in the booth of a slightly upscale burger place
my mother brother & i discussed how the idea of religion makes us feel
claustrophobic
how we would much rather be talked with
than talked at
how A.D.D. only exists so that people can pin a problem to their shirt
and how kids are given tootsie pops to pledge to be 'drug free!'
as their parents fill them up with Ritalin
so they can get A's like the other kids.

i glanced to my left and saw a mother, a father & a son
her nails were very painted
and his face was glazed over with judgement

they had nothing to say to each other.

and when they smiled at the waiter it was not with their eyes.

Mormons are boring
with their magic underwear
that covers too much.

expression
is
not
limited
to
a
flap
of
a
wing
or
a
vibration
of
a
vocal
cord

it's everlasting. instantaneous

so large that it's beyond our senses
and so small that understanding is effortless
if we allow

conceive a concept and project it---

only
the
pretentious
present
themselves
as
paintings
of
the
past

place your posture in the present. take it **** it reap it.

touch.

so cold it's hot.

longing.

a cat who almost       jumps     in the tub but hesitates and instead lets his
paw
skim the water.

tightrope hopes.

guilessly:   i find your beauty agonizing.

you know that butterfly we saw,

pinned

to the case? the one so vibrantly blue that

even your mother who takes everything literally and got eyeliner tattoos to prove a point

stopped.


it made the others look dusty and pressed,

mere textbook diagrams.


that blue,

reminds me of the way your beauty works

the type that doesn’t make a heart race so much as

purr.


when you walked through my mislabeled door, that night when the moon was curvy as a woman’s hips

i realized that when people say love at first sight

what they really mean is love at first loss of sight


because i couldn’t tell you what color your shirt was or whether i was wearing mascara or not

you leaked for me,

droplets of your oceanic soul.


we touched in the ephemeral before we hugged on the ***** kitchen floor.



electric amor,

make me the flower you flutter through fields to drink from

and i promise you’ll never be empty.

swaddle
me
else
my
arms
will
flail
wildly
for
your
love

i look at you now objectively
and with a critical eye

a statue in the art museum of my heart.
              chiseled with sadness
              warped with never knowing anything but loose-end logic & promises                                 held up
high
like wire hangers in a dark closet      

i am the wailing wall of what was once terribly beautiful
              {a place where you saw through new eyes and pumped new blood,
              
               a place that desperate love was the architect of}
i am a remnant.

granite cheekbones and soapstone eyes unforgiving on mine as i ask:

               were you ever truly happy?

i have three best friends.
one is Thomas.
they asked me to sing at his funeral
but i couldn't because i was crying too much.
he left his hat
and it smells of nothing but him.
two is Aly.
we carved boundless into a river bridge before
she moved to Liverpool. an actress with more *****
than anyone claiming masculinity.
it costs eight stamps to write her but i do
because i believe in handwritten letters the way most people
believe in church.
three is a read leather journal
with graph paper pages
crawling with the inked version of my
trainwreck brain
the words that i can bury myself under
and call it art.

under the dark of covers
promise me
promise me
promise me,whisper it
that leavings are not endings
and that if you love something

you tell it goodbye.

you
smell
like:
somewhere
in
between
Sahara desert
and
raspberries

woke up in a circle of your icy sweat. ironic after a night that made me drip
heat
leaving you scares me so i try to slip away unnoticed but i always kiss your eyes before i go
and i always love you most
the only one i have ever spared from the
brutality
of my indecision
as it turns out, brutality ***** and the look on your lips when you asked if we could be forever eliminated any chance of that anyway

i would win a staring contest over a man with no eyelids for you

the thing about love is that it makes
my
spine straight
my path clear and it came the second i stopped needing it

meaningful in its meaningless:
windows rolled down
nightair canopied outstretched
fingers
memorized streets flushed with
the transience of our
itching notions

we spoke of the seemingly surreal future
getting out of this red, square place
and slipping into a big city blissfully
unnoticed

words became arbitrary
as we pulled into the driveway
kicked back our seats
cried defiantly
            the pending beauty
            the potential tragedy
            the growth spurt still
quivering in  muscle spasms


Clarity:
the world holds more for us

because this documentary is sad
because my best friend's street was destroyed in riots
and i missed her call when she rang from Liverpool
fleeing to a safe place
because i haven't bled in a while
in the way that promises you aren't having a baby
and how would i ever raise a little soul
or maybe it means nothing
or maybe it means i have to tell my father
this
poem
is
really
personal
but that's another thing that makes me cry
why do we separate ourselves from each other
?

as you say
'i
can't
be
in
a relationship'
the light flickers quietly in your eyes the color of tree leaves reflecting a piece of pain like a swallowed shard of glass sharp enough to surface still
blind
me
and collapse my heart.

i miss riding my bike down 13th south listening to hip hop with my yellow dress flapping everywhere

i miss the moment when i couldn’t see the end of the irish sea

i miss the full moon in zion and swimming naked in a river

i miss twilight yoga where every part of me pulsed with the foggy coast and that beach i will always dream of


glimpses

of

*******

infinity.

my dog ran away this morning
i underestimated his loyalty as i bolted through the neighborhood
with hot, wild tears
and he was waiting for me casually on the porch when i returned

it scares me when the world feels
small
and not unfathomably large. everything is moving so fast but it seems directionless, like a spinning top trapped in a corner

i want to breathe in the trees and stand still
and feel that the universe is indeed benevolent
and that the end of days is really
just
a beginning.

tomorrow,
let's put Jack Daniels to our lips and a road under our
toes
.

let's find a frozen lake and fill our lungs up with majestic silence
.

you dream of a desert house with windows all around,
and i dream it too


of naked feet
of looking but not searching

.

with face hardpressed against the
                                    cold tile
it becomes an airplane window.
eyes flutter open to see a world i know
                                    nothing about.

forgetting you is an impossibility that presents itself ,,,

awareness is the slender shiver your spirit sends trembling through my marrow
it crosses my eyes and sometimes they notice.

unspoken lover,
you heard me when you dissolved
you heard me make the painful human discovery :
death means
i can't touch you even though
you are right there

remember how at your funeral, your mother and father didn't cry?
it either meant strength or suppression. i cried until my couch could not possibly absorb one more
tear,
always struck with the sensation that i knew you better than anyone and then feeling selfish because that is a ******* lie.

bravery is the look on your sallow face the day the chemotherapy made you blind
triumphant, knowing and peaceful
accepting
unafraid.
that night i knew before the phone call
your last seconds echoed in my blood.

echo they shall.

you belong to the impossible largeness of love
and it's okay that i never said the three words
because

in my head, you were never really dead.

breezy
lustful
whole,

the soft of your earlobe against my cheek.

how can the future exist when

now
your wild sage smell is laced over me like a winter chill and your lips,

your lips are so

                                               dangerously



near.

we raced a thunderstorm and we won
drops formed
in
my
hair,
fell in your cup of tea
a little taste of universe to fill your bones
with.
cherish:
the way my eyelashes flutter in the nook of your spine the way moonlight mutters lacy somethings

it
would
be
easy
to

curl up under your eyelashes and never come out.

That chair creaked
as if rocking rocking rocking would rock away the
sickness
That cat curled
on his lap as if its warmth would dissolve away the
sadness
That frosted the air of
That house
That body
That life

it is there,
and then it is not.

his children inherit his things that they are mostly too tenderhearted to use and laugh because of new understanding that everything is fleeting.

well,
i am accustomed to writing about the dismal and the dingy,
the sharp corners
the foggy roads
the desperations.

now,
i am at a loss
because how do you wrap words around
love that is free
seam bursting happiness
puzzle piece bodies toppling with the feeling that we have always known each other
even before we met

this is a new place
where the poetry is
our souls
our skin
the colors dancing between us.
and i can say this:
love is not to be tasted
it is to be

devoured.

your beauty is not
hollow

starlit and soft,
kiss me clear as your half Brazilian eyes
clear as laughter that fills me:
i am your cup
press your lips to my edges and
drink.

liquid turns solid turns gas
the properties are the same,
as is love
changing but not changed.

if heaven is not liberation,
heaven is our cheeks brushing just as they should.

i really, really, really have no place in thinking you're a ******

given the bed i sleep in most nights.


but,

since i'm seeking a convenient justification:


you silently abandoned ship

as if i know how to read a ******* map or shapes in the stars



regrets, resentment, apologies

what's the point

not worth it



i've got more love for you than i'll never know what to do with

even when i'm already climbing the next tree and you are god knows where



unconditional was not a lie.

when you grabbed my ***
without looking in my eyes
                                          i probably should have felt something like a novelty.
when you kissed me hard against a wall
and stuck your cold hand up my shirt
                                          i probably should have known something more than your first name.

when the deed was done,
lying with harsh spaces on your futon
                                          one of us probably should have said something
                                          before the anonymity of the night
                                          ate us alive.

asking all the questions but the hardest one

-           -           -          -          -

when you say you want to cry because you’re sorry, i want to weep because i don’t believe in apologies

-           -           -          -          -

the almost blue sky is suffocatingly beautiful. unfamiliar bed and an all too familiar feeling. limbo limbo limbo under this invisible bar;backbending for the small things, the intangible things. like the dark green around your iris, or the slight, instinctual brush against my cheek.giveandtakegiveandtakegiveandtake,give

-i love you

-i can’t answer that truthfully

-           -           -          -          -

i walk outside in the dark and there you are, blowing dandelions with your back on the grass, a friend who shows up when i don’t realize i need it

-           -           -          -          -

‘you seem like the type of girl who has never had to watch a dream die’

-           -           -          -          -


justification for not sleeping: why the **** break a perfectly handsome insomnia streak? also, music.

-           -           -          -          -

roofs, cigarettes, porches, cigarettes, satisfyingly self destructive habits, Tom Waits, coffee black as the nicotine inside

-           -           -          -          -


or whatever.

we were cut from the same fabric,
                                                     he whispers into the morning
and my agreement echoes in the seamless stitching of our bodies

too bad John and Yoko already took that photo,
                                                     i whisper back

i can feel your art
it's in the heartbeat of your palm

warm,
alluring

a springtime thunderstorm that might drizzle or might defiantly dump

i'd stand with outstretched tongue
if only for one
                                                                 drop

of your honeydew compositions   ;   sunflower symphonies.


darling,
your diamond skin is

                                                                devastating

as you dream in orchestrated swells.


i can feel your art
when our heartbeats caress

scrape me down
like ugly wallpaper in an outdated house
leave nothing but gray framework
until beginnings are easy.

make me stop
dragging my heart through a cactusfield of memories
the ****** have got this body numb
apathetic to the tearing of skin.

wake me up
from sweaty black rabbithole sleep
tumbling&trying; to grip anything real
hand hits smoke.

i’m afraid of every place ultimately being the same,

different geographics, different politics, different blind religions

but the same

money

power

work

material-driven people

in boxes.

i don’t want to get married. i don’t want to reproduce. i don’t want a credit card. i don’t want a house. i don’t want a car. i don’t want cable t.v.

i don’t want to be in one place.

a beauty i will never
                             understand
exists in watching an
                             inhale
a hit that tunnels down
                             deep
fills up a cracked soul,
one i would like to call
                             familiar
and blows out nameless
                             hopes.
who needs last period?this is the way to learn.

it's like this:

you breathe on my neck and say i'm beautiful; a painting

and i pronounce to anyone that asks that i'm single
as if i have something to prove

convince myself i am superior
i am wiser
i am independent

only to arrive unannounced in his sheets and seize him for mine, filling the vastness in my chest with his naive skin

eating Thai curry in small increments because no two curries are the same something like snowflakes and i want to feel flavors burn on my tongue.                 pacing is everything except when it is not attacking devouring smoking tumbling fondling smothering
over doing it

feels right. right as right can be when having an idea of right is wrong. improvisation, dear
making
it up as you go along and along and align your thoughts with your bones
what would it be like to go sleep and never wake up? meet me at the first star on the right and straight on til morning

                                  we were too big for that place and everyone knew it

mindless
careless

                        *****.


helpless when it rains and he says, i'm alone at this coffee shop
i'll make you tea

powerless
to his book collection, singer voice, fingers

wordless
when he reaches the end of his
                                        
                                          investigation
                                          so called destination

invent and deny and deny and invent just to have an                  escape route.

endless

so you look out at the ****** city and see the bright lights of waking up and you want to think it's ugly
ugly as this situation
ugly as your conviction


it's beautiful as ****

regardless.




i love someone else.

we Need to talk

-why is this something saved for later? a floaty, indefinite time in the future: words that fester get no easier to say

we Need to take a break

-cracking open the distance between us like two halves of an egg shell only renders us broken and ready to run

we Need to be in love

-what if our ideas of love don't match?

the only thing worse than needing is
                                                                      greeding

i want to know what makes people drift so that i can blow kisses at them and go the opposite
direction.

great  beasts
&  even  greater  beauties

swelling subterranean
slowlyseductively
scorching
my soul and asking the very good question:

why  don't  you  let  us  speak?