What I didn’t tell you that day is that I love you
Because I was afraid you would change towards me
Treat me differently and that I’d have to act differently
When all I know how to do around you is be with you
The way I am now and with the person you are
But right now I want you
So intensely that it affects my health

My blood pressure is higher
My mouth is drier and my breath is beginning to smell
Like tartar and decay and maybe it’s because
I feel I’m rotting inside
Like something is dying and withering in me
And I know it’s my strength
How I feel about you
The amount of me that I can devote
To you to see you are happy
The fuel for the words that deny your every self-defeating doubt
Tell you you’re marvelous and perfect at least all right

Please don’t go away
Run away or treat me differently
Just love me and say it every chance you get
Love me more
Add to it and build upon it
Give me permission to be
In love with you
Like I already am
Wanting you to be different
Without going away
Wanting you to be in love with me

I stopped “loving,”
I stopped hating
And I started telling the only truth

That one so obvious that it’s woven into everything
So loud and ubiquitous
That I mistook it for silence

It is that ringing in my ears
The kind I can’t escape when it happens
Only ride it out like a headache

It took more than twenty years to remember
The words that describe it
“Listen to it all, it moves.”

“Hem da la li, si laina.”
And I began to stop every so often
Just to ******* listen to it all

When I did I began to hear it
The sound beneath the ringing that is a song
Simplicity paired with intricate and infinite beauty

I hear it every time now
The groaning and moaning and crying out beauty
Joyous for simply being alive and immortal

I remembered to be in the moment
Live in the here and now and hear the present
I remembered to sing along in the silence

This mind is so beautifully filled
Dreams and dancing phantoms in day
Overlapping the world and carrying on
Overlapping the world and all play
Some florid and flamboyant show
A show to enlighten and entertain
Twirls and tumbles and fireworks
Infinite routines synchronize for the refrain
Heard in the rhythmic swells of silence
So often heard by those sitting in it
Too busy listening to watch the show
Far too busy to take the free ticket

I sold my skin one evening
As I had times before
He was a pale man this time
But eyes and hair as black as pitch
Teeth of smooth and beautiful ivory
Light circles under his eyes
Smooth, handsome face
Marred by an almost imperceptible scar

It was only when I saw his skin
Beneath the neck
His chest, his back
The corded and worn muscles
Fatless arms and legs and torso
It was when I saw his skin
That I both feared and ached
Wanted and wanted to run away

Where was it then?
That old romantic and cinematic sentiment
Where a working girl
Finds protection and comfort
A change and better offer at life?
Where was it then
When I wanted and wanted to run away

I sold my skin to him
My guts and breath and sweat
And though I smiled and cooed
Surrendered more than my form
I cast off my want of romance
Wept and hated myself
Beneath the actress’ mask
Running makeup on top of raw skin
Sweated out my tears
Washed away and worn away
False tone and pigment of youth

He left his seed, coin
And a tip for his tip
Light bruising and dull ache
I sold my skin one evening

What is it
About the simpler language
The easy words that I love so much?

I like to think these are the words
The rest of our race can say
And understand

They have a bare-bones feel
In hopes that through childish words
We speak more like the gods who made us
That through these words
The deeper meaning, emotions
What has been, what is
What is wanted
What we are
Can only be said by children

Let me speak like a child
Who speaks like the gods
Let me put letters next letters
And build meaning
That everyone can grasp

He is like a smile to me
One earnestly shown
The flash of perfect-imperfect teeth
The bunching up of cheeks
Soft and warm with innocence
Boyish, ageless and happy

It sparks the coals of my memory
The first boy I kissed
Sensual and honest flesh
Playful, limber, gentle and careful form
Opaque flesh became transparent
As inner fires began to shine through

Oh how much a mirror image I was
Likewise ignorant but lustful
Adventurous and at once wary
Afraid to upset him and skittish to touch
Ticklish in a way
As I became just my body

How alien it was to me
And how I was reminded how alien I felt
In this body my body
House and vessel to me
With these senses almost my true senses
Conscious and subconscious playing along

Do I really want this to be with him?
I’d love him so much better without this form
I reason when body does not do as I feel it should
Why won’t I *** for him
Or rise to please him as he pleases me?
Why won’t my skin show my inner pleasure?

Oh, I do like you and the things we do
The way we touch and how I moan
I want to say I love you
But will you be disappointed if I also say
That I am not in love you?
At least not yet

I watched spiders make their webs
Four to five paces apart
North to south along the ficus hedge
Anchored nearest to the green wall
Each two knuckles wide
Street lamp orange undersides
Yellow tiny joints
Each moved quickly
Set to finish its trap before the night settled full

I discovered them while walking
Seeking familiar toxin
And found them
Masters of their craft

The first I saw caught that caught my sight
The furious movement of rear limbs
Catching the stream of silk
Guiding it on its way
Jagged plucking stemming a straight line
Then laying over a guiding wire
And moving on
From four o’clock to eight it went
Then back along the clock’s face
Its red underside patient but swiftly going and pulling along
Leading a tiny line of molten muted silver
Five to eight and back again
Pendulumous and measured geometry
Dancing back and forth

Then I saw the second
South I crept with knees bent low
Shrank a hand’s breadth
Swift and wonderstruck
And it too worked a masterful weave
So similar but when I looked back
I saw the difference
More than size of form between them
Slight as was their difference
Unique minutiae of brown fuzzy backs and brown fuzzy heads
Varying personalities and style
Artisans of the same renaissance

And soon I saw a third
South still and still different
Higher up to catch the light
Still giving light to its neighbor
Who lets the light reach her neighbor

A fourth’s stilled anchor
Taught and shining in the light
Beneath the indigo sky
Highest of them all
Largest of them all

If in the beginning of their dance
Drawing cracked windows in the sky
Nets or webs or sails
I might have seen them
Forming a rainbow arc
A fragment of such a thing
But I did not
My wonder and my mind
The first catch of the night

Gods, let me write a forgettable poem
Let it be sweet and wonderful
Lightly stroking the hearts of all who read
Let them forget my name and all the words
It will be sweet and wonderful
It will change something in the world
Subtle little shift toward paradise
Forgotten and saved
And let the poem bubble up everywhere
Whenever it is needed
Able to uplift and heal souls
And then the reader will remember
When she read it last
What she was like back then
And be confronted with how she’s grown
Let it be read and forgotten
Let it be read and its writer forgotten
Maybe it will be one of my last
Or one of my best
~~~~~
Like a flowering tree
Life has its many seasons
We have been told this many times
The best things in life are free
You don’t need reasons
To feel a certain way sometimes
How hot things get, they cool off
How cold winter is, how much life spring brings
You’ll be okay because you don’t have a choice
Excuse me as I cough
I think it helps me when I sing
But no one likes this poet’s singing voice

I eat of her flesh, gorgeous demon
Feel as her hot blood coats my throat
Not a poison, not a drug
A sustenance unlike anything before it
"Take of my flesh, drink my blood,"
I can feel my teeth sharpen
Daggers biting my lower lip
Feeling that ancestral ache
Vision sharpening, each object made crisp
New shades of color
New forms of light
Otherworldly fire and smoke
She smiles, crimson scales shudder
“That’s it, boy,” she licks the words
We laugh as I become her
Her kin and kind
“Cannibal,” she hisses with glee
“Lover,” she sighs
But she betrayed me
Tried to free me from her heart
“Why won’t you leave?”
I scratch at the scales above her brow
Feel the black and gray hairs
Fine as spider-silk
My eyes show her the truth
“Even now, you love me,”
Smiles, low grumble rises from my gullet
If I cannot stay here I will take her
Our bed shall remain empty
Neither of our hides shall feel it
Wretched our passions
Immortality courses through me
“Beware the black bile,”
I ache though, lustful memory
Just her face, black and red eyes
Smooth, beautiful scaled skin
“I will own you, forever,”
She watches as my eyes gleam
I taste a familiar salt
My tears are like a spice
I taste hers
It merges with her scent
Tarnished silver in the air
I lift her, bring her to the light
Wipe blue and red blood from my lips

“I own you, forever in this world.”

Sitting with him was easy
Being with him was easy
But he doubted her
“How is it you can love everything?
I do not believe you
I do not believe you love me,”
And she smiles
She sighs
He slumps
And she takes his hands
“Do you really love me?”

“Loving can be like breathing
For me it comes naturally,”
She holds his hands to her lips
Breathes
“Do I really breathe?”

He looks at her
Starts to hide his wonder behind sarcasm
But she breathes again
Warming his fingertips
“You do,”

“Then I really love you,”
She holds his hands to her chest
Lets him feel the quiet rise and fall
The quick beating of her heart
“Do I really live?”

He asks the same
Yet he
Is uncertain
He leaves the power of truth with her
With the divine beside him
And she asks
“Do we really live?”

“Is breathing easy around me?”
He is scared
He has forgotten how to trust in love
How to breathe freely
“Is it easy to love me?”

She holds his hands
Her grasp so warm
Sunlight in dark skin
She kisses him
“All I can do around you
Is love you
And breath easy,”

It is the last Tuesday of March in 2011
Two months ago, Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali
Prime minister of Tunisia, was forced into exile
Twenty three years is enough
He needs that time in Saudi Arabia

It does not feel like it has been two months
Because the world, right after that January
Has been shaken up

Egypt has since forced Hosni Mubarak
Their dictator of thirty years
Out of the country and onto the shores of the Red Sea

Democracy by will of the people
Popular uprising
A violent revolution perhaps
But yes, revolution in freedom, ideals
These countries will be different
For the better I hope

Now the people of Libya are up in arms
Crying and fighting for their freedom
And because there is so much oil in Libya
And because Gaddafi is letting his troops fire on civilians
The UN is sweating and threatening to take action

Aside from the awful earthquake in Japan
I blame the people of Tunisia for doing the right thing

Gilded clouds in morning light
Sleepy eyes blinking away the night
She turns to him and smells his hair
He strokes her skin, smooth and fair
Deep green eyes with whorls of yellow
Stare into his, cool and mellow
The stars are covered by the rising sun
Beyond the golden clouds the gemlights run
Yet the silver ghost of an emptying moon
Will remain in the winter sky long past noon
The air is cold but in her bed
Beneath heavy covers, sweet nothings unsaid
A light kiss and soft embrace
The morning chill away does chase

The tide will come
And change the shore
The tide will come
And take us for more

The seas are vast
They sing of time
The seas are vast
And know our rhyme

They knew our song
Before we were young
They knew our song
Before we begun

The waves break high
But crash so soft
The waves break high
To carry us aloft

We will be brave
As they carry us on
We will be brave
As they sing their song

They’ll take us far
Far from our home
They’ll take us far
But we won’t be alone

After I finish this, I will come back to you
I will come back if it means I must swim oceans
If it means I must crush and cut through mountains
I will come back to you

I will pray to you each time I pray
I will always keep you in my mind
Whatever path I must take
Whatever might stand in my way
I will surpass it
I will come back to you

If the armies of the dead and living
Try and **** me and hold me back
I will defeat them
I will come back to you

If I should die
Please, wait for me
I will come back to you

If you should die
I will still find you
I will look for you in every soul I see
I shall cry to you for your call
I shall listen for you on the winds
I will look for you wherever I go
I will come back to you

And when at last I find you
I shall say that I am sorry
Too long you will have waited
Too much on your patience I will have depended
If you hate me
If you want me to leave
I will have at least kept my word

For every bit of advice on the matter
For every warning and caution against it
He would still give his heart like a fool if he could
But time has made him bitter
Time has given him every moment he needed
To become wary of what he tells others
He has become a secretive creature
When it comes to those matters deepest to his concern

True, he sings and dances and seems carefree
True, he seems loving and compassionate
But inside he is as cold and sad as any might be
Too many times he has been lured to trust
Each time he has suffered for obliging so
Every hope for intimacy he has seen crushed
Every dream of companionship he watched shatter
Until only the one thing that gives him joy is left unstained

He has tried and tried to burn away the roots
Of mistrust, doubt and suspicion that have grown in him
That coiled and bound and climbed around his heart
Transfiguring him into a blind and numb man
Changed him as greatly as a storm does the coast
Made him afraid of all the capricious good of life
The changing tide of existence became his bane
So that he hides behind a terrible, glorious, painted mask

People see of him the truth he wishes to obtain
Thinking that perfect bliss in life is already his own
Believing that he may be so happy and do so alone
Not seeing how he craves to trust and feel it is well placed
Seeing instead a man who fears nothing for the lack of secrets
Not seeing the man who is unhappy in loneliness
Only viewing the caricature of his abandoned ambitions’ success
And he was worn the lie so long that is the only truth

His heart has turned to dust and gone
His soul sputters lamely against the sea of life
Too long he has waited to forgive and say it is so
Time has made him a hollow beast with a hollow shell
He will act and act alone and never be at ease
He will suffer and suffer alone and never know friends
He will die and die alone and have forgotten love
There will never be meaning to his words or deeds

He will never again have a soul to define himself with

Follow the wind, though he leads you from the sea,
Though he will take through the world as he please
Such wondrous places the wind can take you
The green country sides with such verdant hues
And the deserts with gold and yellow and crimson sand
The wind will bring you through canyons, along streams
And across vast plains under stars, toward dreams
Across the lands in such sweeping motions
As he silently guides you toward the other oceans