Come with me, I said, and no one knew
where, or how my pain throbbed,
no carnations or barcaroles for me,
only a wound that love had opened.

I said it again: Come with me, as if I were dying,
and no one saw the moon that bled in my mouth
or the blood that rose into the silence.
O Love, now we can forget the star that has such thorns!

That is why when I heard your voice repeat
Come with me, it was as if you had let loose
the grief, the love, the fury of a cork-trapped wine

the geysers flooding from deep in its vault:
in my mouth I felt the taste of fire again,
of blood and carnations, of rock and scald.

I have gone out, a cold candle.
Dancing, darting, flickering radiance,
flighty shadows fade back into the night,
but their memory is still on these walls
if you reach out and
touch them.  

I have felt the inhale before the exhale, but
neither as strongly as the pause in between.
Filled with more potential than any dream you’ve ever had,
yet somehow ending the same. Always.

I have surrendered to your breath;
darkness falls.

The Bell rings.
Forms rush past.
                             Intentions.
                                               Directions.
                                                     ­            Stand still.

There's that saying,
"Sticks and stones may break my bones,
but words can never hurt me."

It's true.

Cause words, words don't just wound.
A single word can bring utter devastation or long-awaited salvation.
No. Words never hurt. They transform.
They create, they grow.
We are all, after all, just big fleshy piles of words.
We're defined and redefined and undefined until we can't defy what we are.
We are words, searching for words, living on words,
waiting for words, to bring us to words.
Words can be violently beautiful and poignantly painful, and powerful, and poetic,
and pure.

Sticks and stones are toys.
Words are tools,
and tombs;
They get tied together 'til tongues get twisted and truth is torn,
but they can be pulled apart 'til they perfectly portray a point...
And my point is this,
that life is nothing more than words,
*just words well-worn.

i dream of the end of the world
the only place i find solitude
time for myself is when
i am getting a tattoo
and bleeding myself dry
with ink in my veins
my life is cracking at the edges
and crumpling at the core
and i am not so sure who i am
while sit in solitude in my basement
and drink myself sober
while i put out a cigarette on my arm
because the smoke in my lungs
isnt killing me fast enough
while my friends do nothing
but make sure i go comfortably
to an early grave
while i remember the backrub you gave me
and how you laid in his arms
while i eat a bag of beef jerky
even though im a vegetarian
and the taste of blood in my mouth
makes me sick to my stomach
yet i keep eating because
something had to die
while i try to write this suicide note
with all the eloquence of a poem
and cry for help in the smallest voice
all the while knowing that
i will just ***** our in the end
and end up with one more scar
of many that are there or not
but they all ghost on my soul
shame
i dream of the end of the world

The weight of the world
     is love.
Under the burden
     of solitude,
under the burden
     of dissatisfaction

     the weight,
the weight we carry
     is love.

Who can deny?
     In dreams
it touches
     the body,
in thought
     constructs
a miracle,
     in imagination
anguishes
     till born
in human--
looks out of the heart
     burning with purity--
for the burden of life
     is love,

but we carry the weight
     wearily,
and so must rest
in the arms of love
     at last,
must rest in the arms
     of love.

No rest
     without love,
no sleep
     without dreams
of love--
     be mad or chill
obsessed with angels
     or machines,
the final wish
     is love
--cannot be bitter,
     cannot deny,
cannot withhold
     if denied:

the weight is too heavy

     --must give
for no return
     as thought
is given
     in solitude
in all the excellence
     of its excess.

The warm bodies
     shine together
in the darkness,
     the hand moves
to the center
     of the flesh,
the skin trembles
     in happiness
and the soul comes
     joyful to the eye--

yes, yes,
     that's what
I wanted,
     I always wanted,
I always wanted,
     to return
to the body
     where I was born.

                         San Jose, 1954