inside my heart
and the beats blanket me
unrolling out and around till
my blissed-still tongue vibrates
all the way down to my bare toes
like the beginning of goosebumps
but I never get cold
just icy-hot chills
emanating from
thawed soul,

I remember
the whole

when most girls were learning
how to pose **** for pictures,
to be simultaneously ******
and innocence-baited Lolitas

I was learning (mastering)
the art of the keg stand
and jumping into pits filled
mostly with sweaty boys
at punk rock shows
how to hold my own and
not get knocked down

I had this sort of hard shell
though under the surface
I was raw yolk - so thin-skinned,
easy to spill and shatterable

we were drunken cultural rebels
sitting on front porches
of addict-strewn flophouses
******* about the state of things
but not really doing ****
about any of it

I was there, and thus
rather absent from
average female programming
and since then I guess
I've sort of mostly felt
like one of the boys,
not real ****

if I wore a short skirt
it was with combat boots -
just in case someone might
mistake me for some POA
and require a swift steel toe
to the shin, but that
never happened

though I'm sure my style did save me
from lots of ****** advances

in my senior year, I shaved my head
and the girl who sat next to me
in choir class said, oh my god,
what did your boyfriend say?!
and I laughed and told her
he's the one who did it

in all honesty, I really liked
flying under the radar of what
most people considered hot

because when I stopped dating
the guy who was basically
Jack Black from Orange County
(but less drugs, more alcoholism
and also sort of his doppelgänger)

and lost the weight I had put on
trying to keep up with his lifestyle
of perpetual malt liquor, lethargy
and terrible eating habits

and left my hometown
to attend that big name school
and experimented with identity
in a place that has a greater ratio
of young and beautiful people
than any other I've known,

and suddenly felt myself
wanting attention
particularly from a boy who
liked those hot girls

I became one

and got
way too much of it
from him, and everyone else
and I did not know
how to handle it
inside

after I started to wear pants that fit,
channeled my art onto my face,
learned to walk, run and dance
in 5-inch stilettos (like a boss)

though I know most girls
are trained to put themselves
on display from a very young age
to do and say and dress in ways
that encourage this type of
attentive objectification

it always made me feel
not quite comfortable in my skin
I didn't like walking into a club
and feeling every neck crane

I was pretty balanced as a kid,
but became a real tomboy
and then did a 180 -
making up for lost time
with a crash course
at ***** school

I sold out -
learned how to pose
**** for those photos
to contort myself
into what was
expected,
desired

but it never
felt right

and that attention I got
wasn't for what I was -
it was for becoming
a doll of sorts

the role never fit real well
even though I looked the part

and there's this vivid moment
of self-realization I can recall
where I saw it all as I stared
into the bathroom mirror of that boy
I finally won attention from,
tripping on mushrooms,
simultaneously seeing just how

stunningly beautiful I was
and this existential shame
at who and what I had become:
the plastic, the false, the trying
so hard to be pretty when I was
truly radiant underneath...
I think I cried a little
as the walls and me
both melted

and I could have let that marinate,
turned around and walked away from
that ill-fitting role-play,
but I turned my back on that vision
and returned to the living room
and my life of not being myself
with him

I wasn't the hot girl I'd become,
but I also wasn't who I was before
she was also a mask -
not one of ****** glitter
but of hard Rubbermaid
where no one could see
or hurt me

I had to pass through both
my false masculinity and
Barbie-qued femininity
to find what either
means in reality

and now I see
I wanted to be one of the boys
because I had a front-row seat
to how they viewed and spoke
about the hot girls

it's why I never
wanted to be them...
until I did

guess I felt like I was
missing out on something
and I was, but that
was not the thing

that was Sweet'N Low of feminine -
toxic, disgusting and unsatisfying

it is a very different thing
to unfurl in the balance
of fierce and fragile

it takes warrior strength
to be soft and vulnerable,
to follow your instinct when
it tells you to stalk and still
be able to melt in the safety
of another's arms
without feeling

weak

the beautiful strength
in surrendering

I would say I'm sorry
that I hid in faux masculine
and turned out my goddess
but if I hadn't done that
if I hadn't learned
what I am not

I may never have found how
heavenly beautiful and strong
I could feel when I stop trying
to be anything and allow for
my sacred F&M to flow
- authentically -
through me

and one day, I'll master it
and hold myself in balance

perhaps with help
from another's arms to steady
like a good friend supporting
an applause-worthy keg stand

to use string cheese
on a sub-calibur frozen pie

is to peel and
thatch that ****
like a gooey roof on a
cherry splatch wheat saucer

says my little
space-traveler

even when it goes cold
and pushes the pull
out into undertow

I was
- so -
happy

just
to be

something like
a long-lost friend
incubating inside jokes
on just-pierced ****** tongues
muzzled formal flirting with hmm

more than anything else
I just want our talk

so right everything else
just left

behind

I would trade in all my *****
for more conversations
like that

it's like, there will always
be part of me that sees
and wants more

but the crux
of all that ****

why I finger locks
on fated gates
is because

our talk
is

best. thing. ever.

ranking
formerly dubbed awesome
alongside rigmarole

like, I prefer
talking at you over the wall
even if I know my airplanes
won't hit you quite when
or how I want them

that I know
those ears will hear

is better than
all comparisons
that I have
no more of

****

and often I think
we could just keep
talking forever

and I could
be happy

with
only that

I don't trust
the ****** moods

it's like, I hear ya

but I hear more
what's underneath

the unbridled hope
charred to dark spectrum
from an indelible rainbow

underwhere I sit and play
with all these words

that insist on having
their way with me

could it be my tummy
trying to digest all these
heavy conflicting feelings

the love and the pain
the missed and the discarded
the conjoined and the severed
the forgiveness and the blame
the righter and the wronging
the know and the dismay

or maybe
the wine and the pizza...

I'll go with
C) All of the above

so happy anniversary
of yesterfray

when I peripherally laid
my eyes on you

the day I
didn't believe
because why???

it didn't compute
so my brain pushed it
away away away

because how
could you find it so easy
to replace me and ricochet
between four arms that were
not me

that was my logic:
if you loved me, if it meant
- anything ever -

you wouldn't have
made those decisions
like a haphazard hellbat
rattling off the tracks

so it was
quite obvious
I was just hallucinating
just pasting my aching heart
onto some random guy
who was oddly
not dancing

the truth is deep
and I'm trying to not
have you OD but I think
it's time to increase your dosage
and we're getting closer
closer still to
a mouthful

and one demispoon is
I noticed you the instant
you hit my periphery
maybe 15 feet away

I guess by noticed
I mean my stomach
did a nosedive down
through my intestines
resounding repetition
internal to the tune of
this isn't happening

as you made your way
in front of me

I was petrified
losing my mind
it made no sense

but that feeeeling
had your name
beating down
my lips

and I even pondered
tapping you on the shoulder
to ask something as asinine as
do I know you?

so, here comes
another serum dose

it wasn't until I was
contemplating the potentials
of reactions by you
or not-you

that I remembered
I wasn't alone -
I was, how you say...
with someone?

and maybe you can relate a bit
to how I could possibly find
myself in that situation
so quick

dear Watson, I can certainly now
understand how easy it in fact is
to fall into the arms of someone
you have history and unfinished
karmic business with

when you're
so alone and lonely
feeling lost and hungry
for connection you bypass
all the utterly obvious
ill-fitting cardboard edges
that aren't even the same image
and just focus on the one or two
that click right in, so comforting it is
to walk down the same old street
even though you already know
how and where it ends

it was certainly
a welcome distraction
from picking glass splinters
out of crippled crimson fingers

and now I understand
how you did what you did
and that is why I came back
again...

because it took me that long
to let go of feeling
unloved

and realize
you did

I think this has all
been harder on you
than me

not your load of strife
but the realizations
accompanying
our thing

for me,
it's all been
validating

an embossing seal
stamping papers official
I'd filled out and mailed in
for processing already

but you...
you got a massive dose
of holy truth even as you
spouted ***** defeat

that's a lot to swallow

and I think
it's not really me
you're not ready
to face

it's all these
paradigm-shifty
mystical beliefs
flitting in and out
of inter-D

challenging
relationship history
with faith in sacred things
haunting ***** discordant
pipes echoing up into
your rafters

sometimes
I wish

those things
didn't come along
with me

maybe then
we could be
friends in 3D

without it being
so overwhelming

I'm here
to sprinkle sugar
on that somber skull

to pipe fuchsia roses
and circle purple petals
around those two blind holes

where decay caved in
and bloom your sight
again

I decorate your death
because what comes next

is life

decompose
fester
rot

go through the dark tunnel
let the painful push you out
to the other side

honor the circle
the end is never
the end

death is not morose finality
but grandiose opportunity
prerequisite necessary

in this Holy Unified Scheme
of infinite resurrection

figuratively
and quite literally
it's beautiful, really...

the One is ever clever
with the poetic symbols

if you stop and stare
into silken fractals orbiting
the pistil of a lotus blossom
you'll see

truth whispering
through a sliver of eternity

I love me, but
I could do it with
a bit more

consistency, potency
and wild *******'
abandon-dusted
panache

you know,
how all beings
are born to be loved

I can't figure out
if I'm supposed to be
an oddball Eros-laced
poetic artist of sorts

this revolutionary
evolution redesigner
with wake-the-****-up
typographic punches

or a sower of seedlings
via silly rhymes scheming
with wacked-out visualizations
for story-time imaginations
to mold future generations

ideally,
I want to do all three...

praying for the mind
time and energy
to manifest all
I can
Be

(including
rocking the ****
outta this day job
that's molding me
into a better model
who knows how to float
merrily upon her dreams
obsoleting false me)

*happythankUmoreplease

smell like my Mags -
mad puppyish

steeped in sweet
unconditionals

I should probably
wash them
and her
soon

but I really
kinda like it

and also,
procrastinating

I will love you
past the brackish fits
of irreverent split rifts

I will love you
through bruised indigo blues
stalking shadowed ceiling stares
down to your pulverizing pupils

I will love you
beyond my known limits
pushing my pulse over
the wall to hear beats
echo through you

and I will love you
from afar

if I have to

I feel the fates
tickling my brain

the signs
the fortunes
at the bottom
of my teacup
smiling up

the faceplants
blooming fortuitous

the Verse is up to
something(s)

it always is, but
sometimes I feel it
strong

like yesterday...

and I can't help
thinking of the one
I told you about
so long ago now -

how losing my job
gave me the opp
to find the work
I do and love

I didn't know who
you'd be to me
when I shared
that story

but the truer truth is -
I might never have
found you
either

if I didn't have that
soul-******* endeavor
ripped out from under
my fumbling feet

(but U would have
found a way, I bet)

I was so bummed
at the time, but now
I'm grateful I went back
to serving

it's where I met that
(formerly) mutual friend
of ours

it was a 2-4-1
holy pivotal stone

now I bow to that call
that left me in tears
and led me to two
great loves

that swiftly shifted
my sands

and I'm pretty sure
they have something
to do with each other

with walls up
distraught in a rut
wearing those moping
hopeless pants

as if something bad
is gonna come
from facing me
while you're
in them

the irony
is near lethal

it's the only thing
that may **** you

I hope it slays
all you're not

not tryna
give myself
scrolliosis

to excavate
some yestertongue
from your fortress
to use against you

it's all in my
Youbrary

at the ready

like I said,
it always just seems
utmost important

so it stains me
and I like it

but it's all
for you

because, what kind
of mirror would I be,
if I didn't

- stubbornly -

use everything
existing
in me

to shake you
into remembering
who you are

and are going to be

it's weird how
you're not here

yet I feel you
- still -

reverbs tingling
post-disengage

like you always
******* do

me thinks maybe
you are chameleon

too

but you'll never
see all your scales
in rainbow gradation

if you don't let go
of that black twig
you're clutching

and walk out onto
spectrum colors

it will always be there
if you need to go back
and meditate upon it

but
I promise you

hopping swatches
is much more fun

especially with all
these holdy hands
the two of us
have got

"Love is the only poetry there is. All other poetry is just a reflection of it. The poetry may be in sound, the poetry may be in stone, the poetry may be in the architecture, but basically these are all reflections of love caught in different mediums. But the soul of poetry is love, and those who live love are the real poets. They may never write poems, they may never compose any music - they may never do anything that people ordinarily think of as art - but those who live love, love utterly, totally, are the real poets. Religion is true if it creates the poet in you. If it kills the poet and creates the so-called saint, it is not religion. It is pathology, a kind of neurosis garbed in religious terms. Real religion always releases poetry in you, and love and art and creativity; it makes you more sensitive. You throb more, your heart has a new beat to it. Your life is no longer a boring, stale phenomenon. It is constantly a surprise, and each moment opens new mysteries. Life is an inexhaustible treasure, but only the heart of the poet can know it. I don't believe in philosophy, I don't believe in theology, but I believe in poetry."

— Osho, *Everyday Osho: 365 Daily Meditations for the Here and Now

I'm not in love
with your words

I'm in love with
the way you think

not just
delighted,
entertained,
endlessly curious,
sufficiently bewildered
and longing to climb inside
the gears tick-tocking your mind

but that your brain takes me
into a state of utter awe
blissing me still

it's looking into
this distorted hologram
mirror where I'm seeing
more of me, but from
different perspectives
than the usual 2D
similar to me, yet,
inversely intriguing

it's live and undulate
reflective truth serum
rooting me in now

that's why I slid
right down your throat -
I speak your language
and apparently intuitively
know how to crack you
allkindsa open

(even if it takes a
white-hot light year
and unprecedented doses)

it's like with you
I'm the me-est me
I can be
it's so

magically delicious
I don't try to escape
inside me anywhere

you make me want to
be more here
with you

on the outside

share all the parts
I learned it best to hide
on the in

though I know
it's a wee bit ******,
if these treatises become
merely the sheer prologue
to The Most Unbelievable Tale
of Mystical Love Perhaps Ever Spun

the fact that
seeing you is
seeing me
means

loving you is
loving me too

this could be
- so -
healthy

like shots of
marine phytoplankton
chased with green smoothie

and my ponderings
keep meandering
around this one thing:

what happens when
it gets to the point where
your pictures painted of me
completely override
my false stories

- forevermore -

when I eat
so much of the mirror
I become - fully -
the me I see
through your
Windexed eyes

I daresay
that’s levitating off
the porch of full potential
outside our diamond-cut pyramid
with the gold-engraved signage
hanging in front of our
intergalactic portal

where one
might have
once

looked for a door

that now seems
completely archaic
and unnecessary

my hips
skim petaline
love every flit lit
in the direction
of my reflect

Things Two & One
bring the greatest of fun

flying kites inside days
of icicle rain

sure, their messes
are of epic proportions

but so are subsequent
clean-up forays

author-architecting
an illustrative lesson:

it’s OK to make messes

they’re classes to master
skills of the pristine

we don’t need
to be fixed.

we need to be
aware. open. owning it.

embracing
our pain, our history
our patterns, our spasms.

confession:
I've been fantasizing…

that one day you'd roll up,
like Richard Pryor at the end of Moving,
sitting atop a semi-truck of your whatnots,
war paint smeared upon your dashing,
wearing a tie bandana and bullet sash,
carrying a semi-automatic weapon,
after stalking your **** cross-country,
to the front of our gutted dream house,
after this misadventure, arriving, finally,
at home imperfect, thankful just to be,
there with delirious, Cheshire cat grin,
like a lion dragging in a carcass,
bloodied, brave and proud,
eager to greet my eyes and say:

Honey! Look what I found!
I found my ****!
I brought my **** home...
This is my ****.

and I would greet you,
with water-colored greys
inking down my dimpled peach,
in a black and white gingham apron,
heels, nylons and corseted vintage dress,
mirroring that ****-eater right back,
tray of warm hash brownies in hand,
that got nothing on my toasty sweet
lips dripping to say:

Your **** is lovely, darling.
It'll go perfect with mine!
It's up in the attic - properly labeled,
arranged and categorized.

and with that kind of
ownership, acceptance and bravery,
there is no way our stuff will ever be
more powerful than us, together,
merged and emerging,
by way of wings, soaring,
above our ****-spattered clouds.

work out for you
real swell

being fond of my
I-told-you-so face,
that is

;)

is starting to do
running leaps
at my uvula

from bile pool below
where it's been stewing
for quite some time

it's going to latch on
real good and tight
with white-knuckle fists
one of these days

and herald in
songs of sorrowful
karmic oneness

(and hopefully
some laughter
at the absurdity
ushering humility
with eyes wide
seeing through
the slits in salted
facepalms)

and lessons
oh my, the lessons...

#1 = we are the creators

of our hells
and our heavens

animating your fears and
character assasinations
in my direction

(as an attempt
by your ego to protect
that black-iced velvet heart
that's dying to know
the me I really am
or already does
and wants a reunion)

I'll be here

just
being me
this brain, this pulse
this history all on display

and FYI, I've
never shown mine
like this to anyone -
every millimeter of skin
every satin-wrapped dream
every jagged edge of broken
every malady that made me

me

your ego says
oh hell no, because
it knows my laser eyes
and furnace heart are gonna
burn that mother to the ground
with just one look

(a.k.a. 10,000 jade-lit
kaleidoscopic stones)

and in its place,
architect realities with maybe
a mother-in-law cottage
for that grippy gripe old bat
(at best) out back

behind crystal palace
atop bone graveyard
while we dine on serifs
washed smooth by
thrashing shores

on cosmic waterfront lot
with sugarsand paused
crystalline, still and
completely
ours

still hurt
still mad
still shattered

on some level

but I know
none of that matters
under the blazing light
of hearts flung into the fire

and at the end
of this precious life
what's going to count
is how well we stood

with starched spines
back to the black winds
whipping eager at our
worn, forlorn ears
and said

No.

to pain and fear
running the show

and got up
- ever up -

and unlocked
our fractured citadels
with key at center:

compassion -

the bridge to
everything

in those moments
I remembered

>>>   e v e r y t h i n g   <<<

I ever wanted
and was

by rollicking reminders
ringing the spine

set prior to
this life

speaking of
the greatest good,
I have been devoutly
praying for it

for everyone in
The Whole dang club

wherever it
pulls flows goes
aside under over tow

even though I know
it's kinda like asking U
to tie me to a spit
à la *******-bi

with clock hands
slow-cranking circles
orbiting until dizzy
harshing me
pristine

and I say
yes to it

because more
than any one thing
I want to spread
pearlescent wings
glinting orange
off our star

and I believe
down to the marrow
regenerating inside
my chiming bones

my path to awakening
is submitting to love,
worshipping in skin

and all these
tumultuous turns
and infernal spins

this gutting
inner work

will be worth it

as preparation for
open-heart melding
melting into mellow

bliss peach cheeks
blooming on the
wisp-kissed wind

pulling toward
ornate saintly gates
unraveling metallics
with boiling points set

at incandescent
serpentine

I wasn't expecting
your B or your C game,
certainly not your J or K

or any other letters
in the alphabet, really,

except that one at the beginning:
looks like a pyramid with a perch,
isosceles triangle with bottom arisen,
traffic cone alerting to awesome ahead,
space shuttle tip to aerospace action,
an upside down V with a chin rest,
upward-pointing pencil tip,
2D teepee with a loft...

or your best
approximation.

if this whinging heart
is mine, yours or
ours

but it
sure-as-****
has a mind

of its (our)
own

just feels so ******
like some all ages
HS reunion I never
want to attend

I was doing one of my
healing ceremonies solo

and I thought
to myself:

maybe he needs me
to go away to feel
his own heart
- alone -

in space

and precisely then,
I felt this

Clydesdale inside my chest
whinny, kick up and surge

like holy hell -
please

don't stop
writing
ever

and I
abide

pretty white
pages inked

with all I've got
in black, sticky words

I'm here
for you, always

even when I'm not

I know you hear me -
echoing through your
bones plunking
lonely chords

energy works in rising
falling, harmonizing
and we make music
on lips and skin adrift
and I know

we are
one

no matter
how far or
weird

it all
becomes

because I
still feel you
surging inside
my ribbed space

my lipstick
on the mirror

stretch fingertips
toward truest feels

jar the numb

as I smear
the color me
from wrought fists
wringing heart

cheerleading
through conjoined
memoir dreamscapes
forged with helix lips

spinning ourglass
to shift the sands

while I stifle
these cries
steeped
in stab

for the
greatest good

I wonder
a lot.

and this
one wonder
keeps popping up.

it's about this
boy I just knew
with furrowed brow
and pained dark eyes -
he wore my insides
on the outside.

until he left
the shrouded cult
and aligned to the opalite.

the thing I
keep wondering is -
what would he
say now?

and I keep
settling on:

***** it,
I'm a dreamer.

is the only line I can remember
from the first poem I ever wrote
on my mom's old Smith-Corona

on a thin, cheap piece of paper
with typos and strikethroughs
before that was cool

and when I think about
all the pieces of me
I let him eradicate:

clothes, shoes, makeup
pictures, journals, poetry
friends, family

all those moments
all those pieces of me
just -

gone.

there I am, again
spiraling in magma
equal parts rage
and pain

I bought the ticket
to the worst ride
of my life

and I am so tired
of paying for it

salt slunk
knees hugged
churning fraught
under weighted ribs
and a flickering yellow lamp
locked in this static hallway
between waiting rooms

say yes
to my

hipnotic
invitations

and bury you
in me

alive

the words don't work
unless you put them
under your tongue,
let them dissolve
and become
your new
truth.

you can't just
lick them casually,
heart on lockdown,
guarded by mind,
******* detector
set on high.

the power is in belief.

when you put down skeptical,
suddenly, you make room
for the mystical.

don't tell me
you don't remember
precisely how that goes...

that was the miracle:
it wasn't just what I said to you.
I'm sure you'd heard such things
prior to that luminous transference.

it was how you - trusted - exactly then
to eat the words I put gently
in the palm of your blooming hand.

and just then,
they became true
for me and you
like ****!

and there We were,
making magic, my dear,
with these exquisitely parallel
inversely proportional tongues,
with direct connect to hearts
starting to beat as one.

we shall create as we speak -

but only what
we also believe.

when it feels safer
than love

...

spoiler alert:
it's not

coaxed by
billow blowing
my back toward
double doors

bloomy blush palms
grace cold chromium
transfixed yet still
slightly froze

by their magnitude
stellar statuesque
ornate etchings
on the outside

engravings tonging
somethings subtly
warbling up vertebra
no longer numb

and I
remember
this hand
this voice
this vibration
this harmony

a fifth or a third
resonant progression
of ordered chords
this same old song
never heard, yet
- known -

buried, now begging
eternal womb
to be born

the want
wavers fingers
in front of the bell
until the know grows
too large to hold
behind stately doors

craving light, space, time
to stretch and unfold

dew-spun carbon
beyond the threshold

I wish
I could give you
experiences of mine:

the paranoia
outside my apartment
looking over my shoulder
scanning for the energy
I felt on me

the guilt
sinking in my gut
the moment laughter
escaped my mouth
on the tails of hell
and I swear
I felt shatter

and that time on the beach...
so many strange happenings
my energy was off the charts
though so confused, and it's safe to say
I'm still processing the karmic details
converging upon that crux of fate

but, most of all
I’d like to show you
the aftermath of my
kundalini intro

how knowing
what is possible
never went away

although he fell away
(to the tune of, I love you -
but like my little sister)
into the arms of a co-worker
after I helped him get hired

I got a front-row seat
to watch him fall in love
with the girl he'd marry
my intermissions
were in the bathroom
churning tears out quick
then plastering on a veneer
of I-don’t-care

my heartbreak was knowing
that I went there solo
and to him it was just
a good lay, disposable

I was in love
alone

with how I let go and opened
not hiding anything
because my intent to love
was absolutely pure
for the first time

his wasn't

after that I longed
to connect to the whole
in the arms of another
but it never came

not like that
not soul activation
not seeing the all as brethren
and my heart of compassion
reaching out to everyone
no judgment
just love

maybe I had
traces of magic
but mostly just
caring closeness
cloaking the lonely
flesh and bones

but God
wasn’t there

can't say I didn't enjoy
some of it, but my soul...
my soul always knew
always left hungry
not overflowing

until you

and I found out
it can happen
without knowing
without touching
without history
without building
much of anything
just these blueprints
already existing
reciprocity in seeing
intent so pure
and

words, words, words

the just-right ones
that pick soul locks
and fling doors ajar
not too hot, not too cold
that baby bear dose

I guess
the thing I'm trying to impart,
the reason I'm telling you this
is because I want you to know
I could never erase it

not after 15 years plus
not after the prettiest skins
not with substituting substances
for the real drug that is purest love

it was a gift
when the vivid memories
finally blurred into vague

but still,
the knowing, the hunger
never filled, never left

I wanted to
come home to God
but not like that, not alone

but with someone
riding shotgun...

and if you stumble across
that instant energy
again

you may just run swiftly
in the other direction, like I did
when I met someone
who reminded me of him
that night at the bar
same blue eyes
same major even

in hindsight,
I’m not sure if we had
instant connection, or I had
an instant memory and projection
then fled due to the pain
he awakened in me

the truth is -
the pain has to be dealt with
before we can let anyone in
who truly stirs our purity

and I’m fairly certain
it’s part of why I went cold
chilling our morning after
nebula explosions

and based on
the frequency of these things
I don't think there will ever be
another story quite like ours
where souls converged first
then imaginations merged
building a world upon
energy and dreams
no skin to be seen

there is - nothing -
more beautiful
than that

a winged thing, holy
undoubtedly worthy
of worship, out the gate

and I’m praying inside
to author on the outside
what I know is possible
if we do the work
and believe

stepping over
incinerated expectations
scaling serifed intentions
where real living, breathing
human possibility exists

upon grateful knees
for what has come and
whatever may be

in this cosmos of ours
that is truly

the rarest thing

with so-called God pulsing your palm,
why the need to wedge between
backward and forward covert
kamikaze escape plans?

A:
you lost your faith

I am
fistful
scarful
dreadful
mouthful
constellation of burnt
sore spots connected festering

but, also
breathful
dreamful
brainful
blissful
lapful
lifeful
string of lit brights
prismatic as Northern
sky candied neons

and just
being with you
made me glow
in dingiest dim

by you being you
and me being me
in unison

we can cherry bomb
the blackest sky
with your hand
in mine

I am standing
at the mirror

loving every scarred
unruly thread unraveling
in this breathing tapestry

it wasn’t my fault
what happened to me
my patterns were scored
long before I knifed them in
over and over again

picking people and paths
to validate my false hypotheses

unworthy kept me from
letting you love every one
of these holy spastic molecules

until I loosed grip
on erroneous
self-loathing

and I am so sorry
I really needed you
but I couldn’t let you
be there for me

because I wasn’t

and now,
here I am…

scoping silver under glass
making silly faces for me
blowing kisses at myself
and giving a little wink
over my shoulder

as I walk out
able to embrace
the wild unknowns
that await me

underneath all these
prosaic proclamations

the kind of poetry
that rises on its own
climbing your throat
from pump overflowing
and pirouettes off
the tip of the tongue
somersaulting thru ether
into sherbet blooms
underneath every
faerie footprint

they are sampling:

Infinite Loops
Shredded Fears
Sunny Bunches of Whoa
Iridescent Pebbles
& Cream of We

no obligation to buy
just satisfy that
curiosity

while supplies
are lithe

I've gotten to the point
where I can feel
grateful for

arms that held you
when I couldn't
love that found you
even if it didn't
break through

cradling my lovely
while saving me
the ache

of a try
not ready

and if you
are my future
then they are my past
and I will love them, too