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.

Sometimes I feel as if
cigarette butts are
bread crumbs
for grown ups.

oh
yes

work your way
into my arms, love,
work your way into
my hands, work
your hands into
mine, love,
into

mine.

For as much I
don't
know,

and as much as I
want to
know,

and as much as I
wish I
hadn't
known,

when it turns out I
didn't
know

a thing,
all
along.

the rain begins first
                                     -timid

and the drops make no sound but
they are tiny bombs destroying tiny
countries destroying tinier cities and
even tinier
us as we
walk
                                     -unsuspecting

and kiss the cement with our
arrogance

I won't understand why
saving a thought or an
inspiration for myself
causes it to be all the more vibrant and I
live vicariously through what people
would think of me if they knew
my secret.

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

I'm cracking under
no pressure just
pleasure and I'm feeling part-
icularly bold this afternoon, sitting
on my sofa in my den in my
by-all-means-I-do-matter life!

I'm loving the sunlight coming through that
window and thinking how much I'd like
to be part of it, to go up in flames and give someone
else a chance to sit comfortably in my
blazing glory..


I think maybe I need to step everything up a notch.
I'm not very good at math.
Perhaps I could do that.

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.

let every smile be the kind
that melts into the face like butter,
spreading  itself in the heat of
this moment.

but most of all, I want it
on your
lips.

If there really is a point where
everything
stops being
funny,
I sincerely hope that I
never
reach it.

tonight is speaking in some strange tongue that I can't
quite make out while you're standing and staring at
my neck with your 'a heck of a lot' of hair and my
scalp, practically visible beneath the
moon at the moment, I can feel something slide
inside myself and though I have yet to 'click'
the sound will come from you, I feel,
with you, I feel
with you.

You kept trying
to make me
'see'
but I assure you, I
have 20/20 vision
without your specs
and I
can
see
exactly what you can.

So you tried to make me
'under
stand'

Always standing a tad taller,
just a
bit,
barely noticeable
but an eye-strain
away.

But I reached my arms
above
my head and
fooled you
into thinking
that I am as tall
as I wish I was.

Your point of
view is
a bullet
and mine
is
the
gun.

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

                   --ride

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

it seemed when the air was thick with heat the streets were
seething like the sweat on my back as I'd climb each
minuscule lump in the earth as if it were a mighty mountain -
ten thousand feet tall. hair
stuck to my neck the way
kisses stick to your lips when
you want more than a kiss -
I'd pull it up and away from my face.

it has been
it has been
a lifetime and a half between the cold that was and
the cold that is - now, here, in my bones and holding down
the pavement with frigid arms, stubborn. my hair is
longer now, growing out and it curls like a cat at my
neck to rest, spreading like hot soup spreading
down my
chest.

after the time it feels good to
sigh, it feels good
to moan a little and die
a little, it feels good
to try a little (I have)
give a little more and
take what I can
get, it feels

good.

inlove with a girl who breathes like
snow so light, it is almost
nothing, nothing at all

inlove with a girl whose skin rubs against mine as
a tongue fondles peaches(cling)

inlove with a girl who sighs like the crest of a wave, falling
to meet the rest of it's body(russsshh)

inlove with a girl whose move-
ments collect eyes like her hair collects
rain or her toes collect sand

inlove like I am
inlove, like I am
inlove

I watched them
swaying
hip to hip
in time to
the
music.

And what was the picture above the door?
A cupid or an angel,
pointing his bow and arrow
and I was so jealous
of him.

I was so jealous that there wasn't
a picture of me

any
where.

I will not end for you, no.
I will begin, and I will keep
on beginning.

I will lick peach juices from
my fingertips like mama's milk
dripping from the ****. I will wrap myself in
silk sarongs and stay that way for days,
marveling at the texture of my own skin.
I will run naked through the rain and
liberate myself in knowing that
what will happen will happen and
there is no safe way out. I will sit close
and listen. I will breathe water lying still
in a stream. I will eat poems for
breakfast and I
will slowly learn
how to die.

her pretty
sun-tanned face
assumed the characteristics
of a

grease-stained
bag

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

sliced open, out the heart,
the pink of the citrus fruit.

Ate it like a monster.

the face of today is tired, tiring
to look at like aged and crinkled
paper, just
waiting to be
burned.

the cold inside my nose,
inside my eyes, inside my
hope globes and my curled
toes.

no heavy lifting or light
shifting of winds, just
full-on stale and hard and

cold.

used to think
I was a dandelion,
as you were,

my end
tied to where you
begin,

rubbing
yellow into
skin.

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.

we were twelve and we packed thirteen passion-fruit juice boxes,
crackers and peanut butter because who can survive without peanut butter?
the three long hours we were
walking then
running then catching our breath at the corner of
Kennedy and Lincoln.

having lunch in a ditch and rolling down hills and
I can remember everything.
I bet you can too, the

cars screaming past us on the highway and the
darker it got the faster we scrambled and we ended up
exactly where we started but

we tried to run away and we returned
not with our tails drooping between our legs but
stick-straight and in the air because
we'd had adventure for the first time,
we'd crossed the street holding each-
other's hands, not
our mother's anymore.

and I wish I was
in that ditch again,
with you sticking your fingers in the peanut butter because we forgot a knife

not with you, "dead in a ditch somewhere"
like they say you are.

Constant
inople.

Raspberry pie
in bed.

These are the dreams
of you I have
in my heavy
little head.

My jaw hurts because it might as well be wired shut. I have nothing
to say for myself, no, nothing to say.

And my thoughts tend to come in tiny red boxes,
when they open all I can see is a wisp of smoke
like a lightning bolt it's gone and in the air again.

I busy myself by keeping my teeth clean, menial things like
licking stamps and sending 'thank yous' and resting too much but
not sleeping enough.

I don't think about things too often, I try to get lost, more often than not,
I try to get lost.

creeping along my hairline in
beads of sweat and in
my eyes, in the corners he
urges along tears, rides them,

painting

down


my




cheeks,



then onto my neck,
kissing my collar bone
and, in passing,
tickles the freckles
between my
*******.

the little that's left of him fingers into
streams on my belly that has
been hungry for him -



- he knows.

I started
buttoning
my clothes,
hugging them
as though
cold.

the cold just wants to hold us -
mold us into the blowing wind, fold us down beneath our coats,
bite deep - beneath our skin, beneath our bones.

so we won't forget
how our legs might shake
and our lips might chap
and our hair might brittle
beneath winter caps.

so we won't forget
how our voices go hoarse
and our noses glow pink
and the colder we get
the more the warmth stings.

so we won't forget
any of these things.

the cold just wants to hold us - selfish, but unknowingly so.
cradle us in long arms, carefully, inside the crook
of winter's elbow.

I said 'best'
and then I realized.
I
lied.

You have never been
my 'best'
And you have never been your
'best'
You have been
and will keep on being
what you always were

a fair-
weather
friend.

there wasn't much of a struggle, only
a few words exchanged, one
shot fired      and

no one died.

my body remains, but I lost
my dominant hand, my left
foot

I learn to write again --
my hand grows steadier
with practice each
day

I lean
a little more to the right
than I used to

& the view from my window has changed.

there's something in the middle of me, in the middle of
me there is a large amount of something
pushpushing against my skin and
aching against my vital organs, I
can feel the strain as my heart strings are
tuned up up up and pulled to the taunt
-ness of a mandolin.

the monotonous monks that haunt
my chest cavity take on a barely audible
angelic hum - the lightness of their voices
driven in
to the tips of my
limbs,
which are
quivering
     as if
                
            they
                        

                     were



          feathers.

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.

kisses small and hand-
crafted, broken-in, a feel like
worn leather gloves, slipping
over lips (they were in need
of some warmth) covering no-
thing but the bare necessities - thin, and
they are something when
I am used to
nothing.

you should never go looking for something
because then IT can't find YOU.

and as natural as things are today (not at all)
I WOULD mind if you held my hand (not at all)
just not too hard because that would mean we had something and
we don't.

hips are farther apart when I sit, hands are toes are
spread fingers like spindles like broken into minute portions of
matter, moving about in this



                                
                            ­             big                            &                        empty




                                                       not mov
                                                              ing but
                                                              breath
                                                                   ing and
                                                                   tingl
                                                                        ing, too

where are you, asleep?
with all my childhood dreams
some foolish fantasies? and
the clouds I've already tread on.

where are you, in a classroom with a
notebook full of everything but what
the teacher is saying? poetry
things you've known all your life, like
the back of everyone's head.

where are you, underneath the
foundation of my house? I hear
it creak and I can see the cracks
grow and
grow.

where are you, driving your words somewhere safe?
they'll melt in the rain, over-thought
and un-
cared
for.

new day,
old men and

every hour
retains their listless exhaustion;
half-hearts beat in their chests.


"The sky is bright today," I say, making
small talk.

"Don't worry, " he says through a concrete smile,
"we're tinting the windows tomorrow"

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.

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.

fiddling with the hue of your skin and as it darkens so does your
outlook, how you love winter and all the things I don't and how you
somehow find a way to make me feel like
the worst person on earth just by
telling me
I am.

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.

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.

you give off
a sort of disgustingly wonderful sweet music.
I find myself humming it every time you pass me.

spill out your heart, sister,
show me you're warm inside,
show me you're not just a popsicle with a
hard center holding you upright

show me
please
show
me.

push me!
listen just

show me where it hurts
or do I have to
start
like
always?

words that gnaw our bones
aren't enough anymore and
names and slang and angst
aren't enough

show me
what it's like
when you're
naked
with a
fist

we can't dance the dance when
we haven't even gotten up
yet