A young girl with shoulder-length brown hair and new white shoes galloped across a newly stained bridge with black polished railing
With no cracks, no moss, no holes, no graffiti and led her to her new old school for the very first day.
The creek beneath her, filled with ducks, algae, the occasional nutria, clear, murky water, and branches, weeds, and grass hanging out over the creek, flirting with it,
And the creek flowed while the girl playfully followed.

The wide grassy hill, abandoned by trees and bushes alike, hid a narrow trough, which entertained the young ******* her journey to the school and came up to her knees and
Sharpened her balance while trying not to fall over.

And her friend, with faded blond hair, with blue, blue eyes, with a soft nose, with faint eye brows, and about 4’9’’, trailed behind her, trying to match her every step.
And he was her close neighbor
And at school—her classmate
And then they came home and he was her playmate and best friend.
And once they were home, her mother made them peanut butter and jelly sandwiches,
no crust.

Her mother, at home, then school, then teaching
and her motherly tone reassuring the girl that she could do anything she sets her mind to while reminding the girl to do her homework.
Her father, working with cars, then not with cars, then with cars again, who was good with his hands, but maybe not his memory,
Who the girl is alike more than she may think.

The white shoes grew into a white Jeep Cherokee and took the girl to the new new school;
And the long, dark haired, one-eyed boy,
And the preppy, sparkly, life-size Barbie,
And the bulky young man with a fully-grown beard.

Within the vast hallways, the girl spotted her distant neighbor, her classmate, her playmate, her friend With dark blond hair, with blue, blue eyes, with a hard nose, with whiskers on his chin and a stature of 6’8’’.
But only sometimes.

Driving down the long, grey pavement road, with no lines to part the road, the girl passes the bridge,
The bridge which had taken her to the old old school,
The bridge with faded black rails and both moss and graffiti growing on it,
The bridge she had once followed.

I walk in socks
unwilling to wake
the sleeping
as I pass the window
showing multiple images,
of myself,
distorted and untouchable,
in the blackened night.

It is easy
to slide quietly
between the pains
of glass
and into that darkness
where my regrets
leave an untouchable
mark.

I can stay in the shadows
as long as the moon
is on my side
and keeps
his hands
to himself.

You see love is alot like chicken.
Alot of people are like *** you mean love is like chicken

Well just think about it
Whats better than chicken?

It can be wanted, craved, you can be addicted to it
It can be alive, dead, raw, or cooked
It can be organic and natural, or processed and fake
You can put it with a combination of different other foods and make it better
Or you can burn it, drop it, or leave it for leftovers

So the next time you wanna compare your love to somethin just remember

Love Is A Lot Like Chicken

My mother,
small thick and
sixty-two this year.

I know her advice on daily measures
resonates much deeper than I admit;
always seeming to pry at that
lone heart-string.

Sometimes, when I am home alone,
I go through her things;
her old photographs,
her high school yearbooks,
her letters;

and I read them.

I imagine her this way:
young, like me,
and in love,
married,
driving a babyblue
Volkswagen Beetle,

telling of how it was the
best car
she ever drove;
the American Dream.

I like to think
my mother
was a pin-up girl instead;
her peroxide hair
glowing in the sun;
the summer of 1971.

Dressed in the tatters of her latest mistake
she will tiptoe into your life like a passing thought.
She will offer some token of herself
while collecting the emotions which tumble careless from your lips
to nourish the leanness of her soul.

She will pour herself into you
and like gasoline ignite your smoldering loneliness,
and warmed by that heady inferno
she explains that she long ago traded everything constant
for a frantic ceaselessness
and a freedom borne of detachment.
Now her flesh is made of smoke and shadows
that pass over your senses but cannot be held.
For weightless as she is,
a passing breeze might carry her away.

So though you stand before her naked as a smile,
anchored to the very earth with promises,
you are not surprised to find she has shrugged off the hopes
that you draped so carefully across her shoulders
and tiptoed out of your life,
for she was never yours, but only her own.

Silence
If I
Stopped listening
To the soundless furies
I let define my life, I would
Be free

Days
Sometimes
The best days are
When you wake up alone
And think today is lost but you
Still try

Numb
It’s when
All the leaves fall,
You watch without seeing,
Seeing the beauty nor sadness
Of change

Memories
Can you
Stop forgetting?
Memories I will keep,
My heart overflows with them but
Not you.

Maps
I like
Glancing at things
Like the world and thinking,
It’s small enough for me to hold
And have

Words**
Sorry
For telling you
My important secrets
When you will not tell me more than
Two words.