Yellow rubber boots slip on
as soon as you see me
I puddle up
You thrash down on the blue of me
I ripple in hurt
Go ahead
Stomp heel into rainbow gasoline cups
I beg to brim on plastic ankel
Water wallows
A woman who holds breath
For no ones
Boots who don't deserve oxygen or water or color

It is too much
and never enough
I seek you in Bukowski rants
I let his refrain boil over me
and scald me
the same way I let your apathy light me
on summer nights
my skin, already crisp from the afternoon sun

and how many pathetic lyrics
of
must I French kiss
until I no longer see your curled cigarette lips?
and worst of all
my dreams
You are standing right there
a cigarette bit between your curled lips
I can almost hold your face in my hand
Only to awake to
my arms squeezed tight around core
When I dream of you
Why do I always wake up cradling myself
gripping the you in me

"Just Intermission. Be safe. Be kind."
Our sunset view for 18 months
My home is made up of windows
and I don't want anyone handing me a stone
There are exactly  3 crosses around me and a 20 foot lit up Mary holding a baby Jesus I see when I look out my southside window
I get an email stating that they will be birthing

Lights lulled
Minutes and lifetimes and adjectives go pale
like the way the winter clouds rob the sunrise
Everything peeping on existence except that  
hungry inhale of yours
The second ****** enters inner cheek
I have only one focus--
lining each gulp
with all of the white nutrients
I've collected during the day
like grey oysters shoved into sandy pockets
greedily suckled
with such force and
I pray to every God that ever existed
that she finds pearls
capable of brimming her tiny tummy
with rare antibodies and satiates and
prism beauty that denies any kind of hunger
that could exist in (hopefully a slumbering) 2 month old

I have floated above myself before
A blank faced sheet,  a fractured mirror
Self looking down on distant self
A Charlie, pushing arches against bubble fans
Burping up desperation
Grasping to be grounded

This morning the derealization was different

Winged above I saw myself in a dream
Grown up me
As I had idealized  
as a crimson heart-eyed child

Standing
in a cluttered room
Wrapped in silk, held in your wings
You tickling me, pushing nose into nape
It had finally happened
The first view
of the best version of myself
Unlike nothing else.

Grief is a burly man
He has been shoveling manure since he was ten
His shoulders carry the **** of the world
His nostrils smell earth's fertilizer as rose
Even when we are plugging our noses and declaring offensive
Not me, though
I will sit next to him and braid **** in his hair, and then mine
I will be tempted to have him put wildflower petals on lumps of excrement
Am I a lady clothed in rose

The moment I twisted out of womb
I was prepared
for this

missed kiss
lost bliss and
effortless forgetfulness

My first breath
I inhaled the gust of the door slamming
***** carriers are great at goodbyes
My mother swaddled me in her strength
Her arms
Turned me from flesh to muscle

You think that you are the first in this
But you are nothing but a playground fist

No one held you like they held me

It is so interesting
that the first person on this world
that made me laugh
was the first that made me cry
the hardest.

You hold pink peaches
in the corner of your cheeks
Only in moments
where your words are withheld
I dig deep into your eyes
for the pit of your
passion
What a hypocrite I am--
shovel sways from root
I lay next to soil,
cradle grit and bruised apple
I am inner core,
mantle, lithosphere
the cliche words "I miss you"
orbiting around the sun
All different earths of myself
I hope when it rains
you don't find shelter
that your arms are the roof
I have waited my whole life

I yearn to shed my love
like my summer skin
It holds me down to earth
futile and forcing
It reminds me of the good I should be
the committed
constructive
civilized person I could be
I want to shed that dignified person
staring back at me
She looks so poised
So beautiful
and wide eyed
Arms wide open
I want to shed these form fitting clothes
and nine inch heels
and I want to cut off my big hair
and get rid of th

Use me like you used to
I hold onto that same perfect feeling in my dreams
I'll wake up mid consciousness
REM sleep whispering
Reminding me 
Yes, I remember this rawness
Body taken as a target 
Like an old friend leading you 
Back to the womb
To the security and darkness. 
I rationed how much 
You
Could
Use.
Black ink blue ink 
What ink will you push down and out of me
Swiping my darkness on pure white pulp
Reading the words that were present in every pore
rubbing my pink eraser ******* between index and thumb
Oh but nothing can erase a night
And nothing will white out 
My moon or my tongue or my stain

I will not be punished for what I feel
I will not let the anti-vagabonds knit together the
unsanctioned holes in my chest
Color will dagger
prisms will blind between ribs
And every day that I trudge through blank stares
and twin smiles
my hair will tangle and the moons of grit will sleep soundly
in nail beds
I'll keep chewing on words that free themselves around soul connections
Never swallowing them down
in fear that I'll be stuffed on my own metaphors
instead of the gorgeous others that await my digestion
of their seizured energy
I find myself, a rookie artist
thumbed down by grey roles
that fit me like a bustier made of hornets

When it first happened
Everything in sight
Taller than I
Seduced me
Urged me
To flee the earth

Western red cedar
Sooty brick chimneys
Rainier caps
You.

I could climb and clutter and choke and caress and cling
Oh to have a moment of solitude
With the blue
If I was vertical enough
Would the fever fade?

I could mutate into molecule
A drift of snow
An aphid eaten leaf
A maroon berry
Caught in a sparrow's beak
Would I be alleviated by elevation?
If I get close enough to God would I be washed of my sins?
I vow never to touch soil again
Tree limbs would be my salvation

Meet me there.

I often wonder

why some people

in our lives

swiftly enter

and land on our hearts

as if that beating *****

were a cloud of safety



and why

you had to leave

so quickly

I had you for awhile

my dear

you fed my hunger

you were my dessert

my freedom

my fire escape

my gripping emotion



I miss you everyday



I yearn for your hands

your widows peak

your long calves

your intensity



but this world is not mine for the taking

my love

it is mine to fall in line with

unless I will always be

a victim of your love

of my love

I thought I was stronger
a champion being
of swollen muscles,
arterial achievement

all along my vessels
depleted
unable to thrive
in the you

Malnourished
Adrenal Medulla demanding,
chanting
"beat! beat!"

return to functioning.        please.

I arrive
Altered and away
Hungry
Hunting for your crooked smile
your forest thick roots
your red hurt
your tangerine lips
your towering stature
that offered my infant soul

a famished freedom

Within me is a house
There is a path with tangled lines of dahlias
they reach out, celebrating the company of my steps
The flesh and pits of plums litter my yard
The purple ripe sadness chips at the soft butter paint
only on the shadowed right side of the house (logic)
It is a consequence to bear fruit in domesticated quarters
The path leads to earth born steps
first step from tangential cursing
onto cerebral acceptance
They take me further and further up
Arriving at a silver steel opening
Only I have the ability to enter
My feet monogamous to creaking wood floors
Grains of chaos and contempt
pounded down by order
Pages of words unspoken litter the desperate corners
Where tainted wall kisses golden wood gloss
No furniture
only prints and fabrics and feather
to lay upon
Ceiling-less, crowned by
Colored glass
warmed by sunny soul
and I am alone at last
A home to combust and contort
and howl into

I inhale the Perry in your lips
You turn me to liquid pink
Let my rainy eyes
Make you forget you ever experienced pain

Your skin is thousands of surfaces
First layer, a leafy carpet of green
I step softly  
I could not bare to
crumple any of your bursting life
The last, a bed of molten mystery
I beg to be burned

You hold me
like you will never be close enough
A python of pleasure
harder and harder you squeeze
Until all that I have bottled
Comes pouring out

Will you be able to wade in all this woman?
Or will you wave goodbye from the shore,
always wishing you could have
more.

Your words are drilled into my bones
Unwrap my skin
To find capitalized syllables molding my marrow
I try to sand down at least my ribs
In hopes to remove you from all that protects my heart
But they are imbedded at a permanent level
Your teeth swim around in my stomach
Chattering up
Climbing up up up
Into the middle of my throat
And your tongue slipped from my clenched fists
years ago
Slithering down my stairs to lick up the tears
I form every time
I close my lids
And see your high cheekbones
They are thieves in the night
Ripping apart childhood images
My raggedy anne doll
grass stains on the knees of my white tights
and tea parties with empty cups
Your voice echoes in all of them
Calling me by my full name
Telling me to brush my teeth after dinner
I still cup my hands under the faucet like you do
And I still look at the water spilling
Wishing I was with it slipping down the drain
Away from you

We wrote prayers
The written lyrics of our heart
Cursive words
Hugging perforated edges
Of loose leaf love
After our souls delivered
The message to a larger hope
In floating lovely regard
We then neatly folded the edges
Of the secret need
That had been in hiding
Much like an unnacceptable
Anne Frank diary
From a past snarky society
And we placed our individual
Sacred script
In one another's palms
As a promise to never allow
Something so beautiful
In a tiny attic again

I was not ready for our encounter.
You caught me in the midst of
tending to my own crop
of seaweed,
Trying to farm a plant who thrives underwater
Hoping it would die above land,
along with the cobalt of my sorrow.
I tried to continue
to bury tear.
ash aching algae.
kiss goodby coral.
You took my hand and used your sleeve
to wipe my grieving sweat.
You asked me set down my sow
my sorrow
and put my farm to fire
Start anew
I feared the black rebirth
but you promised me
I would never have to cultivate solo
Ever again.
You reached for my fist
and finger by finger
the freedom of soil and seed emerged
There I stood
As I was always meant to be from birth
a mother
of nature
a snakeskin of anguish
a forever lover of
you.

I  am
a soaking secret at best,
Drenched in affliction
I am
a ghost gripping your shadows,
Hunting for the sun
All the while
You are
a voyager
Seeking hands under tables,
Locked doors,
Alleyways,
Elevators,
Vague descriptions and
Protective platonic stances
You are
a true modern day Columbus,
You find me, a flat dimension of self.
You are
an alluring Copperfield,
Hiding my declarative "no's" under hats
and turning them into whispered "yes's"
Your audience in awe
Unaware of what they are actually applauding

You are
sawed in half
"This can be enough," I tell myself

It isn't.

You are a model
a bartender
an accountant
a casanova
a catch-22
a poet
a pitiful romantic
and


a tormenter of my heart.

I can only stand poets
and artists
and those who choose to be my muse
I only like punk band musicians
angry feminists
and men with great hair, to use

I admire, only, those who speak in metaphors
who journal and protest and listen to the doors

I don't give a **** about models
or actors or politicians,
weeds lining their inner cheek
dandelions spat, everytime they speak

but most of all
I can't stand your mother
the way she holds me captive in her box
"sit still porcelain doll"
she says as she smothers
as I try to become the fir, the froth, the rocks

I leafed through the DSM this morning
diagnosing every ******* person in my life
incessent character flaws,
maladaptive responses
that ache in my mind,
and shatter my "normal"
expectancies of human behavior

In all of the descriptors
"has a strong desire to be the center of attention"
"is often inappropriately provocative or sexually seductive"
"Exhibits odd or eccentrive appearance/behavior"
"Seeks excitement and stiumulation, often acting on impulse"

the only person I could really diagnose
was me                                                                        your therapist