breathe in the smell of meat cooking in the morning and
hoping it's not for me because
my stomach is a delicate beast,
it only feasts on things worth feasting
while it searches for something to fill the cavernous black hole
left by one-too-many blows and one-too-many hearts sinking
and one other heart constantly beating above it, my poor
mother must know, she must.
know that

I don't sleep through meals for nothing and the smell
on my breath isn't alcohol or cigarettes it's my own insides
pouring themselves out because I can't muster up
anything
but *****
anymore and

I don't
want
to

A nod of the head, a twist of the wrist and

jumping back in fright of
what you'll do
next.

Ideas ideas
and running
here, there
now
now
before it's
too
late!

And I get delayed
by people traffic,
car traffic
mind traffic

Buzzing by
bursting through
doors
car doors
front doors
back doors
out
bedroom doors
and in
to
meet
your
maker.
Who just so happens
to have an appointment
at two o'clock,
so
we have to
make this
speedy.

I am as still as a rabbit who has been seen.

The exception is my heart,
leaping from the confines of my chest,
up and out into sky and birds
and my thoughts are left in my bed
while I am tugged along by my heart-strings..

If you are to spend a day alone,
what better way than to spend it in the clouds?

her pretty
sun-tanned face
assumed the characteristics
of a

grease-stained
bag

I hear an awful lot about
fingertips these days and
I wonder how many I'll have to touch today,
tomorrow and
the rest of my life.

The fingertips and palms of my own hands are
worried and weathered, both due to
lack of sleep and the
guitar that waits for me, always.
Gentle, the very sight calms my belly-
aching and these calluses left where I
refuse to bruise or to bleed.

When I work myself into time's duck and weave,
and I don't have to wonder how long it will take or
when I'll be able to croak out a few lines, I can only
hope, complete with the yellow wings of a canary,
that I can last longer
than this dance does.

having your heart
in my fist - I wasn't expecting
the hum coming from that little
drum

you are usually left-handed but I can tell you feel
all right, right about now

you are generally in my top 20 picks for people to
think of today so

I'll think of you.
and as I do
I'll expect you to
think of me
and you-and-I is
relative to
our position
on the map

but don't let that
affect the way you
think of me

if I could, I would draw the back of every
time she turned away from me - her hair and how it met the base of the skull and repelled
downward or climbed back up, she'd cut it short and then
watch it grow,            

if I could, I would re-trace her ears and marvel at how the skin joined in perfect harmony behind them. if I could, I would have had her a million times more in between my fingers, running them through her - everyevery I have
and had and
will have.

i am comforted in my own. just like ice melts, only not so
warm, just warm     enough. lay like a leaf in the sun, holding up lace so that
when i lower it the pattern will be burned into my cheeks, intricate enough
so that people will have to lean inclose
to see

i am ever-changing, like forever-ever, like no mona lisa because
'bullets pass through me and I keep moooooooving'
only the bullets never reach me - i know i'm dreaming when i'm
dreaming.

I thought that maybe the freeze-frames of you breathing, me breathing you and our breath hanging in the cold air, mingling like two school girls
would slip away,
like everything



and while we are quietly humming, we secretly are wishing
that the other would start dancing so that the night won't be wasted

but what we aren't aware of won't hurt us, will it?

the lace that covers your face
isn't black like you'd like
but white as snow and
just as easy to pack tight and
hide behind and throw things at the unsuspecting

dressed in shadowed blues,
ashed hues


you sigh --little whisper of wind from your
caves and you think it is
the deepest your chest
will ever sink

don't know how you sit,     curved in
with that            !sky overhead

my house is haunted by the ghost of satisfaction
because we all want something bigger than us, bigger than
this town and bigger than the world.

when on the road I dream of home and when
at home I dream of leaving,
I can feel it slipping away
from me, now.

I'll sit until you come and tell me
that the walls are falling down,
that this town is burning
down.

overstepping boundaries and
drinking caffeine,
pretending not to fade
away and slip into something a little more comfortable,
like the vapor escaping from my mouth as it hides
amongst the steam rising from the kitchens
and blends with the blue and my eyes
watch with wishes and wants

a smoke break well appreciated,
but I leave all the more
weary

Big TALK

                                         Talk talk talk talk talk talk talk
                                          is all you ever did, sweetheart

talk and talk and talk

                                                 not once did you
                                          think of what your words
                                                    were doing
to me

                                                   that you were
                                                     changing
me,

                                                   ­   that I
                                                    believed
them.

--------------------------

I don't have myself
                           any
                             more

no strength
or energy to
write
this
     any
        more.


I can't            hate you.
I can't            love you.
I don't           have you to hate,
I don't           have you to love,

I don't
have you
at all

------------------------

I don't want this,
I don't want
all of
this


hurt.

your face is framed by the
streetlight streaming in the chill of
the night air and
your hands are warm against
my body, wide, my tummy grumbles,
not a hungry grumble but more
the grumble of an old man, frustrated
by age and worn by his days.

"Nothing could make this moment better."
a gentle nod as I twist away from you,
and twirling in the cold is freezing
my veins and you
pull me close
again.

we can smoke all we want,
drink all we want
curse all we want and
still,

everything else is extra.
excess and nonsense.

my playful words and your
roots in protest,
the way your coarse hair
leaves red blotches all
over my
skin.

run your fingers through my hair and still,
everything else is
extra.

pale
speech

I can hear my voice:
it crackles like
burning
paper.

kisses and the
shivers that
follow, twist into
what it's like to feel
warm
all of the
time.

even if the
temperature tells you
it's not.

even if
snowflakes
tickle your
eyelashes
from time to
time.

I am no dark little girl with
her pretty little
eyes

but I harness
my own
darkness,
from time to
time.

sometimes being happy seems
a self-indulgence:

you were singing songs from the musical in me,
us, sipping sweetened tea beaneath the trees
that crazy summer afternoon

things I thought but never said
to you and
things I thought but always said
over and over as if
nothing else had ever happened to me

and the thing I thought
when I thought of that
was that I thought
an awful lot of
you

I miss that stupid ache of
                                                     it.
I miss what you  
                                                 used to
THINK
                                                  of me.


I miss anything that made me think
of anything that relates to
this thing
we had.

LOVERS
is that what we were?

Or were we just floating
in our own excrement and
stuff like

drugs and drinking and
you saying to me,
"STOP
all this nonsense and
GIVE me anything to
go
on."

I'd give you looks and you'd throw
me words that I ate,
no questions
asked.
                      

I miss the ache,
                                                        I do.
I miss things that
                                                I used to have,
YES, I miss you
                                                        too.


But somewhere in there
I lost that unchain-able        
                                            ­          WANT
and
                                              ­       DESIRE


for
you.

today i fell in love with every face that didn't look away when we made eye contact, godjust lean down and (stoopinglike stone arches) lay heavy kisses that ground me so, just so i can stretch my toes and my neck through and pulling every nerve to it's end just
kiss you, too

I feel as if

maybe
as if

yes yes
as if

I need
to make
deci-
sive
deci-
sions

and re-
vise them

be
fore I
die
for

them.

Sooner or later, you'll have to get up early
to pull the wool over my eyes.
Odds and ends
by fits and starts and
honest as the day is long
(honest until the dark deepens)
like a blind girl in a dark room,
light music can lead you to
a pool of enlightenment, but
can you not taste the sweetness
already on your tongue?

I'm so cold. You have no idea.
I'm sitting in the swells of my own mind,
thinking about how I'm thinking about how I got to thinking about you again.


This can't be healthy.
I have a bruise that's spreading from my chest to the rest of my body,
and for that, I'm being punished. Because it's my fault
my body tells me,


it's my fault for letting my mind meander through the desolate halls,
where the walls are lined with grease-marks from oily human hands,
with each individual swirl of the person ingrained in every one of those brown stains.


And it's my fault for not knowing what my stain is, what an individual is.
Perhaps I have yet to "possess myself", in the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson.


But I can't think about me without thinking about you.
I can't think about you without thinking about everything else that left a stain.

I'm thinking that I'm
(until then) thinking

I'm thinking that I'm
finally thinking (again) about
something
other than
you
(again and)
again

I'm finding that
I am not (until then) you and
we are not part of
us (again)

And again,
(again again)
you will speak to me
and we
will be

(until then)friends.

in  hibitions
these little horses we have yet to
re-saddle

                   --ride

you make me (the happiest
because
     you
       make
             me)
so
  very



sad.

I can re-focus my eyes a million times
and still see only the smile that spreads like butter on hot
toast

you seem a combination of
all the love poems I've ever written      the various parts
of those I have loved, and the parts which
I have not

and you are in every morning, every morning
you have in you; the only reason        for which  
                                                         ­             I wake

Let's let the hem out of every
skirt we own so we can
be
  long
     belong in
their fraying ends.

it's like I was tied to a post, never tried
to untie it, myself but

then your subtle hands
all over

and I was    ******
outand

in all this
space, love ly

can just spin, slower and slow er
until I find (read: believe) that
I don't need to
find

anything
to be
free

I just have to


be

it's different and I
wish it weren't, I'm
growing up, down and
sideways,
learning
everything
at once,
a bit at a time and
nothing,
nothing
at all

I see you and my eyes are
caves seas oceans and breezes and
the wind is shifting my
disposition my
gaze, following as you walk
on your way and
don't stop
to say
hi.

Fine.
I will be glad to open your eyes
another
day.

like children in church
you make me feel the dangers of
a simple whisper,     heads turn
slow burn

feel it hot on skin, deepening as the stare sets   in

I saw a leaf falling
from it's tree so I ran
to catch it.

But in my haste,
I ran
past it.

, I want more
your cradling arms, your
pushagainst, small brush in passing
that sends a warmth crawling    up      my neck

as much as I am young & new
and pink and yellow just as bright as
a daisy! sometimes

I long, too
for the softness of longevity
like wind on my cheek, you

are almost all light, sometimes, I never
expected--

somedays, I'm sure the hue of your skin is
all filter, and I am just romanticizing,
as always

but the red in your beard is all the harshness in the world, sometimes.
and the sound of your laughter fills my head, echoes as if this small room
were an abandoned cathedral

and

your voice
the first prayer heard in a hundred years.

from the first kiss of the day
to the last kiss at night
we smirkingly wring the grey waters of
Logic & Reason
from our Passion
(so that it smells like
newly-washed old
bed sheet
deeply rooted in  
Hole-y Memories
Faded 'I love yous'
Nostalgic 'We've done this befores'
and
Hopeful 'Let's do it agains'

I have seen boys with heavy eyelids
and hair on their toes,
heavy promises and haunting pasts,
loaded guns and a feel for the
supernatural.

I have seen
enough of

them.

girl, you're sitting there and I can feel the
hairs rising on the nape of our necks,
the sizzle arising in our chests
and the subtle turn of events when

you get up to leave and,
like flicking off a switch,
you extinguish
me.

wish I could breathe into your everyday.
givealittle, creating potential energy and sending a chain
of buds into  b l o  o   m

cradle you in my          soft palette
                                  a gentle hum, then
swallow you whole, let you sit inside my
throat for a bit, let you glide through just like
a dream out the back
of the neck

you are caught in the net of stars that hangs in my
peripheral
vision

you are b eami ng
like a beaut, you are
emanating the  
                              only  
                           things

and the slowly things  
and the drops goldenlike
that fall from your mouth          kiss the cement
                                                     when you
                                                        speak

I love
loving someone
on a day
like this one.

I take a picture in my head of,
you wearing blue, your dark features
contrast the light and
you look like you did in that picture
on your mother's wall
of a boy all wet from swimming and happy from living

I can say from the weight of things,
the way your hair has grown and
so have I,
the color of the clouds
that we stumble upon and
the knowing glances that elderly couple in the next booth gave us..

Today was a beautiful day.

newspaper pages, leaving ink on my fingertips
a taste I can't get out of my mouth    & I can't re-bite that first bite.
rough, textured like the bottom of a swimming pool and all I want to do
is sit here. run my fingers over.  in the slowmoving distortion of sound and sight.         peaceful, not to know what exactly you're seeing, at first
what exactly you're hearing, at first
but you have to come up for air                          eventually

haze    lifted,

lipped oh's, pink
hope and
shiver-syllables,
gone.

I wish sometimes
and sometimes I
forget I have the ability to
wish.

I hope sometimes and
sometimes the idea gets caught
on the way up my
spine

my food has begun to taste as
I'm sure I've begun to
look:

grey
quiet
tired and
mean

Every morning I wake (It's alive! It's alive!)
I wake with a sense of new. A sense of old and
a sense that I'll do something minimal today,
at least, before I return to my cave and sleep or
read until the sun has made the rounds of her everlasting day.

Through the motions, in the motions,
on this boat in this vast ocean of 'HELLO MY NAME IS'
and an abrupt goodbye to something I hold very dear.
Or held, should I say.

Well, hand in hair ( I have so very little) I will go on.
Not too proud, but not shameful that I have something
to gain yet.