please lets press our foreheads together and scream until the noise bleaches our hair.
until there is no sound, only little tremors. waves of vibration pouring from our mouths, shattering our fingernails.

lets paint our naked bodies with soot and sit on the kitchen floor, rolling an empty bottle back and forth while we talk about how we will change the world, rust coloured light perched on our shoulders.
we will be ***** and laughing
and then crying
suddenly
as we realize that maybe the world is changing us.
and then lets stand by the open window, fingers playing,
bodies apart, wishing upon the depth of the fissures in the moon
forgetting to feel embarrassed by it all.
maybe you dont even have to tell me
that the moon in fact doesnt have fissures
and if it did, they wouldnt be terribly deep.
because there is brilliance in our unclothed silence
no matter what it may revolve around.

it will be five in the morning
when you finally look over,
your eyes nestled in blackberry purple, and say it is time
for bed.
you’ll sleep before i will
as usual and the room will cool down
and ill grab whatever has been flung across the radiator and pull it over
my head
and retrace our many steps
pause to dance upon the ankles of my own shadow
grinning at the darkness shaking
his fist
turning his back
retreating into oblivion.

i shunned the camera
and he loved it
this was empowerment
i was in control

my shoulders were shelled
with scratchy gauze
that cascaded with wiry
precision over
my body

naked lightbulbs
a constellation of sorts
hung around
heating up slowly
pulling beads of
sweat from my
chest and
beneath my eyes

i fanned out the wings
in all
of their cheap grandeur
and braided endless curves
into the lens

i felt better with the price tags
lying around

his equipment cost

seventeen thousand
dollars

and his work was up
semiperminently
on some very important

walls

it didnt matter what came later
the empty conversation
between me and
the only lover i had ever bothered to
treat well


the jealousy i would feel
of all the
other girls who had
removed clothes
with wit
swaying in their
dragonette eyes
and danced before that
golden lens

peaceful and afraid
much like myself

afraid that their mother’s
would see the photos
or their boyfriends;
and that those sacred eyes
would linger
pining over imperfections
that had never been made
so clear

jealous because I was only one
in a dozen
supple hearts
who had been unwound
like a tick from
my very
own body

and placed
in a corner
to watch
from afar

i became one of those women
who peels away her voice
and leaves it on the top of
the clothing pile

my body is
a temple of light
and sound shrouded in
velvety flesh

this is what
he wants to sell

he likes to make art
but loves to make
money

i bit the
blade
of flattery

and dragged it
across my cheeks

your mother spoke of god
in whispers that threaded your childhood
with this golden sense of safety
that could coax you to do anything
because if you
****** up and
tum
bled
the landing would be soft and padded
with furrows of cloud and
spidersilk angel fingers
brushing the dirt from your forehead,
every time.

now you
find comfort
not in thoughts of
the gnarled brown
fingers of
your heavenly father
grasping your heart tight

but in bloodstained sunsets
observed from wet ground,
feet loving the long grass
beneath you,
ugly birds slicing strips
of the livid sky into ribbons
beyond you,
the nakedness that
will come later
when the night
lumbers forward
like an old, black dog.

these days
you don't think about god
at all

unless you are drunk
and feeling nostalgic

then he falls upon you
like an ocean of canvas,
clings to your bones like
a milky fog,
the sky sinks low,
you feel the truth
raw and wet
in your molecules
and against
your shiny eyes.

your mother would be
so unimpressed
with your snagged
version of
faith.

to this you would argue
that you've got no one
to save,
you awake happy
on most sticky
cherry-eyed mornings
and it's not like
you have forgotten.

you are in the thick of it
and

you still watch the ****
sunset
whenever you can
from a perspiring patch
of warm ground
beneath a
tree that looks exactly
like your
grandfather
and you praise it
with all of
your hardboiled youth
feeling
coddled and breathless
all the while.
feeling  


safe


as you ever have.

caught! caught! caught!
lustrous bodies tampering with light on either
side
my hands suffused on my knees
my eyes closed against them

dreams about drunkeness and
rain on the back of necks
hiding places
and mouths like ribbon convulsing in september
wind.
but no sound
ever.
feverish,
silent existence.

wake up unsure of the
solid
wary of gravity.

the bodies float along
side my own
even more
animated then before
dripping with pulpy colour
overripe and smelling of death
and summer
and backalleyways as tight and hot
as a vein
and hair dipped in seawater.

i keep tricking myself
into thinking
it is about choice
and reality falls away
like a row of convicted
bodies
backed against a wall

and then it is just me
coy, faceless, constricted like a mouse with
fangs in my neck
and them, bleeding
fantasy
all
heart
all
heart
with

teeth.

i am wearing a kimono,
this sheer, garish, floral shred of fabric that wafts about my frame.
the cafe people snip at it with their eyes full of sharp edges.

ive been here all day
the view is terrible,
the music
is like the sound of a snail in seasalt.
little
crackles
of wet flesh hot and retreating, no, burning.
but i am so tired I cant move.
maybe it isn't so bad,
maybe I am just being difficult...
everything,
even the kiss colored leaves that
toss themselves down the boulevard,
seem shrill to me.

all i can
think about
is what you said to me last night

"a pretty face is a loaded gun"
tearing holes into me with your angry eyes.
you know
the line itself is crap,
a splinter in this thigh,
it is snapping, that line, under all the meaning
i gave it  in my drunken storm.

i walk along that line,
as though it is stretched between sky scrapers,
high above like a tightrope.
today all the great buildings that surround, give me perspective on my size,
and they hiss
as great, hollow objects seem to do sometimes.

now that iam awake
i see that it doesn't make sense
when you said it
you were swimming in a gin bath and
playing the poet with a shredded heart
but iam trying to give you credit
and find something other then an image
-image of my body
with a heavy, black barrel protruding from my throat
and a tantalizing trigger, curling like a tongue taunting you
to pull it
and blow your ******* skull apart-
you were just trying to offend me thats what i see.
dont blame this face, you are just angry.

goddamm the music here sounds like nails!
that man over there with the sloppylips looks like he might disintegrate
in worse shape then me I think,
I hope.

anyways i was saying dont blame this face
thats right i say iam beautiful,
you said it first though.
though you only said it, in search of the trigger.

christ,
we all need to get up and go,
this place is like a horse's mouth
lets all get up and walk out together in a thread of gorgeous bodies who just
wont take it anymore. lets go.
forget it. wait
what was i saying?

my gift to you are these few little things
that i have managed to save
like moths who fell asleep in my
care
and
who probably will never wake
preserved in a yellow clothe, folded and placed
in a box beneath my tongue
carefully so as not to disturb the dust on their wings
in case they should
fly again...

(the rustic child’s toy)

morning as blue as the eyes
of god

upon the roof

entrapped in it’s
crisp clutches

love and other
shining, stupid things
teeming below our crunched
bodies

something like euphoria
(or much to much wine)
and

silence finally

watching planes
leave their billowing
impressions on

the flesh
of the sky.

2.(the newspaper clipping)

we sank into the ground
bellow the bridge
and pretended we were
trolls
scaring the
goatlings
that trampled
by

you smelt of oranges
and wood-chips

we
grumbled and smiled
into one another’s
available
skin
to keep

laughter from
penetrating

the web of
fantasy

we were spinning

3.(the photograph)

naked beneath
the togas of wool that
our mothers gave
to us

tears trembling on their
eyelashes

(before
we walked away)

there is now fire dividing the
space between
our salty smiles

neil young-
a tiny voice
tickling the smoky
air
like little fingers
of sound

4.(the letter to yourself)

no contact
aside from

the mingling of
breath
and other
invisible

body things

like the mutual
recognition
of comfort

when was this
but
most
moments
mornings
in
cold that
froze
words
between ear
and mouth, slowing them
like insects,
caterpillars
slugging along
a frosted
branch

imbedding them
in the space
between our cherry
faces.