some days
our hearts are barely ghosts
grabbing at smoke

you are a body in a boat
on the lake with the shadows
of a million birds over your chest
and you are breathing with them all

and the waves want you
like I want you
and we will both kiss the tips
of your dripping fingers
stretching from your crinkled
hand, like all of Tennessee
in your palm.

oh, how full of fog you are.

you are a body in a boat
on the lake with that shore
covered in rocks, unskipped
the plants unpulled,
roots unslipped.

but as your fingers drip
from body to liquid
the discs of ripples
                     spread
to me on that shore
holding my own
               holy head

so little did we know                          (so little did we know)
those ripples were not our own
but instead
the alternating white/blue
of iris and cornea
of skin and vein
of hand and sky                                  (of iris and cornea
that all go away                                    of skin and vein
that all die                                              of hand and sky)

and one day, we will find
(beneath the shadows cast
by temporary leaves)                        (that all go away
our own bones, buried deep              that all die)
under the roots.

                                                         ­       (our own bones, buried deep
                                                            ­      under the roots)

                                                   *and you are breathing with them all

as a child
I wander my young eyes
over hills in the greening
back roads
my love is the sun
how it shone

with the river around me
a breeze through these broken
fence posts,
the water, my home
how it grows, how it grows

like a hope told in silence
the sky is an opening breath
to my hazy goodbyes
and the love I have tucked
in your chest
in your hands
in your eyes.

will you say from the forest
"I kept all your
night cries and hid them in the moss
mixed your heartbeat with bird calls
and named your life a draw"?
or will I still find home
a blue shard in my arm
torn loose like a tooth from
the sand?

I do not know where your hands rest
when you speak.

but your knees are rounded
smoothing river rock and once I stared
at them in a wine-hazed fire,
and I called them beautiful but you
seemed afraid so I stopped that.

you have a perfect nose.

I am skittish in your focus
   , rolled and shaken,
   hazy when you laugh and ask
   for more, I cannot be sure
   that you mean it.
where do your eyes sit when you
ask questions, where do your
ears go to answer?

we talked so long, I think.

you mad ,but you magic
there no lie in your fire
as much as I can, I do mean it.

even if we were only close once,
with that glass tree hidden on
bull street, (you sang into the bottles;
it sounded hopeless and I loved it)
                 even if we were only close when you
                 kicked the candles across the room
                 with all the glass clanging
                 with us laughing our all out, throat roaring
                 even if that was it,
                 I would wake up again on your couch
knowing how your face may look perfect in the
softer morning-haze, with your foot cooling from
the cover, I would drive home in the sun, barely
awake; I would do this all again.

Tonight, we will sink

take 8 deep breaths
place a hand on your head
pray that you never know pain

I hope
(for your sake)
there is never a locomotive
in your pristine living room
or bloodstains on your flawless carpet

I hope
your mirrors never shatter
                  into a thousand
downward kamikazes
glinting with deadly glory

I hope these things
because I know
the dark side of stage-curtains

I have seen the wizard.

and if you can keep up the myth
of bleached-out living
    then maybe someone
             can finally rest in peace

halfway home from
that concrete-bowl arena
teeming (heaving) with
stinky-sweat-soaked rednecks
layered in sawdust and grease

      a messy blackface mob
      spreading spit tobacco
      over their naked bones,
      they sneak around
      through the drafty back hallways
      casually scattering
      dad’s old shotgun shells
      fresh cigarette ash
      mamma’s whiskey labels
      and let-this-be-broken pregnancy tests.

      rusty dogtags clink together
      sliding between camouflaged denim
      mocking quick African rhythms

      circular saws scream over
      the echoing footfalls of
      steel-toed boots padded with
      suspicious glances

and my lonely power lines
are laying lazy across the
sweet, forgiven sky

honeysuckle weep
as they hug the barbed-wire  

the sunset smells something like grace

I am changing
every "I am"
to "we are".

In the shallow hope
that semantics can
save me.

(us)

when the skin of the earth
was not yet old enough to know
the grey light,
she spoke to his corpse
floated on a shipwreck.

her tongue stayed tamed
behind her teeth,
but her hidden hands shook
against the boards
clattering as a broken shutter
in a thunderstorm
when the world was black
and wet and fast.

he fed his best words to
a beluga whale
in the boyish hope
he could sail the beast
over salty horizons,

to mirror the world
in perfect halves

but he drowned
in the blowhole blast
after realizing
they were not enough.

Cadillac Cross

they were held up, two handfuls
of ripe fruit, an offering to the camera flash.

and you seemed only a child, forced
into the skin of a woman, the world
was watching you laugh, but no one would
ever know why.
the private conch you kept
offered for love or lust or heat,
now a deer in the headlights.
now cast out like round die
now handled until grimy
now silent
now hard.

I cannot imagine your
pain, how nothing is safe;
we made a pillar of you, a statue at a temple, rusted roadside attraction,
thousands of rubber bands in a ball, a house of crushed coffee cans,
the longest loudest brightest ball of flame
that side of the red carpet,
and then there was a sound
like a wet rag
falling limp and ****** onto the floor;

how will the decade treat your eyes?
will we find you in the forest
with a cadillac cross on your chest?
or bleeding in a hotel
with your publicists’ card twisted
between clean fingernails?
or scotch taped
with a tapestry backdrop
hostage with cameras wide-opened at your head?

the audience notes the strings of saliva that stretch
blindly from one full lip to the next
like the string of a bow pulled taut
and then lost in wild degradation,
broadcast.

how will the decade treat your eyes?
will there be bags where we do not want them?
packed with sag and soft nights,
will we find you in the forest
with a Cadillac cross
                    on your
                                                    chest?

this is my impossibility:

that I may still smell you
from the crevice of my curve
while the moon laughs at my folly
     that I may still catch your laugh
     through cracks in the pavement

         this is the love of a patient
         who knows not his disease
         only the teething

this
is the difficulty
of breathing alone.

As cavemen with half-yard sticks
smudging soot on open rock
they hunch
over carcasses of donut boxes
(the wax paper skin folded,
use all parts of the animal)
and grunt in chorus.

stocks are down this quarter,
(anger of the Gods)

sacrifice to the sun,
perform the ancient gymnastic of
rain dancing while kissing up

let the blood ink river run
smooth and whole
pray our intake outgrows
our categorized expenses
let there be profit

(the vesper smoke stings
with the haunting of paygrades
and budget cuts)

This is the 21st century.
you can have everything you want
if you work hard enough

you can have Christmas lights
in february
an indie girlfriend,
folk music,
and ***** clutter
in an urban apartment.

you can have cookies
whenever you want

but still,
you’ll want to blow up parking garages
sometimes.

she was called forth
from the rain, sing-screaming through
the lonesome pines, scattering needles
like a ****** angel; stomping
the dust into mud.

festivals strung on her wrists, the
flags shouting louder through leaves
than even that hung-up sun could muster.
rocks rambled up her spine, feet
calloused from dancing, she shrugged,
suspended above the moss.

                                                          ­the fire was never so bright.
would the black streets in a
harsh, dead city be deeper or
stronger than this?, can the skyscrapers
cut open clouds with their teeth
like she gnashed through God's hair
and tangled the sound of her blood
with the river?
                                                         even her chin was a boulder;
                                                        ­ her knees flat skipping stones.

she wore soft bark and orange.
(aspens on hillsides with sunsets,
roots blending with bones and vein
                                                and skin)
her hair spread out as a tree underwater,
or braided tight into vines.

a cup in each hand,
a sword in her mouth,
a wand on her waist,
pentacles on every inch,
forever breathing with the skin
of the earth.

and when she had left:
the missions departed, coals are black
in the cold city, skies scraped and scabbing.
burnt with the deep of a flame-led
memory.

the shallow graves upturned and cried out
into the rain,
*where has the base of my stream
flown from, if not the sharp
scent of her skin?
what shadow have I carried if not
an absence tied under my feet to
only  be free in the morning
with her hair in my mouth?

where does the river flow
from here?

I have been told since I
learned to read
that holding someone close
says I love you with my
heart inside my body inside my head.

she said "fall in love with someone
who's comfortable with your silence."
and still,
          I only find you in the dark
           crushing my toe on your frame
           the scratched black nail in the morning
           shines like the love I gave was too
                     loud and bright, so blinding

that you sank behind the sun
as I played "She loves me,
She loves me Gordian not"
with the sword rays.
splayed across my tongue.

the razor-blade foreplay
was violent enough to carnage
your room to a crime scene wrapped
yellow tape package CAUTION
you yelled with the nothing CAUTION
do not cross do not cross do not cross
                 you fake messiah
                 you save yourself savior complex
                 of a narcissist, drowned in his own pool
                              of backlogged traffic jam verbage
living with a rearview mirror in every room
especially our bed.

           I find myself
with arms wrapped too tight
around a precious thing,
screaming until the spit sling blade
found every secret place inside your ear
and carved it to echo the only word
                 I have ever really known

ME
ME
ME
ME
ME
ME
MYSELF AND EVERYTHING INSIDE ME

living with a rearview mirror in every room
especially the ones you're in.
especially when you are too quiet
to be anything but a noisemaker
in my cavern of a head
filled with my own claps
singing my own song
playing by my own rules
until everything I knew of you was
dust and shivers in the mist.

I met a woman
with a trumpet tongue
who played her words on
paper, white as truces.
she told me through my stereo
"we've both had days
where the phoenix didn't rise".

we' have all had days
where the phoenix did not rise.
but thank goodness
my birthday was the first time
I heard your lips part
and saw your teeth spill oceans
of blue blankets across my jellyfish eyes.

I wish everyone understood the irony
of writing love poems to a lesbian,
but my hands never seemed to reach
the ends of my arms
like I want them to.

They always get stuck dancing somewhere
in the middle.
playing a tune only they can sway to
knowing all the steps
bouncing off every syllable
while others let their wrists go limp
as if the puppeteers needed strings
to tune their fiddle
for a happy song
somewhere far far away.

so take my breath again
keep it wherever it is that you keep
the gasps our ears give you
as your words pull the
heartstrings we forgot we had
that we forgot how to play
to wave our wet-noodle fingers and
conduct a life worth living
so full of blatant love
not afraid to make no sense
my chest was an rusty locket
the day before I heard you
and now I am so full of echoes
from it's tiny, timid click.

For Andrea,
you are a sketchbook muse,
something I have to guess at on my
worst days when there are no words
and the rain smells like a swan song
from the sky.

you kept me writing when there
was nothing left to draw
or sing or smell or see anymore.
when there was black smog
between my eardrums pounding out
the dying breath of clouds
you held me through tinny earbuds
and poems I etched in the moss
running over back roads in my mind

so I hope
you find peace
every time you find a microphone
and that someday, I'll play you a tune
which echoes through you,
with a tiny, timid
click
and a full breath
that resuscitates the open blue
until we are both whole beneath it
until, again, we are true.

i was living life on my knees when
I met JB, he was a song with a body part
in the title, a guardian, a saint, maybe a one-time
guitarist for Kiss.

(The last man to see Jesus, as far
as I am aware of, was the apostle John.
sometimes in his sleep he still whispered
“please don’t bury me, please
don’t bury me, please”.)

but JB had bowed to Baal, had kissed him,
bought a 20 dollar nosebleed from
a man with seven stars in his right hand,
a sharp thing in his mouth.
JB was not an apostle,
but he knew the knees of my heart,
gave his knees to the needy,
shoved soldiers, stared.

we spat in our gloves.
he said I have a swordfish mind,
but I have left 7,000 in Israel,
loved the oh of his mouth as the
stone rolled away, I have
met Jesus, face-to-face.
please don’t bury me.

these were the Great Days,
the First Aid: a myth that cost lives
taped us tight, and when he told me
that 150,000 people die in Britain every day
I said “instead, tilt your head forward,
pinch your nostrils shut and breathe with
your mouth; a half-sitting position with
your knees bent and head and shoulders.”

he did as I said and, later, John
put his **** in my mouth.

Reactive arthritis
affects the large joints, the knees,
causes pain, swelling,
an ectopic tongue on the floor
of the mouth.

I promise you,
this chest cracks
from the force of my gasp
scrabbling every ounce of
frigid mist I can
warming it with time,
face turned black from pressure.

wait for the release, darling.

it may not thaw
the distance between poles
but I can whistle something sweet
just like you taught me
when the summer was a running river
and our hearts
were not these
frostbitten bird wings
strung out across the dunes

I burnt my harmonica
in the coals you left me
it could not play the blues

we are grey
with nothing between the static
a monochromatic flicker
on long-dead television sets
shattered-glass hope breath
sputtered out in the slip-shape of smoke

my wrists are broken
from digging you out of yourself
so

let’s take a minute to mourn.

let’s see if I can hold the soft silence
on my sharpened shoulders
and keep it from breaking

bring out your paints.
show me how the only thing I couldn't see
was your brushstroke
your choke-face
your pathways
your patched-up heart strings
those holy rolling white things,

I would give my backbone
for another look at your insides.

two summers ago,
I found myself under a cabbage leaf
curled beneath the sun.
circled in slumber,
like there was never an end to anything.
then, I grew wings
and left my warmth for speed
sacrificing my calm breeze for cold storms
and windy nights.

on my flight home,
I sit through red lights and
look for tear tracks on the
faces of strangers
kissing their cheeks with my eyes
and pretending I can see the salt.
because there is hope left in
loss, my friends.
sometimes, you just have to let
the best things fall.

(how do you think storks still fly?)

so, I spend rush hour
untying the cloth diapers from my ankles
and when the highway pulls
my hills away from me,
I send them flying out the window
like dead birds
knowing
I will never see the seeds
fertilized through their bones
praying God thinks this
is a gesture of my good will.

let us all pray that God notices
our empty hands when we give up
the deepest now for an uncertain future.

Personally, I am praying for a cardboard-box
collection of home movies documenting
the growth of all the people I left,
of all the places thrown behind me
like stale cigarette smoke,
the homes I have broken with
my ever moving feet, my restless
guilty wings.

I will project the shaky film
all over my internals until my
gut is soaked with light
and the last shocked thought
of my quickly fading mind
will be of the things I could have seen,
the memories I would have made
if I had not gone away so much.

If I had just stayed.

but the wind is a vicious thing,
especially the updrafts
especially the hot breath under wings
which gradually convinced me
that my home was a cold dead thing
that there was no life left in my town
that the only world worth seeing was
far far away.

I have burned the eyes
of bluegrass Beethovens dying
slowly on a stage just to prove
that I never needed a quiet place.
that I was above all the country songs
and overalls and camouflage,
but we all need to hide sometimes.
even from ourselves.

make a face in the shape
of someone you love to hate,
take away all your mirrors,
there is nothing they show that will help you.

open up.
that heart is more a key
than a gavel, our heads
are so full of locks.

show them your broken fingers.
how you cry when there are
friends in the next room,
sing if the dance music mocks you.  

I hope you are happy
when I breathe,
and even after.

there is a straightjacket noose man
                   gauzed inside my chest.
breathing with inside fever and moving
around the edges with a mumble and
a shuffle he crowds the walls
                      with blue light.

the tapes fuzz and hiss when
his hands raise up to the glass
           the security operator is crying
            into his wrinkled shirt collar
and the wind whips itself
to a frenzy, the tapes fuzz and hiss
when his mouth opens up and
crawls a gasp straight to
the shout the shout rises like
sharp pockets of steam

            and the director is shaking so hard
            the pens on his desk chorus like
a thin drum choir, the desk is too hot
to touch, the noose man slips
      to strands then to particle
           then to simple sugars and
                                    energy like light
right through the floor and the ceiling
                                     and we are live
so live.

the glass once slow flowing moves faster
and sand is everywhere and
his eyes snap and chip into the
locks and the tape.
           he rages in the deep the
           lightbulb left, in the dark desert,
                                            the red dust.

he lights like sparks and rises again
       until my every muscle trembles
and the mothers chatter and my
teeth chatter and the director shakes
and the neurons shake and operate
                                  like telegraphs.

(outside, I am a clenched fist.
a tired pillow,
the shadow under an open hand
and a closed eye.)

inside there is a crack and a moment
of confusion so brief as the smoke
clears and the neck has broken
on the noose man,
cut open by the speed of
       his own sharp snaps.

imagine, as I do,
the clutch of tensed pale fingers
on stain-spotted porcelain

tendons stretch like telephone wires  
under perfect, loving skin.

her slop spills over loose lips,
drains itself through antique piping systems,
leaves her skull a musty cave,
slowly panting for revival flames.

                                    he stretches.

the fingertip connects to the handbone
connects to the wrist
connects to the arm/chest/neck/face
         each surveyed in turn, slowly,
         the irises staggering over cloth and hair.

  *his smile is a sunrise through fog,
   the song of angels into a bathroom wall,
   heartbreak from a distance.

there was no night,
only daybreak over two bodies
locked in a mobius strip.
                     one twist of mind, a sleight of fate

and they lay disheveled.

                    *quiet, the breeze
                     snakes through curtain
                    
                     exit stage left.

We find our heroes
         (as is so common)
         in the throes of agony.

         pacing.

Describe a room
any room
fill it with *****, let it
leak brown and bitter
from the open windows.

       *don't mind the curtains

set your face in the upper left corner
pan across to them, naked and fuming
zoom.
straight to her powerful collarbones
       (stay above the *******,
         just a hint of cleavage)
his wrinkled jawline,
the quarter-inch neck stubble.

keep the shoulders in frame
how they tense, how they painfully
shrug and anticipate the next
verbal battalion.

watch their hands wave away
the demons of past nights        (read: last night)
give us the soft stomp of bare feet
on beaten carpet                        keep the stains.

their teeth reach out from
under the cover of wet pinkness.
take a second (slow-motion)
to appreciate the strands
of abandoned spit reaching from
one lip to the next
like suspension bridges.

the sounds are invisible,
but the pain is not

       *and the bruises
        won't be either

my bed is a crypt without you
my nights are filling with cold
these bones are nothing but hollow tubes
that hold your name
and if I broke all over again,
my body would bleed out
the letters we forgot to send, so

don’t hold me like a dead thing

you can burn your silence,
and I’ll choke on the smoke.

the body falls soft
curves collapsing on the edge of
bedspread tangled in cliched prison
escape ropes
tied loose like old tendon,
we are all but used.

I feel the force of Fibonacci
spiraling between ribs
and pelvis, golden ratios
divining skin,
1 to 1.616

I’ve spent thousands of
smiling hours
cupping the soft pit
of intellect in my hands
preening with its glow,
casting the shadow of lecture
on my greedy eyes.

when my feet sank
beneath her earthly soil
weeks slipped quiet
(like notes shaken from leather spines)
with no discussion of Plato.

the hardened sphere was
drained of all prestige
footnote and reference.

sometimes, before sleep,
I sharpen my doubts
and carve it out.

it sleeps by me,
a guilty golden mistress.
I am afraid
she will hear the warmth
through my phone.

they ask what
    little sisters should
        why the water is blue when deep
        how the stones skip uncaring
    on the surface

    on the surface
  we are tied through bloodline
vein to vein, spine to spine
retched to form through
a single woman in 45 hours
    of neonatal grace
        echoing anything but silence

         they are a quiet pair of scissors.
            mirrors, in perfect function
          balanced from present lifetimes
        of subtle practice
      shimmering in sequence
   one glammer, one smitten
echoes of anything but silence

I am that third thing
the cog on wings
mildly pressed between two
perfectly pounding structures
smiling in the buffer
I am drafting,
a stick on the ripple.

they packed a patchy satchel
with enough snacks
to feed a child army
of two,
trekked though
green-blue forest
spackled with firefly flecks
and second hand moss.

came to a resting spot
on the shores of Mirror Lake
the one place
picnic tables were not

and they ate

in the jagged reflection
of solemn pine trees
he mumbled 12 years of secrets
through a confession booth
of nougat
spat out the seeds
winced at black jelly beans
and she
rested on his knobby knees
sighing with the breeze
face upturned to catch
downward droplets of moonbeam

he was a half-formed pinecone
dangling in the quiet dark
she was some kind of meadow lark
whistling the dawn

no one forgot love after that
no one could remember
what lonely tasted like
anymore.

as you walked away, in time
with the settling flakes
your shadow grew small enough to fit
inside a snow-globe,
and so he kept you there
in his display case.

he wore your absence on his face
vacant like a handwritten abcess,
when he shook his head, there were
parts of you that settled behind his eyes
and he looked like a blind man,
lost in his own house.
there was fear tucked into his lips.

what didn’t turn white turned red
what didn’t bleed, break or bruise
gave up on the universe entirely
and dissolved into molecule,
he was nothing without you.
his mouth was an empty room.

he shut us out like a shadow
the light was kept away
and on the last day
that we still knew him,
we found icicles under his bed,
the showerhead frosted shut,
his room smelled like shivers
and dust.
every inch of his heart was silent
every song on his skin was burnt

we buried him in the sun
it was the only thing we had left
to give.

shivered in a thin sober jacket
I wonder why you are not here
again, the sleep alone, the Sisyphus sun.

      every night my closet is dark.
I am filled with the fear of knowing
                  the light again.
of your firecracker heart, your soul
outside you, not afraid to say it.

                say it (again), tell me.
                do you know your own fingers?
                can you speak for the dance they
                took on my shoulder at night
                with nobody watching, can you hide that
                spark flown through my skin?

                        (I am alive with the light of it.
                                     the fear is a valley.
                                     the fear is a wet rock in my throat
                                     the fear is a little death.

I slept in your smile,
there was the hard tap of your fingers
          that could have been my fingers
           that could have set me all free,
           pressing the fear until it hides deep
           between cells of sparked skin,
           lit from an argument of hidden beauties,
           unknowns, you drew the X
           out but did not feel it;
you kept the beauty hidden and you did not feel it.

          so again I am filled with the fear of
          holding the light ignited in my palm,
          casting shadows out like uncertain nets.

                   how full of orange flame you are
                    and green and blue of afternoon sky;
                    a swirled breath kept tight in the center
                    of a pond, a sharp shock, trembling hands
                    leaf-bent on a branch

            the hand hikes over you, a
            quick brush of a lark in the dark bush,
            calling for seeds to bloom, for the
            spring to slip on the branches
            and fall to the ground, slow and
            smooth and emptied pollen;

my hand hikes
over the hill of a shoulder,
the valleys.
and I sing with the pain
of it.

              of the orange of the fire on the
              purple night cloud, lightning
              in an empty field
              the red dust on the palm of  an
              upturned arm, waiting for rain.

                                      I sing with the pain of a
                                      spectator, shivered through
                                      thin sober jacket.

*every night my closet is dark.)

let me forget you.

take me to the drowned forest
where water gurgles from
descicated root-lungs,
preserving limpness in form.
where I can feel at home
dangling, the shadowed bats
swerve in overcast light.

here, I am caught
pretending that the ground
rushes towards me,
and peace is in my lungs.

fleeting, as the earth to
rising sparrows,
life stretches beyond
swinging feet. in a breath,
it shrinks
to mere marbles in
a childhood pocket,
drips from faucets on
upturned faces, squinting
through joy and soap.

life rolls over sidewalks,
around first steps, grating
on scratching pavement.
we've had our scars
more often than skinned knees

like  piano wire, life
ties tune and blood through throat
it muzzles and goads
hyena, perched vultures cackling
life crams with cracking and
static in hope, panic.

it slips,
on the outbreath
as the earth to rising sparrows.
so we all go-quiet.

only marbles, only scars.

I could run away to you, world.
drink in your every scent, the dust
the hurt.

backpedal through Venetian streets,
high-five Buddhist monks,
paddle softly through the Dead Sea,
eat Vietnamese fish with blind children,
pound out piles of dough in back-alley German bakeries,
kiss the single root of an aspen tree
and post it all online.

grinning like a devil, silently screaming
*my life is better than yours
my life is better than yours

through the grating hum
of forever closing locker lids
they sing textbook hallelujahs

we are the quiet ones
stalking hallways
like burnt words under
shuddered breath
our skin is calloused
to rip your shallow daggers
and teach you painless peace

so when you sleep
imagine we are drifting
about your eyelids
a breath away
from bruised

this cup of tea
is dedicated to her butterfly wrists
opened chrysalises
3 hours before the dawn
would have found her
spread-winged, imitating lotus.

there is a hole in my tongue
where the roots go
and I am left here
with sycamore leaves between
my pebble teeth,
praying for rain.

he found the goddess
like so many do
in a desperate fall through foundation,
clutching to the bleak rim,
praying for context.

his last moment of wholeness
was spent with an upturned face
basking in the backlit rays
of her promise

        time passes
         in a rushed imitation of
         magic tricks and carnival rides

when candlelight flew
from velvetine fingers
he hid from her shadow
humbled and yoked

the neon grin of morning
found him
clutching her breath
      tucked inside the hollows
          sunken through every step
          there was nothing left
          of his body

but two glass eyes
caught forever staring
into her waxen smile

that never thought to melt
that only broke with smoke

      *tell your children:

      hope is a scar
      the fault, mistake
      obsession with beauty
      will roll you in ash
      (a ghost of his telling)
       and empty you’ll wake

when in doubt-i-hyphentate.

this-also prevents Microsoft-word
from capitializing my i-‘s when i-want them
to stay bite-sized humble pie,
but it still capitalizes
itself)

Microsoft word
               big ‘m’ added by bill gates

misspelling it prevents this

micropoft word*
* i-am the best kind of rebel

i-refuse to be told how to write by anyone
gate-related or otherwise,
even if i-may occasionally **** myself
on paper, the rain will take it all off,
we shall all be healed.
we *will all be healed.

carried away from the squaggly
green/red/blue lines of a processor
which doesn”t understand: poerty so often is
sentence fragments and uncapitalized i-s
untied shoelaces in a dark boling alley,
my bad breath and watered down alcohol,
stains and the hours spent rubbing them,
sounds on a dead tv set, rubbing carpet in
your aunt’s living room,

i-can spell
things how
i-want to
poerty is fun
like this;

Love,
stop filling the backs of
my eyes with your pressures
rubbing tiny orbs with
backlit diamond roughings,
your face is the roof of
an opened shrine.
      cut me with your writ
      slide the s through every word
      until the tips of your arms
      are dragging the grounds with
      a weight of water-colored birds.

I wished you a thorough
processing into particle,
small and simple to dismiss,
if only to save the last
dusting breath that kept us both
unshaken.