I decided to let things wash over
like glitter, which doesn't
wash, but scrubs
into paradox
between the ends
of *******
not touching

I'd like to tender again.

I punctuate the days
with water and fill my stomach
with seeds, inchoate
and young.
I don't have to be today
what I desire tomorrow.
Still, I indulge,
beneath its question,
in the period,
before its deluge,
in the holm. Root
into malleability: an island
passing through time.

I'd like to be again.

I'll walk with a dove on my shoulder:
wary of the wings;
weary of the fall;
the beating
that comes before
the flight.

I'd like to be tender again.

I don’t know where I’m from
but I’d like to
call you home
and run through your halls
with the innocence of new fingers
pressing preserve prints
against your skin
and staining the walls.

The way my mother
warned me
I would.

I’ll let you spill
sun across
my swollen eyes
as I sigh the sleep out
of this house that’s still
settling. I’ve never stuck around
long enough to know
how long
that takes.
But while we wait,
I think I’ll settle
in and sip your
coffee, pressed
fresh from France—another place
we don’t belong to
but the sound of it
is sweet enough
that I don’t need
to call it your sugar
to know where
it came from.

And just before the sun goes someplace
we’ve never been
and the cold air creaks in
through your bones,
we’ll open doors
and see the rooms
we built together
in this place that
we didn’t grow up
in, but learned
to call our
home.

You were growing warm in the tongues of spring
and I was soft.
You wove roots in between my fingertips
and planted yourself
on ground I hadn’t known
could bear
fruit.

But summer was hot
and I was dry.
So we struck
stone against stone, breathed
ashes onto skin
and let settle
into fossil.

We fell back in heaps
Of leaves that scattered
my body, no matter how softly
you brushed them off.
The bramble said to the tree
“If in truth”
and I tangled
myself to shield you
from a sun
I knew would cease
to burn.

Then the cold changed your face.
And I was giving you my warmth
to keep you from growing
frigid and icing
over.

When it all went dark,
I reached my fingertips
to trace the grain
of your forehead
and when I opened
my eyes it writhed
like snakes
that were not mine
to charm anymore.

And then the Light
was waking up the face
next to mine. And the birds
were whispering
softer than I could ever be.
You were growing warm.
And I was stone.

I think of you when I make eggs
scrambled, the way that you like them.
I think how you’d tease
And tap the top of the garlic powder
1,2,3,4,5
times. I always thought
It was too much
But you would’ve laughed
If I told you,
because of the stereotype.

So now I make my eggs
scrambled, the way that you liked them.
tapping
1,2,3,4,5
As if your hand were still
telling me when to stop.

I pull apart
pieces of ham,
that I never really liked
in my eggs.
And American kraft cheese,
that sticks
to my fingers
and sticks
To the bottom of the pan
When I’m scrubbing it out
In the sink. Tapping
1,2,3,4,5
filling the kitchen
with the memory of spice
tapped on to fingers
that are not
mine or yours
but an approximation
of ours.

And you’re eating
the eggs that I made.
The way that you like them
And I’m sitting
down next to you. Tapping
1,2,3,4,5
onto your back

and onto the top
of a table
that you’ve never seen,
or smelled or spilled
scrambled eggs on.

And I’m sitting alone,
eating the eggs
that I scrambled,
the way that you like them,
tapping
1,2,3,4,5
on the top
of a table-turning
too clean with time.

your body tastes like the warm
fruit left on the windowsill by the bed
where you held
me by the wrists
and let me rot
among red
sheets and potted
plants.

wandering hands
feel wonderful when you’re wanted—
when you want to be
wanted and warped by watched
wrists against red
sheets and warm
fruit.

forget it
and let it
rot

and drip from the edges
of my mind or this cot.
I wish I could call
it a mattress. but it’s
too thin and
too cold to keep me
warm, like the fruits
of your labor.

You’ve been working
too hard to get
me here to hold,
by the wrists,
and wrench
from myself.

let me
write these words
for me— hammered together—

nailing myself,
by the wrists,
to the tips
of these bedposts
in the bed framed
by the broken
plants and the rotting
fruit and the red
blood on the red
sheets.

You can’t see
the red in
the beds of my eyes
through the sheets of your
eyelids, pressed closed,
like the door is
to keep the demons

fresh as fruit
could be,
if it wasn’t left
on the windowsill
by the bed
in my head
that never leaves.

I am my
self and your
self and her
self and his
off-rhyme of a frayed encyclopedia—
the crippling arch of a fingertip and the kink of its self-
awareness.  

I’d like to keep me trapped
in the amber of this moment
but I find myself,
in chemical waste—
and fumigation of my miscommunication—
tasting the smoke,
ripe and ripping up
soil and self .

I am my
self if the self you are
is you and her self,
is her and his self is
the afterthought of a decomposed anthology—
made mechanically—
the wrapping of roots.
The dipping of leaves
into steamed puddles on
cement streets, evaporating,
*******—
mechanically.

I’d like to be
a rock,
excellently.
The telos of my terrain trembles
beneath the benign boredom of being
myself,
excellently.

Gritting my teeth to the chalk of a smile,
I ******* tongue-tied tipping
points of platitude and innocuous
glances. I’d like to take
a dip into the powerade
of an eye—poison
my electrolytes and throw
up the unconscious effort to keep it all
down. Bellow
the belly of this
bending in binary is the mending
of mind
body
and soul—the syrup to my cynicism.
I’ve been bundled
together tight enough to taste the tingle
of anticipation just before the
fall
into cool, quiet cotton
candy. I could scream if I cared
to. My madness mumbled and muttered
mulled through and muted—
passed from eye to mind—
mind to measure—
measure to mechanism.
The hum of
impetus. The creak
of rising action. The screech into
final release.I’d like to
plunge my plasticity in a pool of electricity—
singeing all but just the edges.
Rattling rails of self imposed righteousness.
Tattling tales of presupposed hypocrisy.
Only I can mold my moment
at the peaking of this pinnacle
to whatever my mind would
make it out to mean:
a death
a daredevil
a daydream.

In the thick
of an evening I let myself
curl around the edges
of your finger, laid
unkempt across the luster
of oncoming night.

This untangling of fingers
and re-braiding of words feels
effortless and blunt, like the cut
of your lips against
matted hearts;
tousled eyes;
layered hands.

what if the lion made love
to the sheep?
or was the sheep too weak
to love and let love and let wear and let hold—
or just strong enough? I can’t
remember.

I never heard
myself cry out
loud. It was always
silent. As if you
never heard me.
As if you weren’t
even bothered.

“Stop.” She pulled back.  
“It hurts.”She contorted
“No." She pushed and in her
head she heard a voice—soft and
sinister. Not powerful enough
to be her own.
Relax,
baby girl,
relax.
It couldn’t have been
aloud. It was gentle and
intrusive and she hadn’t known
it was there. It stroked her
cerebellum, tickling
her larynx and falling
just short of a scream. She fell
just short of the bed and collected
herself among the sheets
and their refuse.

I never heard
her actions nor the motion
of her language.
She was silent always
and always screaming.

It's a loneliness
of passion that makes me
want you tonight, at twoAM --
or the breaking
of dawn-- cracking
the proverbial egg
of the morning with you over
tea, toast, and your temperament.

It's funny how my legs don't work
like they used to,
and their smile is all
but a glimmer of some instant trapped
in the backseat of your car.
With just enough legroom
for 2.

I've never done this
before. I've never
done this
before.

It felt sinful to cry
in front of you: my agony.
the woman I had
wronged. So many times,
in so many ways,
with so many words. They were false
truths I hadn’t meant to mean. Yet
somehow, along the way,

I had picked
them up and whisked them away
in my bag, your baggage and everything

else that had marred me.
A scratch
across the glass of my
actions: your face. I hope you can see
past the fog of my deviance. I’ll draw
a smile in the condensation, blurring the
cadence of an attitude—the pure
and their righteous, the demented
and their sin—to make a clearer picture
from this polaroid dangling, overexposed,
from the edges
of our friendship—the soft curve of a lie.

It tastes so smooth, rolling
up through my tongue. It sounds so bitter
wafting out from your throat.

I used to write
about women,
looking in the mirror, peering
out from behind the bars of these walls.

I used to see them
in the kitchen,
by the stove, seated:
docile at the table. Their chairs
were always a little
askew--drawn back--
or maybe they just weren't there.

They'd wash--no scrub--
their hands among the dishes
until their manicures bled.
Then they'd stack the porcelain
in a heap out by last night's
******* and tomorrow's
cleaning.

Sometimes they'd smile
to themselves; a chuckle of menial
labor. But other times they'd cry
and groan and moan out the next
generation of household
women. I used to see
them everywhere. I wonder where
they've gone.

I taste your lips like the cotton candy
of a Newark sky, laced
with smog and dysentery. You lift
me up, roll me over and draw
me toward you. The gravitational pull--
'on my hair and tell me you love me'--
of your shoulders
and the intoxication of your
voice. Craning my neck
to hear--'you love me'--the grip
of your hands
on my throat.

The city is loud. Just
loud enough to gasp
through the static
of your car radio, pressing--'up against
me'--all the buttons.
Just change
the station. Where we rock
and undulate smoggy windows and
candied skies.

This last goodbye
tastes different from
my first time, clutching--
'my back and etching out lullabies'--
the shift stick. Put it in
neutral. We can just coast
from here and take it
easy--'she's so'--easy. Easy
falling into and letting fall and keeping--
'next to me forever'--from falling
over and over the bricks
of your building, shaking
the foundation, the exact
same way. You loved me

like a super dome and expanded
the words of your cityscape: a nice
addition, in need
of renovation.  The cycle of
recycled buildings and veiled skies.
The monotonous gossip
of a Newark morning drawn out
past the night.

I think
about him
too much. I know
he doesn't think
about me.

And how simple
it was
for me
to fall. And how easy
it was
for him
to get up and get on.

I think,
when I see him,
I think more than I've ever thought
about him, or them,
or anyone.

I think
two people
alone
is better than one-- that two
scars can bleed as much as one-- that
words run hot from the sink to drown out the sun--I think.

How easy it is to say one
thousand words and, still, never quite
enough.

Waiting for the next song
to come on or a pin
to drop, whatever it is that comes
naturally.

I can't seem to remember the words
to his face or the melody
of his hands.
But the beat
of his power is
there. That tune I recognize.
That I know and memorize and regurgitate
in rhythm--100 bpm
or something stronger.

My heart pounding
so fast I can't feel
it in my chest,
but rather my lungs, my stomach, my gut
instinct gone numb-- a spreading warmth,
not hot, but intrusive and bursting
--no it couldn't be--
with thirst. A cocktail of passion
and power. Ravenous and subsuming.

I fell in
submission--weary and weak.
The world had exhausted me and he
had reaped the rewards. A phoenix,
he rose
from my ashes.

Leaving me
to smolder, to piece
together my
body.
Mind.
Heart.
Or let them scatter across
ashtrays and Hennessy.

Today is tomorrow’s Tuesday
night and I’m drenched in what could have been
your breath or my carbon monoxide. A cocktail of the two,
of us- the gemini
we are. We were.

Your weight felt heavy and my body concave.
Rasping through the speakers of your state of the art
speaker system-my playlist. I made it
for moments like these. Named it blazing lips
and raptured fingers or maybe just:
'Revival'.  

I'll let you trace
my outline, if I can be
your vertex, pulling deeper and harder,
pushing pencil to paper—ink on velvet
and the emptiness of words.

I gave up to you. I give up
through you. What words could mean
more than you’re okay. We’re just
fine:

You could ignite me, or let me simmer
in the twisting of the sheets
or your dreadlocks. Built in
subtlety and
abandonment. The chronicles
of sobriety detailed in the hollow
of your tongue-- the stale space
between two thoughts--a presence
and my innocence: fruit
ripe for the tasting. You could sip
at my pretense and I’d swallow your malice
or we could delve into my irreplaceability. Wait
a week. We’re just fine.

I feel him hurting
me. Already.

With cinched waists and jarred backs--
a trickle down my eye, carving out
my lips. My tongue. My spine. Your hands--
the rough carpenter of longing.
I crave to find your center--
the point of equilibrium where
two words meet and
love, and writhe and conquer.

All of me is
vulnerable and molten
and yours.

Yours is something different,
different from mine,
from his. His is more.
His is power. Is Glory.
Is light and strength
and Yours.

And what's more?
Is mine. Is our
breath. Our metronome
and the syncopated
rocking of your arms and the bed frame.
Just left
of center. Just right
on target.

Sometimes we peeled back the sky
and pretended that its whispers never caught us.
With wind whipped faces, and chalky cheeks you rested there,
on the side of the road.
Just moments after
daybreak. A face like molten plastic reflected
off the cadence of the skies.

I see you now, wrapped in metal sheaths
traversing the highways of your smile
to the soft whine of a saxophone.

I'll let you lay and wait
a while, in this circle of morning doves,
tuning in to your pressure points.
Switching radio stations.
And tomorrow, maybe,
we'll find where we are.

Her fingers were coated in rain
drops and candied whispers,
lacing the side
of her face, like a gas
mask or a prayer
shawl.

Woven into her cheeks were the clasped hands
she knew all
but too well, dripping honey and sea
salt across her brow- swollen and
heavy. She felt
its pressure, always,
like a sieve or a boiling point. The cool
90 degrees of a summer smoke.
Orbiting her fingertips.

She flicked the ashes
into a puddle and spat. Her gum
had lost it's flavor.
It was always a bit too sweet.

There where times when we
laughed: your mouth parted
small oceans across its landscape,
etching caves into your molars,
if I'd seen them through that rocky grin.

I'd long to hear the crashing of your waves
again. Against a rocky bay.
To taste the dried-up seaweed of near morning
and low tide.
To be matted hair against
a rough wind, shallow
under fading storms.

I'll send smoke
signals and await contact-departing
lost words from frothy beaches

and still I'll cling to remember
the sinking tide,
the swelling dawn
and the indented shoreline,

like a scar across
charred lips or the smile
of a stranger.

Biting into the crust of an evening reminiscent of you.*

Your crown was  
immaculate, your kingdom over-
grown with red ferns and dandelions up
the side of the fence in the back
yard where I'll meet you behind
the shed, under
the shadow of daybreak

with red ferns and
dandelions. A cloak sewn
from innocence, pushing against the weeds
breaking up--through
the side of the fence in the back yard
Where I meet you.

Your voice slurred in deep tongues,
licking up the side of the fence in the back yard.
Where I met you.

Smothered in red ferns
and dandelions.
We watched them grow
up and over the side of the fence in the back yard
Where I'd met you.  
From time

to time.

I'd watch
as the sunset colored you red,
painted me yellow
until we both
blurred into the night.
Before we even had a chance to crumble into
the crisp embrace of an evening.

Words were for whispering small
truths or swollen somethings
with the power of rocks, resting
on sifted oceans--back and forth
in the rocking chair.

Mama's song rings
cracking. Almost
the surface. Barely
a scratch. Lightly
on the record. Hitting repeat.
Falling

just short
of an earthy gesture. A smokey
word and a hallowed cave. Lethargy
drifting in waves.

I watched you always
through layers of sea
salted satin and holy oil.

The face of a churning
stomach, the incense of your fingers
and the hailed
embrace of the cathedral. Kneeling on
the floor of the ocean or a prayer bench.

You lead me, always,
through the tunneled,
or the flicker of rounded
sounds and  whispered pews.

Through clouded words  
and anointed promises.
It's cold enough to taste you
in this storm of twenty something verses, hailed
and poured from mouth to mouth.

A shaking hand
and the crumbling of bread:
something outstretched and sinful.
Perversions of a theme.  

You were my
mask and I wore you
out, with time and mercury
poisoning.

In the drenching warmth I see you now:
A song and a purpose.
A verse and a lie.

All I want is a plump upper
lip and the stain
of coffee on your breath.

I can taste that paradise and exhale
in rhythm. To the drums somewhere. They could be
pounding. In those bloated silences
when I can taste our heartbeat, offset
by smooth jazz and the bubbling snare. Overflown,
suffocating champagne smiles.

Your teeth are crooked,
but I don't mind.
They all fall
someday.

        What's the matter?
With a toothy grin
reflected off molten
puddles in the sun
of a clouded morning,
flashed
through the dreamscape
of a lover's quarrel and echoed off
the lips of a lie.  

I could be sipping
tea and watching the clouds
fall into the haven of your words.
But I might pour
myself a glass
of wine.

My pen was a Palace
and it reigned
over princess and peasant
alike.

The court jester fell
at its feet. The Palace
caco-
phonied with laughter.

The K-
night brought delicious
terrors, to which the princess
fell.

The scribe recorded it all. Exactly
as it happened.

There is poetry in blood- in the veins
that licked up my spine and down
a silhouetted profile in last night's lusting whisper
and this mourning's coffee.

There is something in the way
she holds the knife-cutting
onions for tacos and
laughing for the guests, pulling

down her sleeves, adjusting
her hair in the
reflection of the sink. She looks
just fine
this way, using
these silver deposits to search
for something- perhaps
lost down the disposal
or obscured by drops
of blood from where she nicked
herself.

And she watches the blood seep and
her lines blur with
these words and
the page- or is it
her face?

It blushes.

The stirring fossils
         The thirsting sentence
Under the ruckus of Monday night hooligans
          Three o’clock
The letter falters
           in the frozen arms of a shaken breath
Water stems up the legs of a boundless monster
          *I am going away- you won’t hear from me

Her eyes looked like she'd cried, but her face was an island.

Her oceans were troubled-
tormented with waves and ripples
and the occasional
oil spill.

Her palm trees swayed
in the industrial-strength
night and folded down, absconding some
miraculous treasure.

Her sky was not everlasting and I could
draw the line
where the clouds would descend
over her
brilliant blue.  

They
were rumbling,
any stranger
could see. Her poolside vistas
trembled and down fell
the empire she called
her paradise.

Though it was never truly
hers.

She was ugly.
A snake of a girl- beady
blue eyes and
blood-red toenails.

The small snigger creeping
up through her perfectly
kept teeth as she spat
at the garbage
of the street: the creatures
she couldn’t see
through her beady
blue eyes.

Her mama would dress her
up in yellow ribbons and green bows.
“Why honey,
you make a sweet little
dandelion,”.

She liked to be
a dandelion, but secretly
she dreamed of being
a marigold:
                                                                ­                       Lips parted to the sun,
                                                                ­                                       seeds planted
                                                         ­                        in the rich soil of her own
                                                                ­                                             blackness.
She wanted to be a marigold.
But she was just
a dandelion,
stepping on petals and
weeding out whatever
she longed to be.

A lithely swallow.

A dipping in--  
laying into the flesh.
Finding its
cracks, burrowing
deeper. Pushing
through that velvet sound--
the emptiness
the melancholy
the desperate cling
of the sweat.

Dangling just off
the tip of the fingers: a cliff.
Before the ragged
sealine stretches
its tendrils
all-engulfing.

Sometimes
I see a picture.
A picture of a woman
in a kitchen.

Her hair is tied back. But sometimes
it’s not.

Sometimes she winks at me.
A knowing
smile and twitch
of an eyelid.
Sometimes.

Sometimes she’s angry.
Drenched
in the sweat of steamed
broccoli and cauliflower.
Sometimes.


Sometimes she’s cleaning.
Scrubbing her kitchen
spotless. Red tomato
sauce and broken
glasses.
Sometimes.

Sometimes she wilts.
Beside the petunias.
Black
and purple.
Blue
and pink.
Sometimes.

Sometimes she’s spilling.
Water flooding
over the counter
top and stuck
to the clotted drain.
Sometimes.

Sometimes she sees me. Usually
not.  Sometimes she smiles. Usually
not. Sometimes I help her. Usually
not: sometimes.

I liked when you sang me salty
lullabies, and kissed  
the leaves on my forehead.

When you bundled me
up in sand and soil,
carting me off the county fair,
winning an honorable
mention.

How I miss the parting
of your lips, the lurking
smile: always
there, always
hidden.

Make me a dandelion
crown, and shepherd me
through your shoulders.  

You can see the whole
world from up here--propped
up on the tombstone.

I was born in terrorism.
I grew up in earthquakes, tsunamis and rebels:
in shouting blond girls with red eyes and pixel
smiles.

I was born in blurred faces and mute
voices pulling at my
eyes until I dripped the clotted
tears of a thousand soldiers, or refugees,
or children.

I was atomized, crunched
into small seeds and scattered
across a desert field.
Someday a flower would grow there,
budded from the bones
of my being and  
flowered into a fiery,
empty marigold-- dripping
gold and embers across a thirsty desert,
where the shout
of the civilians was distant
enough to ignore.

I was sodomized,
conceived in the roar--
of the rumbling wave- crashing over-
pulsing through her thrashing cave.

I watched my flower whither
and blister with the deliberate count
down and the glare of the
floodlights-- dowsed in water and soil--
or some semblance of the two.  

I was born in the blood
of my mother and died in the
womb of the world.

Sitting at the kitchen table,
picking at her fingertips: outstretched,
and barren with loneliness,

she touches them
to the hot mug of tea.
It burns.
Sweet sugars, stinging her sorrows,
drowning her desires in lukewarm water,
black with tears.

They hurt, her fingers,
stretched out to reach
something just barely
in the distance.

A sailboat on the edge
of the ocean.
The deep black sea of her
heart.

She peels  
at the blistered hands.
They are not
her own.

FM Frequencies shocking
through my heart,
blurring colors with deep,
droning base.

Sitting in the car,
he looks at me and grins.
His thin chuckle chocking
me in its warm embrace.

'keep your eyes on the road'
'keep your eyes on the road'

Turning up the volume and turning down
our thoughts.

Laughing at the kids screeching by:
Naked and angry, with boiling flesh.

He taps the tone with timid tips
of his fingers.

Strumming on my
heart.

Drumming out my
FM frequencies.

Success is measured
in years, in wisdom, in happiness.

In the amount of people who pause
as you walk,

the number of strangers
who stare at your screen and are moved
to pressing a button.

Success is measured in clicks,
in slow, thoughtful clicks: hammers
pounding through keys with accidental madness.
"I like it," they scream.
I like it.

Success is measured
by happiness. By
snaking smiles stretching far,
too far.

In my peripheral vision, I see it.
A knight battling
a monkey.
A butterfly fighting
a queen.
An old man sitting on the park bench
and laughing at the woes
of the children.

"I like it," he thinks.
I like it

Trying to start a poem
with the letter I
is an ordeal
in and of
itself.

She traces the subtle lines and strong
edges, steadying
her finger on the medicine cabinet.

She hesitates and
feels the oceans
recede.

A small dog on its haunches, waiting
to pounce. She  can taste
the cotton blood seeping
from her wounds in small,
sustained trickles.

Her eyes fall
and she pierces something
big with something
small.

Her finger falls,
crashing like a wrecking ball,
through the desperate blue of Toronto,

pulling a single brown petal,
back splashed by the emerald of her eyes.  

She mutters something I pretend not to hear,
and pours the heavy water over the city.

Then she sits back in her chair, with a knowing smile,
and coughs
into her marigold
tissue.

1
My face in the puddle on the street,
laying cast away
and gurgling with its last bursts of life
reminds me that nothing lives forever.

I am not that face,
dying in the puddle
inside it, I am something entirely different.

It’s somebody’s mother.
It can’t be me.
Her face droops to the ground in a perpetual frown.
I don’t like it.
I don’t want it.
It can’t be me.
2
My memory fails me and…..
I forget.
What is
that word?  
3
How do you get from there to here—
crying in a delivery room
to crying in the nursing home
because your family left you and you are all
alone.
Faster than you’d ever imagined.

Like my father said at Nana’s funeral,
the casket falling through the ground,
“Too soon”
4
Life
a fly against the window,
then
a fly twitching on the floor.

A tightly grasping hand,
Then,
The  abrupt
Loosening of the grip.

“English is a beautiful language,
a remarkably precise language
with a million words to choose from to deliver
your exact shade of meaning.”
- Laura Fraser


How clear, varied
and accurate.
How appropriate:
the choice of register,
style and terminology.
(Register: the use of elements such as
vocabulary, tone, sentence structure and terminology
appropriate
to the commentary.)

Language is clear, effective,
carefully chosen and precise,
with a high degree
of accuracy
in grammar, vocabulary and sentence construction;
register and style are effective and
appropriate
to the commentary.

What would you do,

If my heart had gone blue,
If all the lies we told became true,
If the grass had turned red,
the floor was our bed,
and everything we love, we never knew?

What would you say,

If your tongue became gray,
If dreams had started to fray,
If your voice found its place
in outer space
and the memories we had were washed away?

Would you sing me a song,
something saucy and long?

Would you play me a chord,
one that fluttered and soared?

or would you put on your shoes,
go where you choose
and sing along to your bottle-cap-blues?

A tree, standing barren, naked, lost.
A branch, weighed down by nothing but itself.
A leaf, drifting into the neck-breaking frost.

A group of people gathers with a hushed tone.
A black clad group, silently vexed,
Around a weeping rock, a crying stone.

A young voice breaks through,
"Mommy, will He ever take you?"

She turns away and so falls a tear

into a rising pile of lamentable fear.

If there were a hundred words for every feeling,
and a hundred feelings for every word
I wouldn't know
what word to write
nor which feeling to feel.

When your heart bleeds tears
and your eyes cry blood,

When your head grows nails
and you fingers spout hair,

When your lungs breath acid
and your stomach churns air,