On the eve of the
    time when I saw
          you in lights
              there arises a feeling of aging

      am I yours, are you mine, there we
                   are holding hands spending
                       time that will let us (someday
                                    we'll settle down)
another year,
        another number written
                  on a sleeping page
             (they've gone and shaken awake every
                      dreaming soul to ask them what
                                    it is you could be calling
                                                         ­ me to say)

  talk about the house that we will
                    buy and decorate to
                              be our home

(I like to picture us there on our own)
                        it keeps me focused
                        and warms my bones
        look how we've grown

tracing hands on a bench

        hold out your finger, I'll
    circle it in burnished gold

I'll make it real
         someday

kiss me please.
kiss me hard.
let it leave
a mark, a scar.
let it burn and be a star.
kiss me please
and leave me charred.

I'm not so far away
as to miss it when you say
the way you feel.
i'll listen
and i'll pray
that it's real,
and steal a kiss
so that we may pay
only attention
to the tension between
our blue pools
atop mountains,
bringing them both
to the valley
to meet in the middle
and make up the sea.

kiss me.

what I got was
a january smile
from a milkblooded boy.
if only the pearl of your teeth were
white as my eyes

deertail flash in the dark
and nowhere else to hide but
five a.m. sheets and the smell of
sunrise mumbles

toofast weightloss:
a late spring heart
is drenched with its
ripeness but
rots if you leave it to
the bees

then the summer desiccation becomes
winter starvation—
in between, autumn comes to
stay. purples, mostly
maroons moth
-eaten by the greengrass deadweight of
so many depetalled flowers. Midnight never strikes
soon enough.

there have been no doves for
weeks &
maybe longer than
that i haven’t
kept count
on you to teach me where they go when
the seasons change

but given time and
tide rips the
stains from your whites
so i with
patience await the
first frosts;
you are never far behind the
snow.

meanwhile your
jewel-studded eyes & corsair heart
glint in the moonlit touchmenot of your
faraway skin
keep your hair
shirt on.

your yawns stretch
their fragile morning limbs to
the top of your lungs:

breathe in -- quick quick,
don't let your breath stick
to the bottom of your
throat -- breathe out.