remember, i'm recieving loneliness like
tears bought, nothing for frightened
and still loving.
leaving like dying, under skin
twirling under rain for death, dancing.
open my falling for words and a boy
dropping life.

girl, you're pretty, but as empty
as the laughter
you ting-a-ling out for those hungry boys.
they think you're simple and so, so easy
(to figure out)

they're not worth
the dirt on your designer shoes.

girl, your eyes
are empty as glass bottles
and only half as green.

you crinkle them up in your pictures but your smile
is forced as your baby-blond act.

girl, your jack-in-the-box *****, bounding from
pretty boy to
pretty boy,
wears a little thin from time to time,
even
especially
for you.

you're not more than that, they'll say.

girl, you're pretty, but i am too.
my eyes are full as glass bottles, and twice as green,
and i laugh
with my whole body.
girl, you're pretty, but you've got to find a way to make boys' eyes burn
into something other than the back of your skirt.

girl, you're pretty, but sometime you're going
to crash-land into yourself
and realize that there's a person where you thought
there was only a porcelain-face
and an empty ******-inkling of a laugh.

they'll build boxes for my bones,
and i won't stop them.
they'll seal it
(doubly)
and i'll break through, calm and easy.

they'll curse.
"****!" they'll say.
"we sealed it
double this time!"

i'll not be held in your boxes.
i'll do nothing but laugh when you curse.

when the wolves stop licking at my marrow then
i'd hope to find your face there -
but i'm alone there in the wood
and i'm alone here in this wood.
and you are a shadow
and i am a pain-emptied husk,
whistling and
melting into the branches and the leaves.
i am broken bones.
i am a thousand lost things.
i am breathing, i am barely,
and i am alive,
but i wouldn't know it.

his whole life, in those
big-brown eyes
(burning, why aren't you helping me?)
everything wrong with the world is in
the divets between his ribs
the sharp jab
of his collarbone
against his black-black skin
(****, my iphone's broken again).
this kid has got to be twelve
starving years old
(he doesn't look half that).
we first-world *******, looking at that photograph
(feel sorry for a moment).
his whole world pooled in
the furrow over his eyebrows
(not understanding
his misery).
a hand wrapped
all the way around his arm, pulling him
back towards
the hunger,
but he stares
he
watches
that camera lens,
waiting
for
his
call
his
cry
to
be
heard.

alison, sweet and strong,
if ever there was a person built for such a thing, it's you.
it's the goodness of your heart
and the constancy of your smile -
it is your kindness, your cleverness,
and your mother's love?
it will stretch past this life and into her next.
it will find you and it will hold you.
mothers and daughters, they are never gone from each other -
it is a bond ages and ages old,
lifetimes upon lifetimes and centuries upon centuries
and it doesn't end with someone's life.
she will find you, her mother's-light,
because surely you are what she loved the most -
it's your goodness,
your boldness, your beauty.
you strong and beautiful girl,
don't you know it?
not one step of this will be taken alone.

she was brushing her hair
when she glanced out the window and caught a glimpse
of him cresting the hill.
she sprang to her feet with a yell of
"****!"
and then
"ow!" as foot upon foot of hair
got trampled under foot slippered foot.
the tower was high
and she thought she'd hidden it well
but they always came,
and she really wasn't
in the mood
to be rescued.

pining and finger-twisting;
watch me weak with wanting you.
your golden-haired laughter,
and your soft-crinkling eyes
  do they read the words behind me
    (three of them, overused but
   achingly true)?
haven't you heard?
well, i won't spoil it, but
they're spilling over, so i'd
brace yourself, if i were

you.

nora,
4 years young,
you lovely little girl,
let me thank you for the good
you've shown to me, the world.
your dimple-strewn sweet smiles
your shrieking raucous laughs
your wild unbound stories
(oh, i wonder).
you tiny little pearl
in the oyster of the world,
your mother's middle baby and
your father's only girl,
my darling and my laughter and the child i once was,
i wrote this and i thought this
all for you, nora-bug.

the first time i felt afraid of death
was when i thought there wasn't anything
that i would be gone, without eyes, without breath, without heart.
i thought of seeing nothing
feeling nothing
being nothing
and i felt afraid.
now i'm not saying i believe in heaven
and i am not saying i don't
but i do believe
in the vivacity
tenacity
audacity of souls
and i believe that mine
will fight
to the finish.

girls and red roses
in grotesque poses
within the covers of him

flashing red lips and baby blue eyes
wolfishly at his whim

and there's nothing to them, i'm afraid,
but the blood-white dresses they're in.

you've got sunshine in your eyes, her mother told her
and she knew it.

her toes itched to skip-skap
across pavements and leaves, swirl through
snow
dancing in their boots.

you've got sunshine in your eyes, her mother told her
and she felt it.

her smile could light hearts
set flame to
the day,
and laughter -
music.

you've got sunshine in your eyes, my mother told me
and i learned it.

i've been in my bed, which will always be the bed,
                     as in, the bed,
      where we spent the last of our virginities
in the push of hips and hands and two-note gasps,
and i've been thinking.

i've been thinking of
     all the firsts i gave you and
         all the things you meant to me
and how
  you will always be the boy who
     sat on a table and sang me my favorite song in front of everyone and
          didn't give a **** that his guitar was out of tune.
now that
is a ******* gesture.

i've been thinking that i need to learn to look you in the eye again.

i've been thinking of how
   all i've done for the past three weeks is walk away from you.
       and how just because you walked away from me first
                                        in the biggest way possible,
                                                     that isn't fair.
you deserve more than that
    for how hard you've tried.
i've been thinking that i haven't let myself see that very well.

i've been thinking of how
  right now
    i'm beginning to feel like i could talk to you, and make myself stay,
          and look you in the eye, and not hurt,
or like i could never talk to you again, and still be okay.
i've been thinking that that's a start
                 to something friendship-shaped and okay.

i've been thinking that maybe i'll take a break from you for awhile,
      maybe patch up the sore places in my heart, talk to some new people.
   learn some things, you know?

i've been thinking that maybe i'll talk to you tonight,
      and for the first time i won't be bitter. there will not be underlying pain in my words.
there will be no accusations. no corners to back you into. no hidden hatred. no left-over love.
     there will be just you. and just me. and we'll be fine, one of these days. i'll be fine.

i've been thinking that that can start
    as soon as i let it.

belly-laughing beer-drinking tongue-waggling
boot-stomping word-romping
beautiful bearded
golden-toned stories in my head
feeling you in my fingertips, my palms
the tip of my tongue

but in the night, in my head, in the moonlight
you dance.

the dancer
she pads, across
black-painted stage
scattered with fallen glitter
like stars.

she raises her arms -
head turned
to one side, eyes
down, and
face
serene.

she leaps
and light curls from her toes
sparkling
swirls.

her body makes
fierce
hostile
whipping
and beautiful turns,
round and around
she circles
she
twirls
kicking up
dust and
stars
which drift around her
in the silence
of the awe
she strikes.

her feet make muffled
bare thumps
as she glides
and lands
no music, only
the quick swish of her
ruffled skirt
and the
gentle pads of her
light leaping

she is silent, she is
reposed.
her eyes never find
the audience that watches her
they are fixed on
the stage
her lips
they move
counting
whispering
beats,
barely.

she spins
and she leaps
she twirls
in the heavy velvet-silence
of the black theater
she twists and bends
and leaps and circles.
the silence
proves true
her incandescence,
the golden swirls
twist with her.

the dancer
she falls
still
toes point towards floor
arms hover
eyes search the blackness
which, as one,
explodes.

spit
across the heads of your friends


right into my shocked face.

let's hear it for
    these angsty
         weepy poems
from our broken hearts
  well
      maybe we should
pretty boys
      and pretty girls
we forget
   all of us
how fragile we are
     let's
         isolate ourselves
            in our feelings
(they hurt)
   when we forget ourselves
and love
    too hard
and miss
    too much
and want
    too suddenly
without knowing
   just how deep
we're digging ourselves
      when it hits, it hurts
our words
  are our
    defense
we mean them
i mean them
                   for you.
It's worth it, this
                       fragility
for our childish bliss
     in reckless, disasterous
                                                      abandon.

we watched the sun spill the sky ******
and we painted pictures in the sand.
we watched the ocean i so feared wash the shells
a different color, ruder and ruddier than before,
duller with each passing wave
like blue jeans in the wash
or hearts on a string.
you were the moon, pulling me on and pushing me back,
and i was the sun, laughing at you.
we ran barefoot over reefs and rainclouds,
never minding that we tattered the hems of our pants,
and i had to remind you that there are still stars in daytime.
we watched white-black clouds over pink-and-purple skies
and we laughed to see the birds just wheeling.
we watched the ocean i so feared wash the shells
a different color, brighter and righter than they were before,
lovelier with each passing wave,
like stars in the night,
or hearts on a string.

If I'm swallowed by the sea and my heart
ceases to beat,
I'd have you know a thing or two about me.
Tell my mother and my brothers that
they colored up my life,
and be sure that my poor father knows the same.
Be sure my father knows the way
I tried for him most every day,
and when my mother starts to cry won't you won't you
comfort her?

Tell the boy I love all the times I almost told him
And hold my best friend's hand when they pull me from the ocean.
Read the notebooks in my room
Laugh at what I thought of you
Give the gods and all the angels my regard.
Smile when you see a bird
wheeling in the rain,
and think of me when you think that spring won't ever come again.
My father's only daughter who is so scared of the water
will dance with you when you're asleep and dreaming.
I'll see you when you wash your face to rid yourself of my ingrace
And I'll hold you when you bend, begin to scream.

you head-beckoning
soft-smiling deceiver.
you would have my heart again
(to break)
and i will not give it.

at the risk of sounding cynical,
you don't get to care now
you half-smiling
soft-watching deceiver
not even for the kindness,
the tenderness of your eyes today
(across the room, and gentling into mine)



vulnerability is a cruel thing
to play on

and on the cusp of it something happened
(a two-people-one-bed sort of something,
  so happy ******* new year, everybody)

Come, then, to Neverwhere
A little piece
Of everywhere
Come, then, to be at home
To think your thoughts
To die alone

Meet me then, in Neverwhere
A quiet thought, of anywhere

Leave me be, in Neverwhere,
It's all the same, in rainy here
With stars and shadows
Birds and thought
Shape your world, from Neverwhere.

drop me a line and i'll follow you
down
to the depths
of my soul

lead me away and i'll go with you
if you promise
we won't talk
anymore.

i drink until my chest holds an alcohol-emptiness.
the pain is hollow,
the joy is hollow,
the pain is gone.

i smoke until the alcohol-emptiness is as full as it can be.
i fill it and i fill it and i fill it,
i feel it and i feel it and i feel it,
and it's the kind of feeling that doesn't make you feel at all.

the exhalation, it clears more than just smoke,
and it empties more than my lungs.

things i love
   (such as)
books and rain, knowing snow
will come again
have nothing to do
             (i'm afraid)
with you.

count the paint stains on my finger-breadth
one for every year of my life, or
       one for every color of my heart?
  paint my words into tapestries of canvas-strewn
truth.
                
things i love
     (such as)
leaves in autumn, breezes in spring
  walking my dog in the midewestern rain
have nothing to do
   (think what you will)
with you.

things i love
     (such as)
a golden haired boy
   particular small niceties from strangers
thinking
writing poems in margins
      dancing by myself
holding the world in my always-steady hands
have nothing to do
     (cry me a river)
with you.









so there.

well this is how it goes, this,
shattering of hearts.

a small tap to hear the tremor and then a STEPPING BACK
arms spread, for the awe.

your tap becomes a sharp crack and my heart,
well.

it breaks for them, for you,
a million crystal pieces at your feet.

well watch me, i'll pick them up with all the dignity imaginable,
a professional at this now,
look you in the eye:
"how was the show?" i'll ask.
"did it all
go like you planned?"

and i'll walk away,
piece it back together from those crystal-clear shards and i'll know it better then.
know you better then.

and i'll put it back where it belongs and i'll know me better then.

I wish I felt original
I wish that I was brave.

My life is belly-laughs and hiccuppy tears
and I don't know what to do with it.
I feel things too much
or not at all
And I wish I could write about something other than myself

for once.

i said, "i don't want to talk."
i said, "i don't want to talk."
i said, "i can't talk."
and when we talked,
it ended. and that's what it is.

i know there are bigger things than me -
                                                  your music and your art
  but the way our eyes catch across the room?
that's big too.

                                                            and i know i'll write stories for you someday,
                                                                               and you'll pick out a song with my name,
                                                                           when your hands have nothing else to do
                                                                       (your restless musician fingers
                                                                                and my writer's ones always searching for something)

and i know i don't abuse your substance of choice,
                                                                                             but my substance of choice is you
                                      (and they said you quit,
                                       and i wonder if it was for me)

                                                         and even so -
               the way our eyes catch across the room?
that has substance too.