Your nails stain my skin like Alaska,
grains beaten into my elbows from riverbeds
and the crossings.
“Have a drink with me, my treat.”
I remember you from way back,
listening to Dave Matthews Band
while we emptied out veins in the front
seat of my Volvo.
Revolting, we voted independent and
we decided to never come back to the night
where Alaska was even a possibility.

agreeing to this relationship
                   was like realigning the northern lights
                                     so i could have my own personal
                   show for keepsake.  but really,
i just want to keep you, with
                  your stargazes and lit-up fire thoughts
                                    that could make or break my
                  sentences that let me follow my desire
to believe in love or lead me
                 to the realization that i have no idea
                                    if i have the foundation to
                 let your feather body and soft angles
hold me up to the light.

I was compared to an animal today.
I know we are all animals because our instincts take hold at desperate times.
we know what we need,
when we need it,
and how it affects us directly and
indirectly.

I need you.

I will not struggle for affection,
I will not accept anything less -
unlike an animal I have a voice,
I deal with daily hassles,
and exert more energy than most.

don't give up on me,
don't take me for granted.
I can find what I need elsewhere if need
be.

the world globes were given at Christmas,
the creation in my synapses that i could have what
the childhood singalong claimed:
the whole world in my hands.
what a weight on my shoulders,
pulling me beneath my self.

i began reading horoscopes on each
country, with the ambiguous reflections
encountering consequences.

i used to find that fun.

To: The fierce hollow spinal cord.
From: Your screaming fractured bones.

Dear unkempt boy,
You’ve thrown your back out of place;
arms extended and neck inclined.
It seemed so innocent to me,
but you cracked and crossed your fingers in precise time.
The bones fold under you,
and still I carry your dwindling body back.
The accident you knew all so well collapsed when you gathered each vertebrae in pride.

Collect and reveal your ignorant ways.
Refuse.
Excuse.
Bemuse.  I am finally jaded.

Just,
       Your twisting structure.

you smell of clementines and
i kept my windows open during
the storm so i could see you
coming in from the back porch.
i sometimes feel as if tricks are
played on me as if i was made
out to be dumb or the devil
had nothing better to do with
its time,
but time has nothing to do with
how the stars were made or
where we first met.
i always thought it was funny
that the others would call you
fish, but i love the way
the r's in your name roll
off my tongue like i was
singing spanish melodies
only loud enough for your
ears.
we rarely argue because
it isn't worth the bitter
that builds up,
like hard water minerals
from the well,
the moments before
lightening,
the seconds it takes
to lift off from the ground.
my thoughts run off the
tracks when i'm talking
business on the phone
and you fold your origami
thoughts onto my
unsuspecting skin.
you left creases in my bones
and let my swinging
moods pump its legs
until there was nothing left
but shallow breaths and
***** words coming clean.
i can't help but realize that
your pure patience could
put my splitting nerve ends
at ease for the second time
today.

eggplant skies and zippers,
this collect call counted.

My buttons were tacky,
and you had the liberty to
push them;
you unraveled them instead,
as i was pushing the ones
of your house phone -

i spent quarters of my time
on you.

we brought home this puppy,
black fuzz with caramel spots -
he has german flowing through his
small bodied, big pawed liveliness.
he is already wise like a shepard,
he lives up to his breed.
the boy that i love, his affection has
bloomed for something so stealthy,
so strong;

all he needs is his dog.

i thought i was just irrationally thinking,
but,
he only grazed my skin, kissed my lips
a total of four times today.
maybe tomorrow, it will be five.

the cracks in the walls beg your attention away from the coffee rings
covering the linen on the table and the little things.
you are sure they have meaning,
bending and drawing out stories from your darting heart,
deepening its tarnished encasing.
the taste of metal and past histories touch
on the lines tethered at each opening and you said
you only wanted to be heard of.
so you pieced up some anger to throw down on papers,
took your long list of selfish hunger,
and held them up to the wall.

it gave you nothing back to absorb.

the space between a hard place and your empty shell
can measure the distance between your ribs and the
paper muscle you use for scribbling temptations and love.
that doesn't change history,
but it could change your mind.

And I will love you with all my might,
said the sun to the stars,
as the atmosphere grew heavy.
Satellites permit and continuously split our thoughts in doubles,
I’m oh so sorry for all the troubles we have yet to find in the sky.
Illuminate the gravity of this,
twisting the lines and signs as we maintain order.
We can follow the cracked pavements or the rusty border,
holding up the glow of our universe.
But I will love you throughout the night,
via satellite,
until the morning stretches to our eyes.

the future intent to touch constellations
have begun to run parallel with my knees.
rip tides have taken sand from my porcelain.
i am now in the in betweens of bruising and airtight
pores leaving nothing to the wolves,
with the pushes and pulls repeating in history textbooks.

indians had the right idea,
respecting the ground they walked upon and holding generosity
as a badge of pride.  we have lost that,
searching for solutions to continue youth and shortcuts to succeed and
disconnecting anyone who may create an obstacle in our regular lives.

we are cowards, ignoring responsibility to feel good for a day.
we are selfish; always receiving to benefit solely our wants and never returning the favor.

i have no future intent to touch constellations,
only to revoke my thoughts on giving up on humanity.

maybe, i think too much.
maybe, you are

                                     twisted
                                            like twist ties and twisting balloons.
                                      i always thought
                                           you'd be the star of the carnival.

we smile like sunflowers,
spitting our seeds through our teeth.
they taught high winds to swim across
glaciers onto my skin, backstroke,
trying to shiver down my spine.
Indian summers save my hydrophobic
structure from the flooding.
i like to drive recklessly under the
speed limit, leaving a sense of
significance tanned inside my lip.
today feels like Indian summer
and your sunflower leaves keep
me warm until the next northern
attack provokes, down my backbone,
where the shells are where we left
them
sink.

we are bystanders at heart.
you always thought fools gold was beautiful
and we knew how to reach for highlighted
books in tattered low lighted bookstores
where people used to show compassion for
the little things.
old men croaked in these heavy feathered seats
but that didn't matter much.
it gave the place some history it never really had.
we would read each other excerpts that had no
significance and you would think of me as
kind of beautiful.
some nights we would drink wine, but then switch
to spiced *** to try and knock out the
thoughts that left bad tastes on our
swollen tongues.
i'd end up too drunk, and you'd find your
fingers woven in my hair that was too soft to
hold on.
sometimes you wished it was like wool,
keeping your hands from rigor mortis and
keeping me close to your bee hive body case,
busy with engulfing my bystander heart.
wool quilting to your shoulders,
you wouldn't give this up.
we may be patch work and hungover,
but at least we can keep each other warm.

telephone lines wrap around our wrists and fingers, holding us up for something less special,
we were never meant to be together - with bows in my hair and mismatched socks folded to your ankles;
i just didn't see the parallel love enough to keep the conversation going on both ends in different booths.
i talked for you, puppet glued to the ideas that i ask and you follow with simple lines
of
two sense. (or two cents, rather.)
so, i redialed to give you some time for focused thoughts or to walk away.

funny, i didn't even use your name,
or even think about coming over for
evening tea and to view films with dashing young men like yourself.

but, we never had the chance to correlate our likes
and hopes
and possibilities because

the telephone fights and make ups were the center of
our little world that you took as
"us".

so i'm cutting myself from the phone line to take
a break and shake the mouth movement motions.

*please insert two quarters to stay on the line...

the art of war has been written
in our skin since the first day
we tasted air.
our bodies knew what to do
without instruction, the manual
was ingrained in our systems
before history was even a term.
we knew what struggling was and
the viciousness we'd follow to
feel satisfied within this
paper-hungry, corrupt involving,
power revolving circle of
soil and H2O.
green paper values beyond
human experience, holding its
own wealth above the truths
and acts of kindness.
we are lost now.
our journey to create solutions
and deflate violence, pollution,
and terrorism is counterproductive
when we are only trying to gain
access to fossil fuels,
advanced technology and
easy living.
the art of war is unavoidable with
its nuclear power reaching new
heights and alarming increases
in neighboring countries with
alternative motives.
people are not perfect, but yet
it is hard to use intelligence
towards innovated, structured
education and trying to revitalize
our dying environment or restoring
it to the way our ancestors knew it.
we are too curious now.
the devices we use daily are
hand held miniature and superficial
to honest thoughts even if you may
have the universe at your fingertips.
the art of war is within ourselves, with
the growing population of overweight
eight year olds - instead of gaining
knowledge about life by learning how
to use the imagination, creative
engineers are mass producing game
consoles and virtual worlds for the young
to push past the reality.
we want to be lost now.
society takes tragedies and sensationalizes
so there is just another portal to dig up
the fresh and uncover something bigger
than ourselves.
the art of war has been finalized with
456,495 troops estimated stationed overseas,
leaving at home their families.
our state of mind is grasping, like the hardworking
fathers in search for american made products,
yet can only find poor industry made objects
for $5.00 on the shelf of the local monopolized
superstore.
the art of war was born in us
with airtight top secret plans to defeat
another continent, but we all
swallow the voice to bring back
compassion for starving children and
focusing on the here and now.
the art of war is all around us,
the art we will never escape.

The fine light slanting through the windows outside
hit upon the shadows in the dusty corner;
corners cut by the butcher's son
leave little left of the slaughtered voices.
I cradle his red stained hands,
leaving the untraceable pleasure under my fingertips.
With the time ticking away,
why does all the time travel to some sort of silent retreat?
We all feel pleasure in being guilty.
I start to yell, like ***** willows on fire
to let my own voices recover.

This world has gotten heavy, deep, and lazy, throwing out the old and in with the new as if

We are just trash at the curb waiting

Waiting

Thrown out with shame on our hands.

These days are growing old with our mouths full of selfish words and ugly thoughts of how to protect our skinny bodies from the swelling danger inside of our stomachs.

I never knew how selfish we could be until the daylight broke our silence and you grabbed your things and you left that day.
You left me for the burning desire for another year to exhaust a young girl’s lungs by never letting her thoughts hide in her tightly bounded hands.

Her hands used to speak to the paper.
But then she just spoke to you,
and you never understood her verses,
the language she caved into so easily,
that gave her strength to sit up straight and grow.  

She could grow for days,
writing like that, gaining everything and losing nothing.
Or losing everything and gaining nothing.
But what does it matter anyway?

That’s when you got sick of her,
throwing her out with shame on your hands.  

You never could face it yourself,
gathering the little bit of pride you had left to cover the ******* letters so clear in front of you.

You couldn’t bear that she didn’t need to rely on you anymore.

I met you at the circus so we could sit down and talk,
but you just wanted to tell me,
“you’re a different kind of beautiful, you drive me crazy.”

I could taste your character each time we fell into each other,
throwing each negative idea into space, like it could actually disappear,
evaporate so to speak.

You thought I felt weak,
giving me excuses to live by and waiting until you figured yourself out,
reflecting on the last girl that fed you compliments,
but secretly had other men on the side never crossing your line of vision.

My voice was limited,

Icouldn’tputtogethersentences,
because you handed me reasons to feel nervous and light and alive again.

But how long will that last,
how much more will I endure?

And I’m writing this because there’s not much else to write about, considering you leave me hanging by the threads on my jeans and I almost can’t breathe when you are around.
I gotta talk myself down from this,
the packing and going and running and returning.

Funny, you weren’t listening and the strings I was dangling on stretched and wrapped around my fingers so I could pull myself back up.

you gave me a necklace
made out of insults.
i didn't give it back to you
because you didn't even
see the glint that ran across
my eye.
it moved so quickly,
like numbers in the sky and
all i can really remember is we
both had coffee breath.
you said we were so similar,
logistically,
but i have yet to figure
the formula.
i wish i had a calculator for that,
but i'm only strong with words
and structures that build us up
on midnight talks and the fact
that we all struggle.
i'm struggling to read you
because you aren't in the news
or fictional in my summer novels,
and that means we are by no means
dreaming under the hard moon
that always seems smaller from
where i stand.
i am beaten by reality and
i feel so little because i once
thought i could be so
invincible to you.
we used to play games in the
car, even though it was to
neglect the thoughts
that fueled the shoe to
pressed down a little heavier.
i knew i had to,
so we could reach the only
destination that we could
taste in each other -
we wanted the lungs of a jellyfish,
        (even if they don't have lungs or gills)
the control over the weather systems,
to touch the northern lights
like it was ours to keep.
we wanted things to be fair,
the voice of billie holiday,
some luck to launch our bodies
into sweet, sweet peace.
we only wanted to see something
beyond the borders of what we
have discovered so far.
we only wanted so much more.

We never cry together anymore.

I used to see my body as a ship,
wood and nails and ***** hands keeping
me afloat -
Gathering speed from the sails,
salt in layers on the bottom of my body.

Folks once said that men would cry saline liquor
above the waters
for their loved ones when they were
missing out on the sea.
Now, the salt is a natural part of the water.

But now, my bones are
docked on the bottom of the floor of
the forgotten sailors.
Ship wrecked, the water replaces my marrow.
They are sick, those bones,
eroded into sand;
Just another fact on
the earth and we never cry together anymore.

A kaleidoscope of plastic, drafted in the
layers of trash.  The sights of a landfill,
the smells of hell.
Containers filled with grime, broken recorders
in baby dolls, apple cores, a slew of condoms,
paper products, burnt out computer parts,
bottles that held night life, while diapers full of
tired mother’s yawns; light bulbs that quit working,
family photos that hold too much, dog ****.

The things that matter most are torn,
purged, and poignant with purpose that we’d
rather forget the existence.

Dear lover,
Remember the tattered throw rug we laid on,
when I discovered your birthmark shaped like a tangerine
on the back of your knee?
We were velcro back then.
You told me I had eyes of indigo
and the corners of my cellars smelled of sweet
honeysuckle in the fire months of summer.
That summer, we marinated in our fresh air
that filtered the stale, standstill atmosphere.

Now, the toolbox on the broken shelf,
the set your tired father provided for you,
is rusting at the hinges.
Like you and me.

The saltwater my indigo sight produces, confronts
the bolts and twists,
corroding anything it touches.
Lover, this can be reversed by binding
our loops and hooks together.
Lover, the tools have not yet been used
and only you and I can discover
each other again.

Always,
Me.

we are all made out of house fires,
smoke has filled out our frames and
our throats are held up by burning
structures.
electrical impulses shock us back to life
and the matches flare the tears of
hope and tears of relief
as we watch the paint melt from our
porch.
we think of it as doubt washing off
our steps and sometimes we need
to build off of facts from the basement
stored away in cardboard boxes.
all we have left is references and
yet faith is all about that.
we are all intertwined at the nose tips,
and our breath can been seen from miles.
that's where things get lost,
our tears of hope and tears of relief
are put onto stretchers for the ambulances
to evaluate how our lives are really going and
we all know the weight tied to our ankles are
cords from the light fixtures.
sometimes the darkness can put them away.
sometimes a fire is bolder than
our free will and sometimes
the ashes create history.
our ashes will tell stories of the
tears of hope and the tears of relief
that our doubt melded to the earth
so we'll never forget our roots.
we will never forget where we came from.
the breakers will cause sparks up our spine
but this will just accelerate how we will
douse the flares and accept the tears of
hope and tears of relief when the come
running down our chins and realize how
simple it was to let embers fold the alignment.
this is where we begin building off of the burn
we started with.