Tangent

No, no, please, don’t touch me-
Oh your hands are so
Gentle.
Don’t make me miss you
Make me love you
Make me care for you.
No, no, please, don’t reach for my hand-
Oh your touch is so real.
I would rather stand in front of a
Train and let its wheels
Imprint themselves on my body
Instead
Of you on my heart.
We meet at this one point in
Time
Our lives intersecting.
I will continue on straight while you
Curve away with your life in your
Hands as well as my love.
No, no, please, don’t let go-
Oh the air is so cold.
Can you stop time?
No, reverse it.
Make it rewind, let the tape whir and whip
As I pull away and you withdraw
Your steady gaze
And are pushed back
Back
Back.
Make it so I never have to know, so I will
Never think about you now.
I really would rather to never
Have loved but
You make it so hard.
No, no, where are you going? Please, don’t walk away-
Oh the silence is so lonely.
No, no, please don’t turn your back, but don’t turn around-
Oh your footsteps break my heart
As life carries you away, clutching you in its
Current.
No, no, please, don’t disappear-
Oh the isolation is so painful,
Unlike your touch and your words.
No, no, please, let me hold onto your memory-
Oh the emptiness is so comforting.

I swear things will get better.
Even skinned knees and scraped palms
take some time to heal.
And you are chiseled marble,
sculpted into something lovely.
Stronger than diamonds,
and more beautiful too.
Your eyes reflect hardened obsidian,
birthed from flowing fire itself.
You might still be in pieces,
but you will be rebuilt.
And I will help.
So please, let me handle your scars.
I want to know them inside and out.
I promise I’ll be gentle, I know how tender they can be.
I am well trained in unsettled regrets after midnight,
and fluent in the language of comforting silence.
I know each jagged ridge holds so much you’ve lost
or tried to gain.
I know how much they mean to you.
I promise I’ll be gentle.

The sweat from my brow is racing the shadows of a late evening sun
and somehow they both drip into the tightening grip of the night.
Though the night's still to come,we all know that it murders the sun every day
and gets away with it.
I'd like to sit in the gallery with Winehouse's Valerie and tend to her needs,if the night feeds on the sun why shouldn't I have some fun too.

If I flew into the eye of I don't know when why,would I know where I'm at,would it matter to me if I was where I'd be or in some other place I've yet to see.
Has the cuckoo flown, after been shown the error of his ways,does he feel the sweat of his endless days in the madness of a madness of being out of phase.

The sweat drips from the end of my nose which I blow
and the devil may go where the fancy will take him
I will sit and revolve while the world spins off with any resolve I may have had,not to go quite mad.

And the hammering in my head jabbers on,like some crazy woodpecker that titters at dawn and cracks open its beak to sneak into a tree
will I,or the woodpecker ever be free
does it matter to you,would it matter to me if I knew?

The day finally goes,falling under the spell ,and the bell for a midnight tolls
I roll my eyes looking skyward and there's nothing to see
except an image of me and a woodpecker
in a tree.

I loved you like a forgotten dream.
        Searing so vividly into
        the recesses of my cerebrum.
        Like fire.
        Setting my heart aflame with
        gasoline-slicked words
        that felt like a balm on my
        dry skin.

I loved you like the air after it rains.
        Breathe in, breathe out,
        but I could never
        get enough of you.
        If words could cradle
        a broken heart,
        as tangibly as callous-roughed hands
        and bumpy veins running like ivy
        down your arms,
        then drape me in letters
        and knit poems around my shoulders.

I loved you like light in an empty space.
        Because that is what you were.
        And even though you left,
        I still feel your warmth,
        still feel vestiges of heat
        tucked away in my dusty corners.
        Don’t fade.
        Don’t fade.
        Be the night sky that my eyes
        drink in like glassy pools of stars
        for a parched astronomer.
        Be a Category 5 hurricane, where I
        make a home in your center
        using pieces of stolen debris.

I simply loved you, and as much as I’ve tried,
I cannot find an image more beautiful than that.

When I was fifteen I started kissing
every single boy who held my hand,
because holding hands was simple, innocent, lovely.
How could anything but gentleness
come from a boy who just wanted to hold my hand?

My biggest fear used to be
failing to see the beauty and goodness in the world,
now my biggest fear is failing to see the world
for what it is, and trusting people
that would, without remorse,
run rusted, ragged, knives
through my ribcage.

I don’t hold hands with boys anymore,
because I refuse to redefine what it means
to hold someone’s hand,
so instead,
I’ll redefine myself,
and my lovers,
and redefine who is allowed
to hold my hand.

What if water were made of flowers
the air on the lake would smell like thick honey
they would be taken up onto strings
and put around people
Everyone would be beautiful
And there would be so many different kinds that could cover the sky
everyone would cry
An old man would smile at all the people
Children would be flowing like nature
thinking someone has given them a gift
Their thanks being in how much life they feel
A homeless person would tie a garland into a bow
and put it on a bench
Women would make patterns holding them near the face
God would blush

Tall people would think flowers look like hands around the sun
Heads would need hats and skin would sunburn while petals
would run down with the waves of one pair of eyes
the stem planted in one heart
if taken rips staying in the background
a beautiful beloved bouncing in a thieve's bag
A hundred treetops combing their inner crown with the brush of their lowest arms
A ballad would play for the reflection of beauty in a mirror
the reflection of skin, in water
We are skin
If water were flowers the reflection would be God
And we the image of God
God would blush