Pain Perdu-
that's what they call it
Lost Bread.

Am I, the lone
pastry loaf,
stranded here,
among Raisins?

Hard to say...still.
may I have more
Coffee?

two sugars,
please.

And in the calm water, there
sits the seed of a story:

Green under blue -
the tale of a fish who flew,

Because the tree came to her.

Heavy days and
Hollow nights
I note the numbers and try
To find the
Light

She lives in

the shaky in-between-place.
the sigil behind walls.
the cracks through which
daisies spring,
where the
cold sunlight falls.

being alone
is like breathing
when you think
about
focus on it
you can't quite
seem to do it
right
the breaths heave
in out, up down
jagged and alien
you don't get the
right saturation
the reflexive feeling
you temporarily forget
until distracted
you fall asleep
and your body takes over.
I-
I wish it was just
like that.
But it
it is not.

under the layers
of inky, endless night -

no stars
no planets.

only bitter dust.

Oh
the things we
see when

our dreams leave
us.

feeling of wrongness
sheen of oil
power shower
can you get it for
a soul?

Today it is ok to hold
Your body at pause
Suspend your animation temporarily let your bones keep
Their shape in peaceful unity to
Breathe in gentle air
Tomorrow
Tomorrow,
The big wide world will
Still be out there.

lost in poppies
the flower of Forgetful
slumber in
feathered fields of unknowing.

wander blue
into the cloud.
embrace the
soft plumage of
reaches uncharted
between cerebellum
and heart,

for the map is torn
beyond God.

I was born twice.
Once out of my mother in the late winter of 1986 at 1:52pm in the afternoon.
And then again
the day Samantha Li died.

That may sound more dramatic than it is or just as dramatic as it was.
I wasn't a fancy baby. I pooped like all of them. Was a little underweight. Up through high school.
"Pointy."

I didn't know her well- Sam. Just a sweet-faced angel with a cloud of black hair and questioning blue eyes who went to my
University. She always looked like a china doll unexpectedly caught in a sale at a vintage clothing shop. She played the violin.

When you lose a skill you've had all your life, things start to morph and mutate. You feel superhuman and alien at the same time.
Waking up with my right arm bones in pieces was the start of my evolution- I became wolverine- flying through the night to
have metal clicked into my arm.
I was lucky to be alive.

4 years later, a surgeon told me people often lose their arms from such an injury. The irony of receiving such news was to
want to punch him in the face with my dominant hand.
That guy dodged a time-delayed bullet.

I grew up with a planned dream woven from music notes and CD cases.
I wore second hand clothes, I drank milk drained from a food-stamp fountain. The kids laughed at me in school. They
circled constantly, questioning my glasses, my shoes, my speech.
But the music inside me was something they never had. It was my boat. Violin was going to get me to the far off shore.

But you'll find- as we grow our dreams change shape. They don't fit into the holes for the pegs our parents carved.
I shunned the 6 hours of solitary scales and Bach.
I sought the Cacophony of improvisation and orchestral arrangements.
You'll never make it here- he said. You want to help people.

So I left Siberia and took up my own vision. As we do.

Now my dreams are putty again. Melted play dough on a radiator shelf.
I have leapt through hoops ringed with fire, smoldering plastic and lies.
Filed the paperwork for a better life.
In 27 I see the lines.

They weren't there that night.
And now they're everywhere. On my arm, over the Adamantium.
At the crinkle in the arch of my nose and eyebrow.

A grey hair at my crown.

How will it come?
When they go? When we finally draw the bottom line.

And when the metal leaves me
and all my bones are earth. That will be the 3rd rebirth.

if I could only have
one part
my eyes
without that
a face like an empty
plate, who would
know me
how would I know
if they did
I can touch
and see strangers
with these shining
globes.
take them away
and I am walking
alone
in the dark
a stranger inside
myself.

today I severed the kite string
so I could
instead,
tattoo it into my heart.

when I take the xray
there it will
be.
I promise. The metal line
or silken tie, (whichever you prefer)
will lie there
on the light board

I will put it in the sky
or in a field
on a bus
I will show everyone

We will see it from space.
and when you close your eyes
I will dance with you
in my mind.

no matter where
no matter when
no matter how long
because our threads
are that strong.

they set me out here
on this island
with a fork, a spoon and a book

there was also apparently
a manual. it was lost
in the crash. my guides assured me-

a beautiful island. a bit scrubby
some wild animals, but admired by other
countries.

smoke signals will be
fine
they might not work
but of course- that's
what the book is for

in event of tigers
just use the defensive
position
words will be
enough

and if they are not
legs will suffice for
running away

did we mention
the sharks.

in the water.
please be advised.

you'll be fine though
monsoon season is only
a few months long
and it'll be over

before
you
know
it.

you sit on
my feet and
purr.
is it
because you
know I'll
always be
here?
or because
there's still
little bits
of food
to the
very top
of your
bowl.

blurred hands
christmas present shreds
paper snowflakes on the floor,
anticipation- snap

next slide shows...
was it a woman- my aunt?
why was she carrying fruit-
it was late in the season

I remember,
placed on
the table, linen cloth
blowing in the -click

late afternoon, blue
sky cobblestones red
balloon. carnival somewhere
I was-change

only four
and in a life
I've never yet-
lived
before.

kick your legs like...
coy tilt
to your hips just...
that, yeah.
hold it-

Now...
bite the red
lip, flash
your eyes.
hair curled into
an unlikely peak...
pointed toes align.

Oh,
*****-ish Skin,
slick and soft
I wish I could
wear you more often
but like so many
in disguise
the mystique thins
if viewed repeatedly

instead I will
keep myself in
a closet of
seduction and pull
out my pinup on
a rainy day.

the glitter and stars
will keep the gloom
away.

a frenzied
little broken
tornado-
watch me burning
getting wobbly back
on the bike of
verse
I should have
seen that
rock
coming

Am I a wanderer?
You would think
surmise
muse that
after twenty five
years with
myself I
would know

All I have
determined is
that sometimes
I lay awake
Like an alien
In my own bed
And feel the holes
worn in my feet
by shoes standing
too long
in one place

Maybe that's
my answer
or Maybe it
just scares
me to remain
where the
ground can
keep tabs
on me.

Because if
I do, then
Life can
Catch Up
long enough
to shake her
Finger at
Me til I
Cry.

there were six
she was nine she
said mama don't
leave me down here
it's dark and
he's mean so
cold without a
pulse his
spirit pulling everyone
else down
go back tell
them I want to see
the flowers again.

balancing on the tops of trees, I
see everything, still,
in clarity, in the sharpsmooth confines
of my frustratingly stoic pre-frontal cortex

I sluggishly struggle through  the snarls and tangles
of my "emotional conundrums"
to quell the misfiring synapses still bouncing wetly within.
no pressure to focus
no tactile center to make it stop
the speeding car we nearly didn't miss
the feeling of this space
gently and dangerously adrift.

the shakes of a savior
who feels like a fool.

I  really didn't want
to have to skip school.

missing the time in between
what was won't will be sometimes often
didn't

easy to forget the reasonable logic
behind the now seemingly nonsensical choice
that left you in the current Yearn.

the sweetsour regret, softly ignored scratches
the polish and veneer of worn out synapses
a  pleasantly blurred fastforward-lacquer

I skip the years like stones
pausing fingers on the page of a smile
turning my face away from  the cracks
stepping blithely over the day your words carried false

licking the envelope on an argument
stamped To Forget.

I choose

instead.

to love the memory of You.

as  I walked in white
in the gilded summer night

foot steps following
one heel, one heel
down the street
downtrodden
floating
detached
lost

a call came from
a wind maker on the street
a stirrer of emotions
a sorcerer whose only game
was that of creation

I watched the draw and pull
of the strangers into his
gravitational field

tendrils of invisible allure
wrapping around shoulders
ankles of passersby
as they froze
captivated by his moth-and-spider web
of alien, archaic sound.

in the aftermath
of my escape
from his forcefield

I sat on a bench
carefully attempting
to tuck the edges of my
being back
inside my body

so to join
the rest of the anonymous
collective fleeing
from  the ancient
difficult feelings
he had stirred
from the greater
universal melting ***

no longer recognized
in this
Cold Age of Chrome and LCD screens.

step to the
edge
big evergreens
cedars
look strange from
on top
their scent wafts
smelling different
from on top
of a mountain
I know
that when I
fall it
isn't really
falling...
that in my
bed when
I land
my brain slams
back into the
pillow and my
body is safe
beneath the
blankets
but just in
case there
are air sharks
or sharp rocks
when I jump,
I will pinch
my nose.

my whole body is wanting  for your
cells.
wrapped around mine like
a straightjacket of warmth

I need the fingers laced
pressure of bones on bones
not in or around
but on
senses fulfilled
smothered
in the passion of closeness

but the miles are thin yet numerous
stacked upon each other
melted graham ******* bridges
fossilized seemingly breachable
but not

shoulders itching with the distance
tendons, muscle fibers to light
floating away.


your shape. It is missed.

a robot
approved my
card.
now paper flies
to the
wind
and I get to-
Live.

A string of diamonds-
it's not mine,
for I am a thief
plucking the jewels of Time

they rest on webs of cob
and grass
and trickle upon
the winter glass

but I need no gold,
nor silver spun
because I gild that which I touch
with the kiss of the sun.

I'm teaching them
how to write
the things that I-

can't.

beautiful orange
globe of fruit

golden juice
sunshine summer cup

offered to me
on your finger tips

shut/open my eyes
blink
and the fruit is

cold and tossed into the snow

what did I do to change
your seasons so?

Oh little thing
beeping on my hip...
where are you?
did you find me,
green slider, and
tentative ring?

even your numbers
shiny 9 and 5
with 1s, zeros
QWERTY...an
entire alphabet
to love.

How is it
that without your
invisible electronic
leash, whispered
messages and
brilliant, **** screen
I would stand on
the street
lost in my own
neighborhoood...
It is the solved mystery
of the 21st Century.

I need your hug
I need your smell
I need the things
that I think you do well
hands on my feet
hands on my hips
kisses on my shoulder
kisses on my lips
I haven't even seen
you and the things that
got between
[you and I]
are backwards and
forwards
confusing, no lie.
but we just couldn't go
back even
if we tried.
so to save some time
and make the pain go by fast
I'm going to destroy
my values with rhyme
and just try
and bury my memories
of our past.

I can measure my life
in lists of things I
meant to do.

The bullets, the stars.
numbers, arrows.
Musts, maybes and
Laters.
All there in
the wobbly print
of my 9 year old
boy scrawl.

If I circled it
did it first,
Will this guarantee a
different fork?
Wil  walk down
my to-do, to
Prosperity
If I accomplished
it all?
or
would I start
a new way
perhaps tattooed on
my arm

would I start , then
cllecting boxes
of regrets?

Every lists is
a promise I pretend
to make for
myself.
my Beautiful
False Paper Trail
for a productive life
assuredly.
not the one
that I lead,
At all.

manage the-
measure the-
beating worry
surging- the tickles
of dread I didn't
really Don't
welcome.
if I love you
and lose you in the daily...
that
fear of leaving you sleeping.
what do I do
when they really shut the door
and we're
cut off.
when I'm here
are you,
still there?
can my love -its
armor
is it strong
enough?
vs. the world
I worry.

pull your head out of your own-

you're not perfect
you'll never-

So be Just Enough.

that's all. it's not
a competition.

because we all
eventually still

end up


behind the finish line.

balance
on the line
one foot
step careful
you break
your mother's
back and who
can have that
on their head

walk
forward towards
your toes
follow through
feel your hips
align to
move you

line up
your spine
catch yourself
like a cat

and take
all the arrows
in your shoulder
because everyone
knows that a
proper archer
will
aim to
miss your heart.

when I go back
it is the same
and it isn't
I am me and
her now
we have memories
like two halves
of a lost
coin.
And I have the
same hands.
but the things
they carry
are burdens that
just couldn't
even be imagined
the last time
I exited this
stage.

popcorn venom-
no I
won't, you dumb
c----

watching you become
daunted by my
expectations.

truth-
can't let anyone
down if you

throw
back  the
catch
without eating
it.

I thought of the giants whom
I planned to conquer when
I'd reached an eligible age:

build a house out of my goals
furnish it with a child in white
rule by 28 with a future bright.

but now in the clearing of brinks and
cliffs, facing the threshold of the sum of
three decades.

I stand, with one boot unlaced,
mirror in hand
a deviant Janus.

I try to block
the bird, as she whispers "Close."

*Meet your knight
or meet the night.
but for love of god
walk a road, ANY road,

before it forks you over.

it only ticks sometimes,
passing the hours at its own whim.
but still it measures-day clock. life
clock.
relative minutes.
replaced from sand
for the grim grains fade translucent and slick
after
a time.
yet glass ultimately shatters,
flinging shards like dangerous paint across our mortal floor-
and inevitably-
we all cut our
feet.

I mourn for skunks.

The squashed, flattened masses
***** mashed, their stripes scattered
Matted  masks disguising unseeing eyes
Through how many fields have they run?
Once sweet babies, small noses, downlike fur
fleeing to their final place from green leafed bowers in a terrible act of asphalt bait n' switch

Let us all grieve the sacrifice which,
Unto the motor gods
Has been served.

'please,
come home'
they said.

'I already am'
I replied.

'where?'
they asked.

'In my heart.'

there are new ones
but I don't know them
the way I do
know you
the words that
might offend
sayings, actions
that confuse semi-strangers
but are like
breathing, sighing and
blinking to
you, who have
often sat right
at the root of my
soul, interpreting
calls as they come out
and pressing your hands
into my shoulders
and looking
into my
mind.
they don't know
anything but
my outdoor
shell
and as I am
concerned
maybe they never
can
or would I
let them
or
will.

she walks at trouble with her Jugular bared

Into fire because she likes the heat,
the way the flames play and flirt
with her fingers and her bones.

lips tilted around a cigarette
drags in the poisonous kiss
of a ***** cloud,
upturning her palms to strangers
to give them her hands and her ways.

That girl is Brave

diving off every cliff
and caressing the rocks
as she floats down
harmlessly to rest
upon the filmy waves.

but when her little soul
becomes golden at the edges
I hope for her that a hand
will catch her balloon string
and guide her back to earth.

Too tall to
command the
world in
Napoleonic
fashion-
conclusion-
will
surely result
in some sort
of Complex.

Push and pull
like a wave
tides to the moon
the way she goes-

All equators
on the line
in balance
and yet the colour is
off.

Twists in the
branches of fate
may break, fall in the
road, shatter on
the fork.

but with my plate
so full, I cannot clean
it.

I fear starvation
I worry for the coming winter
I cannot store
for I am already frozen.

A stone cannot hide
For it cannot
Feel.

I am not a stone...
But I wish
I was.

bone traitor.
Skin viper
Edge Stealer
Ridge maker
Health reflector.
Mirror- you liar!
Rogue on the scale...
Signs that my brain has duped me;
Floating oily in the
Basin
Phantom aches
Blood test lies
Powdery remedies pressed almond abandon all cows
Bean curd body snatching
**** the doctor to get a clue

Girl in pain this isn't me so-
Who the hell are you?

Something of a wasteland lately-
Only elbows, shoulders and ribs.
Tentative and soft about my navel
Yet, above my hips no camel can trace a
Path.
Drops in this desert are fleeting and often the bones
Of strangers get in the
Way.
People look at me now and
Don't know what
To say.

in my brain
there is a switch
somewhere
that I need to find
or my bathtub plug
at the base of my spine
to drain out
the full reservoir
of all this building
slop
tears, conflict
guilt, an angst
ridden moral chain
of knots that
is clogging
the channels
of continuation
for my life
path.
because if this
don't go soon
I'm looking at
you,
Lord.
And we're gonna have another
talk.

I need
a new notebook
or to engage
on the phone with
Life and
tell it to
slow down.
I can't write
fast enough
with these
feeble hands.

vines on the stone
And you are Here
staring into future mirrors
and pebbles on the path
pass and scatter

grooves run through the sand
and under your feet they
are soft.

so choose now, Fierce One. and
hold yourself aloft.

Made you Breakfast Eggs, yolks pooling
Slipped into that Lucille ball coat.
I wear it well
Like Pretty Woman level.

But in the midst of
these folded clothes
Tangled toddler hair and budget restraints

late at night,
I watch over your troubled dreams, kissing demons away.
Yours always, but forever furled in my
Ultimate Soul

Lies a Wild gypsy Queen