my lips are not anyone else's
my mouth has a place of its own
and if you have ever thought different
exposed be the pride you have known

to see with the eyes of your spirit
you have to submit to its breath
then even in deepest of waters
you'll manage to make every step

it's simple enough to remember
but somehow the first thing forgot
when rhapsodic verbiage is offered
we sing to a tune we are not

but follow the song into silence
your very own tongue will explain
there's nothing that ever was spoken
that won't be repeated again

whenever I get to thinking
about what it is that you really
like, like if bourbon was your
vice then i'd be some simple
syrup, the kind my grandma
makes--with sugar and hot
water, and how you only
use a little, a little goes
a long way.

still got those words runnin'
through my head, you'd be better off
you'd be better off if you were
*you'd be better off if you were by yourself

we're whipping through the backroads
without seat belts, kicking up the dust--
the Sangre De Cristos looming with chalky
crowns above the hills, riddled with fence
posts and battered lean-tos, homes with
green shingles and matching john deere
tractors--the mountains, the mountains.

you go around every corner like it's a straightaway
I still see you smiling at me through locked doors
cradling me like a baby bird and hoping I might
throw caution out when all around your heart
there's these warning signs on big yellow placards
glinting in the night.

there are a dozen thoughts, all equally crippling--
staggered images of you squinting up at me on
the hill above the barn in that wrinkled white t-shirt,
a gray murdoch's hat pushed high up on your forehead,
hip cocked out with your hands twitching at your sides
rubbing brake fluid between your fingers

brooke, it is pointless to you. That's so obvious to me.
they tell you to stay down when shot, play dead when
in danger, but i've been seeking solace in your neck
trying to keep myself from telling you that  I love you, feeling
it at the back of my lips ready to spill over, overcome
by your gentleness, asking God why, why can't I just
love him?


it's so obvious to you? that i've spent a  month telling myself that it's okay, that you're right, that you're harmless, that things can work
out, so pointless goes on ringing in my ears, clattering down the
airways into my heart where i love you still hangs loosely by a
thread, or maybe a rope, maybe an industrial wire ready to bring
the house down with its weight, a marble for each day, a stone, a
boulder.

county road 255 seems a whole lot shorter,
I'm preoccupied with the dry shrubs the color of verdigris, the color
of your laugh,  how i can't see through the tangle of my own emotions, how i really do want you to be the one, the one person that just happens to be right--it's so obvious, you said.

so obvious.

i would like to tell him
that i would not have
documented these things
if I had known it all would end so soon
I would not have kept track of the firsts
of his hands, or his movements or
the profile of his face with the Sangre De Cristos
rising up behind him, how I thought he must
be a part of the land.
of the steady
way I was p r o b a b l y
falling in love

no one tells you what the strain is like
when you know you're waiting but the
when is questionable and the who is for certain
when you want to stay frozen because without
a leader you know not where the ice cracks
but just how to crack it--with your heavy feet
and sand-laden spirit, with a body drained
down to the dregs, so hopeless and inconsequential
an existence in the flesh.

I mean to say that nobody tells you what the strain
is like--to be plagued by the notion that your choices
put a spin on people, a timer on chances, a could-he-be
would-he-be play in a hundred acts in which girl
sleeps with his sweater while simultaneously
managing to hate herself because she can't actually
see herself with him, hugs him with a hand slid
meticulously over his chest as he turns away
scared to death of the inner monologues that
begin with "I will hurt you..." and end with

maybe
if i just
s  t  a  y
a w a y

intimacy dwells not within words
but within darkness
hiding on the inside of your eyelids
passion dwells not within the past
but within the unreachable future
sliding just beyond your fingers
love dwells not within truth
but within lustful lies
ridding down
slow
silk
*******