He stands,
cigarette in hand,
golden hair blowing in the wind.

Except it's not blowing because he cut it all off.
If you ask him why he'll tell you he doesn't know;
he just wanted a change.

He'll pick you up when you're
feeling blue and he'll calm you down
when you're feeling red.

With his hands he creates music
and with his mouth he creates laughter.
He is the essence of humanity.

He'll take notice when you do good
and he'll call you out when
you're acting like a ****.

He stands,
Bertran the Man,
atop his white van,
cigarette in hand,
short hair reflecting the sunlight.

He'll tell you he loves you,
only if he means it,
and by God he will make
you feel it.

the funny thing is,
you think i'm still interested.

i don't fall in love with people who leave me
alone,
frigid, frozen
covered in a 9 o'clock night rain
with a piping cup of peppermint tea in my shaking fingers and
nowhere to walk except home.

you only ever touched me once
and that was centuries ago
when my lungs were new and fresh,
and i didn't come home smelling like ashtrays and stolen lilac
perfume.

i'm not a little girl anymore,
and i dont cry when red lights shine down
and people scream into microphones
with sweat sliding of the sides of their faces
cheeks shiny like stainless steel coffee pots.

i'm not attracted to you,
just like i'm not interested in your friend
that i ******
who tasted like american spirits and greed
because it's not worth looking at boys
who will never, ever satisfy you
or understand even the tips
of your fingernails
and golden brown split ends.

you told me once when i was
at the younger side of the ten
years between us that sorrow
was so familiar to you it ran
daily through your (nervous)
system. a tragic blood type,
you said. be grateful that you
are neither donor nor receiver
and your inertia will carry
you through.
  
                               tonight you
sat in the living room and tried
to explain the mystery of who
he is to your father. his first
love died in his arms as a
teenager. he went to military
school, reform school, but he
could never escape his tragic
fate.

         know this now: your
father will not understand. he
will nod and nod but his
tragedies were penned by
sophocles, your own
shakespearean; they belong
to different times. he will not
understand.

                       your father thinks
your blood type is the one
printed on the laminated card
in your wallet. your father finds
the man you love neurotic. your
father is a great man but his
veins are built for fire and steel

and yours are made for sorrow.

why hadn't i thought of this before?
why are children hidden in the floor?
why is our mother missing and
why is carbon four hundred parts per

human? historical doubts, unusual droughts, i thought
i'd never say it but **** canada. **** budweiser, ****
saint valentine and his pagan oppression, bless my blood
for being dark. there is consciousness in the pores of corals,
a strong mind in the **** at the polar regions of this table.

i am not an arctic hare, i am not a vector
for your raging codependence, four meters
into the thermosphere i am not vulnerable to
methane, early snowmelt, or severe wildfires

but you are.

i wrapped myself in twirling circles
inside a redwood tree,
tall, burned and cascading all around
our shaking bodies,
a bundle of sage drifting through
patterns of golden
rain.

naked bodies swam in dark
water that slept under a drifting fog;
Newport filters made for tired fires,
driftwood instead.

emptied packs and emptied stomachs
threw themselves into
a waiting bed of blackberry brambles
scratched skin burned in
2 a.m. drifting shower steam.

now,
i am tired,
because i fed the fire within me
too much
and something is slightly missing,
left along with the charred remains of my
forgotten shirt,
on a riverbed that was once brutal,
but now held bare golden limbs.
it's probably lying somewhere
carefully disguised in
light and blowing leaves on
a dark forest floor,
but i haven't the energy to take it back.

bruised necks never swallow well.

take me to the desert
lie me down on the burning shifting sand
dry my skin into creaking sheets
of golden leather
feed my guts to the wolves
bury my bones with the snakes under the land
where no man will ever touch them again.
stretch me out under the heat
hang my intestines
like party streamers
on the spikes of cacti

i wonder what would grow out of my flesh
if you buried me alive.

i put my fingers in my mouth
salty
honey soap tasting
i can feel the pulse in my upper lip
desperately beating

i can feel my pulse uneven
when i jab my fingers into my neck,
like a dancer slightly falling offbeat,
distracted with the smoke

or maybe that's just my imagination,
my father had arrhythmia,
so did my grandfather.

both of them abused substances
and drank irish ***
and black coffee with sugar,
both of them wrote about things
like "passion" and "sunset",
both of them had troubles with commitment,
uneven smiles
and
bad teeth.
both of them ate too much sugar,
and laughed really loudly,
both of them liked arguing
and letting stories fall from the caves of their mouth,
leading armies with their teeth
their tongue a home for dragons.

it only takes a skip of a beat,
the dancer to fall completely
for me to become
another carbon copy.