Cleanliness is next to godliness.
The state of my room during my adolescent exodus from god would serve as the devil's side of the coin.
But, sometimes the details need to get shattered and scattered about until you see that the lord never left your skin.
Or hers.
Or ours.
Or theirs.
And when I touch you, I can feel the electric pulse of god coming home.
When I dance, I feel the lightning shooting from my heels into the core of the earth and back again to strike whomever is kept in their seat.
Together we are the holiness that arises underneath the sheets or within an embrace on this years worst luck day.
Religion begs to differ,
but together we are god and the details aren't important.

instead of forgetting you
i could forget why you really smiled
take your smile and arrange it within a shrine
of all the kind things you did for me
and all of the sweet dimensions you added to my world

if i could remove her from your line of sight
or the humiliating things you said to our friends
or remove your fifth ***** soda in an hour
or the cigarette smoke you blew in my face
or the drugs you keep pulling out from your pocket
or if i could
remove
the context
of
your
happiness
whatever it will take to remember us fondly

do you enjoy the feeling of your sorrow filling out your story?
because tasting that completion is never short of
pure
succulent
joy
and that it isn't real if it isn't
part yin, part yang
and that someone becomes who they are meant to be
after a softening
a humbling
or an elation
and a rocket flight toward the stars
because it's never another soul
it's never someone else's task to complete you
let that burden lie only in what you have not seen,
suffered, accomplished,
mustered, justified,
won & conquered,
and cried
              screamed
shouted
              laughed
pushed
    ­           inhaled
and
                                             cried your way onward

Oh, but they are
          &
     They do
And your head won't let you forget it
And the drink won't allow kindness to spill
off a stranger's lips
Just ***** soaked words of disgust
Because no one is really as human as anyone else
and
Crediting the curves of their face
or the steps they
intentionally
      or
accidentally
take
is too hard a practice for a group of minds soaking in top shelf gin

your moves on the board have been a series of obsessions
1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 3, 3
until you made your way back to me
because your definition of the outline of a woman was clarified at a very early time
and the succession of women,
of words,
of worlds,
and blurs
all a piece of the kaleidoscope of your carefully placed mind
drugs like that
pretty like this
touch me like that and talk to him like this and tell her like that just in case no one ever has
and i have a birds eye view of opinons
truth is, i don't care what you do
as long as it always comes back to me to mine and what i can define

You say you belong to me repeating,
"I'm yours, I'm yours"
When you know as well as I,
that you too belong to the world
The breeze from the valley lifted your feet from the soil and you knew freedom,
There is a mapped ocean in your mind's eye
And if you look at me long enough I can see the wildflowers in your stare-
but I will follow your lie.
Tell me you're mine.
I'd like to dream that I own the world.

EXPERIENCE
IS
EXPERIENCE
IS
EXPERIENCE
is only a word
used to describe
                                          perspective
because bad can pile on top of terrible, on top of naive, on top of cruel
and you'll have nothing beyond stories that
do not wish to be told.
EXPERIENCE
IS
     your head space narrative
starting from the beginning and underlining until a broken paragraph
creates
a
visionary.
EXPERIENCE
IS
      a prize for allowing your memory
to serve you on a silver platter.
because lessons are hard to learn unless you wrote it down
on the chalkboard
after class
and gained
all that a past can ever hope to be.

I will take you out with the tie tied tight around yours
and the bow bowing out of mine.
to the dance floor where the leaves will do their dying dance with time.
and i can teach you how to be shy,
to stay away from the wind
and hang on to my limbs,
to be my evergreen
and never fall away from me.

Won't you give me two handshakes
enough for my nervous body heat to feel your shivering sweat
and recognize the twinkle is behind our eyes,
but fear has taken the wheel tonight,
Won't you give me a blank glance from the corner of the bar
I like the way you stare with no pretense,
it makes my dress on the floor feel meaningless,
Won't you let our loveless embrace breed a warmth between our hips
and when you grab my hand I'll let my heart skip to your beat
and we can find affection amidst apathy
be bold with me

your plastic smile beaming
& your plastic champagne glass brimming
with smeared hot pink lipstick marking your spot

you never believed in sharing a soul with anything but glory
and when nothing is more important than what the people who aren't here

think

is happening, you can tell them what you like,
tell them about our seven minutes in heaven, and be sure to embellish
i'll keep the hell to myself

you keep all of my books that your friends ask about,
keep my grandmother's art on your wall,
my jewelry box from china on your dresser,
and the records that speak to my soul blaring from your speakers
because,
what am i to you?
what
am i
to you
?
just another shell containing all that you could be?

and like a roadside operation
you prodded and peeled back until you found what you wanted someone to see within you
i can breathe easy
because when you lose sight of who you are, i'll still be creating my own salvations from the dust you kicked up when you ran away from tough questions
god isn't found in the portions
HALLELUJAH

timing
the time’s arch nemesis
they’ll wrestle intention to the ground
a point on a circle always comes back round
i want to rename love
a word that has a
tick
tock
click to it
a gentle slap at the beginning and the end of it
once upon a flash of skin
lightning rose up from below the waist, within
and the quick
boom
bang
spite of it
we both know where this will lead
a clock tower’s shadow ahead of you and me
the face is round, honesty will plead
and the point will be reached again
at the dot
spark
round
embark of it

Good.
Morning.
               I hate what you stand for.
The pleasantries that neither of us can cling to when reality comes knocking
in through the flimsy curtain and
Where is my comfort?
It is contained in solitude
until I've been alone all day

A woman once told me that when you're old you need work to keep the blood at a steady
boil.
                                          Well,
I'm 24 and I haven't reached a simmer all year.
Good.
Evening.
             You're hiding something.
So, stay over and see if you can muster up my youth
& douse my flaming fear
with
every
drop
of
boil
running through your veins.
Good.
Night.
         There you are again.
Just as I remember you.
You're a consistency that I can't quit.
And
if nothing else,
it makes my blood
run
in
circles.

The pursuit of
oneness-
togetherness-
humanity-
is in the creation of something
for
everyone
and
everything.
the possibilities are endless
reach to where the individual creations intersect one another,
there you'll find a holy matrimony of pure unity.
the pulse that you feel when the ocean's current syncs with your heartbeat-
like the moon making love to the cave of your soul where you keep your chained desires of expression on hold for the moment when you finally feel the push of something that cannot be touched, seen, or controlled
free.
expression.

Has the moon ever winked at you?
It's 9 AM and the hills are breathing out
and the birds are screaming at the sun.
I walk around the block-
whiskey in my coffee, coffee in my hand, because I'm not ready for last night to be over.
And the moon,
she agrees.

The earth's bumping up against itself again
like the shattering ****** that left you laid out for the better part of a decade
it's pushing up against itself again
swelling into mountains, then sinking into seas,
taking every bit of energy in sight and ******* it down into the depths of its girth
I can relate
It only looks pretty when the lights are out
and then you realize, if all of those people that I haven't forgiven- that ravaged me, that consumed me, creating this desire to destroy at the cost of feeling alive
If I just gave myself enough respect to let go
I wouldn't be scrambling to make a quick exit, I wouldn't have left you devastated with expectation lingering in the air
I wouldn't have left you
I was a chasm
you were the sea
Now you know what it feels like to fall into me

When I was seventeen, my favorite color was blue
We humans haven't been able to see the color blue until recently in our vast evolution
and seeing it now doesn't make us profound but it's a step in the right direction
Then the list began forming
What else am I seeing less of
My friend is by her bed sobbing at his soul's departure
and all I see is her heart's defeat
All she sees is the victory
that means
no more blue battered skin
no more concealing the outbursts of her mother-in-law's
single worst living and breathing regret,
no more blue skies watched from the window, stuck inside
But I just tell her that I'm sorry for her loss
Because I couldn't yet see her shade of blue
Her face was drifting
So I reached for the ocean and let it rock me away
Tell me a story
while I fall asleep to your baptizing sway
about the teal touch of a careful hand
the stark blue strike of a lover
and the midnight blue comfort of the house you grew up in
I want to tap into my synesthesia and hear your every word colored with your every pain, your every joy, and your every breath
I want us to see each other as we are,
not as we would like to be
Our blue veins sustain our lives
and our blue hearts aren't to be hidden aside
Let's stand in this wide ocean of many shades of blue and let us see it all

She makes my cheeks blush violet
with her indifference,

while I stand 
on the bones of our history

Old Gloria and I was the light of times-

times
 past.

Summer was a night,
 a night that used to pay for her own ride home
and 
I would lie begging at her feet 

My jar hadn’t caught but one breath and

she disappears down the winding road
heading south 

All pink faded, 

my complexion turned an icy tone,

as the car exhaust rose into the midnight sky

It’s judging million eyes

blinking back at me as a gentle reminder:

not all things that are glow 
are 

still 
alive

Do you ever feel your hand cinching up the paper, your knuckles are white, and you have the urge to swallow the words down your throat only for them to spew back out of your mouth with fire on their edges from the overflowing ashtray gone viral sitting next to him while he tapped at the keys hoping this page would carry some meaning, some worth larger than the pile of
discarded justice,
discarded wisdom,
discarded worth,
discarded youth
Do you ever let the curls on the side of your mouth point due north after you found a nakedness behind a sentence and you know they can see you now like all the others with their white knuckles, blistered hands, fiery eyes, and bruised knees bowing to the pile of un-cinched papers lying beside their empty ashtray next to a bottle capable of doing your self deprecation for you
but -stop
Stop looking in the mirror and just let the curls lift while they stare

It was the day that you told me that I'm a liar,
that I have chosen to build up my falsities on the bones of people more truthful than me,
That I don't like myself enough to look into my reflection,
It was the day that I felt my bones shaking beneath the surface,
My veins turned into train tracks and I let the truth barrel its way through,
Now I'm a tourist under my own skin,
I no longer hide behind the missteps of other people,
And I see what I have done without judgement,
under a blanket of snow, in the winter waiting on the sun to defrost
and grow every bit of me new again