That it doesn't hurt.

That there is no ball,
no yellow tumor,
no pain

Let's call it a star,
a little growing thing
with white legs
and glowing fingers

Let's say it's kicking me
when I lay down,
tiny diamond feet
pressing under my ribs

And when it takes me
let's say it grew,
swelled so large
and so bright
my body could not take it
and succumbed to its brilliance

So when I am laying
in a dark wood coffin
that star will be in me still
shining brightly

Her skin reeked of chlorine
and yours of cigarettes

She lay in the car, unconscious and unknowing
and you panted and petted and groped
and, sweating, you stole her sanity

I want to crack open my skull
with my black pen
wedge it open
and have a look inside

I would poke around in there
touch the worms
that crawl through the gum
the slippery grey slime
I want to **** the
black beetles that join them

I would pull the thoughts
the twisted strings wrapped
so tight around the lumps
I want to loosen their hold
if for just one night

And taking out my brain
holding it carefully in two cupped palms
I would rinse it off in the sink
the mud flowing down my hands
the dust of fatigue
mixed with mucus
sliding down my wrists
and the bugs twisting around my fingers

And I would put it back
gently settle my brain
down into the yellow soup
cleaner now
and I would sew my head back up
and flatten down my hair
wipe away the blood

and go back to sleep

We want your every purpose:

we want your youth,
your rosy cheeks.
we want your shining brown skin
and your supple arms

we want your thoughts,
your cogs and spinning wheels.
we want your psychosis

and if you are drained,
sagging and grey
with only one last rattling breath left -

well,

we want that too.

Apples are tantalizing.

They tease me,
their red and green brightness,
so crisp and juicy,
and my braces

Sleep is tantalizing.

Uninterrupted sleep
that is,
no *****-covered toilets
or hospital visits for kidney stones

And silk is tantalizing.

But I will never slip into sheets
your white silk ones
and feel those slippery folds
on my bare stomach -

I should cross that one off.

If I were to write a poem about you,
my haunted Spanish artista,
I wonder what it would look like.

Can words on a paper
simple lines and colorless letters
sum up what I feel when
I see you fears?

The war. A war I cannot imagine,
young and innocent as I am.

Would the words be jarring,
a handful of stinging bullets,
LOUD and TOXIC,
bombs and sirens and screams?

Would they be sloooow and sluuured,
blood seeping into the streets,
or the last rattling breath
of a dying man?

Or would they be quiet?
The quiet would be worst, I think
an aftershock of loss and pain,
salty tears whispering down
the cheeks of mothers holding still children,
prayers murmured into the night.

Mi Dios
Ayudame
*Por favor

Ideas are so difficult to keep

I cannot trap them in jars;
they are not flitting lightening bugs
awaiting my capture

They slide through my fingers,
those impish creatures,
slippery silver minnows

But they are so beautiful,
my thoughts,
dancing down my palms
and diving off my fingertips

They pirouette in midair
landing,
sinking into the soil

Deep in the dirt and mud
they bloom.