Continuing to live - that is, repeat
A habit formed to get necessaries -
Is nearly always losing, or going without.
It varies.

This loss of interest, hair, and enterprise -
Ah, if the game were poker, yes,
You might discard them, draw a full house!
But it's chess.

And once you have walked the length of your mind, what
You command is clear as a lading-list.
Anything else must not, for you, be thought
To exist.

And what's the profit? Only that, in time,
We half-identify the blind impress
All our behavings bear, may trace it home.
But to confess,

On that green evening when our death begins,
Just what it was, is hardly satisfying,
Since it applied only to one man once,
And that one dying.

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,

and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.

little dark girl with
kind eyes
when it comes time to
use the knife
I won't flinch and
i won't blame
you,
as I drive along the shore alone
as the palms wave,
the ugly heavy palms,
as the living does not arrive
as the dead do not leave,
i won't blame you,
instead
i will remember the kisses
our lips raw with love
and how you gave me
everything you had
and how I
offered you what was left of
me,
and I will remember your small room
the feel of you
the light in the window
your records
your books
our morning coffee
our noons our nights
our bodies spilled together
sleeping
the tiny flowing currents
immediate and forever
your leg my leg
your arm my arm
your smile and the warmth
of you
who made me laugh
again.
little dark girl with kind eyes
you have no
knife. the knife is
mine and i won't use it
yet.

And she wore
black eyes in her pockets
and when she cried
her jeans went red.
my baby speaks with the
tip of her tongue on the
back of her teeth.
and every time I hear her speak
her beauty
makes me weak
and I'm down on my knees.

I have been one acquainted with the night,
But darkness gives me peace not often found
On summer days.  I look alone to them,
But winter winds, the moon, and shining stars
Provide companionship to men like me.
I dance around the dark and think they must
Consider me to be a lunatic;
The moon always befriends a crazy man.
But loneliness reminds me of close friends,
And cold revives the thoughts of pleasant fires,
And darkness hides the stories of low liars.
I might not like the night itself as much
As I adore the memories it brings,
But I still find a beauty in night skies
Because it blocks my poor, imperfect eyes
And gives, in darkness, a new light to things.

When you plunged
The light of Tuscany wavered
And swung through the pool
From top to bottom.

I loved your wet head and smashing crawl,
Your fine swimmer's back and shoulders
Surfacing and surfacing again
This year and every year since.

I sat dry-throated on the warm stones.
You were beyond me.
The mellowed clarities, the grape-deep air
Thinned and disappointed.

Thank God for the slow loadening,
When I hold you now
We are close and deep
As the atmosphere on water.

My two hands are plumbed water.
You are my palpable, lithe
Otter of memory
In the pool of the moment,

Turning to swim on your back,
Each silent, thigh-shaking kick
Re-tilting the light,
Heaving the cool at your neck.

And suddenly you're out,
Back again, intent as ever,
Heavy and frisky in your freshened pelt,
Printing the stones.

The sunlight
does not breathe on your skin:
it is your skin, the dust,

the specks dancing upon
a blank board. And flaking onto

one dawn foot-print I slip
my limbs between slow, loving
your warm, caramel crooks.

How you rooted yourself into
morning’s peak, and I
am moonlight in
his last nocturnal slumber –

I say you are lit like a
home, not a cloudburst or star

and settle each particle into
porcelain. Cups for two
as if it will fill me up,

swinging inside
my belly, your love is enough
light for the both of us.

The bite and the breath*
These you do not forget.
Like a grade school crush,
the rush of the Atlantic in December
Embedded within the most physical parts of memory
like a rock in your knee.

I'm silenced by the quiet here,
the space between buildings
and the white gossip of the salt stains
Upon the sidewalk.
Spreading tales that only this dolly township could know,
Burning curious holes in the black ice
and talking to the snow.

In a year, a few new babies,
A shop or cafe proudly erected looking
Suspiciously new, admitting big dreams
To the peeling peeling paint corner stores
That will never ever ever go out of business.
These are the blocks that could never be
recreated in a movie set.

This is the willow where I told two boys I loved them,
once as a girl, once as a woman.
This weathered with the seasons.

This is the candy shop,
Whose floor once knew
my toddlish ire and snot.

This is the bay
that I explored for decades
throwing rocks into the clay
First to seek
Second to escape
Third to return
And fourth to stay.

This is the town where I was knit,
In the quiet of the valley
and the roll of the sea,
This is my body's kindred fit-

Trapped inside this sleeping town,
this is where I am free.
I'll stick around.

Are you bored?
Do you feel there's no point to the things you do?
Is your life missing an element of excitement?

Fear not, I have just the thing

Put the Awe back in Awesome
Put the back Zing back in Amazing
Put the Fanta back into Fantastic

What?  Fanta is great.

Anyway

It's rather simple.  

The next time you have to do something you find boring, depressing, or unfulfilling, do it FOR SCIENCE!

Some examples:

I'll be out later, I have to do my English homework...FOR SCIENCE
I'm giving the big presentation tomorrow...FOR SCIENCE
I got into a car accident this morning...FOR SCIENCE
I don't feel so well, I need to use the crapper...FOR SCIENCE.  I'll be in there awhile.  For Science.
Someone tried to steal my purse, so I stabbed them...FOR SCIENCE

I guarantee that if you use this handy tip, your self esteem will rise, and people will find you exponentially more interesting!

Or they might think you're crazy

They definitely won't think you're boring, though.

So go out there and show the world what you're made of

For Science!

My alacrity scares me,
like the electrical figurations in your head
that create valleys and mediocre love.
Sometimes, we love just to prove that we can do so,
because our lungs breathe effortlessly
while possibilities are fleeting
and slipping through our grip like
the missed first kiss and futile attempts
for you to notice me.
The concaves of your skin,
wrapped tightly around colliding bone and ligament,
the barrier against me learning you –
the twists and lifelines leading me to something
greater than your chest rising and falling
in the haze of the night.