Eliminating madness
Would be to lose my essence
A barbed wire snake sitting pretty
In my belly, his presence
Is what puts that shine in my bright
wet eyes, the look that makes you
want to run and stay and fight
It is the molten gold you feel
In the hollows of my hips, or
Why I go weeks without a meal
and sleep four nights out of seven
Madness-the tinge of darkness
Within the heart of heaven

Today you wear a black sweater.
Standing in the marshy December atmosphere
With a cigarette between your two most learned fingers
You do not take shame in such a habit
But you make it so appealing.

That day you wore a beige knitted number
I saw you at dinner, and recognized you right away
Your distinctive ****** features peeking out
Over the loosely woven yarn that hugs your torso
That face I still cannot quite figure out.

I watched that beige collared cloth
Hang down your back and angle at your neck
As you danced behind that girl I didn’t know
And then I watched that same sweater
Stumble on over to me, ecstatic to be there
I had no reason not to indulge you.

And when you wear your school’s sweater
I know you need to belong, and play a part
You’re a rugby star, a lettered fraternal success
But I also know that grey cotton crew neck
Clings closer to you, than I ever will.

Bound in chains by cyclic affairs
Patterns of the past - my chrysalis
Has ceased, complete paralysis
From language's malicious pair-
      what if?
The edge of a cliff,
Or solidly on land
I'm unable to distinguish on which I stand
One step will disclose all
*But what if I fall?

I find safety in the darkness of the crowd
The cumulative hum is deafening until
My ears ring with incompetence for the sound
My hips are going in between the claps
And my legs burn from dancing too ferociously
Only flashes of light reveal my expression
Beaming with a misplaced innocence

I try to focus on his face only to find myself
Staring down black pupils like barrels of a gun
It’s been a long day, I’m clean out of epinephrine
It feels good to have your shoulder in my throat
To put my weight on something else and forget gravity
I’ve made an escape, the result of a good night
I find consolation in a repeated tomorrow

I catch a free ride and stumble into the city
By night I’m so much further than where I arose
Drifting unintentionally and forgetting all the rules
Always late to arrive and early to leave,
I’m never where you need me to be
Just a mind finite and floating
But if I lived as just a heart
As just a shrine for my soul to breathe
Then, I would be perfect.
It’s this bag of flesh that slows me down
Like an expiration date.

You stand in the morning rain
Wearing your plastic shoes and faux
Fur wrap

I am baffled
And I press against the windowpane
to glimpse

Raindrops pelt
and my skin is cold

Like a peacock the black umbrella opens
and you light a cigarette in the rain
(the umbrella held in the crook of your arm)
You are a demon I am sure of this
Smoke pouring from your nostrils and
Dark red lips

You do not wave
but a taxi stops
You turn with some sudenness
towards the window that I watch from


My eyes catching yours
In the cold rain  
Dark green things they are
Peering deeply
Peeling back
Each layer
and a whisper only I can hear
"Is this a dream?"

The taxi door shuts
And the headlights
Through puddles the tires
Churn

I will not think of you in the sunlight
and when night comes you are not on my mind
But
I dream and my soul aches
Because I have not yet learned how to stop loving you

*I walk with you through a field I once knew
Where the wheat has grown knee-high
You speak the silent language of dreams
We walk past the ancient walls broken by time
Ivy grows between the cracked stones