I want you underneath and
I want you, underneath.
you don't stand at the gates of
me
flying a white flag;
you are the minotaur inside,
unraveling my maze and
making it into silk sashes
that I can tie in my hair.

you are (nothing if) not a fool
I didn't win you working wet-necked tricks that I
invented for boys -
     un-sacred boys

I bore you my soul in a jar -
             soaking in jasmine tea,
                                    no perfume,
                                                     disintegrating in thick devotion

you set it in the sun
and told me it deserved more than that.

time is pouring out - it's all over the sidewalk,
it's making me old

i'm too old now, but too young to do anything about it:

too cowardly to abandon things that tip the pitcher
too poor to refill it myself.

i’ll always find my way back here, to the shore;
the moon is out this time,
and i stare at the patch of sand between us and ache to touch you again

dreading the countable infinity that separates me from you

in five years maybe i’ll be a fossil,
coal crushed in the soil,
but still i’ll wait for you -
maybe you can put me on your desk.

after the storm there was nothing;
like he knew he someday would,
he returned to the second day of creation

sky and ocean

a black cloud crept in from the endless horizon
only bringing lightning
and it was too late to cry out -
all that was left
was to turn his face to the sky and wait for rain.

looking up at a plane and pretending it’s a star.

looking up at the star and imagining its
expansiveness,
molten light surging and ceasing

looking up at the expansiveness and wishing I could reach through the window wishing the glass would bend for my hand like water wishing I could crush the sun in my palm and swallow it and

looking out at the mirror and wondering who is

looking up at me imagining i’m a plane.

too tender and divine to be touched
like the nape of her neck
or the bend of her ankle,
the curl of her hair

something immutable, incorruptible
unearthly:

the un-violate-able softness of her mouth

the car feels like you
dusty ice on the windshield
i can't see out

your eyes are wiser than mine,
so i take your hand
close my eyes
let you drive.

at first invisible
a sudden gleam, revealed in spring:
grain of sugar in the snow
you nourish me when all else melts.

my eyes are getting old
i've noticed
and memory too.
i never used to turn on the light when i sat down to play
i don't even need to watch my fingers,
i just need clarity, and an embrace
something to pull my wrist so i can leave it all behind.

would it bring me any joy
to touch a body with no warmth?
no -
the heat is love, patience, being known.

you are the white water that softens our skin
or the thick fire that clears the prairie,
always revealing life.

no child is spared from your gaze
you
watch me reel and roast
soaking in brine,
save me from the ocean or a shark -
i won’t look you in the eye, only a glance
only a furtive glance
i’ve seen you all before
father? lover? god?

you led me outside, let my nightdress fall into the sand
put my hands on your shoulders
i saw your secret fear while you watched the white shadows
dancing gently on my skin
translucent, like you -
where were we?
can you take me back?

quelle rêve, pour toi, j’espère:
me voir
      ma visage serene
              la centre de ton univers
tu me touches dans mes cauchemars mais quand je me lève je suis contente
il y a quelque chose de romantique dans la pluie
      elle travers ma fenêtre,
       et tu me chuchotes des mots sublimes
« t’es ma petite fleur...incroyable. »

i can’t picture you i can only
feel your hot touch on my skin
bastardizing your voice in my head
begging myself to carve my heart for you
i know i will, just sleep next to me in the shed
just wake me up for morning honey

on you like a lotus flower!
blooming in my heart
this shirt is yours and it doesn't feel right, too tight, full of seams that cut your hurt body
"i feel like a kid"
well, you're not anymore!
i pull off the blue plaid so i can see you

how wonderful to have found someone kindred
I like to think of you in white, me in a prairie dress, us together eating strawberry pie under a red-hot moon
you'd laugh at me and hold my hand
fall asleep in the grass, content to rot or bloom

careful! if you've got it right it shouldn't be so hard to fit
I couldn't tell if you were lingering on my eyes because I was on yours
but you looked at me while I drifted asleep, and then I knew!

warm flannel like fire
icy gaze to ease hot touch
i melt in your hand

soft campfire mouth
have you been waiting for me?
trying to stretch time

hold my waist, eager
but not hasty. seconds pass
just like molasses

you make winter warm
you make rain come melt the snow
i like you in red

"someone you love can be so damaged!"
the human body is not sacred as we believe it to be. everything is a house for a soul! but flesh is warm and blood flows so we treat it as if it lives. it does not live. love, reason, sorrow live.
flesh is not sacred so much that it is protected, but it is not sinful and it is not a cage. we cremate the body - prepare it, manicure it, embalm it. the cynic says we do these things for the living, but it's not true.
we care about the dead because we can tell they are living somewhere outside themselves.
it's like making the bed, steaming the curtains of a room inhabited by some lover on an indefinite voyage.

blood will creep into the soft, cream cotton seams of my pinafore and it will never ever leave.
will they torture me first?
I don't think so.
does a killer hate or love their victim? is it the same?

i.
will you starve me? hit me? **** me? the answer is no because you sense that I am alive - you sense my warmth, what makes me move. I wonder how a killer feels life. does he feel it at all? what makes an animal deserving of life or not? does it need to speak or sing?
killers maybe are afraid of conscience and the power of the human mind. maybe they **** other deserving creatures because they hate the guilt we give them for wanting to hurt
or for being hateful.
I wonder who made them hate or why some of them cannot feel love anymore. it's romantic to think about saving a killer with love.
but we can't and we shouldn't think about it.

ii.
I wonder why I like to seek out things that disgust me, or if I like it at all. I heard someone say that if you believe you're worthless you'll work hard to make sure everyone else believes it too.

i grind graphite like a girl shelling shrimp for five cents an hour.
the product of her work shows no toil,
no toil at all in its juicy, lustrous fat -
she throws the exoskeleton into the ocean before her fingers begin to bleed and it makes no sound.
her wails are trapped by the chastising hush of waves, enveloped by the menacing scars on her fresh hands

i sharpen pencils like her
the product of my work shows no toil,
no toil at all in its fine, glinting peak -
i throw the refuse into the fire before my blisters begin to fill with fluid and it leaves no ash
my blackened fingers are soothed by the steady whisper of tap water but i carry the dead skin forever

winter
the wreath’s rustle interrupts my sleep. in my dreamy shiver there is lucidity. between my toes there is carpet; I can feel its green, sense its virginal cool as I shuffle across the hall. I have the urge to scream, to tear the milk-matted blanket muffling my fervid anticipation. I hear you, then: the creak of the door, the friction of skin and silk, the sapped wail of youth’s wasted power. starlight pierces the linen curtains and casts my shadow ten feet tall, two feet tall, not at all. I crawl into bed and feel your breathing but it is not you. you are the unbroken hum of the furnace.

spring
the sugared smell of candy fruit depresses my throat and ***** threatens. my eyes search the window for a stranger but only rain knocks; my clothes are still wet, dripping one, two, three on each step. they dry more quickly than the boards creak; more quickly than I can find the storm drain, my translucent skin sloughing off at your touch. you are the static of broken vhs, the rattle of the closet mirror door as it slams, the easing cries through a premature mouth. I scream again, only to feel you in my ears as cotton, in my limbs as rigor. you whisper my name and I turn like a dog.

summer
dandelion seeds litter the dew-fresh yard. sing louder, you say, and I run faster. the wet heat is psychoactive. I trip and fall and you are the grass; you are the mud, the leaves, the water, the worms. you are the earth who protects my knees, careful to keep pristine my blue-jean jumper, careful to capture every moment of fleeting touch. oak leaves sway above. as intently as I gaze at it, the sun gazes at me and my doe eyes well. maybe there is something in them. maybe there is something in them with your crystal reflection, an eskimo kiss to speak what I cannot.

fall
afternoon sun rules my body and becomes blistering, unbearable; I stir, pressing against the heat, pressing your fingers into my skin, seeking to relieve the thrill. steam curls from my eyelashes as they squint to see you through the illuminated dust. it accumulates. you are the sudden cognizance of the windburn on my cheeks, lingering october air sharp behind my eyes, forcing tears I cannot help but to explain incorrectly. you are their singed, sweet-hot puddles in my hair. you are the residue they leave long after your sublime touch made them invisible.

i. reward ten thousand dollars
it scares me to think you will drive me home one day, one night, one night when i am very drunk and the stars do not glisten because there are no stars left! i am sure of the reason:
upon being conceived you swallowed them all whole. this is not purposefully clandestine so much as misunderstood knowledge:
in our lifetime these celestial objects will be mistaken, much like a well-intentioned teratoma, for
cancer
countless times you will be plucked, yet unripe, from the fire that will as soon liquify your flesh and cleanse your soul

ii. wanted, dead or alive
psychosis is not a watershed.
it is an amalgamation of the bugs who have crawled up your legs and gorged themselves on your fruity blood before hibernating
it is a room of walls plastered with ******* of nauseating pale cadavers, of empty homes, of longing hands, of breast buds and tied legs and virginal lips and bare ***** and stained sheets
it was in you forever and there is nothing to blame but an imbalance, for
you are the duality of...girlhood.
you are soiled ******* and unkempt hair, abused plush dolls and sticky hands, infected wounds and sunburn sting, stale cereal and coloring pages
you are satin veils and vain slumber, tired tears and starving entrails, hesitant touch and static vhs, shrill laughter and breathy song
you are itchy bug bites. you are snow in my eyelashes.
you are a lissome angel pregnant, god bless you, with a fetal (fatal?) evil; perhaps my fear begins here, or perhaps it greets me when your aura bites my eyelids...alack!
it must be so. **** orange light suffuses my thin veins. the sun exudes apprehension and abruptly the car is totaled and
this is why you cannot drive me home. even when i have become quite inebriated:
it is not natural for the air to be so warm; only ere our galactic body closes her eyes.
surely you will **** me. you are no creature of the night. run me over; crush me between your toes; let my nectar grow trees in the cracks of this, our, every godforsaken town.

iii. have you seen me?
her neotenous thighs stick, like sap, to the concrete floor, water seeps beneath the cinderblock. dust collects between her fingers in which she clutches, with the brutality of youth, a softened - if garishly colored - carton of apple juice. four-o'clock sun pierces the thick glass window (if one will call it such) and she feels listless; rather than squint she pores over the illumination with intent that, in her unsuspecting naivete, she is not yet aware she holds. before she ***** in enough light to blind her she hears a voice that feels familiar:
come upstairs
soon enough it will be ruefully forgotten
soon enough she will realize she was bagged and thrown in the trunk
too late she will wish to exact her revenge

that's all you are, he said: love addiction.
everything is a drug these days but it's all
pluh-see-boh, haven't you heard?
keep grinding the sugar into the carpet.
keep telling yourself it's not the amphetamines making you jumpy.
all the scabs you're carving out hook themselves onto me and they're
rah-vuh-ness, can't you see i'm getting oh-so-thin?
my skin is healing over the ants.
yesterday i picked them up because i saw them drowning
i was almost distracted by the dandelions, you sneaky *******, because they look just like your freckles dotting the lawn
but they were suffocating under the ice-cream i dropped
it melted and crushed the flowers too. they're swollen and ripe and bowtie boy says it's
feh-cun-duh-tee, can't you give that to me?
i know your hands are starving.
i know you're empty and all you dream is to lick the sweat from my slick thighs
holding my virginal knuckles tight in your callouses
take me back home when you're sober,
roh-mee-oh

here lies, too, his lover still
doting from the daffodils
shrieking, hot and virile; shrill
caressing flesh she's soon to ****

so goes, whence?, the evening train
as she, longing to love again
lust as deep as sugarcane
howl at me between the rain

enter, now, the corpse of faun
carved from wet, unsightly lawn
lithe and nubile as a swan
murky eyes look further on

at last, rise from the netherworld
'round her fearsome finger curled
soul diffused and newly pearl
kissing the form you call a girl

red checkerboards collect dust and fade but brown eyes are steadfast

unravel strings of my soul
static newscasters float through the floor like pennsylvania snow into the soil
it is easy to say your soul will rest there but to do so is to forget.
as surely as coffee came with every meal i can say that a soul with roots so deep and leaves so broad never rests
as wisely as a principal gives his life for a child's i know that such a soul's essence does not dissipate beneath the force of mourning
as purely as minted coins glistened in your young palms i can feel that a soul like yours never ceases to grow.
you have forgotten more than i will ever learn. you have given more than i will live to take.
for now solace comes in a full man's full life
shine on me until we meet again

i have been allergic to silver since the first grade.
should a lock fall to the floor i do not hesitate to seize obediently
she alone hears wind chimes; she alone construed the new york vigor as youth
but there is no youth to be had. not for an inamorata of a perfect stranger whose bountiful flora precedes memory
she has plucked his fruit
she has fed it to the children and the vapor is hot on their breath; they have chewed away the pulp
their smoke fills the chamber with syrup, a lachrymose miasma who ripens her essence so quickly as to expedite her decay
alack, she sees the hazy curtain in her drunken state yet it will not suffice!
forty years she has suffered the slow bleed
voices into lungs
lights into hearts as her alveoli freeze diligently
they welcome the intonations with resolve tantamount to her hands' abstinenence
so she repeats her mantra and the paint is preserved

another incarnation
freedom remains elusive

languid touch oozes from small claws; they do not yet know the wonder of keratin
my body is no temple. it has been harrowed by years of disillusionment
racked by anticipation
oh, the notion of some epagomenal redeemer to lift my vessel from damnation!
tears stream heavy and hot
soul is devoured
what remains is a moon-sliver; a sylphlike cadaver, an effigy of a bone ****** dry of marrow
from the rib came life

water drips steadily into the black sink
there is no warmth here
some breathing relic of a bygone era speaks lively volumes on death;
rigor mortis racks the bodies of intent listeners
there is honey and dirt on his breath
he has been in the apiary
round eyeglasses grow brittle and their lenses blurry, closing the window of his soul to a loving corpse who cannot smell the dirt on his breath
honey and cologne
where has he been?
water drips steadily into the black sink
he touches her arm;
fleeting warmth,
bitter cold,
here again

i am not dumb
i could read before i could walk but i don't remember when i talked, or what i said.
the words always tangle
they tangle in my ears and my mouth and they ooze down through my bones to my lungs
make it hard to breathe and see
i am not dumb
i know your bluey veins and your callous knuckles. i know your eyes are green and i have never seen them, not ever. but i saw your hand twitch, just once, next to you
myoclonic ****
like you're falling asleep

i feel fear as a rule,
it grows in my ****** like a perennial,
baby's breath if you're lucky
i crawl because i feel fear as a rule
i can feel the weight of my blood and
it pulls my viscera to the ground (all the way to my grave)
all my limbs contort and they abandon me.
the smell of cherries and beer draws me to the kitchen and she draws me out and upstairs
it is so strange to me to occupy such space
why have i grown if i am a child?
the smell of cherries and beer draws me to the kitchen
she draws me out, upstairs, kissing, pulling hair, again
again. again. again.
again as a rule

my limbs are cold and purple and i ache for the past;
they will be rosy soon (if it turns out to be raynaud's in the end)
cairo used to be a boom town, she said; it ain't anymore,
if we're talking about the same place
i miss the waiter in kentucky
he couldn't have been more than fifteen
someday he'll buy me a house

pull on my teeth, press my tongue, make me *****

baptism recurs as trauma, angels watch me
seize
i have begun to pray again
i may feel cold but i am so warm
in my throat and bones, i have a fever
by the time my vagus nerve grew up my lungs were so full i found it impossible to scream
give me love without evasion and equivocation.
no one will just speak to me anymore

peril is not what i fear, i fear your death at such a scintilla of contentment
how can i love you for such distorted exaltation, if it is love at all
she has sunned only her heart, a weathered inamorata of gangrenous pallor
timid and stark naked in the swirling moonlight, blood viscous and ripe to drink, she speaks at last:
i cannot be your lover.
in retrospect, the affair was a whim; lithe but so bitter
love is not divine will, but tenacious valor
as i have learned
as anything

have i disrupted your cadence?

i am so dizzy and i must have vertigo
the harem girls tire me out real nice
it's all good and well in the south until someone goes and cuts their hair
please come with me
am i as you wish me to be?
our time is so short and i must be dreaming
give me some tylenol or something
the more i move the less i can
please come with me? please come with me and cuts their hair she said

from what we have heard she is senile
she will smile and the sun will rise.
take her out to pink pasture, do not heed her caveat,
from what we have heard she is senile and
it is all for naught.
the war did her in, she still bathes there,
in the clouds,
in the tepid spring of father's rigorwater
the dewdrops are full of gas, they must have made her this way
(or, retrospectively, the bombs)
the old war did her in
the sun is risen over pink pasture and i can hear her seizure scream
the clear air fills with smoke and the curtain closes.

imagine she is as thin as a doe
glassy eyes like a dead bird
it is not here that you will kiss her,
but here, tomorrow
what is a place but a time?
do not glower at me, my lord,
i have given my soul to you.
it is quiet, even when we make allowances for
pain.
imagine she is as thin as a doe
glassy eyes like a dead bird
skin not pallid, but pallor;
pink veins and lips full to taste your sinew
an embrace allusive of sublime ruptures
sallow eyes and face,
she growls at you, a low tremor

it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. it was a pyrrhic love, it was a herculean love. how the new life will begin i do not know,
but i know it will come from the lovers,
the loverly trees sprung forth at my
birth.
i can't comb out my eyelashes,
i cannot comb these lice out of my eyelashes
i wish i did not have lice
please give me an excuse not to change my sheets
i miss the girl in my bed
i wish i did not have lice
just say something back to me

it is so strange to see a shadow
it is so strange to swim in a pool of chainsaws, and
mirrors
i can't get out, it doesn't hurt but i can't get out
tie me up in a bow
in a beau
is this what we're doing now?
yeah
again

alva, my sleepy girl
you're not pretty
i wish you were.
you're going to die
i wish you didn't have to die but i wrote it.
you'll lose your baby
he'll get beaten but he was a real girl and he felt a real love
a real love, flowers growing, lip gloss dripping
a real love is what i need, a real love is what i need,
a boy like fay who can listen to me sing
boy who is sleepy
likes to bite my lip
id do anything if he asked
but anyway, you're going to die and i thought
to let you know heaven is white, but you see everything, because you see with your heart too
you can see the poppies
you can see fay
im on a kick again, just ignore me, baby

ears pop, boys laugh
you look nice in pink
look nice in my head, in the sky, in
the pool
im a ****** and you know,
you know and we talk about
***. we talk about making
war
which is funny because i still can't walk

look at me,
all day
never blink, thinking about
me
how nice do i look in pink? in your head, in the
pool. in the sky.
im just a kid and you know
you pick me up by my neck and pin me against the wall and i laugh because you don't know that i still do not know how to walk

how beautiful, her eyes, as she walked unto me;
it is not yet the last day of spring.
the orchid screams
so benevolent. so
violent
it is not yet the last
day of spring.
scream for catharsis
scream for closure
sing for sweet release
even when i sleep, it clicks,
singing for sweet orchids. i
am always somewhere nice. i
click, click, click, last day of the
spring

we moved when i was young
maybe it was because of john wayne gacy
he might as well have been my uncle,
he was in the town after so many years
in the town even after we burned his paintings
sky's yellow still, stomach acid from all the boys
so pretty and vibrant after the rain
so pretty and vibrant on the white crosses
nixon thinks so, too, im not alone
he ran a cemetery in the town
wish i were buried there, next to beverly marsh
in the town where i grew up, in the land of flowers blooming for me

500 miles to wichita from here. that's a long way to walk
especially in this hot rain
500 miles means 500 long hours from any kind of love, which means i'll swallow up the whole field before i fill up anyway with sweet sorrow (i move slowly).
some lover who will swing from the trees with me
feed me rock candy and butter cookies, drowning the city fish in the lake
we go to church on sundays now, not just for christmas. my ******* are pink how he likes them and we go swimming whenever we want
not just on sundays
everything is green in kansas, warm and sweeter than molasses.
some lover who is going to sing this to me will meet me in the pasture where we slaughter the pigs and the chickens
making melodies from the police sirens
we can't stand cold water, now
and we can't see in the rain
when we're here in wichita
no longer so far away.