First love
So bright

Tongue held
Quite light

That step
So right

She fought
We fight

She thought,
"I might"

Then yelled,
"Go! Fight!"

And the play goes on in life

There are dark times upon me,
While I stand here a victim of your unforgivable actions.
I feel the repentance of our love as a knife through my stomach, as it sinks deeper beyond the dermis- feel its blade turn horizontally whenever you return into my thoughts
I become nauseated by your presence,
Not of disgust-
Rather from the suppression of tears, fighting back weakness knocking at my chest cavity.

I'm angry,
I can't help but weep
I remember the times we danced, and we laughed,
And the aching feeling of confusion overwhelms my sanity.
I break when I see your unmistakable smile, your intelligent glasses I remember you despising but me adoring.
I swoon as you don your best clothing, for I remember you trying so hard to look your best
For me.

You threw me out like Wednesday morning garbage. I wonder if you weep as I do...
                  
                                           That's a lie,

I know you never would.
You have more important things to fill your head with-
***,
Beer,
Oh ya, and education.

Thanks for putting me second, you ******.

I totally understand after a year and a half that you would treat me the same as a disposable diaper.

I get it...

Your watermelon vine fingers
Caress my sunflower stalk spine.
We dig our trowel toes into the lome
Of my mattress,
Cover our shoulders in frost-evading fleece.
I hear your heart ripen under your skin.
I smell the heat inside your lungs
Growing and expanding in the August crisp.
You seed a whispered kiss on my lip.

You are planted inside me,
digging into me,
And I bind to your stem
With my peach flowered palm.
We bloom at the first ray of morning as
I weave deeper into your trellis arms.
Our breaths match the pull of the wind.
You touch your forehead to my breast,
Our stems heaving.

Here we grew our love.
Here we grew the foundation of our separation.

I dreamed of you
In a dream of mine, I saw you
In golden tassels and platinum crystals
In lustrous diamonds
In radiant tinsel
In a dream, I did
Dream of you

I want to live the high I get from lines embedded in your scalp
Received from the contact of my fingertips messing through your sawdust hair
Lacking a frothy shower, smelling of pure human,
Not some artificial musk.
I want the real you,
The sweat,
The blood,
The tears painting Native American designs on your belly button.
All 5'11" of your unique composition, including
Your esophagus spitting colloquial rhythms,
Brain stem communicating your radical ideals,
And trachea resonating hypnotic gregorian chants.
I want to nuzzle in the space where your heart belongs
And cuddle your muscles under my chin.
I want to exist inside of the real you,
Under the throat you swallowed me down,
Behind the jugular that gives me shelter.
And every evening while I drink your smiles to sleep
I'll polish your teeth for morning
To showcase your perfected beauty,
To educate others on my addiction for every edge,
Every corner of your soul and that which it resides in.

I am small.
When I scream my limbs shrink shorter.

I eat my hair.
The frizz sends me into claustrophobic tremors.

I have seven teeth.
I unscrew them with frantic fingers wrapped around a flathead before I sleep.

I never sleep.
When j sleep I keep a test tube of your thoughts twisted in my sheets.

I've seen the largest rivers.
I never travel because I fear sprouting feathers, being a freak.

I've planted 10 trees.
The roots sinch my toes and bring me to my knees.

In every way, they are forgotten
And we under think their power, their purpose.
We seldom ponder what we would become without them,
And never stop to thank them for what they have done.


Mother,
     Thank you for taking my temperature via forehead
     For stirring my Mac and cheese
     For washing out my clothes' stains

Father,
     Thank you for changing my diapers
     For versing me in ping pong
     For writing down my painting's names when I could not spell

Lover,
     Thank you for rubbing my back
     For holding mine in yours
     For loving me tenderly

Friend,
     Thank you for braiding my hair
     For painting my nails
     For grabbing the tissues when need be


I presume mine becoming frail, old, and flimsy
What will we become in this aging process?
I doubt we will mature like fine wine or expensive cheese.
Ridden with disease and pain, we will fall to my sides. And no one will be thanking us anymore (not that anyone ever did), because we will be nothing.
Do nothing.
All the knowledge, will power, exercise will never change the **** outcome.

Someday we will stir our daughters Mac and cheese, or remove her stains from her shirts, and someday she will do the same for her daughter.
Yet this all must die someday,
There will come a time where I can no longer stir the boiling noodles on the stove,
No longer shred the brick of cheese from the fridge.

There's not a ****** thing to do but wait.

I took fifty steps backwards when I decided to read the book I wrote you today.
You know, the ******* fifty page story of our love?
The one that I spent three months on?
The one that I poured my heart and soul into?
The one I gave to you on our one-year anniversary, the first of "many more"?
Ya, it ******* killed me to remember all the good things I forgot on purpose.
And then I remembered that I loved you since day zero, and then I got to thinking how I'll love you till the birds stop singing.
I managed to stop reading at page 3,
But up until that point was needles to my eyes, daggers to my heart, razor blades to my soul.
I managed to stop reading at page 3,
But tomorrow may bring page 4.

This was all after I looked at the pictures of your graduation day.
Remember I couldn't stop crying?
Remember how every day since then I haven't stopped crying, dying, trying to forget all the **** you left piled up in front of me to climb over, holding my breath and slipping.
It's become an downward uphill battle,
Because every step I progress you push me down twice with an invisible hand of dishonesty.

Something stopped my finger from clicking on the folder of prom pictures.
The one where we kissed always brought tears to my eyes,
But now I'm crying for different reasons.
When I look at you in still candid shots all the other colors fade into the photograph and my eyes dilate farther into the sea of "used to be".
I'm tired of my grey world without you.
I want something to make the world what I had before,
Before you piled the **** and left me to rot,
I want all of that,
But I want none of it.
And then I try to tell myself "no, *******" but you know it never works.
It never will,
Because then I start to think about being naked with you,
And the electric feeling that your bare chest against my stomach gave me,
And how your fingers tangled in my hair drilled me deep inside of you,
So deep,
So deep I need surgery for removal.
But any successful operation would never end in life.

For all the words good about you I've written, I can match them all for bad.
But you know it doesn't matter,
Because here I come climbing over your **** pile,
Because maybe
I still have a chance with you.
Maybe if I wade through the **** I'll reach you someday.
Or maybe it's going to keep growing in height and diameter till it reaches and pollutes even Heaven above.
And then what hope is there to ever live a life without you?
Because Heaven is the only possible place,
Since I know you'll never make it there.

She came back on Christmas
to don the polyester white tree
and fleece lined blankets hung over edges of chairs.
But she always forgot to say goodbye,
as the hinges creaked upon her betrayal.

To fill the gaps between solstice seasons,
I stood in place
While party balloons hung plastered
to our shallow walls for months.
Other days a bath house for aching joints.
But never for the woman in question,
because she only came for Christmas.

The hours grew into days which encroached into weeks.
The dog-walkers passed,
The mail man caressed my farthest reach each noontime,
The daughter and son toiled with the mower,
The rake, my lungs (the dehumidifier).
The mother checked my fever on Thursdays.
But my rooms were empty all year,
Until the week of rushed decorations
And mass tear-down. All within four nights.

I guess the vacant tree gave me comfort.
The fibered needles and flame retardant tree stems.
I pictured each dollar store ornament as an entity of you,
Pulsing with life and beating of blood,
Vibrating in sync with the refrigerator and furnace.
But the fever-checking mother caught me mid-April
Molesting your Christmas tree, draining every ounce of humanness left.

And I knew when fever checker shoved it upstairs
You'd never come back to me again.

I was right.

Who decides the sun is yellow
The sky is blue
Green is envy, red is passion

Who's to say my cat is not a lioness, ferocious and proud, but who's to say a lioness is dangerous?

I determine my own reality

Where white is the color of evil, and black is not worn after Labor Day
The Eiffel Tower is my bathtub,
And my bathtub?
The Taj Mahal

I can touch my toes to the moon, swish my fingers in the infinite storm of Jupiter

The River Styx is my backyard, and I live in the center of the sun's hottest point, where no temperature is recorded other than 0 degrees Fahrenheit



How do we name the animals?
Language of origin please, root word, Greek, Latin, Romance languages,
Puke

Why can't my fish be called a shmeeeffflaarnaa?
It's much more interesting than 'neon tetra'
And as for the dog, I'd much rather have three daphnaria's running around my house



You should come live with me,
it's much more fun here

There are the days that love swells and grows infinitely around me.
It will pick me up and throw me over its shoulder in bliss and sing me to sleep with harmonics so angelic my tears themselves begin to cry.
There are the days when love will never be proven wrong, when nothing matters but love.

         And then there is today.

I'll fly you to the southern shore of
Hudson Bay,
tucked into my chest.
You will watch the trees become thicker,
the humans lesser,
and I will watch your eyes widen
your mouth corners curl.

I will hold you by the creases of your arms,
dip your toes into icy Canadian ebbs.
Your naked shoulders will shiver
in North American wind,
whipping your skin with
Chippewa feathered designs.

I'll drape you in buffalo pelt
weave your toes dry in ****** hair
crown you in northern pike jaw.
You will mesh into the chestnut treeline,
fingerprints flowing into root and permafrost.
When ready, we will ignite
our forgotten primal wings,
ride the air stream home as baby eagles.

I am 14.6 billion years old. I am energy traveling at the speed of light,
I am a single proton with one orbiting electron, perfectly balanced
With quarks and bosons and higgs inside
And pieces of matter yet to be understood by man.
I am every star, every atom of Hydrogen fused to Helium.
I am a massive object of molten rock, cooling and fusing.
I am trilobite knee and dinosaur tooth,
Wooly mammoth hair fiber.
I am Permian Extinction, I am Ice Age, I am all surviving species.
I am most distant brothers of man, I am first language and first songs.
I am Bubonic Plague and Death
And life out of new molecules from old.
I am the Industrial Revolution,
I am Depression and Holocaust and oppression.
I am titanium and assembly line.
I am Perseid meteor shower and Halley ’s Comet.
I am every black hole,
Inside, another whole universe of me.

I am seconds young, and I have much to learn of
The multitudes of the universe, myself.

I see my thoughts nuzzling in your brain,
Dripping with anticipation,
Drugging the both of us simultaneously,
Organically with steady pollination.

Neither of us quite understand
How to express our fascination with this newborn flower,
So we do what we can,
With smiles here and there
And small conversation to trek the bridge between us.

Someday this may bloom if we nurture correctly,
But no single answer exists as to raise a child,
Start a fire,
Or grow a garden.
We will create our painting in the exact way we desire,
With our own brushes and canvas formed out of our skin,
With the paint from our irises.

What a beautiful feeling,
The budding of love,
With its uprise of uncertainty and swirling butterfly emotions.

I am nothing to you,
A mere particle of flesh
impounded by the pulsing gravity
Perpetuated in your dizzying, unfathomable motion.
And you are everything to me-
Provider of energy,
Life,
Warmth,
Love,
And a home-
I can only hope to be as green as the trees
Who give such beauty to this landscape you call your kingdom,
Who smile under your radiance,
Who breathe for the planet.

If green was the color for thankfulness
My heart would bleed chlorophyll.
I would paint my world in pulverized leaves,
Coating my tire treads to gift you thanks everywhere I traveled.

I can only guess the reason I transplant orphan saplings into ****** soil
Is to give back to the one who gave everything.
Maybe someday the trees will streak my palms with their thankfulness pigment.
My life lines will allow rivers of green to flow across my skin smoothly, just like water,
Down my arms, coating each hair and fiber.
My fingers will sprout innocent leaves, quivering in the crisp evening wind.
They will sway East and West,
Finding North in between,
Shadowing my neck to cool its newly forged bark,
stiffening my posture and stifling my movement.
The freshly cut spearmint grass will leave their green fingerprints on my arched feet,
Painting my soul with gratitude.
I will point my branches to the sky,
Kick my roots to signify my green heels and toes,
Embodying my brethren until the rain washes away my new skin,
Praying that you notice me.

I asked a flower one day where the world's going to go.
She shook her head and laughed,
Responded with an
"I Don't know".

I asked a bird one day when time will stop.
She motioned at the perched oak branch over our heads and whispered
"When this branch drops".

I asked a fawn one day if things will ever change,
She whinnied and stomped her feet,
As if I'd asked something strange.

So I sought next no less than the absolute best, the most humble of all that I could guess.
I found the blue whale, perfect and pale with his perpetual grumbling wale.
And I ask him where the answers were
But he said
"Child, save yourself, and no longer wonder".


If peace can't find these questions answered,
Then what does anything mean that I've heard?

I hate to write poetry
Because every one I write is about you,
Because every thought is about you,
Because you make me sad.

I love to write poetry
Because every one I write is about you,
Because every thought is about you,
Because you made me happy.

But did you know that every hushed slip of lips,
Every lust swept memory,
Every clouded sky daydream
Is nothing but you?

And did you know that my car seat is unbearable to sit on,
"Time Machine" is no longer listened to,
In fact every song
Is tainted like rotting flesh.

Even this poem,
Yes,
Is undeniably about you.
And so will be the rest of them
In eons,
In millions of words,
In kilometers.


       I hate to write poetry
       Because I love you.

       I love to write poetry
       Because you loved me.

Living in a state of confusion
Is quite the same as a nightmare

Standing in a place misunderstood, that cannot be understood.
People that have no faces, faces that have no meaning
Buildings that cannot be remembered, memories wishing to be forgotten

A cloud that festers, growing and bulging like an ugly cyst



... I just wish I could understand again
Take the darkness away and reveal the lightness I once knew

I think I'm going to blow away
And see what happens as the moss turns into trees.

I think I'm going to run away
And watch each river incandescently freeze.

But when the time comes to accept the end of my mobility,
I will tilt back and wonder about all the other inbetweens.

If only I'd found love in something that never loved before.

The stars, shimmering off moonlit rivers, would sing for us,
Walking hand in hand, beside you.
Authoring the pages of our laughter,
You would covet words never spoken from your searching eyes, your reaching fingers.
Songs and poetry would flow from the ballpoint fingers we interlace.

But this love is naught found in reality,
Only found in death.
The textbook mind with unmistakable power,
The chapped lips continually trembling.
The beast locking doorknobs and car handles,
The creature shaping children's nightmares.
In death, where nothing exists but itself,
His sweeping arms would blanket the civilian he desires,
No arguments,
Death receives his utmost wishes entirely
always.

Death would cradle his lover in passion.
Death's infatuation would match no other man in the entirety of human existence.
Death would linger with each wisp of life escaping his lovers body,
Sipping them through his curled tongue like tobacco smoke.
Death would never lose his lover,
Death would find his lover in eternity and reincarnate her into flesh again,
The most bloodless cycle of all.

If only I'd found love in something that never loved before.
But this love is naught found in reality,
Only found in death,
The most bloodless cycle of all.

I wish stars grew in your skin
Next to the oxygen humming in your lungs
To thaw your stagnant blood
So I could watch you orbit your part of the planet
Three hundred miles away,
Because your heart would then permeate faster than life's speed limit,
Scaling all the mountains between us to
Float in my peripherals like
Residual Chernobyl radiation.
Dancing hazily,
Constant reminders of my past
And the jenga monkey ladder to my future.

I never liked being insignificant.
Now please infect me with your cancer
So you can't escape again.

You're probably laying on your back staring at your inviting ceiling, slightly transparent,
Swirling together your collected pool of hopes and dreams
Just like me
At this very moment.
You are listening to indie music,
And so am I.
Sometimes I imagine we are listening to the same song simultaneously
So we can think the same things together,
Disregarding the time zone difference.


I just wanted to tell you that I would have walked across the gym with you at graduation,
You would have cried with me,
We would have hugged and held hands,
And we would have celebrated until our eyelids puffed and our hands became pruny
From our laughter infused tears.
We would have drank soda and not beer after the ceremony,
Because we never needed anything but ourselves, and maybe a camera, to have fun.
We would have changed out of dresses into sweatpants and flip flops, because we never needed to impress each other.
We would have driven in my car and screamed out the windows
Until someone called the cops and we ran away into my bedroom for safety.
My mother would have had a hug waiting for you,
A cake for us,
And a smile for eternity.

We would have made our way upstairs
To lay on the cheep Home Depot carpet and stair at my own ceiling, just as inviting as yours,
Counting the stars through the drywall we pretend to be invisible.
In the background,
Distanced enough for thoughts to still process,
A playlist of us beats in a fuzzy muffle from the dying iPod dock,
The kind of music you can't help but get high from.
We would talk of our plans and our futures and pretend they weren't separate,
Dreaming of sky scraping homes and earth-bounding trips to Asia and Europe,
Finding our destinies and origins here and there,
Then coming together to share our experiences.
And when things get too sad we would just enjoy the music and remember everything we had, everything we have, and everything we will lose.

I guess what I'm trying to say is listening to good music makes me miss you more than my poetry can begin to express,
And I'm so selfish for wishing you never left me,
Because I know you're happy there and I'm happy here without you,
But I'd be happier if we were listening to music under the same invisible ceiling.

The farmer cuts the corn,
Swear from his brow on the wooden handle.
Before the calf was born
The farmer cut the corn,
His sickle left the fibers torn.
5 AM, his daughter lights a candle
While her father cuts the corn,
A shiver on her brow, hand on the wooden mantle.

You had a butterfly
Glued to your ankle.

I imagined it flying
Up your thigh,
Crawling up the
Curl of your hip,

Resting in the arch
Of your ribcage,
Then finding your shoulder
To whisper with fluttering
Into your earlobe.
I felt it too.

It found your nose,
Standing with sucker feet
Over your septum, painting
your eyelashes with wing.

I heard my tongue fold
to the roof of my mouth.

It was innocent.
The two of us, naked together, breathing each others oxygen
Close enough to smell the ****** aroma of your sweat and natural scent
Close enough to touch lips so tenderly, close enough to interlace our tongues inside my mouth

It was special.
Young love, together we shared this feeling so few comprehend
We proudly say we know what love is, we proudly say we shared true love

It was quiet.
Skin touching skin, rubbing gently like fine grit sand paper
Soft, rushed breathing passing by my ear

It was perfect.
In every sense of the word, it was perfect.

It was beautiful.

It must be real,
If hearing the blades of grass
Whisper to my toes
Makes me think about you.

Venomous
As you poison me
Intoxication at best
Sickiningly sweet
Surprisingly sour
To differentiate between the two is impossible, drugged by your painfully soft

Lips that inject me with these
Salivating neurotoxins
Numbing mind, body, and soul
Penetrating deep layers of

Skin so comfortable as my form molds against yours
Feathery whispers surrounding my ear while

Kissing slowly, silently
In a sublime fashion as darkness forms to daylight, and daylight turns to midnight

Time means nothing here

Kiss me slow
Kiss me soft
Kiss me long

Make it last
Make it count
Make it strong

I want to feel you
I want to know the reality of kissing you
Engrave it in my soul
Save me from the pain of forgetting your lips

Kiss my cheek
Stomach
Hand
Shoulder
Neck
Kiss me

Kiss me in the moonlight
Kiss me goodnight
Kiss me on my tiptoes
Kiss me goodbye
Kiss me good morning
Kiss me by the sunset
Kiss my clothes off
Kiss me naked
Kiss me

I need your kisses
Always

I want your kisses
Always

I love your kisses
Always

Kiss me carefully, kiss me carelessly

Kiss your love into me

City lines illuminated by animated street lights reflect off of your skin.
Images of infant filled houses
and hospitals with new born fetal babies, juxtaposed fatal mothers,
emit off your body
in black and white stop motion,
slicked by this canvas of fluid blanket
And you, victim of lifelessness
lie cold and waterlogged
inhaling liquid, the new source of oxygen,
your eyes fogged and inverted submissively.
What was sung to sleep by hymnal chants  
of incredulous mourning moans now lies
Dead
on a forgetful Sunday Evening.
The street lights give no respect
as they ponderously encroach,
Leaning in to hear your fleeting birdsong.
These lamp poles, tender and limber,
flex to form prayer circles, forgetting their rightful footings.
And with each inch bound tighter,
the circle emulates a power emitted through photonic light beams
bending irresponsibly to get closer to truth.

They then see it, and so does woman
Stopping by this wooded mausoleum.
She stands with inquisitive mittens, palms open and receiving.
Flecks of skin lift off your sinking vessel as what was you leaves into better places.
They drift, forming a clouded colony
crawling  up webbing left to lead them correctly.
Each inch spreads more purity,
each meter strengthens recent weaknesses.

Woman notices a cloud gather above you,
and each particle refracts the whole galaxy with increasing detail and accuracy.
As your body turns to skeletal structure
you seep faster into the silt-heavy waters below,
your bones creating playgrounds and Eiffel Towers, hospital white in hue,
so clean it hurts.  

The cloud moistens with rain,
it becomes heavy and starts to drift,
rocking,
in futile attempt to birth again.
And each fleck takes woman.
She spreads eagle and takes flight.
Toes lift individually and with lessened pressure,
she stretches each appendage as your flesh meshes with woman’s in unconventional ways,
every crevice and crack blanketed by you, what was.
The street lights pulsate as they observe in amazement
your transformation.
All is forgiven while the lamps induct you into purity
and absolve woman for witnessing this connection to God.

If you saw me
I might be upside down,
Different spectra of vibrations
Pulsing from my goosebumped knees.
I imagine if I sweep my arms back and forth
Across the benthic stretches of our skies
I may feel your structure
In the crease of my thumb.

I reach my hand out to touch you.
Your elbow is somewhere in space,
Bent a certain posture.
It's possibly inverted,
But it could be rigid and reaching for my hair.
I think your forehead may point toward my collarbone,
Protruding like deer antlers.
In your universe my collarbone looks different,
Objects that will never be
metaphoric molds for my words,
But exist in every third line of your poetry
You may or may not write.

In-between our possible distance
There are millions of bodies,
Or just a few.
Neither of these options we can see
Or touch.
We will never know how close our blinks are.
Yet I can feel my breath rush down my chin,
Knowing if we ever found each other
Your exhale would twist into mine.

Little tree,
You grow tired of creating mouse-sized shadows,
Lose hope when your leaves cannot cover a whole human palm,
Wither when your fruits are too small, bitter, and too unripe to stomach

As the other taller versions of you tower above, they steal your food and tuck you away underneath

It's hard to get noticed in a sea of fish so vast only the insects can fathom its size
It's hard to survive in a crowd of Darwin enthusiasts

Ah, so young, and so deprived of faith in success.
I have faith for you, tree. Brother, we are the same.
We all just want to make it.
We want to be one of the great Redwoods pictured in magazines,
They take all the credit from us

Don't worry, friend.
Together, we will break through the underbrush,
Show them what we can do,
Prove our greatness once and for all,
And stand tall with our comrades of the vast forests everyone knows by name.

Love is the kind of thing you read about
Love is the kind of thing you dream about

But to experience...

Help me find words to rationalize the feeling of love


When every kiss holds meaning behind sealed lips
When every hug warms the body like hot chocolate on a snow day
When every smile gathers heat to your cheeks
When every laugh tattoos memories
When every tear beckons death

Electrifying the sensation of touch, from an innocent hand-hold to a loving palm that rests on my cheek, supporting the weight of my head as I fall asleep on your chest to the soothing sound of respiration

That emotion which takes one word to describe, yet can be described in thousands of words

All of which, I feel from you