i'm searching for the comfort
of an old flame to keep me warm
tonight knocking on familiar doorways
to foyers where my boots have already rested dripping
with snow or shedding beach sand and all i want is her
the one i remember in bouts of photographs
bright hair hidden in a knit olive colored snood
with big blue eyes set on full power
as we set out on the open road together car
packed full of soft blankets groceries illicit drugs
cigarettes and the fumes of santiago ***

she convinced me to quit smoking saying
she hated kissing the marlboro man and
i'll take you to the coast i said meaning
every single one because i had harbored
my love for her in a million ways of secrecy
and only survived on a currency of torture
pain inflicted
pain withheld
pain drugged away

she was absolutely perky for the first thousand miles
hair haloed and face lost in shadow as we drove
into the sun out of a cocoa beach condo
leaving behind bikini squeals and smiles
she was with me like an ethereal dream
eating scones on the boardwalk beach
in bitter cold new jersey and that night she was
a long legged american girl astride me
sweaty hollering in a secluded gazebo

she was a blur of parrot colors to me
spending most of july dancing in a daffodil field
in oklahoma while i changed tires on the
hyundai her daddy bought one after another i
just gave her the pink slip to my heart
under a pavilion of light pink fractal fabric
pitched on high beams ascending into
pale gold otherworldly billows

she's sweetly ****** and surrounded by patchouli haze
hanging off my back like a monkey wearing a
wide high fashion soft brim hat she found before
i surprised her with a bunch of freshly picked
wild violets from the roadside she
cripples me and we go tumbling
wrinkled and aimless both exhaling plumes
into the paisley purple sky already full of clouds
blowing straight north hair tangled together
full of windswept snarls barelegged now
and writhing creating craved friction
just two souls of pure energy on the loose

but the best memories i have of that trip
are the nights we spent in joshua tree
not-sleeping beneath a meteor shower every
night for a week when her *****
was still running the show and i
was just a poison rash itching her
calf muscle before i became the master of myself
we were a flurry mess of long naked limbs
tuned to the exact same frequency

she was a fresh meadow flower naked
under taupe corduroy overalls cut ragged
into shorts walking with her arm twisted through
mine and i thought i was the happiest man alive
when we crashed in colorado for two weeks
and every morning i woke to her incandescent
hair sprawled lazy on the karastan rug under
the turquoise glare of the television or to
the smell of a gong sized breakfast casserole
consisting solely of her dreams the previous night
and i would kiss her good morning with her hair
up in curlers and my face between her knees

but she started to grow wings in montana
little nubs etched out on either side of her spine
i noticed them one night while she was sleeping
face down chest stretched across my chest
i watched them grow the further south we got
and by the time we reached the heartland
under those glistening river cypresses
or the banks of that great muddy river
canopied by huge florida palms
she was itching and molting them all over the car
and she finally flew away from me
said she was born for the city but i hope
she's waking up now not under skyscrapers but
a metropolis of oak strands governed by the tyrannical sun

and since that day i've painted her lips on
every girl i've ever seen in the morning every
face that emerges from indigo ambience is hers simply
i hear her nothing-to-lose laugh in every fog or faint haze
after every lunar prowl through a mushroom ranch by the coast
my eyes get shined up with dew every time
i find seagulls nesting in a cypress grove holding
some kind of seance for the flash of sunlight off the nape of her neck
in front of the watery green sunrise of the atlantic
and in my teeth-grinding night terrors i have
a hard-on and i can plainly see her dancing
luxuriously on a deck stretched out over a shaded creek
tight and smooth like the skin of a djembe drum

and sometimes when i feel very weird
with something like sick stomach hunger
churning in my gut i shave my ******* clean
and trim my ***** hair into a crude cave-painting
version of a mountain lion just for her
i wade out into the sea passed the orange trees
and wait for the moon or her lips
to rise and lick me full on my face but
she doesn't return my calls suddenly
having phone
trouble i
guess

right now my browning chest is
propped up with beach sand buried in my elbows
i was dozing off underneath my shades
with the salt spray at my feet
& the seagulls swarming overhead
you asked for a story so i'll tell
you the only one i know
it's about making an exodus
& the accident of my personality:

the last time i was shot at
i was making a collect call at a pay phone to my mother
i was living out of a backpack
                                                    in a hostel
in sticky sweet new orleans
in 2008 post-katrina

after spending half a year without a friend
i decided to live what i write and become
the mythical warrior-poet or
                                                 just a sun-haired boy
fighting with the sky searching for his spirit animal
wearing old wool dress slacks cut short above
the knee i was only cargo trying to get
as lost as i possibly could

they came out of an empty socket shop window
blasting through the doorway onto
                                                            ­ the steaming street
jittery & starving roaring on the collapsing mist
but i'm no one's pigeon crouched behind a sedan deathtrap
poised to flee but with nowhere to go i can only hear
                                                            ­  my own heartbeat
                                                       ­       mother screaming on the phone
                                                           ­   hanging limp

& my own feet beating a new path on gravel through a strange city
when the windows grew lighter &
i slowly emerged from invisibility
in a world sprung new not defined yet
shrouded in what i only assume was
                                                             ­   special magic

for a while i was scared to sleep alone at night sometimes
i heard downer & buzzkill other nights that i cried
                                                           ­                          beneath the ivories
& i thought i'd die alone if i had to
but i was too young
to be that cynical

now i'm rising like a big owl out of a meadow
finding good new ways to fall apart as lightning
blooms on the horizon & clouds gather unnaturally
into pale blue ribbons & dance in a pinkish sky
& the sunset burns the treeline down
                                                                ­no one else can fix me now
                                                             ­   no one believes in me
but i believe in myself more than ever
the only person i've ever really loved is my mother
& she says i can't make a name for myself writing poetry
but i'm immortal among these words like stars
being blown in plumes of dust across a night sky
i'm looking for a new better place to dive in from
so if you've got a certain star in mind or a secret
cliff-space combination treebranch hangout take me
there or whisper it to me while we're already high
& hugging don't kiss me unless it's hard & in a precious place
because i'm feeling invincible again instead of invisible &
i really really really cannot wait for someone to try &
                                                                ­                             ******* stop me

when i look at you now i see a woman
who is stronger than most men i've met
but i like to remember you as a teenage beauty
a weird girl with wolf-whistle legs
and white tan lines flashing beneath your
delicate wrist as you walk by in cutoff denims
and frank zappa t-shirt

i like to imagine your jade-inlaid navel in midair
at a romantic disco with soft ballet slipper pink
lips quivering but trying to build a castle and
i am slumped nearby on a dusty corner stage
waiting in orbit for you to notice me with your
notorious blue eyes telling me either to watch it
or come scratch it

the thought of you in a daisy print dress
makes me weak and warm in the secret
ticklish spot between my own navel and ****
but i am just a poet-artist humming the first
sixteen bars of in-a-gadda-da-vida with a
third eye glowing in my forehead

i am an inexhaustible trumpet player
transient and eccentric in a dangerous
helpless swoon in a citrus grove calling your name
and all you want to do is shut my mouth
or ignore the sounds i make but i found you
chirping in a bloom of tenderness on a clover bed

you had just drifted awake in full sunlight
engulfed by the tiger fire of your own hair
with a copper halo of fresh dawn on your
shoulders and we sat together on the floor
of that smooth gold green florida hillside
surrounded by dark patches of pine and oak
we were only children and you had a long smooth neck

this morning we sat witnessing an act of nature like
two peculiar dogs perched on a long screened porch
with a squeaky door my blond hair flying everywhere
and you blushing on your knees as the early morning
fog raided our skin and left the fragrance of the trees on
our noses and lips

the fog burned off after our daily adventure
leaving a light blue haze on everything it touched
and sunlight streamed through the open kitchen window
you made zucchini breakfast enchiladas and i
stood dumb at the table sipping a homemade
kiwi mimosa listening to you sing to the dishes in the sink

some nights you still cry and unhook your
earrings before joining me in bed and we
wait for the twilight reconfiguration discussing
moon-tides and planetary magnetism on our waterbed
until you've stopped crying but your nose is still running
you wipe it on my shirt curled up with your
head on my chest as the stress world melts away
or i'm up late at 3am in a tuxedo at the keyboard
tithing all my energy to you in the dim hallway
with your eyes still wet and shining like a night light

you are indescribable
and i'll sing to you forever
without adderall or **** in my blood
until you come again
by yourself alone
this time on the tile floor
feeling jovial and strong
and weak and slippery