Scattered, splattered gold – like sunshine, once
It crashes into a dark place, a cave by the sea,
Where no one ever goes.
She can pick it up, let it slip and drip
Between her fingers, fingertips. But
She can’t put it back together again.

This girl, someone’s child, she dances
And reads books, and likes to ride her bike
To ride roller-coasters, to fall in love like
The famous people. Mickey Mouse.
She loves love.
Or she used to, she once did, not now.

When she was young, she would write poems
And she would know so, that they were poems.
But somewhere, the rhythm of her mind changed:
Syncopation, alliteration, became the sing-song
That helped her through the night.

tonight
i don't belong here
my skin is not mine
hair like rope
up, i climb
to nowhere

tonight
pits where my eyes were
petals for lips
irises

we fall into blue
deep violet, violent blue
like oceanwater weight
i am, but not here
like kafka on the shore

So now she stays, she lives in the dark place,
That same cave where the sea places
Her secrets, things that need to be saved.
And she’s wrist deep in what used to be
Something warm, and sweet, and really quiet –
Holding sundust, smeared
Willing it back into the sky.

Danses-elle, en reverie
You are the spastic source of the ocean life form
Moving between your cage of ribs
To juxtapose the gray, the human decay, and the
Preoccupation of what can, who should,
What you might and come what may –
Waking up with a stranger in bed to have
Wine in the morning, starve the dismay
Evenings of making coffee and sense,
Making away with the day

La fille, danse
Pacific sway
Pas de cheval, mais actuellement
Il est le pas d’homme naturel
There are a lot of things ugly about a place
Where we chase until fall out, fall away
Into acting offstage, and we can’t get away, no no
Dance on, girl
Dans la rue des esprits anciens
And we’ll dance and we’ll dance

My apologetic bones creak as I step
From today to tomorrow, again and again.
I wish they would quiet down,
For fear of the world hearing the symphony
Of my old soul exhaustion.

This life, relentless like the sea,
Like the endless cacophony of water that
Carves white sand beaches from
The mountains of Santa Barbara.
Out of the ocean I rise to drown.

Love, love lost, love holding your hand
To chase lightning from the sky back
into the night: the night where
College students get drunk and **** each other’s brains out
When all I want to do is sleep.

With a tearing, retching, wretched sound,
My soul keeps leaping from my open mouth
In pieces.  No peace, as the rest of me
Takes leave from sanity, reality, **** **** ****.
I have nowhere to go.

I came to seek the Great Perhaps,
But I’ve found only a Great Collapse.