it starts as the first day of our first year ends:
the sun's fading rays reach out
to touch each snowflake
       (like lazy sundays
      baby come back to bed)
before it hits the ground,
or the dog's nose,
or the very tip of tongue and fingers,
pulsing magnets for the tiny flakes,
drawing them in.

she stands on the cracked bottom step of our sinking porch,
arms and mouth open,
stockpiling snowflakes
she'll want to save in a jar on our windowsill
       (like catching fireflies
      there's one there)
though they'll melt as soon as she seals the lid.

her hands will be December-morning-cold
when she presses them into the spaces
between my top and bottoms,
against the skin of my hips,
made for her hands alone,
but her breath will be July-afternoon-hot
against my chin
when she leans in to kiss me,
a snowflake and her words caught between our lips
      (it's snowing)

I tell everyone that
you broke my heart.

But if I press my fingers hard
against my chest,
a little to the left of the bone in the center
that’s curved to fit the shape of the right side of your temple,
I can feel the steady
thump, thump, thump
of it,
still alive,
still in one piece,
still beating. I think
my heart is stronger than my body
most days,
when I can’t force myself out of bed
because my pillow still smells
like your shampoo and
my heart still beats:
thump, thump, thump.

When my knees give out
because I find your
“Essentials of Strength Training and Conditioning”
textbook right where I told you it would be,
my heart still beats:
thump, thump, thump.

When I stand in front of the fridge,
motionless,
staring at the notes you’ve written
in the margins of the takeout menus,
my heart still beats:
thump, thump, thump.

When I lay down on the floor and
stare at the Casio keyboard under the couch
where you left it,
my heart still beats:
thump, thump, thump.

When my fingers,
still melded to the shape
of your hand,
can’t grasp the doorknob
or my next drink
or the telephone to call you,
my heart still beats:
thump, thump, thump.

I tell everyone that
you broke my heart
but I think
the only thing you left whole
was my heart.

The rest of me is thrown around the room
in broken bits and pieces,
memories littered like body parts
across the hall
and the floor of a room I once called ‘ours,’
but my heart still beats:
thump, thump, thump.

My heart still beats
like eerie jungle drums in the dark,
like a clock and I have a hangover,
like a leaky faucet and a copper basin:
thump, tick, drip.

My heart still beats.

(You didn’t break all of me yet.)

they say that anyone can make it here;
you just need some will and some way and
all of it can be all you ever dreamed.

they don't tell you that the waitress -
the one who fills your coffee mug to the brim
and smiles at your meager two-dollar tip -
can play Beethoven's 9th better than Ludwig himself;
or that the homeless man on the corner
wrapped in yesterday's newspapers
begging for the change you don't have
just wanted to be a star once upon a time.

they don't tell you about the failures,
the missed chances,
the "better-luck-next-time-kid".

they tell you about that one-in-a-million,
that lucky strike.

they say that anyone can make it here
but they don't mean you.

What repose and subtle wonder it is
to venture looking backward
upon my written name.

Scribbled, lacking coherence in its characters,

doctored suggestively towards containing
 an inherent “literary” edge

out of just what it is,

an association of sounds,

(parent’s gifted accidents of intention)
commingled and pushed into

an accepted truth by repetition

and repetition alone.


The surges of black-tongued self-consciousness

-that I’m far above the spot-scratching undergraduate

notion of admiring my personal stamp, of falling in love

with myself by using “bigger” words to fetishize
my most basic claim on having existed, of being HERE-

are given rise. 


These fade, by examples immemorial, to give way to other voices

striving for attention, to grasp their mark upon the page.

Late evening



On a wall,

Initials carved with a filthy bar

of rationed soap

In Dungeon Europe’s eastern range.

Where prison bars once hounded in

where beating’s sounded off 
morning’s crisp hue

The inevitable made its finer points here

Trampling over names and voices

lost to history.


Now a museum

the lunch-time rush 
of internationals

(who mostly work for corporations with offices in every place they travel)

Photograph themselves with expensive cameras

After shuddering, some even hazarding a tear

in considering what fates have befell

occupants on the wrong side of a different bureaucracy

 ....but all that matters, after they leave, is the the proof 

they were there. And how it was just how they imagined.


Morning, in my bedroom

and I’ve written something again...



I can stack it away

if I feel that I failed to capture

what I wanted to be seen

(if not in my own handwriting,

then on some gilded white screen

letters upright and well-rounded.)



How much can it matter to me?

Seeing my own name

allotted above or at the end

of some juvenile thoughtpiece
the kind editors everywhere
are doing their best to get rid of.


I suppose I write because it pushes me out of the expected

it releases me, on these mornings, these graceful, time-blessed

mornings, out of the cell.

To roam among the other skeptics, who thought aloud to wistfully

spend time away from the routine

To hold aloft a lighter-flame for those trapped inside.

I want glamour.
I want edge.
I need f(r)iction.
Periodic glances.
Poison. Setting.
A dark/darker/darkest of romances.
Intoxicating. Sinking. Sinking. Slow now.
Plucking stars.
In the shadows. Cruel hesitation.
Collections.
Twi(sting).
Plug me in. Bring me down.
Saccharine.

Why can't you see you're beautiful?
You take my breath away.
Your eyes swirl colors like the sea
some blue, some green, some gray.

When you anger they shift dark
just like the perfect storm.
I often linger in your eyes
devoid of weight or form.

The clouds are jealous of your skin,
it's texture soft and fine.
Your smile can make flowers bloom,
so like the sun it shines.

Your hourglass has perfect curves,
I've memorized each one.
I know you think you've got too much,
but that idea I shun.

I know you hate the way that age
has changed your hair from fawn
to the gentle sweep of angel white,
like feathers from a swan.

It frames your face creating clouds
to sweep your ocean eyes,
and all I see when I see you
is perfect love's disguise.

Here's what I see:
A tree
Carved out of the side of a hill
With wooden planks battered into the bark
To form a makeshift ladder

To you, whoever you are,
It could be a crow's nest
On a pirate ship.
You scan the ocean with your twig telescope,
But nothing's there but the water and calm
Nothing, definitely not this messy world.

It could be a castle.
You're a princess,
Lucky you.
Look out over your balcony
Down that stepping stone staircase
That leads to your kingdom.
Lucky, lucky you.

It could be the tree I see,
But I don't think so.
This escape is far too full of an unseen magic
To be as mundane as it looks to my clouded eyes.

You find your refuge here,
A hazy vision that blurs out my reality
And replaces it with your own.
I hope that mine
Never breaks through yours.
I hope that you never have to see the same dark streets I do-
That, to you, this tree is always more
Than just a tree.
I hope that your version of reality
Lasts forever.
I hope you never lose it

Because I know that I will always be curious-
I want to see where that ladder leads you.