beige sits in your skin, layers in
various shades. sometimes I mistake it for
pink, in the shadows

but no
mostly just
beige

--void

where will your eyes lay me ?
on the edge of our bed, where years have folded our skin together
in a filter of light

or in some dark place that has yet to find us
in the damp afterplace of things unresolved--



I picture you turning,
my transgressions braided, trailing behind as your steps grow more and more    sure.


               --last

every sooften, a day will wash over     leaving me
a little paler, a little thin ner

for the most part I crush it like a can and bury it in my chest,
pretend it's a necklace, wear a face to match
I'll take breaths so deep, but my chest won't move
up    or down, some days

I cut it into pieces, dangle it from the ceiling and watch it glint in the  
sunlight, some days

I pull it over my head like a blanket, and keep the dayshine
at bay, leave my limbs pale a little longer

somedays
it's almost a comfort

some days, It's almost as if
I breathe it as it
breathes me and

the wind we create together carries us
in it's length across
the valleys of our        
small universe

yesterday I fell in love a million times -
with an old man who ate lunch by himself but
smiled and called me 'little daisy' whenever I
refilled his coffee, with my coworker who has three kids
and pretty eyes even when they are tired, my yoga instructor,
the man on the bus with a large coffee stain on his starched collar,
my neighbor who was out mowing his lawn in the dead of winter, and
Kurt Cobain - but today I didn't fall in love at all.

tomorrow I plan to take a walk, eat something for once and
sit next to the man with the stain on my way to work.

perhaps I'll fall in love again.

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

left the lid off and it molded over
night, let it sit out a little too
long, the taste is a little off-- I hope you got my message.

my aimless fingers, are spinning webs of websof
whatif's
whatnow's
you

probably won't answer.

I have no direction, only
intentions and a bowl full of hope, Ihave
an extra   spoon.

a little past noon, now.

and I find I have trouble
taking you in all at once, there is
a pink-like hue   to all of your newness,
like I'm looking through
rose-colored glasses

like there is always a 'Theme For A Pretty Girl Who Makes You Believe God Exists' playing in the background when you cross the street or
stand, waiting for a friend.

I'm not sure whether it is you I miss, or
the coffee-stained pages of music (at least
I thought it was music)     we made when
we were together.

I often over-romanticize, but
I just thought I'd ask, just thought
I'd see if the breeze I felt was
from an open door or
from the inevitable cracks around the door frame.

I just thought--
I don't know.

oh god.

They could smell our smoke, I'm sure,
when we would pass by passively
                    - existing and wishing wanting.

Forgetting each word stumbling from our lips, tumbling
to their deaths on the hard, warm concrete.

The golden whispers we kept to ourselves,
which made them all the more profound
and we were proud to call ourselves
what we were then  
               - what we are still.

Can you be anything but reckless and cowardly in your own way?
We were children out every night that we were sleeping together,
sitting together around fires, making stars and
laughing drunkenly on a cloud above everything.

They could see our glazed eyes for what they were, too,
for what they were
            - dreams.

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 nefarious dead-pan glance and
all I can think about is how I have
your favorite book tucked away, safe,
because I want an excuse for my
trembling hands and the constant
chugging of my mind at times, the ever-
present headache that originates in
my stomach. I am hosting a
cavernous black hole there
that spreads it's lips
wider and
wider
and

w   i     d             e             r

every day that washes over,
leaving me a little paler a little thinner a
little hungrier than
before

I am s
        i
     n
   k
  i
n
g

there's a picture of sunflowers, my favorite
by far. one
leans apart from the congregation, rests
it's head on a wooden fence.
a visible sigh in it's face

it's posture affects --
and though time accelerates,
there is still gold in the lines of my face,
some days    the light catches

and warmth Ihold in my pockets
for days like today, I drizzle it on my tongue.

&my; insides are wrapped in dusty glow
from eons before
I began to wilt

it is hard to describe quite
the feeling I feel when I see
what I see what I see when
I tiptoe to the waters edge -

bare quiet witness to the highly mannered,
manifold expressions of life that
grace this place - some things so
light and bright and
weird and delicate
as to stupefy
the senses -

language often
founders in
such
seas.

better to picture it in your head if you wish to
feel it.

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

grey
quiet
tired and
mean

I feel like all the time I have this
feeling of being under
cover (keep me warm)

Heavy-duty
winter covers with the
cigarette burns from fifth grade
and the smell of *** forever
ingrained from high school.

It's the kind of night where I can't
breathe because of this smothering mother
of a blanket, and if I venture from my fortress
I'll surely be bitten
by the outside,

I'll surely
be (keep me
warm) bitten
in this

cold.

I will rip the first three pages
from your favorite book and I will
eat the memories I have of you
in one
bite.

I will devour any trace of you by
burning
my skin
away.

I will dissolve every look every time every
good intention on my tongue like
bad
sugar

and

like bad sugar, you
will remain
a temporary
satisfaction
for anyone
you touch.

I like to think I have a little moon
behind my lips, that you
could reach in & pluck

and in your eyes, reflecting
the rare bits of light that slip through
the blankets we cover the windows
with

I never know whether to look away
or to let them fade  
in slow-     motion

That looks
like
violence,
but he wears it so
proudly and
I find I like the way
his hips
swing
almost like he has a
purpose when
everyone else has lost
or not yet found
theirs.

this is the place where wires tangle
the birthplace of sneezes
a home for desperate coins,
two balled up tissues, a
****** wrapper (yippee)
a note with handwriting that fingers the page with it's curly tentacles
and a packet of
matches
to start
the fire.

there is a constant ache behind the eyes - dim,
like the dying embers of a fire. my stomach
is always too full of everything I didn't eat, the
foreignness spread like black mold beneath the
surface of everything.

picking at hangnails, picking at chapped lips, picking
the scabs that scabbed over my spirit.

my tongue is scratched like a scratched cd,
I have only one or two things that I keep
repreprepeating.

there is a build-up in my throat of apologies,
lingering on my breath and the truth I have been
keeping in my belly, the truth I have swallowed so
greedily, the truth is I haven't
much

truth.

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?

I feel as if I lost this gigantic piece of myself in the storm drain,
sifting through gunk and garbarge you can see an enormous
chunk of skin and self left over.

It's been cut from my side and from some of my head,
and the odd thing is, if I remember correctly, I was the on holding the axe.
A small little axe like the one everyone has hidden in
their pockets and their backpacks and for the creative ones,
on their chests.

I feel as if..I lost what I lost because I'd decided to keep it,
and when decisions are made,
others are still straddling the line
and every decision affects the other.
So. I had fifty decisions
and only one that I could see clearly enough to
work out an outline that made some sense and
had some flair.

And the hole in my head has grown teeth and lips and a tongue and it's screaming,
"Make me younger!
Make me younger!"
in a voice that seems all too familiar.

My mother's voice,
my father's voice

But awakened from reality, it's not so hard to realize that
smaller things are versions of larger.



I have smaller fish to fry, though.
I have something to gain.

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

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

yesterday I spoke to the moon.

after a time, with the distance and all
I hardly expected an answer but when
I felt her sigh, I knew she had heard me so I
climbed to the top of a nearby car and
asked her if she could, please,
repeat that.

she hadn't been spoken to in so long, she confided,
she had grown ancient and old and she felt we no longer
spoke her language and
we no longer cared to.

she spoke for a long while, I felt her growing closer and the gap between us
closing. I felt a calm like the calm you feel at sea, and the
calm you feel in the warmth of another person.

if I reached my hands up I could touch surface and
feel her old majesty.

humbled, I asked if once more she could dust the earth with her wind
and kiss my skin, but before she could answer
a car horn ripped the sound waves open and left them
gagging.

as I refocused, my moon seemed as far away as ever
and I folded myself into my coat and went
on my way, disheartened,
to say the least.

it wasn't until, glooming the night away on my couch,  the 11 o'clock news said
that strange and powerful winds were sweeping the nation,
then I knew
my moon
had heard me.

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

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.

the air isn't pinching, it nibbles my skin as I catch the scent of
remorse and a hint of peanutbutter and honey,
tangy and sweet I wish I weren't that way sometimes,
I wish I could see the worm in an apple instead of
the seeds

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'll never know
if those are
giant troll heads

or people

behind me,
will I?

We were statues in the sky.
We were up there where the air is clean and
too high for airplanes to come muck it all
up. Too high for the kites to tangle in our hair,
too high for the gunshots.

We were birds who flew only up,
forever up.

Though I was more of a rotisserie chicken,
laying on one side for too long,
always burning my own wings.

And you were always saving me from myself.

you have a downward symmetry about you, your mouth rests a bit too deep in your
chin, so to speak, you
speak in skinlight   my eyes slow to
capture all of you at once, b eaut  iful

honey, you
could speak in deep tones, rich and creamy
hard to swallow but   just
another
bite

and yet your words bubbleout like brave
little warriors - they emerge in such
formation and
present themselves
, not to
question

One can't stop oneself from wondering.
At least I can't, or won't.



I see one singular thing while I feel everyone else is seeing everything in
panoramic vision.

and I focus on that one thing for about sixty seconds,
long enough for babies to be born and countries destroyed and I
have nothing to do with any of it.






You use the word 'beautiful' too often
and whatever it is that was
isn't anymore.

You say you love someone too often
and they don't anymore.

I have a theory that is the reason behind language always changing and rearranging:
and if we didn't change
things would be the same and we'd die
of boredom and
lack of interest etc..

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

your yawns stretch
their fragile morning limbs to
the top of your lungs:

breathe in -- quick quick,
don't let your breath stick
to the bottom of your
throat -- breathe out.

I wish I could fill your glass to the brim
and have you
                   over
                      flowing
always.

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.

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

, 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.

You're so special, boy.
Confident with words and smart
with accents of verse and your art,
your poems, opinions
overall pinache.
Greeting with an always-outstretched hand
and may I add?
You're thoughtful and mind-full
and beautiful.

If I could be so bold,
I'd ask if I could borrow your brain,
I'd give it back,
but in return I have only one offer.

If ever again you need help
to figure out why you're so dear to me,

you could borrow mine.

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.

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.

just not
when I am
looking.

better a truck stop
waitress
with platinum
hair and
pineapple earrings
than living with a
corpse.

maybe you're right
maybe I was afraid
maybe.

but you were so afraid
of being
wrong
that you didn't
make a
choice.

the heat between my hands as I clench
them, between me and this
seat as I writhe against it, the ache
in my spine from sitting up
straight, the purse of my
lips and the
sting of my
eyeswide
dry
eyes.

no breath and then one deep
one. two, three. fourfivesixseven - !

slowbreathing.
no heaving sighs.
no looking left,
no looking
right.

Layer upon layer upon layer,  it is too cold for skin
and my sunkist days pull away, while I reach and grab for a hand to hold.  

Missouri is a surprise party for someone who hates surprises.
Missouri is a cruel joke, handing you the ripe-to-the-very-second
sweetness of a strawberry summer and snatching it away at the
last second to watch you fall to your knees and beg for mercy from the
biting wind and your stinging lips, no chapstick to be found.

Layer upon layer, sweater under coat,
socks over socks under boots made of steel.

If there is one upside to this brutal chill, if there is
it would be peeling back this extra skin, this shield of
fabric, to reveal steaming pink underneath.

It would be that
cold weather
makes ***
even better.

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.

legs stick-straight
my hips don't gyrate
my hair's not well-trained
and my ******* aren't the same
size

my eyes
aren't bambi-watching-his-mother-get-strapped-to-the-back-of-a-van-BIG
they're not blue like the atlantic, but grey like
cigarette ashes.

my eye-lashes aren't a foot in length,
they don't billow when I blink
and I've lost so many, a ton,
ones that I didn't even
get to
wish
on.

I don't want your
soul-*******, your
pick-me-up lines.

I just want enough air in this room
and enough space in this town and
enough corners in my brain
to hide in.

I just want a bed at night to lie in,
I just want an atmosphere without holes in it,
I just want you to stop
looking at me
like that,

and I just want to give you this
hole in my stomach
where food used to flourish,
the people used to live forever and
the point of everything was that
it made us happy.

I don't want to settle for
the background of a chagall.
I want the lovers, too.

I'm up in knots again, today like
tug-of-war inside my chest like
little kids at recess - pulling, pull
ing but it never breaks because
who has upper body strength at age eight?

and tears like ringing a rag, can
never get every drop out.

and every day a bucket of water over my head,
head's so full my eyes could fall out, draw
out my sentences to fill the space between me
(at the top of the lungs like a
yawn perched, but it never rises)
and the space between you (I couldn't
ever fill it.)

the feeling builds and any way I lay
there's a pocket of my body to fill.

so I tuck my knees to my chest,
stretch my chin over top,
no escape, no empty space
curled up

like a newborn baby
so in the morning I
can re-learn how to breathe,
to speak and speak my mind

I can re-trust,
re-hope and re-
care.

breathe new air, just
one day's worth. so I can
re-position myself on the map,
point and say, "I am here!"

and feel it, too.

Plucking tall glasses from their perch above the sink and
letting loose the dark that wiggled, relentless, inside it's bottle.
Gold was chipping from my mother's cheap wine glasses,
creating the sort of sad ambiance that you, unexpectedly,
find yourself craving.

There, in the belly of it - flavor resembling nothing of the puckering and
rambunctious cranberry and pomegranate that **** my insides with
summer-tainted sweetness - lurked a hazy glow, too often
over-romanticized, I think.

And I,
haphazardly stealing from the bottle's mouth,
didn't realize what was stolen
from my own.