Blue plastic cows
munch green polyester grass
on a hillside next to a warm
pale blue farmhouse in Iowa
on a sweet Sunday last June.

You knew how to dance
in the barnyard under the roof
your father built last spring
when the sun was shining
through the clouds for once.

My feet stirred up months of dust
which got into your cornflower eyes
and turned your eyelashes brown
until I couldn't see you, just the
light shining from within.

The indigo Tuesday rain
painted streaks down your arms
as you harvested my heart
from among the tired wheat, ready to be carried off
into the flour mill, where it could get some rest.

But you left me standing there when
your father died on a Wednesday night
under a brilliant full moon after the kids had all gone home;
there was a rock at the bottom of my shoe.
The dream was never built to last.

Your hand submerged
in the clearest of mud puddles,
my crystalline heart floats

Smile traced in ink, a
porcelain mouth
cheeks kissing dreams
over the pavement, shining
whiter than your skin

The clouds listen like her
favorite son, the blister of sun
gasping from above

Your morning eyes,
I've never seen them brighter
holding your mind asleep
beneath the overflow of ideas
recorded in your head

That shot of whiskey
clouds your speech, teeth
stained sharpened boldened
by the alcohol within

My breath knows
the walls of his mouth
like it's never known yours

Moons fogged over,
the eclipse complete
I forgot to remember
the dream as it lived -
no longer used, it sinks
to the bottom of my fountain mind

I focus on the turning
the weight of my feet
on shallow ground

Pay attention,
she said, to these good hands
you're inside.
To the air outside, as it freezes
through your bones.
Pay attention to the names
of everyone you've ever loved, and
pay attention to the way they sound today,
the way they never will again.
Pay attention when you speak.
Your words are muted, stilted, muddy,
your clarity is gone. Pay attention
to this paper cup, the champagne bubbling
within. The sparkles in your eyes are spots,
there's a surgery for that. Pay attention to me,
pay attention to my lips, these unholy things
you love. Know what you love, love what you love.
Pay attention to the clock, remember to wake up
when you have to. Get to work on time. Then come back
home, and I'll make you dinner, and we can watch television
like we used to. Pay attention, and maybe we can fix these spaces
in your bones. Pay attention, and maybe you'll let me hold you
on this windowsill in the dark, the rooftops shining with moonlight.
Maybe this time, you'll look at me when I speak. Pay attention.
And maybe things will go back to the way they were.

i couldn't carry my heart
into the cold of the emergency room.
it was crumbling between my fingers
into pieces they picked up
from the floor, placing them back
into my too-small hands.

there were too many pieces
for me to comprehend the too-bright lights
and the quiet that allowed me to hear
moans and cries of the woman next to me
telling the doctor that she took too many pills
to forget the fact that all her kids are gone.

she had her stomach pumped. i needed
my heart pumped back into place
so it could feel the answers to the questions
the doctors asked me, so i could have told them
when i said i didn't want to die, i meant i was
too scared to propel myself into the unknown
like that. but i was too scared of propelling myself
into the horror of the next day week month not to try.

i wish i could have told them why my pulse ached
when it pounded through my bones. i wish
i could explain that it burst like that because
someone touched the seams that were holding
my skin together, someone poked their fingers
into the soul of me where they didn't belong
and it pierced my heart straight through,

maybe then they would have listened when i said
i needed help beyond what medicines could fix,
there was a place where i could heal and it wasn't
in the suicide room of the hospital
where i could count how many instruments
hanging on the walls i could stab myself with
despite the signs that said this room was harmless,

their concern was so misplaced
that they told me they had no beds for me, that
there was nowhere inside this building i could learn
to pick myself up off the tiled floor, they couldn't teach me
how to walk if i couldn't remember where my bones
were supposed to go. they told me i wasn't unsafe enough
to take me to the psych ward because i wasn't standing
with my toes on the edge.

i wanted to tell them, i would if only i could find it,
could locate the place where my pulse echoed
through my wrist so i could stop it from beating,
so i could keep it from punching straight through
to the ache pounding in my bones.

i wanted to tell them, if they would listen,
that i couldn't breathe in the middle of the night
and if i didn't feel safe then, how could i be safe enough
to let me into the dark of that night alone
without any bandages to repair the stitching
that had come undone while i was breaking.

If there's nothing they can do,
nothing I can be taught
in order to push the cold away,
please tell me at least the food
will be okay.

The last time, sauce dripping
over my teeth like I am supposed
to sink down into it, pour myself over
the meaty softness of someone else's body
and rest, being absorbed
into their consciousness until
I am nothing more than
a weight on their tongue.

Tell me I'll be able to sleep. They were
always leaving the door open,
the lights still on, I can't sleep knowing
that any moment something could happen
and it could come for me.

Tell me the faucets will pour out
cold water so I can wake up. Tell me
there will be a mirror so I can watch
the lessons taking hold
across my jawline.

I need to know they'll let me in
to see the doctor. Not the one
who tells me everything will be
all right, but the one who has
a plan, who lays everything out
in the simplest terms, so I can
understand.

The one whose mouth zigzags
around broken syllables
like a crooked train track, spitting
Lorazepam, Citalopram, Trazodone,
I don't understand the language
but I know, he does this every day,
points nonsense words at shadows
hoping someday we'll understand.

Maybe I could. If I could only
pull the sauce out from my eardrums,
clear the junk from my tongue and
the wreckage from my teeth;

Mother,
if the food is good,
then maybe someday,
I'll be able
to taste it for
myself.

It is difficult to ignore
the run-down playhouse.

The ivy running
up the sides.

It has belonged to spiders
for seven years,

the yellow paint is
chipping, you cannot see

the ladder inside, how tiny feet
clambered up the wooden rungs,

the windows clouded over
with dust.

And I start shaking,
only a child could understand

longing like this,
I've never been sheltered

like they've sheltered me
for all these years.

In the absence
of childhood memories,

this house is how I know
I was loved.

The stars who carry an old man's face
in their bones stop to take a rest on
an uneventful day, laying down their burdens
for just long enough to make it count.

His nose is the first to go, cracking
decisively down the middle like a
half-moon breaking at the seams
of a teenager's whispered prayers.

Next are his eyebrows, splitting
at the roots into a forest which calls
like the girls at a high school football game,
just waiting for him to call back.

Then come his cheekbones, splintering
in one shuddering gasp like the mothers
who have borne a child and still aren't prepared
for the day he has to leave home.

His lips are the next to go, crumbling
into a dust that will never speak again,
like the girl he should have told to stay,
but who walked away before he could.

He breaks in the silence
while the stars still have their backs turned,
ignorning the stories that escape, shimmering,
into the cosmos from whence they came.

There is something about the skin
of a woman that makes my fingers
want to sandpaper their bones
until they curve like
her waist does.

I want them to bend
around her hipbones,
come out the other side saying
Baby, my knees are so weak
you could carry them away
in your prayers.

And I bet she would.
This girl, she would pray
so hard it would move
straight through her,
every breath is a dance
and she's trying to move
so fast that the world
couldn't even touch her.

I want so badly
to touch her. I wish I could,
if only I could rewrite my story
until I became someone else,
I would find her eyes at the bar,
let her teach me where the cold
comes in so I can fill it
with my lips.

I want to see the way
her God anoints her forehead,
how He shows her the light
in the times she needs it
the most. My God, She tells me
I'll never be able to love you
with the lights left on, and
I think She's right.

My body quakes whenever I
step onto the sidewalk, because
I think they can smell it on me.
I think they can smell her on me,
these trees they whisper
as soon as I turn away,
and I think that means something
about the way I've learned
to make love to this Earth.

These girls, they love so much
differently than a man does,
a man can tell you that you're
beautiful but a man's hormones
have learned to speak for him
in order to get the job done, so
you never know if it was true.

If I could hold a woman, I know
I'd cradle her cheek against
my collarbone, I'd tell her I know
it will be all right, I've done this
before and I know exactly
how it will end.

I don't know how this
will end. I don't know how
I'll manage to keep her a secret
inside of me. There is a dust that waits
in her attic and I know I could climb
until I reach the sky.

At the bend in this river,
I know this course will carry me
to a clearing where she can teach
me how to smile in the sunlight. Where
the breeze will show me that my soul
is not stuck tight as the bonds
they push me into.

As soon as I can laugh
the way she does,
I know
I'll be able
to come
home.

Sweetheart,
there is a star
cut out from my heart

I would give it
to you, hold it
outstretched
and let it fall
into your hands,
a warm and glowing
reminder of something
I told you, years ago

I would hold
galaxies, swirling,
up to your face where
you could watch them
turning  --

I'd leap over train tracks
and lay my hand close
to the flame at your core
just so I could
brush this white-hot
pain away from your chest,

I'm watching it
blistering there, and
the flames are licking
at the piece of me that has
always been connected
between us, veins weaving
together in tangled knots, I'm stuck
so close to you it hurts

And tonight, this holy
darkness closing over
your head, I hope
you can think of this,
and touch your hand to
your heart --

I hope you can smile
thinking of the ties
that bring me sailing
back to you.

The peaks in your voice crumble and shake
as you laugh
Rocks tumbling down the cliff,
boulders crash into the sea

This mountain life is tracked in your veins,
the cracks and breaks
shattering against me
in the rough hold of your arms

I never knew someone so holy
Your eyes held up to the sky, watching
the snow on the mountaintops,
whispering their names in the sunrise

And when morning comes, your lips
crack open, that precious smile
breaking free
from the traps you've held it under

I breathe in the years, wish
my mountain veins would peak like yours
Swallowing bruises under layers of skin
rocks settling in my blood, magma melting hot

Your dusty eyes my compass, I've come home.

At the center of the planet,
I believe there is a fountain.
I think that once you've made it through
the Earth's core, its hardened shell,
you pass through the curtain into the heart
of everything, and there,
you'll see it for the very first time.

The fountain would be simple,
shaped from rough grey stone.
The water rushing softly over pebbles
tossed into the pool at its base, left
by every traveler who's passed through
before you.

You have a pebble of your own.
You've kept it since you started digging,
and it's stayed with you since, lighting
your way when things grew dark, and
showing you where to go when you've
gotten lost. It's kept you company, when
no one else could.

Let the pebble slide through your fingertips
like a cool summer's rain, and keep your hands
held outstretched, make sure you don't
miss anything. This is important.
This is what you've been waiting for.
The Earth receives your blessing.

She is waiting for you outside the curtain,
and as soon as you pass through, she takes
your hand. The evening shadows in your heart
pull back, receive the light, and you fall into step
with the tide. And this, never forget this:
the moon will always sing you home.

July 29, 1976*

Eighteen, skinny
as a whip, all curving bones
and freckled knees
Your curled hair, that timid
smile balanced above the
pearls of your jaw

The city is dark at night,
you were never afraid but the stars
were diamond-sharp that night
and you stopped, shivering in the cold

I can hear your last words
frozen on your tongue,
"Now, who the hell is this" -
your hand on your hip
voice a knife

A bullet to your chest
breaks the silence, folding
yourself in half, a paper crane
crumpled on the pavement

The papers said you were killed
instantly; I don't think you were
I think you knew, a bullet buried
in your best friend's thigh -
did she watch you die?

The petals in your hair,
they've fallen, years ago
This woman lying here,
the scarred pavement of a
New York City street -

She is someone else, not
the starling you were
in your father's eyes
Wings outstretched on
a fire escape, waiting
for a breeze to pull you
over the edge

I can feel his breathing
pull
through his neck,
the stream running clear
in his throat, desire melting
from his arms.

I never needed anyone,
he says
from a warm hollow down
within, I only needed myself
and I liked it that way. His tears
contradict him.

We share one of those
dark, sweet
kisses and he keeps his
eyes open, straying from me
out to the colder places, where
I've never been.

My crushing heart never
needed
anyone like this. The aching
locks where keys will never fit,
where cups lie emptied on the
***** ground.

Those long fingers I love
pause
against the grass, sunlight
breaking over his face, streaking
swirls across his clouded
brow.

His wild jungle heart bubbles
alive
beating crimes into the hollow
of my cheek, I never try to resist
when I find a heart so deliciously
lost and broken.

The baby bird in his chest has
flown
and I come home to the blues of
my windowpanes, grace in the
unholy whispers, thoughts engulfed
in the tide.

Staring into the puddle
like it might open up, a portal,
and let him in,
falling through the sky.

My tongue is cold against my teeth
and I tell him not to think too deep,
not to feel so much, just for a second.

He is the ivy crawling up the bricks.
He is the patterns in the dust, outlining
stories against the pavement, scattering in the breeze.
He is too much a man for me, and still never quite enough.

The sawdust in his hair clings too tight,
and when I get the call someday --
the one that will tell me if I should have believed him,
the one that will fix everything and tear it all apart,

I will remember his mouth.
The parting of lips and then the teeth,
stark white against the black.

Like eyes,
      the pond stops rippling,
      its happiness too strong to bear.

Just rest,
      this is your home now,
      stars where bricks should be,
      holding the ceiling above your heads.

She is everything,
      her fingers breaking
      every promise you've ever made
      in the twilight.

Outside,
      the farmhouse as day breaks,
      you are crossing the river
      of every love you've left behind.

Your tongue
      held across your teeth
      like prison bars,
      you shudder into silence.

She waits
      patiently in the darkness,
      loving holding breathing life
      into the spaces in between.

You are
      the spaces in between.
      She'll follow you there, a field
      beyond right and wrong-doing, as Rumi said.

She is
somewhere
beyond the sky.

My lungs stop working when I look at them.

There is a happiness on her brow that never stops, not when she blushes and breaks their staring contest to rest her eyes on me.

There is a happiness that never stops and I knew it as soon as I woke up this morning, stuck under my bedsheets like I'm nailed to a cross. There is a rain that never stops, and something shifts in her eyes; she follows him when he turns to go.

My lungs unplug like a cork stuck in the neck of a bottle I can't reach, and somehow I am home.