I wear you like pearls,
Dripping down my neck,
Into the curves of my chest,
Rising. Falling.
Beneath the weight of your breath.
I clench and release the air.
Suffocating.
Your fingers in between my lips,
It was a sweltering summer in the sheets.
And we swam in our own ocean,
Tossing about and-
Rolling.
Tides of arms and balled fists,
Crashing together, a furious,
Lustfull storm.
You wore me like perfume,
The aroma of volcanic ash,
And I erupted in your arms.
And no sunlight remained-
Except in your eyes.

And after you left I threw myself to the wind
starting fires you weren't there to put out, down a rabbit hole with your tether around my neck
pulling me back to nothing.
You and your girl drinking tea in the city and laughing,
young urbanites
even in my own dreams,
you're wiping my tears on your toast.
And I really meant that I was gone this time
done for,
crazy,
ripped and pulled.
Until one day I sat down to write
and the words stuck in my mouth came running out like spit and blood and drool and blood and blood and blood
a piece of writing that no one can read
a piece of trash I forgot to throw away.
Oh how everything,
reminds me of you.

The sloppy rain slips and slides down the fogged-up windows,
and this lets me know that I am not as small as I think I am.
In a city of three million plus, I feel like the soul of a nation,
even though I'm just a twenty-one year-old piece of plastic, drinking a hipster beer.

The waitress has frizzy hair and oily skin.
She's holding in late-night infomercials and missed ballet recitals, behind her words.
She looks at my luggage and asks where I came from or where I'm going,
and I tell her that the fun thing is that I have no idea where I'm going --
and that I still haven't decided where I've came from.

This city allows new-found anonymity, and I want that to be my cause.
With each passing glance, I know they don't see me, and, to me, that's the slumber-kissed throat-slit I've always dreamt of...

...the streets play music that I only hear -- and I know that's not fair, but I don't care.

And the homeless represent the bowels of the city.
And the businessmen are the ghost-filled engine.
And the middle class is the defense-mechanism I always wanted for Christmas.
And I am the empty delusion, desperately seeking a new pollution.

“To live is to be slowly born.”*

that day
time reversed its memories
the interior waters were protected
the autumn fruits were quiet
in their sweetness
some joy was scudding by
leaving shy traces on the cheeks of the city

who called you?
not my screams
they were trapped in someone else’s
purposes
fear, indifference, emptiness, hate
were in the middle

you  were a passionate thief of glances
there had been many before
each time blood rushed inwards
you had a secret collection of lost heads

suddenly it started
my right hand started
to strip you of your dreams
my right ear kept the pace
in the colorful space
I didn’t mean to pry
into the tension of your jaw
saying “I am”
(thinking real hard)
into your frowning with your lips
and the intense split growing in the middle
pushing you and yourself apart
the uncertainty of your feet
ready to take off

it is fear
dissolving my presence
my skin stopped recognizing myself
every inch has a voice
I was disarmed
I descended into yourself
and you offered to me
my own mystery

Picasso was watching over our shoulders
to Degas’ ballerinas
hinting at the lack of faith
in your smile
-there are so many spaces
filled with non-sense,
I know-

I turned into a landscape of desire
with perfumed weeds
there was an ocean of eyes
between us
wonderful images rolled over my skin
what was your chest crushing?

to be or not to be engulfed
still a lottery
our preoedipal mothers were pointing
their fingers at the horizon
pain turning into more pain
turning into hate turning
into hope
this heaviness in the middle
their laughter and innuendo
heavy as a tomb stone

that day never came
when you had me
without hello
no theory convinced me
to understand
this centering love I feel
every time your smile
happens to me

dreamers never say
“I’m sorry”
just leave me there
I'll be consumed
one day

Today I wrote a song about your teeth.
They are crooked and imperfect.
Just like this. Our hands. And these
songbirds are all liars. We haven’t learned.
Flesh memory is overrated. Last night
I felt the linen, and it whispered to me
nothing. Not even the shape of you
reminds me of happiness. What is the use
of these metaphors if they can’t
beautify you anymore. No longer as fierce
as the inferno I allowed you to become.
Drowning in bedclothes, trying to understand how streams of consciousness
are becoming bodies of water. Today
I wrote a song about your teeth. And I
read it aloud to the voiceless, and now
they know what love tastes like.

My foggy mouth tries to hide behind rain-smacked glass.
She says goodbye with complacent stares
and with the sudden flash of an umbrella.

The red of her dress doesn't belong in my life.
Each of her strides carry my resentment and weariness,
alongside the melting grey of the Seattle skyline.
So, I don't yell for her or imagine our lives,
as the windshield wipers sweep her image, out of sight, but not out of my head.

I return home, the half I was for decades.
The tread of my shoe mashing bluegrass,
digging up seeds and insect carcass, with every step.
Storm-soaked magazine subscriptions lay on the porch,
and her name is tattooed on every one.

The dog lays on the carpet, ears and eyes perking up at me.
And he knows he's truly alone, because I'll depend on him.

Eggshell kitchen cabinets are jammed with her:
Vermilion, saffron, and burgundy glasses hold
half-empty hangings of golden flat draft,
keeping her day-old, dried saliva smothered on the edges,
like transparent ocean waves dying on a glass coast
and buried in the bottom of the sun-pierced vortex.

What I couldn't realize is that the cup was me:
marked in so many ways,
letting decaying memories burrow and stay.

The fact is
we were a round peg
and a square hole.
I tried to sharpen my corners for you.
I failed.