But can you love me in the deep? In the dark? In the thick of it?
Can you love me when I drink from the wrong bottle and slip through the crack in the floorboard?
Can you love me when I’m bigger than you, when my presence blazes like the sun does, when it hurts to look directly at me?
Can you love me then too?
Can you love me under the starry sky, shaved and smooth, my skin like liquid moonlight?
Can you love me when I am howling and furry, standing on my haunches, my lower lip stained with the blood of my last ****?
When I call down the lightning, when the sidewalks are singed by the soles of my feet, can you still love me then?
What happens when I freeze the land, and cause the dirt to harden over all the pomegranate seeds we’ve planted?
Will you trust that Spring will return?
Will you still believe me when I tell you I will become a raging river, and spill myself upon your dreams and call them to the surface of your life?
Can you trust me, even though you cannot tame me?
Can you love me, even though I am all that you fear and admire?
Will you fear my shifting shape?
Does it frighten you, when my eyes flash like your camera does?
Do you fear they will capture your soul?
Are you afraid to step into me?
The meat-eating plants and flowers armed with poisonous darts are not in my jungle to stop you from coming. Not you.
So do not worry. They belong to me, and I have invited you here.
Stay to the path revealed in the moonlight and arrive safely to the hut of Baba Yaga: the wild old wise one… she will not lead you astray if you are pure of heart.
You cannot be with the wild one if you fear the rumbling of the ground, the roar of a cascading river, the startling clap of thunder in the sky.
If you want to be safe, go back to your tiny room — the night sky is not for you.
If you want to be torn apart, come in. Be broken open and devoured. Be set ablaze in my fire.
I will not leave you as you have come: well dressed, in finely-threaded sweaters that keep out the cold.
I will leave you naked and biting. Leave you clawing at the sheets. Leave you surrounded by owls and hawks and flowers that only bloom when no one is watching.
So, come to me, and be healed in the unbearable lightness and darkness of all that you are.
There is nothing in you that can scare me. Nothing in you I will not use to make you great.
A wild woman is not a girlfriend. She is a relationship with nature. She is the source of all your primal desires, and she is the wild whipping wind that uproots the poisonous corn stalks on your neatly tilled farm.
She will plant pear trees in the wake of your disaster.
She will see to it that you shall rise again.
She is the lover who restores you to your own wild nature.

The song of us is sung
on a minor scale a third degree
of a minor key
chromatic mediant
in this relationship
between two sections
to provide color
purvey
interest while
prolonging harmony
a string taut twanged
in a key between g and me

mid gutter again
at a
pace I consider
meaningful, neither
too fast
or slow but, a quickness
of aim
so much
from here to there
wherever
on the sides,
flowers
animals
trees,
from them
i gather
the essence...
there a pace
i beat and step
listening to
a distant illuminating
drummer
making
ambulating causing formatting,
my way,
my destination I forget
and no matter,
with
the wandering
cadences
resounding
in my ears.

a poem the way
I do
is to first turn
your heart
inside out

then
go a day
or two
with no
sleep

thinking
of
optional words
and rhymes
until

you pull your
hair out
and don't
take a bite
of food

the whole
******* time
and smoke ten
packs of
cigarettes

waste the day
your apartment
all filled
up with
crumpled paper

and beer cans
and butts
and your answering
machine
full