I keep having dreams
about you, where your
face is hidden by the brim
of an oily hat, there are dozens
of pictures scattered across a
burlap armchair and even
though we are inside, I can
see these giant oil rigs out
in the pasture, through
the walls that hide nothing
(not even you),
and I am fighting to stay
awake, reaching for your
hand and relieved when
you don't pull away
I've been seeing your name
everywhere, on billboards
and street signs, branded
diesel trucks, stamped on
bumpers and endorsed on
checks--

what the hell am I supposed to be praying for?

that tasted like popcorn
and dirt; warm, and then
Alive.


The grass separates itself into individual blades
that glitter          and    dance
                                              under the sky
like a million knives
floating
              on
    the
            afternoon
                               tide.

Friend, I want to grow roots with you.
                                                                ­  I want to make a home in you.

I am as raw as a newborn.
All that my body can handle
is the sweet juice of a peach
                                        
                                         running
                                           down
                                             my
                                            neck.

I never knew the sky could open as it has,
                                                       could fill me with cloud,
                             and the dust of what the first atoms
have left behind for us.

My body is a torch
to light       with the world of your palms.
Use dandelions
                          as matches.


I am stripped of all pretense, bones
free of caveat and nicety.
Now, it is time to live as an
earthworm does. Softly, naked:
on the cheek of the
                                                        earth.

No one ever told me I was nothing,

but they sure tried to sing it and write it in trees
and the dirt with their sticks and stones and my own bones
and when the words didn't hit home they used  my. body.
and. my. hair.  and wrapped each sinew of my muscle in
knots and buried me beneath sixteen inches of myself
until I could no longer hear my own screams just a
faint whisper of a melody, tell me--how do you
help yourself when you can't even hear
your own pleas?



Nobody ever said I wasn't enough, but their questions
suffused me out, and each action undid a button (or a blouse)
took out these flimsy plaster walls and flooded the gates with
sordid tastes and feelings I never knew I had, broke off parts
of me like grapes and popped me from the stems to put on
plates, and you might even say they ate
me.

in fact there be people saying I'm **** perfect, talkin' about how
there's something different 'bout me and the way I approach things
like they ain't ever seen caution, how I'm the best thing that could have
happened to them but that's all dry corn stalk and maybe it's just my fault for trying--in a completely non-piteous sort of way, maybe I spent
too much time hoping or putting faith in dime slots instead of dimes--

I've come around to notice none of my habits are inherently me, that music is just a page out of a how-to pamphlet on Being Liked and Staying That Way, how to buy boots and hope material possessions make it better, how to search out a crowd and ruin Wednesdays for yourself, the 10-minute sequence on Staring Out Windows on the 25th Brick and how No One Even Looks Attractive after kissing him.

No one ever told me I was nothing, and I never thought I was, because I am not no thing at all or not one bit--A conglomeration of others
certainly does exist, but who are they, who am i, and where do I
come in?