your hand twists around
the milksoft steel of that long
slender stem
a vinyl blossom shelters
your head from godspit
your features are betrayed
by the watery spears

i know it is you
by the skin, white and pressed artfully against
the bones
the irises-
like a clever bouquet of
knives, glinting in
shattered city twilight

oh come here, draw blood
come here
apparition
trick of the
dampened light

kiss my wet face
with your wet mouth

let your lips slip across
my forehead.

if you come

i won’t say one more
word.

i write about what i know because
ive got nothing better to say
and i try to fit the length of a thought
onto a single page
because i just hate it when
ive got an entire poem or whatever
almost finished,
only a few words left,
and  they just wont fit

and plus who am i to waste
a slip of paper
on a phrase or two
that doesnt make sense alone
and that (who
am i kidding)
no one is going to read anyway?

unless there is someone
out there
that has always wanted to know
about what its like
to watch a person

transform from
water to ice crystals
in a matter of minutes

or how it feels to hate your
father and then weep at the thought
and then hate yourself for weeping

to blindly step with
bare feet
on a baby bird
and feel its naked skull crumble beneath
your heel      

to dance alone, throwing yourself
into frenzied spirals, smashing
against the walls and breaking
apart like a tired old star
to collapse then
letting the light drain from you

letting the               light
drain
from you
and reaching up to touch it with quiet hands...

We walked home along the river, eyes puckered like mouths ******* on secrets,
mouths tight like angry fists.

And my feet grew clumsy under winter's crush
so i held onto his arm to keep from crumpling
as he wordlessly cut through the night, its jagged particles sawing into his ruddy face.

I nattered and moaned as my feet slipped along the glassy path
and we stopped in a convenience store,
wilting a bit beneath its bleached glow
and he bought me chocolate bites to redeem himself for earlier
evils.

Within the place we shared i curled up with the sweets
hot and muddy on my tongue while he fried himself potatoes
quietly and made a few extra for my crawling fingers to steal.

And the cold slowly seeped from me,
i could feel it rushing to the surface of my flesh,
blood dethawing, veins exhaling, skin rising in faithful protest.

He entered the room and I payed no mind.
Our bruisy silence continued until slumber took the reigns.

This is what happened. This summer, across the endless shoulderblade of prairie miles, through the mountains (granite teeth, road the crumbling, ageless tongue) spit out on the other side like seeds, all the way from that little grungy city, carried on the feathers of a bird whose bones were steel and organs vinyl, this summer I dreamt of you.

Nestled in orchards, cheeks as soft and flushed as the apples, lying flat on my back on forest floors, handsome when darkness fell. The trees from that angle looked as if they had tumbled upward, away from their roots, unfurling like hands, spines snapping to attention. Thousands of knotted fingers crawling, thrusting against gravity, reaching for the sun.

Body treasured in musty pocket. Dreamt of you beneath open sky, upon the lips of the ocean, her form vast and sensual. The sand was inviting at first, shallowing to house the contours of my body, growing hard later as my eyes fluttered beneath closed flesh. Unwinding in sleep, body seizing up, slowly. Everything slow.

The photo reminded her of bruised fruit. Well first and foremost:fruit.
Her body, curled around itself, sheltering the fibrous crunchy pit of her, her body white and frayed looking, rounded buttock, calf gently sloping, feet modest, willowy toes toenails like shale
face blurred, questionable dark spots where her eyes could have been. they closed as the shudder buckled, her mouth sagged open, lip lolling to one side, brow ancient furrowed like folds of sand nudged by a lazy tide.  None of it concise, only guessing. Her knees brought up, squeezed against small  
crunch-able chest. Full, heavy with pulp (stringy sweet, what snags on the teeth) but what if it were to fall from an appreciable height? Filmy is the flesh. Daring the looker to look closer, see what mite be hidden there.
Ripe:questionable. Sweet like nothing, pouring from the corners of a mouth: what a bite it would be.
That first bite.
The bruising comes in when she thinks of the brain beneath, that open, limitless figure so pale and forefront and brimming with intent, so crush-able with careless fist, so lovable with thirsty mouth. But what of the mind that put her before you, that turned her vulnerable, shameless, open for discussion?
Put her before you. naked.

there is a hor  i   zon (the spine)
and a sky (the cold azure cape)
resting upon it’s back
there are
black birds
tearing
small, soundless holes
into the blue

this is my version
of nothing,
so call me poison
I dont care.

Riesling and cat. This is Christmas for me. This wine used to tickle me, it is sour,
like the grapes were young, like I was young when I drank it and praised it.  There are always tears around this hour. This time of evening is the time when enough of the day has passed without me doing anything to feel bad about it, and there is enough time left to be unsure. Will I be lonely again tonight? Will I spin in the kitchen, feet slipping on spices spilled (the remnants of some sort of communion)
will I outstretch my hands and let my knuckles crack against the sacred objects-a fridge, countertop, stove,
will I drink all the wine in the cupboard? To that I say yes -my mother would weep at the thought.
Mother, just so you know, I always drink the wine in the cupboard if it is there. But not in a sad way, in the way that (simply put by a heart that I burn for): in a way that makes the gravel against my eyes easier to bare. It is not sad. I repeat. Do not cry mother.
Tonight I will sit in the spot hollowed out for my lonely body, a place con caved especially for my spine-rigid and warm with aching. I will allow the furred creatures to slither across my lap, curl around my neck like vibrating scarves. They have ladylike evil in their eyes, they extend fingers and pronounce their claws and let tongues creep between them and I do the same in my own human way. And without anyone watching we will be beautiful all by ourselves.

Will I write you a poem, one who has blackened before my eyes? Yes, and this is it.
Christmas for me, crackles with time retrieved and run over the reel again, it is stiff with wear and sweat and tears that squeeze from those traditional embraces, dried out, worn out like a dish rag, draped  
over the faucet and forgotten.
When you finally come home, I want to pull on the shoes and slip the coat that has become like a second skin over my back and leave the door wide and gaping open like the mouth of an old man dreaming of new pleasure. I will run then.
And you will watch my small body retreat from this, light pillowing before me giving you the illusion that i have no dimension:only darkness within me you will see, from your place by the doorway.