knees deep in holy work
grit under nails, sticky hands
every ounce of me
scoop, pile, every ounce of it
packed into cups and piled
my testament
proof of humanity
then, swept away
inevitability is salty and wet
and my sands of life
are gone too soon

details slip through busy fingers
but still warm the wistful touch
and time over-exposes memory
like a photograph left in the sun

so I don't recall what you wore
or the music we played that day
or where we were driving from
or the photographer counting down...

but I remember the flashbulbs when you held me:
the way they spun your hair gold
and star-bursted my vision
like we were the models of love

and this is picture proof
that the sunlight captured our moment
and I haven't forgotten what you said,
"write a poem about this."

that sunset was a solemn thing
in breaking hearts would love dare ring
a beauty that should be so bold
to turn my lover’s courage cold
and still I believe true that I
in deep confusion loved the sky
but light of love did overstay
the sun set one year late that day.

and so I watched  the marbled clouds
be rid of all their silver shrouds
prepared for melancholy night
and frigid fangs of lost love’s bite
and in the waning sunlight soft
a single mourning dove aloft
did wake the stars in dying light
which took the sky with drawing night
and when I gazed upon the stars
at last I saw they weren’t so far
with all the thousands in the sky
it’s not so hard to say goodbye.

in city park a crow laughs,
while a girl scatters
rhinestones and crumbs.

the bird hops childlike
over the warm cement,
offering coins
from his beak.

a frowning man
at the bus stop
probes the folds
of his wallet
for a bus token.

deft fingers
meet softness-
pinches of
rhinestones,
and crumbs.

he smiles,
remembering
freedom.

"fair trade
for some,"
he says.

i grew up as the mayor
of a city i dug out of the dirt
around the jacaranda
in the schoolyard.
sometimes i’d collaborate with friends
and we’d build empires together.

but, mostly, we fought
over supplies and land;
we couldn’t stand it when
one had more than the others.
we flung seed pods as cannonballs,
shrapnel out of leaf litter,
even planned secret raids,
but the aggression only turned
our bright cities to dust.

the most valuable thing i’ve learned
since becoming an adult- perhaps
what separates me from that childhood-
is that the most devastating weapon
against feelings of inferiority
is verbal reason,
and that’s not to say aggression makes
us children, but
i think we all have little cities.

the moon was better off for where it shined
illuminated lovers' wont entwined
but bid the lovers' gesture something new
in redwoods tall, a loving taller grew.
thus trees themselves did falter in the light
as placed your gentle hands along my night
yet witnessing, they too were surer lived
by beauty only you the world to give
and furthered as the beauty of that sight.
the ground itself improved for it was blessed
with rolling shoulders building back and chest
forever warm embrace unfaltering
til ecstasy i bid yourself to bring
and soft draw in the longing of my breast.

you held me under the honeyed glow

of autumn moonlight

and my spring tide surged.



your luminescence

filled the zenith

of my sugar-studded night sky.



but you are not my moon;

you coruscate

with the ardor of starlight itself.



you are a nebula- glowing

eternal in this heavenly procession,

lustrous beyond lust.



you speak starlight saccharine,

and dance constellations on my lips,

trace the craters in my hips.



you are the fervent fantasy

in the core of this wayward planet,

spun every way in love’s orbit.



they say we are made of stardust

but I didn’t believe it

until I met the stars.