For years
I have gasped in
Music
replacing myself
with it,
finding its expression
better than any attempts at my own
And there is peace,
however brief.

They call me a dancer,
but I have lost something
in these years.
something hard and sacred,
and in losing it
I have grappled to find it
not knowing
that it is gone forever
with the song that carried it away.

You are there with it,
within the song.
So when I dance I can be with you;
and when you text me
from out of the ****** blue
it is slightly shocking and
it is from far away-
   (farther than the song, anyway.)

That i can hardly read your name
that I can barely make out the words
of your bluish text
because both are from another planet,
and the experience is as vague as
how I choose to remember you.

And how can I answer your call?
Luckily, dancing requires no words.

Discipline and self-reservation
are not my strong suits;
I'm a passionate person (as you well know)
but in remembering you
I have mastered both.
I don't indulge in your memory anymore.
your kisses are gone with my size 2;
I don't even remember what that feels like.
And our conversations
which I once memorized like lyrics
now murmur distantly,
hum like a deep rhythm.

And though it rests within me,
forever it will sleep.
because I have buried the rhythm
like I have buried your name.
I can hear it,
I can even sway my hips to it,
but I will not call back,
and I will never invite you to dance again.

You are gone.
This song and my dance are all that remains.

Like the swooned flamingo
Fall clumsily
into my arms, soft bird.
Against me gently,
Your sleeping flesh
would push
and I would succumb
to your shape,
trapped by the bulbous density
of our peace,
And I,
I would bow to you.

Take down the street lights
I"m not afraid of the dark,
Nor am I any less vulnerable
if my isolation is magnified
by one of these buzzing
thin g s.

Their odorous hum is offensive
and they violate my vision of the
innumerable galaxies
living simultaneously
with ours.

I squint,
wanting to witness Them
as they witness Me,
But even the moon's illumination
   shining down acceptance
      like high noon heat
is interrupted
by the harsh orange-ness
stinking up
   the shallow space.

The shadow they cast
hovers beneath me
   lonely, irrelevant;
I prefer the one the moon draws,
dripping out behind me
to linger in places I have passed,
or stretching out in front of me
   like a perpendicular mirror
to show me places I've yet to go...

Take down the street lights:
Of these shadows
and of any mysteries the Darkness holds
   I am not afraid.

The feeling is like mushrooms.
That's the only way I can explain it,
but to sobers I say,
It's like being reminded of an old truth
you once learned, but forgot about
until recently.

You've wandered into the forest
taken an inviting path
And when you come to the tree
at which you usually glance,
acknowledge in passing,
You decide this time to stop and take in
its bark-bound beauty.

Tall, cylindrical like a leg
rough skin with feather hair,
the tree is still, like calm,
harmless.
Unable to resist, you reach out to touch it
feel the hard bark under your palms
the whisty brushes against the leaves
As the breeze makes movement
all around you, small rustles,
Nature at rest...
It is the same tree you've always passed,
but something has changed.

- Flashes of an old lover laughing
or pulling you into an embrace,
eating,
walking up to the car,
looking away -

You withdraw your hand from the bark
and use your eyes instead
to survey the trunk you thought
was shallow.
Though you are alone
it seems that something is aware of your presence,
not a threat to it,
not like a predator aware of its prey
or even visa versa;
But for some reason
you get the oddly familiar sensation that
This Tree
is looking back at you.

And indeed it is rational
to decide that you were in
a nostalgic mindset,
an imaginative contemplation
on such a natural force as
Momentum,
and you can wiggle free of the feeling
that way;
But you have to admit,
there is something about
the moment,
about the tree
and about the way you're almost finally
seeing each other
that seems...
intuitive.

Gloom and
Gusto
Degrade my little hands,
Green with the slime
and grime
and grit
and sticky dirt
Stolen from the
Gut of my enemy,
My God.

Dreaming of greatness,
consumed by the girth
of life and sin
only to find that it
is not Good.
That my gluttonous hunt
as been but the
Greed of questions,
the fervor of eager,
That my mind,
my soul,
is grotesque.

And all this time
I thought this was
Graduation.

Golly gee, a tree!

So tall he stands, as from a dream.
I stroke his spine, but without a purr
He whistles back,
To me he lures.
Hands rest softly,
Knees bent weak,
I close my eyes to hear him speak:
"Child, baby, sell your soul.
It's me to whom your secrets told.
Sit down, be still, and feel me breathe.
Be sure you know me before you leave.
Alone forever, a tribe you'll lack,
I love you baby, so whistle back."

One single tear sent down my cheek.
My eyes are open, but hands still meek.
A slave myself, I'll never be free;
I belong to him, my friend, the tree.

Feminine hands
Fumbling
Over the half-smoked bowl,
the lighter -
fft, fft, fft -
and the flame.

Unfamiliar maybe,
to fast times.

Fog around her
Face
And you can't even see
that she's not so
Fragile.

Lush beautiful days
where it's cold in the shade
in cities in California
I can't remember the names.
Wind moves through tress
my bare feet slip on leaves
in a place where I realize
Childhood was only a dream.

White in the face, I
Wonder, from
Where
Did all this stress and
Worry come?
My hands start to
Wrinkle,
Wrung together too tight,
The winter wind
having made them cold and dry.
So I sit
Waiting,
Weeping, and
Wondering why I hadn't
Wished for warmth
before

3/1/2013

Sitting alone
the silence around me,
it drowns me
as I wait for a sound,
a simper,
a whimper,
a whisper to know
that I am not alone.

Softly,
Sadly,
I listen to silence,
waiting for a light,
mourning the dark,
and living
like a still pendulum.
And time,
time,
Time alone
will raise me up
and let me scream.

1/1/2013

There's this picture in my mind,
I can't seem to erase.
It's more like a feeling
and much less like a place.

Retro music playing,
Anticipation for the lights,
But mine is for the beach
and for the innocent nights.
I'm holding onto the hand
of someone I once loved,
a child's sweaty grip
in naivety's glove.
Yearned I for safety,
Guidance and validation
But if that was the dream,
I should have made home
my permanent station.

So when I fell down,
I turned and I tossed,
And cried when I remembered
how my innocence lost.
Like the nightmare
from which you violently wake,
I so stepped into reality
to start the life I will make.

And that's where I am now,
Clutching my right to a choice;
scared to learn once again,
scared to use my own voice.

So I wait for a circumstance,
For a signal, a sign,
And someday I hope
that I'll grow my own spine.

28/12/2012

"Dibs"
you used to claim, smiling, and pointing at me.
It was a joke and I used to laugh,
but it buffered my relationship with
Men from Home
by cloaking my presence
with preoccupation.

Like royalty,
I caroused with you
the City of Sand,
safe to be free with innocence.
and the Kingdom I surveyed
was glamorous.

Then, after That Spring,
I fled, and
found myself facing unbuffered men
almost naked;
Without your jacket
I was chilly,
and my body was offered the
sticky hot sweat of **** Sapien Hands
for warmth.

Smooth operations
against my naive flesh
left callouses and bruises
only I can be responsible for
accepting.
I was generous
with the pieces of skin
I wore and tore for the pleasure of others,
hoping to find you again,
or someone close.

But this new kingdom
was not Glamorous
was not innocent or funny
or warm.
Living in the squalor of my own choices
a derelict of my own self-abandonment
I became Queen of the Grunge
and it was painful,
I tell you it hurt!

Homecoming Queen
dons a shiny elastic crown
but Homegoing Queen
wears a ***** one of thorns.

For a while, I wore it
allowed it to obscure my vision
and warp my mirror's depiction.
Scars I mistook for knowledge,
and though they have made me wiser,
it is impossible to prune the
Diadem of Dirt
when its very composition is barb.

So:
atop my head I wore two crowns
and from across my shoulders
I shed one coat.
Bruises I gained as well as experience
and a new empire I consorted.
And indeed my mind's severe questions
took my body places I doubt it thought it would ever go,
But as I return to our former palace,

I realize The Answers
for which I was so desperately searching
could be found deep in the Sand,
and that the more intensely
the more earnestly
my hands shovel into the dirt,
the warmer it becomes.

Now, I smile
As the Sand starts to glow
with the diamond fire of my own soul
and I am warm in just my healing skin.

Now, I return Home
and discover the circularity of enlightenment
as I am filled with the Gusto of Me
and of finding my buried treasure
deep within the Sand,
deep within my love.

I can take it anywhere
Because I know
I feel
I am
My own.

Upstairs,
There was a pause.
"Is this just about ***?"
you asked.

Instinctually I was offended.
Is this just about our bodies, you mean?
That my warm rub against yours
is just skin, just flesh on flesh
as we share the space inside one
and around the other.

I permit you
to taste the spit that comes
from the inside,
and gently you give it back,
And I swallow.

This is our exchange
of space and juice and breath
And yes,
with most persons
I watch from the inside, alone;
But I know you
Have tasted your tide
Pressed against your push and
Felt you
Share the space -
really Share the Space -
with me.

More
I want to know you more,
feel you more
that I am driven to this potent nook of intimacy
and hope that this time I will
yet again, be unsatiated.

So we do it again and again
to get deeper
to try to force through out figures
and be more together than
The mutual space inside one
and around the other.

Maybe I am alone.
Maybe this depth is unrequited.
But that is the necessary risk of Life
because in order to create
in order to continue
We all must make love.

I evolve past offense
and look into the eyes that
have seen through me:
"Isn't it?" I respond.

Hair draped back
I can see the path of the brush
where it swept fuzzy sleet
away from her face
and out of her eyes.
The strokes echo in soft strands
framing my her face like fluffy waves
the way the brush intended.

My friend is not perfect
in the sense that she is not flawless;
but in the vestige of her presence
her aura is captivating
and is absolutely beautiful.

I babble,
but what I mean is the potency of self,
being without trying.
Synchronizing with the spiral center
and twisting like a cork
into and out of the trunk that hinges
her existence
in a way that grows eternally.

Essentially, the unconscious.

Free, I fell into it
and became one of those moments
I want to lightly pinch
when he said
"Wow, you're a good dancer," just as freely back.

I smiled - then stopped.
Noticed my fleshly shell
echoing with the reverberations of my soul,
and withdrew.

Tremors booming from the inside
seem invincible
but so intimate to the Center
they're more like
Night's shimmering water
whose glimmer always waves
but never lingers,
Just shivers.

I learn as I die
how to align to myself
and what congruency to one's context really means,
because it's not conformity.
Just as significant as it is irrelevant
My Own Ness has a spherical redundancy
I chuckle at finding reassuring.

I want to be heard
like we all do
But (like we all do)
only by those who will actually hear me.
Redundant, I know,
because it will happen as it will
But it's the kind of symmetry I think is worth
living for
giving for
dancing for
and eventually, dying for.

I babble,
as I watch the subtle shadow
of my friend's unconscious hair
glowing faintly in the dusty light,

But sometimes
I'm actually saying something.

Like snow,
a blank page tantalizes me
fantasizes me
luring me into the vastness of its grip
and asking
What will you do with this space?

But unlike Creators,
my art provides no function,
serves no definitive purpose
other than to sit in awe
and appreciate
the Art of Others.

It's hard -
I'm overwhelmed by the potential of
the unexisted,
by the grandeur of what could be
that I sometimes slip
forget
that I don't have to do anything with it;
I just have to witness.

That,
that space between
Standing
and
Wondering if peeing my pants is a work of art
is slick.
But as the place between
Stagnation
and Movement,
Sanity
and
Peeing your pants,
Grave is only achieved by Balance.

How unusual,
that kind of eye contact
we say we crave
leaves me cringing.

Unfamiliar eyes
stare knowingly
through my incarnate dress
past the illusion of the way I want to be -
   the person I want I really want to become -
and into the entity which I am.

{Gasp} -
discovered.

How unusual
Exposure
feels like something from my dreams
an alarmingly weird yet refreshingly natural
sense of deja vu
that leaves me speechless,
humbled before both you and myself...

I want to converse with you,
to share with you my illusions and incarnate clothes
but it seems has already been said.

How unusual,
I have nothing to say.

How unusual
that I prefer the silence.