Funny how we woke up in the morning
and pretended that tomorrow never happened—
strutted naked in mirrors celebrating our youth,
laughing, knowing suns and moons couldn’t do the same.

We borrowed our arms from the fridge
and peddled bicycles with bad breath—
trading war stories ‘cause we knew
if we came back alive
life would still be the death of us.

Poems about women  
Spills of passion  
Flow from anger  
Burst from love  
Gather dust in libraries  
Find homes in back pockets  
Adorn bulletin boards.  

Counting poems  
About women,  for women  
Is endless    
Reams of works  
Billow forth  
From crazed minds of men  
Hourly,  daily, weekly

Small wonder  
This gentle ***  
Incomprehensible,  
Entices, enchants
  
Fill pages with thoughts of her  
Ease all tension, write

I remember when I was young
my dad used to be the last one
at the table, because he served
himself so slowly that the rest
of us were done, by the time
he got there. So I would stay
in my seat and play with my
peas till he finished, so we
could leave together. Now
I am older and he stays up
to watch TV, I have other
things to do, but I have
to say goodnight to him
before I go upstairs
because that is the
only way i know
how to say
I love you

We smile at each other
and I lean back against the wicker couch.
How does it feel to be dead? I say.
You touch my knees with your blue fingers.
And when you open your mouth,
a ball of yellow light falls to the floor
and burns a hole through it.
Don't tell me, I say. I don't want to hear.
Did you ever, you start,
wear a certain kind of dress
and just by accident,
so inconsequential you barely notice it,
your fingers graze that dress
and you hear the sound of a knife cutting paper,
you see it too
and you realize how that image
is simply the extension of another image,
that your own life
is a chain of words
that one day will snap.
Words, you say, young girls in a circle, holding hands,
and beginning to rise heavenward
in their confirmation dresses,
like white helium balloons,
the wreathes of flowers on their heads spinning,
and above all that,
that's where I'm floating,
and that's what it's like
only ten times clearer,
ten times more horrible.
Could anyone alive survive it?

There’s a sick, sad little space
between tea spoons and midnight
where the teeth on your fingertips chatter
and the ink in your forearm prattles on
about which bone you’re going to pull out this time
and how your chapped lips taste like poetry
but your dry eyes can’t bend around the prosody
and it’s in that space that my clothes turned into feathers
and flew away with the *****
the one that pipes out those same four chords
and tempered breath made into rotting elephants on sale
but the bazaar called for more than just pennies
and I don’t think my cough medicine blinks enough
to make this dance hall stop spinning

There once was a boy who felt hollow
The hole inside him grew and swallowed
He filled it with flowers
For hours and hours
But still, deep in pain he would wallow

There once was a boy who felt empty
His troubles he thought no one else'd see
Locked away he'd cry
Til the day that he died
And never saw, next to him there, me

There once was a boy who felt alone
He wore himself right down to the bone
I did all I could
Loved him more than I should
If only, if only he'd known

if we must die,
let it be known that
you're only as great as yesterday lets you.
that the leader of men carries the hope of all men.
that the world is never the final destination of life.
that man is only a photograph of heaven.

if we must die.
let it be known that eternity lives in every face.
that the mind is all but a femur of the unspoken soul.
that you are only a footstep ---
and every footstep must wash so to leave room for other footsteps.

since we must all die,
let it be known that you once stood--

let that be known.

Before guns wore make-up,
We used to put pennies in our socks
So we’d always walk on the root of all evil.

Now Wall Street angels frolic through satellite clouds borrowed
from youths educated by universities of smoke and plastic bags.
                  
(The tears of a child are homage to the waning gods)
For in a day not far away,
Over the painted moon of the Morning Son,
The sun will rise wearing the finest war scars money can buy.

And the screams of humanity will be heard from Venus,
Forgetting that the reciprocal of   L-I-V-E   itself  is     E-V-I-L
And perhaps death is the life meant to be lived.