i want to work harder than i ever have in my entire life.
i wanna wake up hungry
with the flavour of possibility in my throat
i am exhausted
from all the mediocrity
i am tired
of not trying hard enough
this world is too **** splendid
to let go to waste
i am starved
for the taste of satisfaction
i am not waiting any more.
i am a verb
not punctuation.

he looks at me as if
he's never seen anything quite so wondrous
as if he doesn't know what to do with himself
he tells me my eyes are full of stars           and that my smile is a galaxy
my head is full of comets and i've never met anyone
that my soul already knew
it walked from my body and embraced you as if we had been lovers for a long time
your bright body is a sunrise melting into mine
i can't hold you any more precious than the feel of your skin under my fingertips
or your chest breathing into mine          we are one idea
you are half my soul
already i have stopped missing you because
now that we have looked into our eyes and seen these reflections,
how could you lose your own body? the heavens are in our faces;
the sun and moon may be distant but light
travels so fast that there are no light-years between us;
your luminous skin touching mine
is only ever ten minutes away.

do not dare reach out
and stroke the cheek of that sad face
it is not your head to hold in your lap
anymore.
another's. it is another's
as if you have given it away, it is not yours to repair now
the luminous eyes
the roundness of the heart--
they are not yours. perhaps
they never were, perhaps that time
was a fierce wish aching within your memory
a desire to touch the face, to kiss the eyes that do not see you
do not go into that home
it is not the one that you lived in
anymore.

what if your face is not real
what if those beautiful eyes and lips and cheekbones are something that i made up out of images in magazines
what if you are not beautiful
what if i don't love you
what if you are not real at all

once when i was seventeen i tried to buy cigarettes from the stop-n-save in the middle of the night
because the boy i loved
didn't love me any more
i wanted my mouth to taste like his, toxic, intoxicating
i wanted the stars to cloud out in the curls of smoke
the man behind the counter asked for my ID and i gave it to him and he said
sorry, sweetheart, i can't sell you those
and i said please my birthday is in a week
he looked at me like he knew how it felt and i said
please i'm dying for a smoke
he handed me back my license and said,
i'm sorry
and he really was.

when i think of you:
i feel first. that is all.
thought comes later, after one thousand nine hundred and twenty nine kisses
five cups of tea
the golden late afternoon
suspended around us as we move through space and not time--
i feel you,
as your hand clasps softly around the back of my neck
and my fingers explore the muscles of your back,

i think i knew you before we met. before i looked up at you,
saw your soul was electric through the night, and it was inviting me
to dance--           you are the first time i was hesitant to love, because
you are so precious.
my eyes are full of stars, you tell me; i think
i pulled them out of the sky
just so you could see them.

so here i am, moving forward
grey mornings bring progress
that's what they said
when Leland Stanford was condemning the Chinese
to slavery
for a railroad

i want that one thing
i want to hold it in my hand like the beating wings of a tiny bird,
or the fragility of a baby's trust
to have it, to say; this makes me worthy.

i'm jumping onto the box car
with a knapsack and a sandwich and my hat, hoping
to cross the country
and be okay at the other end.
here i am.