i will wade out
                        till my thighs are steeped in burning flowers
I will take the sun in my mouth
and leap into the ripe air
                                       Alive
                                                 with closed eyes
to dash against darkness
                                       in the sleeping curves of my body
Shall enter fingers of smooth mastery
with chasteness of sea-girls
                                            Will i complete the mystery
                                            of my flesh
I will rise
               After a thousand years
lipping
flowers
             And set my teeth in the silver of the moon

I
have
written
one
hundred
twenty-
seven
poems
about
you.
Please
­let
me
go.

I can't sleep
With the flashbacks
Playing itself in my mind

Hearing every tease
Every insult
Every threat
That was said to me

Seeing the times when
I felt horrible
Alone
Useless
And hurt

They play themselves
Again and again
Until the tears would stream
Down my cheek
Rolling over
Eventually falling asleep

"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)"

you were my first midnight kiss
drunk and laughing
spilling like bubbly over and over into your arms
your lips a white froth of sweets
this was the fairy tale hour,
so to speak
but i'm no cinderella
running away
with glass in my heart that aches.
no i was done with fragility;
i'm yours, rust and bolts and ticks and all
you were my first midnight kiss,
and although it did not awaken me from a century of slumber
or turn my fins into human legs
i could feel a different magic
tingling upon the cupid's bow of my lips