In the Deep South
There is always a woman
In an apron calling out to her kids
Warning them to hurry in
Or the corn bread might get cold
The kids couldn’t care either way
And at their age
Food doesn’t taste as good as
The marshes feel around their ankles

They’re just young enough to be nourished
Off of adventure alone
With sticks in hand
Grazing the tops of half-way grown
Up to their heads wheat

In the Deep South the outside
Is still the Wild West
Where you can walk a few blocks
From your front yard
To deserted boulevards
You can’t but a greeting card
From.
And among all the untamed
Nature and desolate fields and lakes
There is so much space
For kids to create

In the Deep South
Kids see broken down Chevys
As breeched kingdoms
Open fields as battle grounds
Littered with rocks that look like grenades
Every vacant marsh a ****** planet
Where you use overall clasps
As radios to your fellow astronauts.

Why would anyone be in a rush
To come home
To something so real
As Mama’s cornbread.

The time will surely come any day now
When I walk up to the front door
When I arrive I’ll knock feverishly, almost impatient
And from the inside I’ll hear it; I’ll turn the **** and open the door
I’ll greet myself and we’ll smile at the recollection of ourselves
We’ll sit down at the dinner table
And talk candidly of memories we share
We’ll eat and drink, I’ll pour another glass of wine
After I’ve politely asked for more, and added “this is delicious”
I’ll excuse myself early and I’ll understand as I give a kiss goodbye
Then I’ll shut the door slowly with a wave between the crack
I’ll wave back and backs against each other we’ll
Walk back to our separate lives lived in separate times
Knowing that surely the time will come again when our stranger past
Will knock at our door to recollect our shared collections of time.

There once was a girl who now no longer exists
In a city that no longer exist, with a name
That no one in existence can pronounce
And that only inexistence can imagine.
She lay in a bed that also no longer exists
Playing a game, that only existed in nonexistence,
With a boy whose existence is, again, no longer real.
The one rule of this game that has long been lost in existence
If it ever really existed at all, the one rule of this bed game was and is,
The bed is the only thing that exists at all.
The boy and the girl who both no longer exist they,
Drew a line around the bed, rendering it their only plane of existence
Neither a toe nor a finger could touch the floor as they were sure
That that was too close to earth to not nonexistence
And touching this floor, this divider between existing and not,
Was not the point in their coexistence in their nonexistence
You see this game was not for those who exist
Because they did not exist. Not in this house,
On this street, in this city, all of which are no longer in existence.
But they exist to one another in their bed of inexistence
But to no one that now exists at all.
Centuries of existence will be worth this kind of inexistence.

meet someone you want to write poems about
and instead sit at your computer for hours
taunting yourself with their voice?
feeling it warm the back of your head as their
words flows through your ears?
even now I can taste them sweet
as they drip down into my mouth.

I dreamt that I wrote to you last night. I woke up with paper cuts in between my fingers, lemon juice that stained my bed a ****-yellow color, ink embedded underneath my fingernails,  and every time I reached down to scratch my ***** I left a shameful line of old black ink. I think I’d have mailed it to her if I knew that when she read it she would scream with a horrid realization. A realization of finally understanding the monster she use to sleep next to, before the **** sheets before the ink stained boxers. I’d have mailed it to her if it wasn't just in my dreams. I imagine that the lines in my letter were laced with layers of lucid logic that stringed together feelings that con-caved in on themselves. That ate themselves whole;  but instead of making them disappear entirely they grew twice their size and spilled over the pages and underneath my nails. The diction I imagine I would have chosen to write with would be read with a southern twang.  Slow and drawn out. She would have to read it with extra syllables that her tiny lungs could not possibly hold. It would make her choke, for the first time, on words that weren't her own. My words would finally fulfill the dreams of my hands; constantly wanting to ring around her neck like I was seven again on the playground and her name was Rosie. I wouldn't have rhymed in my subconscious, to me that always seems fake and I can’t really rhyme without having my voice break. I might, however; use from time to time red bold words laying in the middle of long paragraphs in hopes she would remember her red dress. Of how, before bed, it grazed over her slopping neck and slid off onto my floor. In my dream it’s still on my floor. I hope in my letter that I wrote out a picture of her seeing me seeing her put it on in front of our window the next morning and even though that dress was too short for autumn and she would wear it anyway. Because she knew it drove me crazy and because she wanted to remember me even after she walked out my front door. Mornings like that I begged her stay even if we had just fought over how much she snores, even if I had called her a **** one too many times the drunken night before. My letter, I think, would tell her that I wish she didn't have to bundle up and leave that she could instead cut up my bed sheets and make herself a new warmer dress. One that would have matched my pillow too perfectly for her to not lay her head on it and call it a hat. For her to pretend that my bed was the world outside the door. My letter would go like that. It would make her scream at first then make her remember that monsters can love too and knowing that; she would punch her new mattress and tear up her new pillows ones that I have never touched. She would scream, "*******!" preceding my name every time she landed a blow. She would say that so many times that she could never look at her new bed again without thinking of me, and of ****. When I dreamt last night I dreamt I wrote you a letter, but dreams don’t have hands that can hold pens. So I instead sent you my bed sheets, my boxers, I signed them with lemon juice and old black ink. Wear them, sleep with them, read them for what they are worth or toss them out because monsters with words like mine give you nightmares.

I promise to keep writing
About all of this
To document all of our stories
And read them over and over again
Until the stories
Become less like tall tales
And more like memories
Each repetition making them truer and truer
Making them feel like they happened
Like they were real but only like
In the way that a dream is real
And only because you’ve dreamt the same dream
So many times and only ever to yourself

I hope your love for me is like  
Early morning coffee.
And I am your favorite mug
When you take me out of the cabinet
Pour into me your energy and motivation
All the things that make you smile when you are tired
Will you set me down gently then
Wait for me to cool off
And kiss me slowly with a smile
Sipping the sleep out of your eyes
Walk me around your house
Careful with the handle.
Looking down at the floor
Make sure all that’s burning up inside me
Stays below the surface and
Doesn’t jump out to burn your toes
You wouldn’t care if it did though
You just wouldn’t want parts of me
That you love so much to be wasted outside
Your favorite mug.

Often I feel all I really am is a pile of embers
Pieces of burn paper collected
And swept into a pile
Awaiting the shovel
Awaiting the trashcan
But I was once a flame
I held the afterglow of something powerful
Something that only man has ever touched
A promethean myth of promise so
Potent its future begs to be clutched
And as much
As I could love to be that flame again
My role as the after math is just as important
The pile of rumble that before a bomb was a building
Can be seen as material for something new
And the lot of something as raw as me
Can stand for hope, rebuilding for remaking
Things only exist from piles of ember and of rumble
And from me I can build an army
My fortune has not yet been set
My goals have certainly not yet been met
But I show promise
Now please tell me how will you make me?

A eulogy to the somebody
I claim to have used to know
It is scribbled on paper
Napkin
Receipt
Whatever
Behind my wood rotten desk
Under frost kissed drink rings and
And like all the other letters before it
Creased and folded into shoe boxes on top shelves
They all begin the same
And that part I have memorized
As I count the licks
Against the roof of my mouth
The slides of my tongue just beyond
The edge of my teeth
The drop of my head
I match with the dip of my voice
When I say, “A terrible loss”
But the words I have now bent
And smudged across one another
In the palm of my fist-formed hand
Have bled through their paper
And like no eulogy before I have
Nothing to say.
My head hung over what I know realize
Is just some body
That held somebody I used to know.

The apple tree is far too honest with its harvest
Whereas a lime tree relies more on faith
A droll kind of tree
One full of doubt
She examined the fruit
Some were ripe and some were rotten
She felt nervous with the truth
It was hard to tell which from which
Without plucking that lime from a switch.

The first time I saw her, her body looked like an exit wound, not physically and now sometime later in my memory I think it was maybe the way she said certain words. Words like “hollow” and “soundless” the combination of these two words strung together with other smaller and slightly weaker ones in between made me think of a match hitting gasoline or of a bullet being loaded into a gun.

Tress grow slower than we do, she says,
They gestate longer in the soil than we do in our mothers
True, we were both at one time seeds, she says,
But trees grew out, while we grew up
By the time we learned to walk
A tree will have only fastened its branches
It will have rooted its self in a home
That, like us, was not self-elected but while
We are constantly trying to walk from our home
A tree is rooting itself in theirs.
We grow up and walk around our parent’s house
Then our neighborhood, our city, our country, our world
Glimpsing only meager morsels of other beings homes
It’s difficult to pinpoint our own, to know it wholly
But a tree, she says, a tree never walks from its home
And through this it knows it so absolutely, so entirely.
A tree grows slowly, gazing at its environment for years
Far past when our timeline has expired
It watches as its atmosphere changes, even in the slightest
It still grows higher and higher at a pace that allows
It to view every intimate detail of the world it resides in
Never failing to notice every leaf, twig, branch
We don't know our homes like that and
It’s a shame, she says,
That we grow a lot faster than trees do,
Perhaps this is why we get home-sick.

To my father time,
my keeper of clocks whose minute hand
never clicks too fast for my growing mind,
whose hand was always held out to help me over curbs
and over mountains
Leading me to the path he’d knew I needed to walk down the most.
To the gray hair I loved to brush through as a child, with paintbrush fingers
and as an adult discreetly smell with each long, over due hug.
To the man I loved first and the one I give thanks for
every last thanksgiving.
The one whose eyes held the same color as mine
and when I looked into them saw I us both
picking flowers down the street
but father time
your eyes were always slightly different than mine
they had a touch of yellow that I could never,  in my own eyes find
but how I wanted that same hue of gold.
To be touched by your Midas eyes I thought I could uncover the world
but I can’t. You are too far away and I miss you
and I can no longer feel the warmth of those yellow specks
only the black of your pupils that are
deeper than the ocean and I am a fish without gills forever trying
to swim toward the orange light the sun yields each morning
only to be stuck in mud  
forever waiting  for your glowing second hand to touch me again each hour
and remind me to look for gold in blackness
and that I have the same eyes as yours, that can turn minute hands into
years of arms and mud into gold.

Isn’t it strange how we as humans choose our favorite things based off of their ability to **** us? For some its cigarettes, others choose *****. Mine, my self-appointed executioner is a woman, a girl really. Her face is not beautiful it is fragile, nor is her body it is frail. She looks almost dead to me, freshly buried; hair thin and untouched; skin just now starting to fall off her bones kind of dead. I would think she was but for her eyes. Perhaps they are too close together and perhaps a little too big for her face but either way they echo the most wonderful hue of vein-blue. They are beautiful. They ruin me. They make me want to start a militia. Run down the street naked. Proclaim my love for blood. Open up my veins that on the surface promise one color but spill a completely different one. She makes me hate my body. Makes me realize its trickery, that it would promise me her eyes in my bloodstream but when I cut myself open to see them, to touch them I am left with nothing but me. My body, blood red when my favorite color has always been her eyes.

The mathematical measurement of emotions
Is based off how fast they run
Set all up at the same level white line
Each toeing the chalky powder on cement
All at once taking off at the sound of a gun
Each running-panting in a race whose finish line
Always wraps around to the start again
In an arena where bullets don’t run out
And the chalk is always fresh
Where the winner and loser always play the same role
As math and measures are stagnant
Offering no hope for healing or progress  
The fast step that tears make
Forever beating out the long strides that hurt takes.

Feminism is not a bad word
It is more than four words
If you are a woman if you are a man
If you believe that gender equality
Is important, if you stand by your mother
When she shouts, “I am equal!”
Then you are a feminist.
And I’m tired, I’m tired and I’m frustrated
That the patriarchal society we live in
Would rather demonize equality
Rather than let it stand tall as the statue
It deserves to be.
All it means
Is you believe that women and men are equal
That they deserve to be treated both fairly and just
And I trust-
That the only image of a feminist in your mind
Is one that hates men, that burns bras, that simply get in the way.
And sure there might be a few of those, yes
But I would like to ask you
Since when did one represent the whole?
Since when were all white Christian men
Devalued, dehumanized because of Jeffery Dahmer?
If I were to follow your logic
If we were all to follow your logic
We’d have to lock up every single one of you
All because a few of your fellow men
Perverted an ideal that at the heart of it was good
And please be good
To your feminists please know that it is not a movement
To strip people of rights but to grant rights to those who have been denied
Feminism isn’t a bad word
It’s a word that holds an ideal
That genetics that genitalia do not dictate
Whether or not a human being is held to the
American standard of equality.

Perhaps I have stumbled upon the root of insecurity
Of why we judge ourselves so shapely
And shame ourselves into uncertainty
I think that every day we walk around
Comparing ourselves to other people’s performances
We are not granted back stage passes to their behind the scenes
We only see their highlight reel
The cut and pasted snapshots of themselves
That they have chosen to present to the outside world
All of the bloopers and uncut scenes we are only capable of seeing
In ourselves -are in other people, invisible.
It’s not fair.
To compare a perfectly edited version of a person
To another whose flaws are all too visible.
This is why we feel inadequate.

I know how the final moments of my life are going to be spent. I will be sitting on a second hand couch, one I got from some yard sale after talking the woman down from thirty bucks to twenty. The couch is itchy and fills up half the three hundred a month attic I’m renting out. I’ll have some music playing in the background something slow and hazy, maybe a mix CD I got from a friend whose name has escaped me. I’ll get up only once or twice that whole night just to rub out the scratches on that CD, I’ll spit on it wipe it on my pants put it on repeat and sit back down. Its three in the morning, and much like tonight, I am just sitting trying to think of something, anything else.  The only light that falls on my clasped hands comes from the open refrigerator door; I’ve been too busy to shut it, anyway there isn’t anything in there to be spoiled. The rent is due, bills need to be paid and I’m trying not to think of all that. What I’ve chosen to fixate on is that light and how it changes with my swaying head; a spot light for my angst. As I’m swaying and thinking and not I’ll drift off. I’ve had too much to drink and am so very tired and I’ll wonder who this couch is going to make itch next.

My mother is getting ready for work. And I am a child of about 9 years old sitting on her bedroom floor watching her get dressed the same as I would for the next 9 years or so in this house. The house that I remember then use to shake violently from the train a block away and was so glass-fragile and so cold-damp that its walls warped and swelled; making it look like someone had once blown up a large balloon inside of it and the walls curved around it. Even after that balloon popped the walls never managed to regain their original shape. My mother who never complained about the state of our home and in fact rather fancied it would tell me “Isn’t it cozy living in a snow-globe shaped house, and when it shakes we can pretend we’re snowmen in a glass ball.” She would always say things like that. I would always listen; I would always sit quietly with my legs tucked under my *** and watch my mother get ready for work. She would go through the same motions she went through every night and every night in the same order, she did this so often and religiously she had it down to an art, a methodical system of movements that at this age seemed to me more like dancing. I would watch as her dance started in her hands. Her fingers thumbing over the light pale and pink lip paints she saved for weekday afternoons and for Sunday mornings. She instead reached for the bright Chinese red stick she painted onto her perfectly pursed lips. She then reached for her black dress, pressing down the wrinkles smooth as the backs of thumb-tacks, smoothing the fabric over her hips, her thighs, her legs. Next she would sashay over to her vanity, pick up a small container and spread over her eyelids a bright but dusty blue shadow. I love this next part. When she would gently sweep me up and sets me on her bed as she knelt down and told me to sprinkle her face with a shimmery clear powder, giving her the look she always said made her stand out, made her look “unique”. I always thought she looked like she was in the caught in the middle of a snow-globe. Her next step was then slipping her dainty and fragile size 7 feet into heels that I knew would look invisible in the dark night outside our front door, she would look like she was almost floating. I often thought those would hurt her feet as she walked that long stretch of street outside our house.  Her arms then would sway and flick her hands outward, grasping with all her fingers a purple and gold glass bottle of perfume on her dresser. Back then it looked to me like a curious crystal globe of sweet-smelling water that turned sparkly when she shook it. This is my mother’s last step, she presses down the sponge-like pump. I really love this part. The only magical part of my mother’s evening- the part I always thought would make her realize she should stay. As she presses down on the pump I see the shiny and clear purple hued liquid release and bubble out into tiny specks of oxygen atoms, I watch them as they swirl up the golden bottle-the rounded glass holding them in, controlling them, allowing them to eddy and ebb around themselves, to tango around each other within the safety of its bottle. They are dancing, writhing around in their own world, free from the terrors of the outside air, these atoms embrace the chaos and they wallow in the pressure that perpetuates them in an endless looping of rhythmic motion. They enjoy it. They bask in the comfort of the fluid that holds them tight together safe in their glass house, keeping them untouched. I, sitting there eye level to this bottle watching ever so closely as the air bubbles swim closer and closer to the surface until they slowly start to realize that they are being expelled from their bottle. Then they stop dancing and move franticly in a tornado-like motion, they scream and they fight their way back down towards the others like them, wishing to not be pushed up and out into the bigger pool of air they know will surely render them invisible. They wish so strongly to be kept inside their glass world, to always be safe and visible in the enwombing liquid that circles around them in their bottle that reassures them of their existence as a single being and not as a part of a whole. To be separate from the mass of air that awaits them, the air that only yearns to add to its girth, by swallowing the tiny air-bubbles. I want them to stay. Stay in their snow-globe and live forever as air bubbles safe and few, to not swim up to the world that will gulp them down whole. I know they are dainty and fragile and I want to keep them safe. I want to always see them dancing separate and unique and never leaving, yet they do. I want them to stay, yet they do not. All in an instant, faster than the blink of an eye, the once dancing bubbles are gone and are now sprinkled sweet across my mother’s neck. The only evidence of their existence- a lingering scent flowing out of my mother’s bedroom as she grabs her purse off the couch. I want her to stay too. And as she grabs her bag and slams the front door it shakes our house like glass around me. I remember a younger me, left there feeling liquid and weak in a snow-globe house now void of air.

I fell for you
I felt you without you using your hands to touch me
And in the beginning you never touched me
That’s how I knew because I didn’t touch you either
A touch would tell too much
And isn’t it strange how we used to be strangers
And suddenly we were anything but lone rangers
Wondering this plane alone
We had each other at a distance
Far enough for a passing glance
But strong enough for that glance to move glaciers
Without your hands touching me
I felt home shift its meaning from a place to a person
And without you I feel home sick
I fell for you
And you warned me about it
With every half hug or taken back stare
But even if I can’t even be a welcome mat for you
Know I will always choose to live in you
I’ll choose you.
Every time
Over and over again
Without pause
Without so much as a heartbeat in between my answer.

It would behoove my grade school bible teacher to know that I have finally found Jesus.
He sits alone at my neighborhood bar,
and in a fashion that is not unlike the line
at a New York City Jewish deli shop,
he takes questions.
Ticket number 347. “What kind of man will I marry?”
Ticket number 7623. ”When will the end of days come?”
My bible study class, oh,
how they would shake inside their buttoned blouses with envy
that I was the one to find Jesus,
between drinks, between cigarettes,
with beer and peanut excrements on bottoms of his sandals.
Handing out answers like pork cutlets
to mouths that haven’t eaten in years
because they have filled up on the empty appetizer
that is stomach-churning worry:
the gutless and gut-full sin,
of having problems without the hope of solutions
of having questions with silent answers
that it shakes believers so hard in the night they fall off their beds
and they land conveniently on their knees.
They wake up in the morning with bruises and scratches,
external hurts treated with
a mixture of peroxide and stuck-on-you band-aids
that hug tight their stinging cuts until the next day
when the Band-Aid losses its glue and falls off
when they land in meat grinders turning out sausage links
that no one even has an appetite for.

I found Jesus in a bar.

When I see him
I remember Sunday school
and how I stood up on the sweaty palmed stained pulpit and yelled,
“He is not real!”
and now that I am confronted with my falseness
I wonder was I wrong to try to cool the fire of questions unanswered
by answering them myself.

I took a ticket.
I stood in line.
I waited.
The knot my Sunday school teacher tied with my intestines
years ago tightened itself and pulsated
with the influx of another beer
and growing bowel movements that only made me more unsure
of the source of pain in my belly.

I watched
as Jesus nodded politely in between
admissions of sins and proposals of betterment
a gentle, deliberate nod
like his neck was the waist of a Hawaiian girl
on the dashboard of a Colorado trucker,
or maybe like aged fast-food wrappers that tilt forward with the inertia
caused by strategically placed speed bumps.
Each nod, a mini-bow that seemed to contradict
his devotion to his divinity and his authority
over the bleeding-kneed and hungry-stomached servants.

I am the last ticket before the last call and
being this close I can see sweat stains under his arms;
my mother would say they are extra halos.
“And your question, my child?” he says, and
I think I should have been more prepared
or at least not have stuttered like the elementary school student
one stuck playing the under appreciated Pluto in the graduation play.

“Was I wrong that day on the pulpit?”
It was rudely put. I was embarrassed.
He said, “Did it ease the hunger pain of uncertainty?”
He knew it did. So did I.
“Then no, you answered your own question.”
He seemed drunk when he said that,
so I trusted it as a sober man’s thoughts.
Then I walked away full
with knees unscathed.

I loved her body
And I used it up
The parts I liked
I drank up with a fever
Of thirst
That left her
Dry and frail
And I would have felt bad
If I wasn’t so
Dry and frail
When I met her
And now I suppose she’ll
Go
And find someone else
Whose parts she likes
And after that we’ll both be hydrated enough
To look at the parts we aren’t so fond of.

It would behoove my grade school bible teacher to know, that I have finally found Jesus. He sits alone at my neighborhood bar and in a fashion that is not unlike the line at a New York City Jewish deli shop, he takes questions. Ticket number 347, “What kind of man will I marry?” ticket number 7623,”When will the end of days come?” My bible study class oh, how they would shake inside their buttoned blouses with envy that I was the one to find Jesus, between drink, between cigarettes, with beer and peanut excrements on bottoms of his sandals. Handing out answers like pork cutlets to mouths that haven’t eaten in years because they have filled up on the appetizer that is stomach churning worry. The gutless and gutful sin of having problems without the hope of solutions that shakes believers so hard in the night they fall off their beds and land conveniently on their knees. They wake up in the morning with bruises and scratches, another problem but this time the solution is simple. A mixture of peroxide and cotton-blend Band-Aids, hugging tight stinging cuts until the next day when the Band-Aid is loose and falls off into meat grinders making sausage links you don’t even have the appetite for. I found Jesus in a bar. When I see him I remember Sunday school and how I stood up on the sweaty palm pulpit and yelled, “He is not real!” and now confronted with my falseness I wonder if I was wrong to try to cool off the fire in my belly that was unanswered questions by answering them myself. I took a ticket. I stood in line. I waited as the knot my grade school teach tied with my intestines tightened itself and pulsated with the influx of another beer and growing bowel movements that only made me more unsure of the source of pain in my belly. I watched as Jesus nodded politely in between admissions of sins and proposals of betterment like his neck was the waist of a Hawaiian ******* the dashboard of a Colorado trucker, or like aged fast-food wrappers that tilt forward with the inertia caused by strategically placed speed bumps.  Each nod, a mini-bow that seemed to contradict his devotion to his divinity and his authority over the bleeding kneed and hungry stomached servants. I am the last ticket before the last call and I take advantage of both. Being this close I can see sweat stains under his arms, my mother would say they are extra halos. “And your question, my child?” he says, and I think I should have been more prepared or at least not stuttered like the elementary school student stuck playing Pluto in the graduation play. “Was I wrong that day on the pulpit?” It was rudely put. I was embarrassed. He said, “Did it ease the hunger pain of uncertainty?” It did. “Then no, you answered your own question.” He seemed drunk at that point when he said that, so I trusted it as a sober man’s thoughts. Then I walked away full and knees unscathed.

I love you now as only few things are to be loved
Within the secret of an untouched desire
Or in the dark esoteric of a thought
So I am further gone than you might have expected
Down your chords of tragic intonation
For it is unknown to me yet, your guile,
Behind your harmonious guise
The worm in my heart has always
Been the apple of your eye.

Still after 22 years I’m not used to the spin
I still sway with the torpid orbit of this earth
I still feel more like ripples in the ocean
Billowing out helplessly by forceful winds
Than like the fish that swim solid beneath its gale
My legs still ache to move backwards as
The ground below me charges itself
Further and further forward, still, into
It’s circular rhythm, perpetual and exhausting
What I’ve always seemed to think was
Its true underlying intentions
To drown me.
To never stop ringing around itself
To never lull in its constant wind-blown vim
Created by its imposing movements
To never let me parity my body above sea-level
Never letting me know of or be thrown off balance, me without
Any knowledge of or way to grasp a steady pole.
This swirling pool of motion with each tick and tock right,
It engulfs me with waves of pressure, its crests crashing
Heavy on my attempts to stand beneath it.
It renders me dizzy without senses.
The blood-thirsty rocking of this earth
Whips hair feverously across my eyes
Blinding me to the ground I would grasp to steady my body
If not for the winds ebbing across the planes I struggle to stand atop
Winds, rubbing my hands red and raw and unable to feel
Slashing my fingers with invisible knifes
I would catch my breath, find strength to stand, if only these winds
Would slow with the stall of the earth’s movement, if its swirl
So constant, did not weigh so heavy and hot around me
Burning with tropical heat, thickening the air, heavy as water
And me, wishing for gills.

As of late I have felt less like a person
And more like the aftermath of a shattered glass
My body’s innards that were once safely trapped underneath skin
are now sprawled out across the kitchen floor
And the smaller pieces slipped into tiny dust ridden cracks that a broom can’t reach
The parts of myself that used to be neighbors
Have been forcefully relocated to different continents
And no longer recognize one another
It’s exactly like dropping a glass
When the circular base of it
Bounces and shatters it looks like a small jagged crystal crown
Perfectly shaped for house mice
Some mouse king might wear it like I use to wear
My heart.
A symbol of power- of knowing that
If all else fails I have this heart, this crown
So when people look at it they will know without a doubt
That I am good and I am deserving
But now with that piece of my body separate
From my other organs I am not so sure
Being so broken the only hope of reconstruction
Is in that dust pan in the closet
And as it collects my dangerous little shards of organs
I’ll pick up the bigger pieces with my hands
And hope that my blood is thick enough to act as glue.

Walk with me
From the sun into the ocean
From the water into the sand
Let’s make our steps as powerful as lightening
And just as bright and when our toes
Touch the shore
Let’s make glass
A purer and more beautiful element
And when the trash collectors pick up
Our footprints and throw them hastily
Into bags
Even the way we shatter will be beautiful
We’ll be glass in a world of plastic.

my spine grows further and further
up my neck it releases seeds of thought
upblooming in my very heavy head
weeds and flowers alike it drops
enwombed in my crescent head
the weeds grow right
the flowers grow left
each soil my mind with beauty and reason
the flowers they speak
of creating and love all other things ascetic
the weeds teach me logic, numbers, and phrases
they warn me of anything poetic
I am inclined to deny my bias for either
For such a balance they create
But as of late I am pruning my mind with deft
And find that I am of Ehud’s left.

Kindness and goodness are only genuine when the motivations they come from are born of morality and not fear.

Sometimes I think
That I eat grapes too much.
I eat them so much,
And so many that
Some fall into the fissures
Of my mind.
They burry themselves there
And there I let
Them sit.
For days,
months,
For years.
until they ferment,
Until they make me drunk
So mind drunk I think of you.
Of you and your
Intoxicating voice
One I that I can’t make out
Completely  until
I eat more grapes that
Fill my mind so full
Some slip down into my throat
And mute my voice
So that yours is the only
One I can speak in
And you always talk of making more
Wine.

one of eight strapped to this tree
with threats of knifes that turn bark into skin
branches into limbs
if only the connections deep as my roots
did not entangle my own mortality if only they
could be severed easily as my leafs in fall
then perhaps my pinch dripped heart
would not punish those who hurt it
whom at first pruned with the promise of love
then betrayed with blades of unrequited rapture
those whom just did not understand the veins between
life and limb.

What if when the dust finally settles
And the tides have stopped
Crashing against the shore
And the winds sit still on tree tops
All that remains of you are your hands
Riddled with scars from words
You have written for me
And I am gone.
You sit there for the rest of time
Staring at constellations of scars
On your skin that spells out all of the
Things you wrote about me
And over the ages my face will blur to you
My hair will stop looking to you
Like wheat fields and slowly it
Will look more like a sonnet
My eyes you will remember to be blue
But they will look to you like the third
Ripple of ocean water from a stone
What if when the dust finally settles
You ended up changing your mind
And all that remains of you are your hands
Still scared but you can’t tell
Not when my hands are covering them up.

There aren’t a lot of things in this world that make me truly happy; in fact upon further reflection, there's nothing at all that completely does other than you, things merely distract me from the inescapable fact that I've been perpetually lonely my entire life up to this point. Only the thought of you distracts me long enough to make time without you bearable, to make me hold on just a little longer to see you again so you can fill the void in my soul that has been eating at my stomach since you left. I love you like this. And when you aren’t around me images of you age backwards in my memory and comfort me to the point of almost wholeness and at the same time a vast emptiness. Knowing that thoughts of you aren’t the same as your lips on my forehead and that they don’t fix the loneness I tend to align myself with without you here. When you’re gone I stick my hands in my pockets more. I thumb the hole in the bottom of that fabric feeling for the last penny to my name and realizing that it slipped down through that whole, through my pant leg, onto strange and unknown ground. That is something like how I feel without you. Like how I can remember touching you at some point and wanting to hold onto you for dear life but the second I let go, you fell through a hole that I couldn’t follow you through. So now I am penniless. That is the most heart sinking feeling. Being so lonely that my heart swells with heavy emptiness; it falls through my body down to my feet and I am forced to stomp on it with every step I take. Each stride squeezing out more and more blood so that by the time I have walked miles to see you again I pass out in your arms.  I tell you, “Lovely to see you again, I missed you so much.” Then I am happy and whole again.

When I look at you I see love
It lives all over your body
From the tuffs of your hair
To the tips of your finger tips
To the right side of your face that smiles more than your left
And that love, you wear it like a metal
And it makes you bold, so bold it
Makes me nervous and forget how to talk
And how to tell you that my love is more subtle than that.
You have to listen to it to see it
It comes out late at night after you place your metal on the dresser
And I’m not so blinded-
When your eyes are shut tight
And then I know the only way to your heart is through your ears
And I whisper to you that I love the smell
Of your skin
Or that your lips on my head is the only validation of my worth
That I will ever need.
I love you in words that live hidden in my head
And I know you look for them when you pull me
In closer, when you search my body for mutually shared feelings
But I’ve never been one to sew on feeling to blouses
Because I’ve never trusted a laundry machine
Not to tether my heart’s delicate fabric
So please, just listen to me speak.
Note the pauses in my sentences and
The dips of my voice, the clicks my tongue makes
When I say your name and follow it with I love you
Please know that your name has never been as safe as it is
When I hold it in mouth.
And I will never bit down on it
And love will always be on the tip of my tongue
And you will be the only one safe there.

We were told we were born sick
Though we never felt ill
We met in Sunday school
And over the coughs of other children
That hacked out either verses or mucus
It was never clear which
I asked you for a paint brush
And you stepped over the damp tissues
Thrown defeated on the ground
Like offerings at a precession
And you’d painted next to me.

We were told we’d always be sick
But we never looked ill
When I accidently bumped your elbow reaching for
More paper
Our blushing cheeks the color of alter wine
Bore healthy smiles and warm glows
And after countless more Sundays
When the men in funny neck ties
Came around to give us crackers
In the shapes of pills we couldn’t swallow
We decided to hide them in the sleeves of our robes
And we watched as all the other children
Grew sicker while we grew stronger
Even though they drank blood
And we’d sneak off to drink wine.

We became the heretics of hallelujahs
AWOL archangels
And we were never bed ridden from illness
In fact we yearned for the outside
Disregarding the warnings of germs
That ran rampant there
Figuring that was why they made the
Church’s steeple look like a needle
We wanted freedom nonetheless.

They told us that we would catch the flu
By holding hands
And when we were caught contaminated
They told us to wash our bodies off in the water
And you looked at me and I looked at you
And we agreed that we should-
But not this water, not here
So we grabbed hands again
And you with your free left and I with my free right
Pushed through the double doors
And as the light poured in the chapel
It scorched the priests but for us it baptized us whole
And now we tell ourselves swimming in the sea
That became our holy healing water
We’d only ever be as sick as others let us be.

I remember the places I used to hide
My feelings locked away
With no one to find the key
Waiting for Mr. Right
But he won’t come
So I’ll settle for Mr. Right Now,
Mr. In the moment,
Mr. Can I take your coat off
Just to see your skin
So I can picture you naked
Full of regret, full of hatred
I do as he wishes
He slips off my coat
Along with my self-respect
My shirt follows and so does my hope
Passion and desire, meaning more than one night.
Now the pants, the bra, the shoes
Like tinny vessels,
A disappearing bruise
And with my last cloth of hope stripped away
My heart and mind meet at that place where they
Know That Mr. Right won’t come. He won’t show.
Because with my self-respect, my hope, it’s gone in the midst
My mind tells my heart that he doesn’t exist

home is where the heart is
but what if you don't have a home?
what if circumstances out of your control
have forced you to pack up
your belongings in knapsacks
book-bags
and suitcases
where could you kept your heart?
would you nestle it in-between socks that double
as bubble wrap
or in an old mason jar
cleaned of its old bacon grease and
sealed shut from air
i knew a girl once
who was without a home and instead of packing it away
she carried it on her sleeve
and under bridges and squeezed between cloth and a park benches
it got too ***** for her to recognize
and people would nudge up against it in soup lines
and in the winter time it would smell like outdoors and  freezing pines
i would ask her
why not keep in in your backpack
surely it would be much safer there
and she told me
she would never
separate her heart from her body like that
and if she did find a home
she wouldn't keep her heart there either
because houses are temporary and her body would be as permanent
as God would allow it to be

I think it lives in me
My horror
The eyes of a creator
exiled from human existence
And displaced into dark corners
Of my increasingly less human heart
I think you’ve seen it
After a few tequila shots
In the heat of an argument
In the mumbles of a deep sleep dream
And it frightened you
To not only suspect but to know
That something so dark could live
In someone you held in light
And if this is the reason you ran away
I understand
My horror lives in me
And as soon as I’m sure it is sealed
It won’t be and it will slither up my stomach
And spools itself around my heart
Squeezing my blood into the far tips of my fingers
And the ends of my toes
And I’ve pricked them my phalanges
On the sharpest needles
In hopes I could drain myself of it
But I never can
See- my horror lives as me
And from time to time
I hide it long enough to love
And sometimes be loved back
But my horrors don’t go for that
They are a jealous thing that can love only me

In the break of a storm
Rain acts like cars whizzing past pedestrian's faces
Blinking with watery head lights
And deafening horns of water-droplets
Beating on the heads of concrete drums
The wind like the underbelly of a lawn mower
With teeth, circular, sharp
and vicious enough to cut the point off blades
Of grass
When strong gusts blows
Hats off men’s heads
The stretch of jagged lightening
Mocks the warmth of yellow light
As its golden blade cuts through
The butter-soft black and blurry night
And the pruned weeds of people
That turn earth’s green brown
Count after the flash of light
So similar to the sun of daytime
They swore was there to brighten their world
1..2..3…
Thunder lets them know how fast the storms
Girth is approaching like
The rings inside a water cup tell you
Something bigger than yourself is walking towards you
It’s footsteps a voice that causes even the best intentioned daisy
To lose a petal or two.

Why did you leave me here?
In a wool coat with
Wheat straws still in my hair
To fight,
To be captured,
To be captured, and
To contract the fate
Of most
Who find themselves
In the same
imprisoned war
But for you it was
Far too soon for
Both mine and
Your liking.  
And it was far too
Inglorious to die
With your heart in
An angry fist.

If I had  a daughter,
I would tell her this-
"Never lose your strength baby girl,
Always respect yourself enough to walk away
From anything or one that makes you unhappy
Walk away in combat boots or stiletto heels."
I would tell her,
"Always travel light, don’t ever be weighed down by all
The burdens life will make you carry
And if you struggle sometimes don’t worry because
Your mama will always be behind you with a purse
Big enough to hold some of them for you."
I would tell her,
"Always keep your heart on your sleeve
And after that teenage boy rips it off time and time again
Don’t worry because mama will always keep on hers
A needle and thread to sew it back on."
And, "Either way Papa's a straight shot."
I would tell her,
"Baby girl when things get rough,
When you’re down and getting back up seems
Impossible and you’re feeling low and you're feeling stuck
You can always reach for my hand if you need it
Even though I know you don’t."
And I know she’ll remember how strong she really is
How beautiful in everyway she grew up to be
And when the same people that pushed her down
Tried to again-
She would tell them,
"You know, you should really talk to my mother."

If I had a son.
If I had a baby boy
I would tell him, "cry to your hearts content baby"
I wouldn't say,
"If I put you down now will you be a man about it?"
because he wouldn't be one yet and I would
cherish the time that I could speak to him without
response and when I could still comfort him with kisses
he couldn't turn his head away from yet.
If I had a little boy
I would fill his head with tales
of wizards and knights,
of dragons and princesses
so his mind wouldn't know the limits
of existence and his imagination
could have wings bigger than the ones
I would paint on the ceiling of his bedroom
I would tell him daily, "respect your father
and mind your mother"
because your papa ain't no rolling stone
and your mama only rewards manners.
I'd take him to the water and I'd tell him to mind that too because that's where he'll find peace.
If I had a teenage son
I would tell him give valentines day cards
to all of the girls in your class
because beauty is in everyone and only
a fool would see it as only skin deep
and mama didn't raise no fool
I would tell him read all you can write down even more
because each moment is fleeting and best to
remember all these times when you know everything, right?
when he makes mistakes I would tell him,
"Tough."
because thats what my mama told me
and there ain't no point in crying over
a problem that you know you can fix
and if you can't fix it on your own
know that I can help and there isn't a problem in the
world a mother won't fix for her child.
If I raised a man
I wouldn't tell him anything anymore
I would let him tell me
of all the things he has done all the things he wants to do
and all of the person I raised him to be.

Once you’ve been in the ocean
A lake is far too small
If a lake ever had ledges
Off them you would surely fall
You’ve swam in much too big of a place
To move to another without so much space
A pond will never be your true home
Not for you not once you’re full grown
Your arms will be too big your legs too giant
Your body in a puddle will never be complaint
So as you develop from a child to something bigger
Remember that you’re an ocean not a river
Your brain is too big so your body had to fit it
And living in a river would would surely **** your big sprit
Stay in the place that fits like a size too big shoe
Where there’s plenty of space for you to grow up to be you

I would call it love.
If you would-
It would validate every feeling
I feel when you are away
I think it would
Remind me that we are two
Healthy organs
In a sick body we named the world
And even through you call me heart
And I call you lung
And even though we aren’t in the same place
In this body
I still pump blood for you
And you still filter air for me
And I’d call that love
If you would.

I dreamt that I wrote to you last night. I woke up with paper cuts in between my fingers, lemon juice that stained my bed a ****-yellow color, ink embedded underneath my fingernails,  and every time I reached down to scratch my ***** I left a shameful line of old black ink. I think I’d have mailed it to her if I knew that when she read it she would scream with a horrid realization. A realization of finally understanding the monster she use to sleep next to, before the **** sheets before the ink stained boxers. I’d have mailed it to her if it wasn't just in my dreams. I imagine that the lines in my letter were laced with layers of lucid logic that stringed together feelings that con-caved in on themselves. That ate themselves whole;  but instead of making them disappear entirely they grew twice their size and spilled over the pages and underneath my nails. The diction I imagine I would have chosen to write with would be read with a southern twang.  Slow and drawn out. She would have to read it with extra syllables that her tiny lungs could not possibly hold. It would make her choke, for the first time, on words that weren't her own. My words would finally fulfill the dreams of my hands; constantly wanting to ring around her neck like I was seven again on the playground and her name was Rosie. I wouldn't have rhymed in my subconscious, to me that always seems fake and I can’t really rhyme without having my voice break. I might, however; use from time to time red bold words laying in the middle of long paragraphs in hopes she would remember her red dress. Of how, before bed, it grazed over her slopping neck and slid off onto my floor. In my dream it’s still on my floor. I hope in my letter that I wrote out a picture of her seeing me seeing her put it on in front of our window the next morning and even though that dress was too short for autumn and she would wear it anyway. Because she knew it drove me crazy and because she wanted to remember me even after she walked out my front door. Mornings like that I begged her stay even if we had just fought over how much she snores, even if I had called her a **** one too many times the drunken night before. My letter, I think, would tell her that I wish she didn't have to bundle up and leave that she could instead cut up my bed sheets and make herself a new warmer dress. One that would have matched my pillow too perfectly for her to not lay her head on it and call it a hat. For her to pretend that my bed was the world outside the door. My letter would go like that. It would make her scream at first then make her remember that monsters can love too and knowing that; she would punch her new mattress and tear up her new pillows ones that I have never touched. She would scream, "*******!" preceding my name every time she landed a blow. She would say that so many times that she could never look at her new bed again without thinking of me, and of ****. When I dreamt last night I dreamt I wrote you a letter, but dreams don’t have hands that can hold pens. So I instead sent you my bed sheets, my boxers, I signed them with lemon juice and old black ink. Wear them, sleep with them, read them for what they are worth or toss them out because monsters with words like mine give you nightmares.

I cage in God.
With glorious bars
Too small for his fingers
He releases his singers
Plucking chords made of nerves
Swelling with each note served
Undefined voices will swirl
With planetic like twirls
Filling my senses with increasingly
Distrusting incentives.

Monsters are real, though they are not adorned with red eyes
Not seen with curled upper lips, with giant claws
They are under your mind’s cache appearing only when
Your world goes dark, when they feel safe under blanketed
Eyes and pursed lips covering and concealing
Their tainted dark intentions
They hide under your bones, they sharpen
Their teeth
And the tips of your ribs
Swapping shoulders  
You can’t tell which from which
They encase your heart, no they
Pierce through your chest
They hide in the dip of your voice
When you say things like “love” or “hate”
Dropping syllables of doubt in words
You realize are no longer your own.

I wish it was easy to say who I am.
I wish God was less of a creator and more of an author
Ink stained fingernails glasses brimming the edge of his nose type
Whiskey on the side of his computer; optional.
I wish that in place of these veins and hair and bendable thumbs
I had poetry, soliloquies, syllables, punctuations.
That marked my existence
I wish my mind was a novel and each word inside it
Moved through my organs and around my chest
And when you cracked it open knowing who I am
Would be as easy as reading a book
I wish that when I get so angry I forget to speak
That you could just rip off the end of my skirt and read the
Internal and omniscient monologue in place of my skin
That would explain everything
When I smile during turmoil I wish it wasn’t a mystery
And the chapters printed on my visible teeth
Could tell you exactly why.
If God was an author I would be a character
And each of my traits would have meaning, and significance
Why do I bite my nails?
Because when I was five years old I saw my mother do It and when I’m nervous
I do it to be close to her
That would be the reason and I wouldn’t have to sit and wonder about it
Because that fits my story
Every page of my life would be narrated by someone who knew
Me better than I knew myself and that, that
Would take a lot of pressure off my shoulders.
The horrible weight of self-defining
Wouldn’t it be nice to not have to discover yourself?
To have someone do it for you
Instead of taking years to find out that you work better under pressure
And that being a doctor really wasn’t your true calling after all
What if you could just look down at your body
And see words that told the story of you.
What if you were armed with the knowledge of knowing
Who you are and what your purpose is.
I wish I was literature
So finally I could through my hands up
Shout back at you saying “Here, look this is who I am.”
I like the sound of the ocean
Black and white movies
I get sad when it rains
Just read me.

A lesson I learned in school
From the boys I have only known
Through sharpies on bathroom stalls
Mike who broke Kim’s heart
And G who would love S forever
Even though the arrow pointing away
From it in a different color
Said otherwise
I learned on painting wood
Suspended by nailed in hinges
That love was more temporary than
Permanent marker
And could be erased by a janitor with
Clorox and even the
Girls who were so motivated to hang onto
Their love that they carved instead of drew
Hearts around their lover’s names
But found they could just as easily be painted over
By pink stained brushes
The lesson I learned in college
Eventually replaced the one before
The first day
In between classes and cups of coffee
When I saw the stalls
Were covered by doors made of
Marble.
Without a scratch of temporary.

all the envelopes in all the worlds
will never be enough to carry my love letters
letters with headers that would be better read
dear  lover number 1,2, or 3
but the dears are really never suffixed by numbers
because the names that correspond to them
mean more than all of their sum
and fill up too many pages than I can count to
and some pages the number I can’t read at all
because I bare down too hard with my pen
and the ink seeps down onto the next letter I have to write
making page 76 look like page 48
and the periods at the end of sentences
look like misplaced and blurry hearts
it doesn’t help that I write in red
and that I only love a certain shade
it doesn’t help that I am broke
and I can’t afford ink
but rubber band are always on sale
and I can wrap them tight around my throbbing veins
to pump out the most velvet red hue
at the lowest price
but when my blood starts to bottom out I stop writing
and I start kissing the next boy who makes
my heart beat out more and more words
to write with.
Another number to start off a letter with.
Dear number 5, I’m sorry about your head but you shouldn’t
Have under judged my right hook
Dear number 7, don’t worry my body’s finally absorbed those bruises
Dear number 1, I wish you could have seen me naked I wish
It was still possible for you to see me naked.
To cut off all my rubber bands
And to burn all my stationary
Because you need to be greedy
And you need to use all the envelopes in all of the worlds
To write letters for me.