A wisp of smoke,
an empty trail,
I used to follow you-
Up
to a place who’s brother
is an undisturbed rooftop
after the sky has given birth
to its million white children

with white castles
and blue ceilings,
gentle cold,
that penetrated my thin body
no air,
simple.

No harsh thoughts.
As a buddhist I would wander
catching the slowest of the feathery creatures
with long faces that came to a point
stroke them

The hidden outbursts of motion would send me sprawling
but I felt no pain
up there,
there were no houses,
just white castles
that formed and reformed

I think King Solomon once imagined a government like this
fluid,
what doesn't work
only crumbles into something that does

There were no cars
just invisible bodies
harmless but powerful
riders of the frigid and heated drafts

The only noise came from me
the single impurity
I cried out when I saw the white castles
filled with silent ivory people
that smiled but did not respond
I could see them talking with eyes
with more expressions than I have ever seen

Silently they spoke
swallowing the smoke that came from below

Raw
Misty
Morning
mossy beds
seaweed drying
upon clam-adorned rocks
deep mud pilfering
shoes and small things
all forgotten
when tides come in
better to be on shore
than to be out searching
better to be safe
instead of stuck waist deep
in clay-like mud
magnificent
nefarious
stealing
sludgy
thick
mud


the water is cold
as is the mud
mind the tide
the seaweed clothes and covets
what is lost
The clams find homes
in what cannot be found
the mud paints
the pale shoes and things

Morning light is what I’m reading in your eyes
half asleep with fire burning low
sunlight soft
mist drying in the grass
letting memories from nightmares pass
winter hasn’t covered up the daylight
it can only hide the life below our feet

I met her one day while sitting on a bus.  I was unaware of her until she sat down next to me, pressing down the unknown cushion material of the bus’s seat.  Her cold blue eyes looked into mine.
“Hello!” she exclaimed, as if I was an old friend.  I gave here a curt “Hi”  because I barely recognized her.  Her blue fleece was worn and not entirely clean.  Her hair was familiar, it was straw colored, half of it pulled into a ponytail.
She had the expression of a smug mouse; exceedingly confident and bossy, with tinges of homeliness and sincerity.  I admitted that I had forgotten her name.  Once I heard it again, it transported me back to a memory that took place in Mallet school.

It was hot outside, and the dust from the stones had made our hands chalky and hot so that it felt like wasps were stinging them.  I saw a kid blowing on their hands, trying to cool their blisters from the monkey bars. The girl with the straw hair was writing down her phone number in marker. She slipped the paper into my hand as the bell rang, signaling the end of recess.

I knew her. Numerous memories came back, only with the help of a name to remind me.  
She was the kid who refused to sit up for Mrs.Taylor, the kid who refused to listen to reasonable requests at a young age.  The person who pried herself into my life,  a person I didn’t understand yet came to know.  
I didn’t understand her constant negativity.  Not until now, not until she washed away the muddled details and replaced them with clearer visions with her tongue.

“My father won’t be home from jail for another four years,” She said in a husky voice, “and I don’t get to see him often.” I gasped inwardly, and clutched the edge of the seat.

Evelyn,
you flew out with the day's wind
and the sparrows
were the only family
to see your mouth dry
in the buoyant moon

The flies
with their translucent wings
flew about your
open lips
catching particles of light
in their flaky, blue, gold, red, violet veins
upon their lovely wings
which graced their delicate black clothed bodies

They
were dressed for this
once-in-a-lifetime occasion
but not I,
in my red itchy face
and cotton gown

I took you by the hands
(my feet numb and covered in inky grass)
telling you things
only mother would care to hear
the unfiltered hiccups
and childish
wake-ups, and a simple
"close your mouth"

My father and uncle
took your sock-covered feet
and we lifted you,
took you to the light
which filled your mouth
we placed you in a stiff wooden chair

Your mouth closed then
and your eyes remained open
your crinkly hands dropped
settling into your lap
and for a moment
you were alive

I watched you there, sitting in the small booth.  You were sitting in your denim pants, with your arm draped over the top of the bench’s backing, as if someone had been sitting with you, less than moments ago.  A thought flashed into your eyes, and your posture became awful, it bent like a string that was meant to resound and hum, but instead twanged and then broke.  The way you sat brought the table closer to your chin, and your eyes became watery.  
You were gazing into your brown drink. You hadn’t touched the rim yet, hadn’t moistened it with your lips, which hid under a forest of coarse growth.
Did you notice the consistency of the foam in your glass?  I bet you the waiter had spat in it. He didn’t like your tone; even as glass with something thrown in the middle.
He couldn’t place it.
Maybe it was melancholy with an aftertaste of maybe.  An aftertaste of hope.  Or it was an incurable sadness that hadn’t permeated the deepest caves in your lungs. Your heart, I mean.
Did you feel it in your chest?  This emotion?  Let me tell it to you backhand-style, because I think I understand.
It’s the time when the little boy runs off the cliff - but the mother or father snaps their fingers around the child’s hand.  When you open your eyes,  the child isn’t what you thought he would be (gone).  He isn’t a soul that, with the loss of him has ripped the living, beating heart from your bare chest.  He hasn’t.  No, no, but the claws have grazed your skin. Still, you live, the child lives.  This is because he hasn’t stolen the air from your heart.  Your lungs, I mean.  When you see him alive, then your lungs swell, swell, swell, then they pop.
Then, and only then, you know you’ve reached your capacity.  Ah, but listen now; when joy leaves, it empties a room.  The room can get very empty, and cold, like December, and meaningless like July afternoons.  The rupture from the pop heals, and where do you go?  You know what you’re missing, and you can’t get it back.
There you were,  back at the shrinking booth.  The foam hadn’t nestled in your mustache - yet-.  The waiter turned away.  You couldn’t see inside his mind, but your eyes told me the loss in yours.
I sipped my orange juice, all the while wondering how you were, wondering why I like to watch.

Hey.
I saw you
cutting yourself in your eyes
and shedding pain
wet drops
that stained your skin
leaving red trails of salt
marking you within
as something else

you had painted your skin
a different shade

I can’t cave
I heard in your head
crashing against the backs of your eyes
making you tear up
making people stare
I wondered
I wish I had wondered aloud

You left.
and did not come back,
found comfort in someone else’s arms
not that you knew mine were here,
hoping, wanting
-until feeling passion so intense
it could be felt as pain-
to brush away your humiliation,
calm your hands from clenching it’s shovel,
to fill the hole you’d dug,
and smooth your knotted brow

the heated knife of frustration,
and hot-blooded fervor
was legible in your eyes

as legible as the tears,
and the pain

I would.
If you had known
If you had asked
I silently whispered, pleading until my hands were cold and white in the December morning
I’m here, I’m here, turn your head, I’ll give you what I can
but I should have said my hopes aloud,
exposed myself as more than the bystander,
exposed myself as someone who wanted to be more
in a life that was more important
than you thought it was

We've got an old way
of working things out
and an old life
(we are young, sister)
though you say we're young
(I never lie)
but how could we be
since that old dusty memory
is clear…. clear… clear
(ah, yes, you see we're young)

And I didn't say I didn't care
I just want to forget...
and would heaven
be at our door
if it never had happened
(Is that a question?)
well why did it happen?
just to us
(just to us, both of us)

When I am home
I get shivers
and cold feet
as they touch
where he had fallen
and you are out drinking
(I am always here)
as I am sinking
and the fat ugly droplets won't fall
they're weak things tugging at my scalp
if they fall, I can rest
(you sleep better than me)
I want them gone
but my skin is a cage is a desert
(darling, face it.  You have dry eyes and a messed-up conscience-)
and whatever tries to seep out
evaporates into nothingness
why had this happened to me?
(you mean us, you silly girl)

What can come from tragedy-
this is no blessing in disguise
(it was bound to happen)
and your eyes are that of an old man's
(our eyes.  Looked into the mirror recently?  I think not)
yes we are older than him now
headhunters gather strength in their victims
we gather age
(we are young, don't lie to us)
chained together by skin
(bound together is a better word)
invisible to the eyes of others
you sit, ghostlike in the bar
(I haven't had a drink in years!)
Sometimes coming back to the skin we share
you are my sister
my blind spot
(the intelligent side, come to think of it)
the dirt on my tongue
which I haven't found a way to spit out yet
you crunch under my teeth
(you are the dirt, the whiner, the pessimist
the man was a worthless criminal.
I saw him dreaming of us.
and I cannot digest his foul thoughts,
I knew him better than you
I saved our life.)

Mother birds at home,
Their babies are too young to die
Why did their children fly away?
Away in metal shells,
Forgetting feathers to cushion their fall

Cold blooded snakes bearing symbols
Stole their baby birds,
Ate their innocence,
And threw them at their enemies
To win ashes left from beauty,
beauty slithering beasts cannot obtain

The snakes are poisoned
Their leader: dead
His skin and all that mattered: shed.
And now the little birds must be slain
By enemies they'd not wished to gain

And fly away, they must
In their hulking metal shells
Carrying as many others
Underneath their arms

But whom do they choose to carry off?
Few they can help,
Thousands more; forced to stay,
Thousands they wouldn’t have to cry for,
Thousands they wouldn’t have to remember in sharp obsidian dreams,
Thousands they wouldn’t have to gun their engines
And run over, to save they few they could
If snakes hadn’t stolen them away

Cry no more;
Create feathers from metal,
Though they may at first cut your fingers
Take,
If nothing else,
Hope from endings,

And the strength to fly
after falling

Mother birds wish for their chicks to live beyond them
To a new horizon they born to see
They coo in their nests,
Shocked and unable to cry out in pain
Tithing new mothers and their newborns a wish,
To live lives that are long
For all are young
Who see hope slain
And purpose undone

Dew 'neath the eyes
become teasing images that lack substance
but I am sightless
my home is black, colored only for those who bring their lanterns,
never shifting, but drifting
turning accidentally back,
and I, not the right degree drift,
find a face I'd thought I lost-

don't wind the clock
or leave the key
where I may see it

if you insist,
if I am your guest,
give me rooms covered in seaweed from the oceans coffin
where I may drift unharmed, untouched

your rooms,
scorched by the warm ice,
giving views to the otherlands,
where motionless green beasts ponder their actions,
filled with water,
yet never willing to give,
spiking those that dare,
those, desperate and dehydrated enough to dare..
those are for the wild,
who need pain to quench their need for adventure,
mules in a constantly shifting land

no, I want cool floors of laminaria,
they'll squelch beneath these pale feet of mine,
and, as I gather dew,
calm my feverish scalp

Come again into the sea
let the salt sting your eyes
and cry your tears of joy
and seaweed tangle your feet
and sand, wash away with the tide
until you are as clean as a newborn
for you are born again

let the water soften your skin
and give you little wrinkles

Dive into the depths and peer at the mysteries below
come with me, for this I know
we belong in the waters wide
and swimming far, down low
push fault and fear aside
and with the days you’ll grow

Oh, come with me to laugh and blow bubbles to the surface where they’ll pop
like little orbs of mirth all innocent and sweet
for these are the sweets of the sea

and splash in the waves and sing melodies and laugh ‘till you can’t stop
like pure sunshine in our ears, immortal in our memories
and we can pretend to be immortal until we die

and breath in the clean air
and stare at fishes fair
and the unknown creatures rare

Come again into the sea
and dive deep down,
until all you can imagine is the water
surrounding you
becoming you
cleansing you
keeping you

Come again, for I am lonely,
and the water can be cold
I need another person
a warm body to love and hold  

and stay, for I know you’ll want to go
but don’t, please don’t
many did, so long ago