Life gives us
soft,
      fragile
                 form
in the beginning.

We begin
fuzzy,
clumsy,
blind to the blades
nature bestows as knowledge.

Some avoid the tree of good and evil,
adjusting to the bright exposure,
grasping binoculars to drink up the scene of sin.
Waiting to watch which love is truth.
Waiting to say who is evil in their attempt.

There I am.
in a shop full of knives.
Hungry to ****** naivety,
no matter the price.

The reflective edge
illuminates my soft pain,
As I choose the sharpest edge
to electrify my new skin.

What drove mother crazy?
I had to taste the apple.

There was knowledge in the pain,
in the experience of carving your skin
with objects unable to care for your blood.

You who wanted to drink my pain,
sweet roots I made metal,
You never deserved to be seen in horror.

I have learned to stop opening the drawer,
to stop carving the names of dead love.

Life continues breathing,
as we become
strong,
          worn
                    bark
born to form curious skin.

I once met a man who read my bellybutton.
He told me that the two horizontal lines
meant I have internal and external insecurities.
I scoffed at the idea that those things
could disappear from mortal souls.
He then pointed to the bottom vertical line,
the most noticeable,
and told me
that meant
my biggest insecurity was my reproductive organs.

I smiled small.
Should I tell him about the dead baby
or instead of the riley women who have male dependency.
I chose the latter,
for Im not sure if the kid is still dead.
I could hear her screams in late night alleys for two years after.
She haunts my horror dreams,
singing we could have lived happily ever after.

Instead, Ill chose the story of my stepfather
who called me a *****
and cried to my mother
that I was trying to ****** him with training bras and black eye liner.

'Did he hurt you?'
'of course,
but so did my mother-
and I've learned to forgive those
who chose life over freedom.'

It's more than I've done.

The world sits before fingertips
like piano keys yearning in stillness.
I become nervous
and flood the possibilities with sinking ships.

Thats what childhood gave us lost ones.
the ability to understand probability,
realistic expectation,
no fairytale miracle to rescue our slipping love.

We may be sarcastically prepared
but where does that leave room for hope?
There is no hope in the live broadcast of bodies falling from towers
nor in the closets full of kids hiding from loving fists.

After all, those who lost innocence too soon
need a reason for the soul
more than the noble lie of love.

Some try to replace their love with circles.
The heartbroken soil of earth,
littered with mathematicians and linguists,
is now veiled between narrow strips of light,
revealing each unconscious glove,
fact checking their painting upon bright,
calming their hubris with symbols,
excluding truth in dark night.

Those with wandering toes
try to ascend to the sky,
twist toward the ceiling of branches,
attempt to swallow books of romance,
then settle into tree roots,
only to find their bones
broken by different forms of fate.
Crying out with constrained lungs,
their heavy thoughts
often coat lonely lullabies of our comfort.

I wander in and out of the striates,
brushing fact and wanderlust
with fingerprints of lonely curiosity,
pressing reflection upon papyrus.
Occasionally seduced by poetic freedom,
my hands make an attempt
to climb the bark of lost songs.
Yet, I always fall from the ascent
upon the same destination,
our graveyard.

Refusing to accept your silent departure,
I watch a young boy scream delusion
at our crumbling faces.
I place coveted trinkets
of blue bonnets and snow white sand,
simple moments of easy sacrifice,
at the feet of your flaming alter.

Our inky history swims into my nose
as I press the pages to thirsty pores,
smelling the scent of what was.
The ode to flaw reeks with rot.
So, I remove the last page
before my burnt hands
reverently let the others fall into the fire.

I stuff the last page into my throat,
letting the black liquid and white paper
become a part of my changing nature.

I find hope in this power,
The simultaneity of creation and destruction.
It soothes my tidal doubts with encouragement.
The piano player must love the ancient poetry
destroyed in the birth of each new ballad.

I

We sit on a tailgate pointed toward
the hills, where life ripples down the slopes
gathers in pools of the creek and begins again
to climb up the peaks and tree trunks on the
other side. It colors the breaths we take
green.
Children run here, learn their legs, as stalks
graze their shoulders and block their
view. They get dizzy as rows rush by.
We rein in our bovine friends here, watch
them jump and kick, see them call in
spring

II

We walk between rows of highly stacked cement and exhale smog that drifts
upwards to
join the cloud of soot.
We walk among so many abrasive shoulders. We get
hung up on abrasive personalities.
A gray wave in a black sea we’re vapidly
drifting. Legs move quickly to stay afloat.
swimming. Swimming always. Swimming further.

III

We sit for pictures with clogged eyes and stuffed chests
We coo at portraits of masks and dummies
We write books for laughs and money and friends
We read a little to find the romance and sorrow
and lay cold on the slab while our own pages turn.

IV

We pass out of porcelain faces with their tightly
drawn eyes that cast gazes over shoulders, homes
of last night’s kisses. We pass out of the electrical
current of youth
numbed and still alive
with eyes that look like stained glass windows of the
Church of Holy Suffering.


V

We wait for Sunday night to turn the dial to the Blues. We keep throwing something for an animal to pick up and return.  We string beads and sell them for redemption.

VI

We think of our friends. They’re draped in a future,
warmed with hot blood rushing through their veins,
slamming fists to tables, pronouncing their minds.
ripping off dresses, sharing their madness.
tossing paint to canvas, showing their hearts.
asking questions to startle, proving their love.

VII

We think of our parents.
dead and gone, dead to us, dead by self-proclamation -
Is their blood cold and still in their withered veins?
Have they their fill of slamming fists and ripped dresses and tossed paint and startling questions?

VIII

We are sad.