heart
just fine
thank you

I am a heartbreaker
don't
you
know that?


thousands of hearts
and each of them mine
every time

every night
I will break my own heart
now


maybe I should
break my own heart
now


I am the heartbreaker
Watch as I go

I kissed you;
I mean kissed you.

and the rain between the buildings
loudly lauded with applause.

You remembered the honey to go with the cream for the tea that I drink while I'm reading.
Later I'll bend like the bind of my book so to show you the depth of its meaning.

I asked myself Who are you when you get caught in the rain and I thought of myself (and only myself) and the time I was running to work when it started to rain and I dashed from tree, to magnolia tree, until I was able to pop in the convenience store.
And I remembered just exactly how many people stared, and the look on their (sheltered) faces, making it that much harder to be that person caught in the rain.

Here I am walking exactly as fast as this raincloud
and my eyes are puffy but my belly is full
and I have forty dollars more
than I'm used to.
I have forty-two dollars.
Plenty!
And at least I can see,
because I am looking.
It's just a mailman.
And some of those big scarlet bundles on big tall green bushes.
And maybe I've smoked my last cigarette?
I have some more so it's OK if I didn't, but maybe I did.
I am walking my feet in the ground, just as fast as this raincloud.
I am walking my feet to destruction and my mind to distraction
as fast as this raincloud goes, home, and the long way.
And maybe I shouldn't speed up or slow down.
I took my first deep breath next to a trash can.
It's not going to **** me.
The first sight I saw was only a mailman
but I'm making my way to the park
where it's green by the fountain
and all I can be sure is I'm counting the leaves when I get there.

the world's silliest man is treating me to *** & breakfast.

giggles galore & in the early afternoon, he will be gone again.

you wouldn't ask the world's silliest man to take anything too seriously.

he does what he does well, and so, too, do i —

we get down to funny business, and it's nice.

it's nice, letting him be good & sweet & secret, in my eyes at breakfast.

he isn’t serious. you can only trust a silly man with silly things.

On my way from you,
taking the last trip down your steps,
I slipped on ice we'd watched freeze from sheets of sleet,
from sheets of jersey cotton.

I caught myself,
but not before thinking back to that fall evening,
to the warm rain that oiled the top of the stairs across town;
back to when, on my way to you,
I left him
and lost my footing.

Grace aside, these moments
parallel in a way that fissured not bone,
but my psyche--
defining at once
this new she who sought one,
despite she who belonged to another.

Oh, the things she did say,
this foreign half of me,
as, descending your crystal-coated staircase,
she heard herself, for the last time, speak.

We had both fallen so in love with the sound of her voice.

On my way from you,
I caught myself,
and let her, broken, fall.

One finds solace in the clearing among skittering of leaves.
With solstice quickly nearing, love bereaves.
The wind is honest when it cleaves the foliage from frozen trees;
the noblest will fall to her decree.
One walks with empty hands, but for worth and sense of self,
an unleashed dog in place of a forgotten someone else.
There, one stops to stand, planted feet to leafen land,
wholly nestled in a richness void of wealth.

The events that transpired
occured as written.
Our mouths and neurons fired,
seeding flowering unmention.
Fuel and fire brought attention
to a subtle, growing tension.
The events that transpired
occured as written.

A predictable reaction
to words written
caused the changes, gaining traction
among smitten.
An explosive interaction
between palpable attractions--
predictable reactions,
just as written.

Burned it to the ground,
as it was written.
The lost was found
and lost again, in stark and wry omission.
Quiet was the mission
born of wavering disposition.
It burned into the ground
as it was written.

Back to where we started,
all reversibly departed.
The events that transpired
occured as written.

je t'écris les petits mots français
parce que tu les as entendus en anglais.

je veux être la seule femme tu adore;
tu voudrais, tu a besoin d'encore.

mon coeur te connaît bien,
et tu peux l'avoir, si tu le tiens.

-
one day the sun will blink out
and i won't be there.


:
my god is right now.
my hell is control.
my joy is devotion
and my grief is an absence;
maybe the hands of a clock,
quickly ticking
and unwilling to repeat itself.

;
my purpose is god,
desire is hell,
my love is my joy,
and that sun blinking out
without me is my grief.

-

it’s all quiet but you snoring upstairs.
the harmonized hum of the kitchen,
a bird down the block.

A musical masterpiece,
synchronized symphony;

It’s like you all practiced for hours.


I can’t help but notice
the peace you bring with you;
as in, its shear force.

It blows back the curtains,
leaving nothing in its wake.

Can you believe it?
Nothing.

No fear; no questions, doubt.
I have so long dreamed of this;
a gentle, subtle bliss.
This quiet nothingness.


With the exception of you snoring.
some hums in the kitchen,
a bird down the block.