She had lips that tasted,
like the scene in that movie
that you'd fast forward to get to.

She'd roll through things
whirring by
all brutality and lace.

I'd paw at her in the autumn night
searching for her warmth
looking for her love.

I wanted to write it on her back
(everywhere you go, -
I am going to be your man.)

I remember the summer
that my parents crumbled.
The anger
etched upon my fathers brow;
the shame
on the end of my mothers
quick clipped sentences.

It was two years
before the affair came to light,
but the August sun blazed
never the less

I haunted the halls after dark
quietly creeping along the walls
silent specter
adjusting the thermostat
as low as it could go.

I didn’t know what,
yet I knew;
it was all wrong.
Mother knew it too,
and father just waited.
Waited for it to catch up.
Waiting as the tired marsh hare waits,
knowing that the alligator is near,
yet too tired.
Too tired to fight the inexorable.

My family grew cold,
and all the while
the night sweltered
leaving the Spanish tiles sweating
as the faithful air conditioner
chugged on.

Our humanity does not lie in our goodness,
but rather it exists within our flaws,
for it's our flaws that make us interesting,
and it was because of this that I found
my aunt to be the most interesting person in the world;
for she was flawed in the most exquisite ways.

She was nothing short of a legend in my family.
Her deeds were not spoken of in day-light,
but whispered about late evenings
amidst closely clustered kitchen tables.

I remember hearing lurid tales:
she's been married twenty times -
she's been arrested before -
she's knocked out a boy's front teeth.

I never knew if these tales were true or not,
and I hope to never find out either.

I'll believe them; I'll believe in HER -
as she believed in me before:
as she believed in love and excess.
We talked shortly before her death,
What good is a life without regrets?

She was the finest of vintages,
and of her love, I drank deeply-
-knowing that my drunkenness
would be worth any hangover,
for a sweeter wine
I have not tasted.

In  the summer they joked
that she came from a place so cold
that in winter, a mans laughter would freeze in his throat,
choking him to death.

I awoke from the dream
vomiting the wine onto my sister
and her new dress,
but mostly onto her.

The party had died down by then.
I was sad to have missed it,
but sadder to long for my dream,
and her,
and her most of all.

I found the devil on the corner of Canal and Chartres.
A gleam in his eye, and smelling of French aftershave.
The echo of my footsteps resounding sharply
off the wet Louisiana cobblestones.
He beckoned me closer
whilst a woman with large feathers on her dress
and a snake draped over her shoulders
came to stand next to him.
She had spice in her soul, and rouge on her lips.
Satan smiled at me then.
There was blood on his lips, and his hair was perfect.

I keep telling myself to not look back in anger,
but I wonder what I'd even look back to.
How much of you is left;
or has your Chicago been built over by a more Chicago?

Sometimes you can't see the stars
because the constellations are in the way
in the way that only your love
can be more you than you.

Some day that tea cup
will put itself back together
and it will all start to collapse;
hold me closely then?

I awoke from the dream startled.
The bedroom was oh so very cold,
and I went to cover you in the down,
but suddenly I remembered;
staring at the vacant, ***** sheets.

In Florida sometimes it rains so hard
that you believe that it can't possibly stop,
that it will just rain and rain forever.

Sometimes I'd wake to a storm late at night,
and I'd sit out on the porch.

You could smell the lightning, and the coolness of the storm would
make your hair stand;
I'd feel so alive.

Some nights I'd go out, and my father
would be sitting on the porch already.
Lost in the storm
or maybe
called to it.
We wouldn't talk,
but we'd be lost together
in the rain and thunder.

Sometimes I wonder what of him
is left in me.
I am not sure
if I am more afraid of there being
very little
or of there being a great deal,
but when it rains
I think about him on that porch;

She tossed the kindling:
twigs, dried leaves, and an old piece
of tattered fabric,
at the base of the bridge.

The wind whipped her lace dress,
as lightning flashed,
and she gave a secretive grin
before the thunder raged at the night.

She hummed something;
not quite a song,
but not not a song either
while she longed to laugh
like the people in a painting
or cry like a widow on the news.

The flames danced gracefully
under the angry sky,
and she danced too;
small feral motions,
and twirls,
as the structure smoked,
and more dancing,
always dancing...
until the lovely ruins smoldered,
and all that she was left with
was a faded memory
of what the smoke
must have smelled like.

The winter wind kissed my cheek
as I walked into the world.
The snow crunched underfoot,
but I paused in the clearing
to see the last full moon of winter
perfect between the trees.
I stood in the soft light
solitary and with love in my eyes
as my breath blocked the view.

Lightning broke across the sky
as if God was hastily scrawling an autograph.
While the storm came inexorably forth
there was a fire in your eyes
that no deluge could douse,
and I loved you then
as I always had
ever since YOU
marched inexorably out of that little house
heels, hair, eyelashes, and strength
igniting my heart and stealing my breath.

Some things exists on a plain apart.
Words seem clumsy and confounding
in trying to explain these things,
which further frustrates the heart
which understands them
without the need of pretension.
Her beauty was one such thing.

It danced like a flame
on the darkest day of the year
resplendent, triumphant, and yes
unconquered.

To be near her was to to be entranced.
Entranced by such a heat,
that you believed
that even the seasons let her be
as she moved in perpetual summer.

To be around her was to be different:
to be apart
like her beauty,
but to be changed,
yet you allowed it all the same
for the sadness was nothing
when placed side by side with the euphoria.

I met a girl once,
from some distant
antique land,
and she told me
that sometimes
Chicago winters burn brightly.

Her silent snows fell softly
on my sandy shores,
and her skies saw hues
that she hadn't known.

I wanted so badly
to take her hand,
but you can't really care for anyone...
until you've lost them.

I buzzed around her heart
for she had honey in her core
but it wasn't ready,
and when we said goodbye
I wondered if our paths would diverge
once more.

He sat watching as the love dripped out of her,
like broth dribbling off the spoon back into the bowl;
each drop of pho causing ripples of warmth.

He wished to plunge deep inside of her soul,
to penetrate her mind and pause briefly, but
long enough to see how much love remained.

He watched as her hands became a swarm of bees,
her brown eyes turning to fire as she spoke,
and in this moment she was still beautiful.

His heart writhed while slowly realizing that,
it doesn't matter how much you love someone.
Sometimes love just isn't nearly enough.

You saw my slumbering
washed out in the rains
wisps of hope veiled
dreams I couldn't remember

And I saw you too then
alone amongst the wreckage
the embers still smoldering
but with light in your eyes

Give me your hand now
let us turn south from this place
with warmth in your lungs

the thunder storm is breaking
and it doesn't matter anymore
that no one here knows my name

Everyone rejoiced over the Humbolt Park gator being caught
but I wept alone
in my office
under the slightly angry glow of fluorescent lighting.

We don't know much about Chance's life,
but... we can assume a lot:
we can assume he lived in a basement
dark and dank
in a kiddie pool
with ***** water.
We can assume that he had a uv light,
but that he was a stranger to the sun,
to other animals,
to the feel of fresh water, and yet...

For six days he became Godzilla.
Imagine the triumph!
Crocodilians have been around since the Triassic,
but never in all those millions of years,
did one dream that it would go from a ***** basement
to being the apex predator
in an ecosystem where no one knew his name.

People complained that
he must have been confused,
scared
terrified for his tiny reptilian life,
but I never thought that.  
- I imagined him enjoying his triumph
as he paddled through the lagoon,
the sun on his back.

She didn't really have a beginning,
or an end, now that I think about it;
she was moonlight on a dark ocean.

Her eyes were a night sky
and I could hear the wolves howl
when she laughed.

She was just the type of woman
that your grandmother warned of,
and she pulled me close like the tide.

The sparks spilled from your eyes,
and I dabbed at your cheeks
with a paisley pocket square.

Your voice was so small
that I had to sit so close;
close enough to smell
your Chanel perfume,
hints of darkness
and complicated beauty.

I watched your eyes
so as not to be lost
in your smile.

I picked my emotions
out of the night sky,
and dredged up my guilt
from the wine dark sea:
packed them into a suitcase
with socks,
and that old wool sweater.

I stepped off the plane
into the Miami swelter,
but for the first time
in to
a Miami
without you.

I watched the life fade out of you
like a tide slowly receding -
- inexorable, cold, without mercy.
I could sense you from afar
as your body fought a civil war
down in the depths
where it was too dark
too dark to see.
I am not sure if I want to say the bowels of hell
or just...
your bowels -
- I am not sure if there's a difference.

You waited there.
In a room filled with neon lighting
charts, beeping lights, and cords:
with nurses and strangers passing by
until life stole even you
from yourself.

Beauty was the only thing simple about her,
for she was quite simply... Beautiful.
Her voice was a 1,000 years of happiness:
her tongue one precise moment of glory.

The sun melted into her skin like frost
on a late spring day,
as she napped like a cat;
feral in her beauty, wild in her heart.

She buried her dreams deep in the moonlight.
No one could steal them there,
but all her friends wondered
why she always lost herself in the stars.

I drank you deeply at dusk,
and that,
is where I'll wait-
drunk on your magic
grasping at your ether.

Me desperte en el desierto.

Las llanuras pulsaban en el calor:
ido fueron los edificios que habitan en el cielo.

La Tierra me hablo;
"Mira en mis obras eres poderoso y desperado."

Eschuche el lobo en la noche.
Yo lo conocia,
pero
el lobo es una cosa incognoscible-
- solo puedes verlo a traves de tus ojos.
Y ver un lobo a traves de tus ojos...
bien
tus ojos tambien podrian haber sido cerrados.

Senti vida alli.
En algun lugar entre mi corazon y higado.

En la suave luz del amanecer,
antes del incendio
mire por encima de obras desalmadas
y yo queria saber lo que el lobo sabe
pero
es impossible:
uno no puede saber lo que el lobo sabe
mas de lo que uno puede saber lo que sabe el rock
el dia
el mundo.

Translation

I woke up in the desert.

The plains pulsed in the heat;
gone were the skydwelling buildings.

The land spoke to me,
"Look on my works ye mighty and despair."

I listened to the wolf in the night.
I knew him,
but
the wolf is an unknowable thing.
You can only see it with your eyes
and to see a wolf through your eyes
well
they might as well have been closed.

I felt life here
between my heart and my liver.

In the soft light of the dawn
before the fire
I look on the souless works
and i want to know what the wold knows
but
it's impossible
one cannot know what the wolf knows
anymore than one can know what the rock knows
the day
the world.

She decorated her soul with dreams:
the kind that can't be stolen,
not even by the inexorable march of age
which eventually robs you of yourself.

Her love was a massacre;
savaging everything in it's path,
but with a beauty that you forgave her
before she apologized.

Her eyes were lilly pads,
and her voice
was the crunch of snow underfoot,
and while you couldn't believe that she could be hurt
you knew from the moment you met her
that you'd be her unneeded Don Quixote

Love is the sound
of your door closing
as I leave for the last time.

All too often we mourn
the fact that the fire's burned out,
but I WON'T think of the embers!
I'll remember the blaze burning brightly-
-those nights that you dressed in moonlight
those morning that you were there,
soft and gentle, still dreaming.

Chicago stretched before our eyes
just little lights and tiny cars
drifting through the darkness.

An abandoned swing-set
next to that chocolate factory
somewhere downtown
where my lips met yours
for the very first time.

So mud splattered
His armor tattered
In darkness and in shadow
Had journeyed a bit
The same old ****
In search of a Cadillac Eldorado

His beard long
This knight so wrong
His heart became a shadow
Closed his eyes
Still heard the cries
But not of a Cadillac Eldorado

And as his morals
Lost their quarrels
He came upon the wandering shadow
“Shadow” he croaks
the one with the spokes
the beautiful Cadillac Eldorado

Over the ghettos
Of Pompano
Into the field of the shadow
Ride, boldly ride
The shade replied
If you want a Cadillac Eldorado

In the vagueness of twilight,
your blonde hair sparkling
in the moon and rising sun
all at once;
smiling an exquisite smile
veiled by memory,
tinged by dreams.

By and by as the new dawn
pierced me with greeting
blustery tendrils of frost,
warmth emanated green
from your catlike eyes,
generous and feral
awakening my soul.

I basked in your spirit,
and in the deepness of winter
I suddenly felt alive,
longing to breathe your smile
to taste your fire...

And when we two parted
I wandered your apartment
placing my life
into a shopping bag,
but under your bed
I hid a photograph of us.

I hope that some day you find it,
that you say that I was EVERYTHING
that you needed,
but...
I'll settle for you remembering how in love we were,
and realizing that somewhere
that person whom you loved still lives
somewhere in me.

Dusk brought in the tides.
Small waves broke upon the shore
in muted hues of blue and grey,
as night began to gather in her eyes.

Yet even in the darkness light remained.
The wine stained her lips a dark crimson,
but when she smiled
everything seemed beautiful.

The air seemed to change with her smile.
Her facade forever locked in sfumato,
ethereal and lovely;
daring me to dream, and oh
what dreams may come,
but why dream
when she had stars in her eyes.

Excruciating...
Is the feeling when
you are not enough,
for someone who is
everything for you.

Your love is addicting –
like…
******* in my beard
on a Tuesday night.

Teach me to see
as an infant:
I need everything to be
for the first time again.

I want to watch you bleed –
into the subtext and margins
of my notebook
so we can dispense with the periods.

Your sweat is bitter
like dreams deferred,
but I still long to lick
your mind and taste your voice.

And it was in April,
that she first arrived
with the bloom of flowers, and the scent of rain.

I was never sure from whence she came;
some high rise, or maybe from Spring herself,
but I knew,
from the first moment she grasped my hand
that she was so many things that I didn't realize
my soul thirsted for.

I knew then, that she would be worth the
heart break,
and that in those shattered moments
I would love her still.

When the embers smolder
I find you in the darkness.
Dissipating smoke and I can nearly touch you,
but you slip away, back to black.
Haunt me still;
just don't go...

She moved in beauty,
like darkness within a shadow.
Pinkish skin like that of a new born,
and hair kissed by fire.

The corridor came crashing down
as I longed for her being
while trembling at the hint of her oblivion,
slowly permeating like winter's cold.
The clouds gathered, and Vesuvius rumbled
in the distance.

I crept up on her
in the vague moonlight,
and she whispered;
“I am Vishnu, destroyer of worlds.”
Still... I longed.

It was there that we sat as summer simmered;
Autumn, a shadow off in the distance.
I slowly nibbled after a bitter quince,
as she sat in the shade softly,
a wicked grin upon voluptuous lips.

“Can you share it with me?”
What is there to share with anyone?
“The reason for your smile.”
But the smile is already shared.
“I want to know anyway.”
I smile because I hate him.
“You should smile for love.”
They are the same currency really.
“How exactly do you mean?”
The other side of the same coin.

The Brazilian sands became too hot,
and we strayed into the town for dinner.
Bosa-nova narrated our meal,
yet we departed earlier than expected,
our love turned suddenly brutal.

I sat alone in the orchard as fall lurked.
In the vagueness of twilight I saw.
I saw her feral smile while she sambaed.
I remembered her untamed laugh.
I shed a tear for her lost artistry.

I wander through the irreplaceable night
waiting for the grey vagueness of dawn.

It isn't always so complicated;
the deepest things are simple at their root.

When the wolf wanders into the valley
does she hesitate at the fork?
Does she wonder about the untrod path,
or just stick to the banal evil of normal?
She prods at my kidneys with her nose,
hesitates, smells the remnants of Florida,
and trots onward, not looking back.

It's second nature to love you,
but first to see my wrongs.
It's easy to miss things
in the new darkness of night.

My life started at heart break.
I was in kindergarten
and she was a full foot taller.

I've lived and died countless times
and with each new heart-break
I realize that I'd rather be
broken than over it.
Dieing a little
is worth the price
of loving,
of being loved
of living...

The heavens explode against my windows
all gnashing of teeth and thunder growls.
It rolls off the lake on the hooves of Buffalo,
and I stare deep into the July contrast:
dark skies on dark waters -
Occasionally illuminated as if Hephaestus
is shaping this world at his forge.

She vomited up spring time,
the scent of mud
and the sound of ducks wings
spilling out onto the sidewalk

There was June in her eyes
embers starting to burn
things starting to grow
laughs foreshadowing tears

I saw you there
a thousand years ago;
dressed in lace and moonlight -
black, but no, not the trendy kind,
opaque like 4 A.M.
My eyes could of been closed;
I felt you inside,
felt you in my stomach.
There's no metaphor there,
in my ******* stomach,
so deeply that you felt violent
Call it whatever you like,
just don't  you dare play it cool.
Gentleness, like antelope in the dawn,
isn't always what I need...
Sometimes you crave citrus in a
fresh cut from lifetimes ago.

I dreamt you last night.
Attending church with my mother.
You were there in the pew,
in the grey dress you wore to your grandparents
that Christmas.
You were beautiful,
but your eyes were not your own

She had a beauty that boomed like thunder,
distant on the newscast- while some family
stood by the wreckage of their lives after
the storm (somewhere in Oklahoma) and,
it made you want to cry, like a newly made
widow, who’s story would follow at the top
of the hour: people described her with -

vibes a lot, but nothing vibrated, it was more
like an explosion, but not like a backpack in
Gaza, more like the Fourth of July, in Ohio.

It was hard to see her by looking directly:
you had to find her in angles and moonlight,
and even then you weren’t sure in the same
way that sometimes you can’t see the stars
because the constellations get in the way.
She made me think of Miami, but I couldn’t
say if it was more Miami than Miami, or just
what was left …

…of imperfect pictures painted by a sculptor
that wasn’t always paying attention at the
right time.

Does the migrating duck truly know
what it is that he wants;
or is he caught up in peer pressure
when he conquers indecision,
and spreads his wings to fly
south?

Is it possible that as he soars,
like Icarus,
that he is accosted by doubt
while the late autumn sun
baptizes him?

And when he finally crashes down,
in some forgotten pond,
warmed by a tropical clime;
that he wonders what might have been,
and is overcome by regret?

I thought I knew loneliness,
but that morning
when I discovered
that your toothbrush
had disapeered
was truly
the first time that I had met her