My head belongs in his hands and his lap,
and my tears can be caught only in the
thickness of his faded blue jeans.
My forehead belongs nestled in the nape of his neck.
My hands belong in his hands-
rough and raw and calloused over,
whipped relentlessly by the sun.
My knees belong against his chest,
held tightly to keep out diseases and terrorists and
the realities of life.
My fingers belong against his lip-
warm air bowing life into them.
My feet belong under his thighs,
saving my toes from a frost bitten end.

His cheeks belong under my palm,
rubbing the patches he missed and has let grow too long.
His eyebrows belong between silver fingers,
connected to mine made of flesh,
picking wild flowers-
which have become weeds-
making room for adoration to trickle in.
His back belongs beneath my wrists,
pulling out the stresses of todays and yesterdays
and mostly of tomorrrows.
His lips belong on the cool curves of my uncovered shoulders,
whispering sweetly of strawberries and daisies
and the way little blonde hairs stand up along the dip of the back of my neck,
where brain stem meets spine meets shoulder blades.
His shoulders belong under the weights of my world,
the cover of Atlas Shrugged tattooed nine years deep in his skin.

We are an equation-
an equation to save mankind,
and the equation of a line:
every part matters.
And the sum of my parts is nothing without his.

Mr. Beeson,
that East and West Egg,
that walking thesaurus, dictionary,
thermometer
peeled back the blank skin
from over my eyes and introduced
a whole new world to me.
A world full of color and black and white movies and
beautiful suicides.
A world of stanzas and strophes and meter.
A world of words that bleed out from fingertips and
create the image of one's heart.
I had been looking for something like that,
a way to create my heart on paper,
meandering around authors and song writing
and trying to be beautiful.
I felt lost, but finding poetry made me feel
like I actually had a place and a purpose.
Poetry is something that has grown close to my heart and soul and mind.
And I write because it's a part of me.
I write because I love words.
Words, words, words.
I love diction and description and exposition and narration and parallels-
oh how I love parallels!
I write because I want to sound beautiful.
I write because I feel all too much and I can't keep all
those feelings inside of me so I drain them out of my
veins and watch them ooze onto paper in ink.
I write because I have so much to say but it sounds better
in stanzas.
I write because I love the way my words sound all
strung up together in clauses and sentences
and fragments.
I write because I feel in love with the way
words look like next to each other.
I write because that's how I put my tears and smiles
and fears onto paper and out of my head.
I write because I don't know anything else.
I write because I write to live.

I don't know how to start
just like I don't know how I feel.
But that's the paradox of the woman, right?
Will anyone ever understand my brain?
My neurons and brain stem and cerebellum,
left and right brain,
and all the lobes:
frontal, parietal, occipital, temporal.
Will anyone ever make sense of it all?
No.
No.
But you try.
You skirt across my hippocampus.
Try to pitch your tent there.
Try to make a life there.
Try to dig up and excavate the things that will make me yours.
You're coming close.
Because I believe in tests.
Yes I am one of them.
Yes I do it to you.
I thrive on tests.
I pull them out of my ear drums and fingernails
and from in between the splits of my teeth.
I pull out the ACT, the SAT
the LSAT, the MCAT,
the Bacceleureat.
Everything is a test.
Every answer
every question
every "please come get me"
and jack in a Styrofoam cup.
The way you walk the way you look at me when I breath is a plus or a minus or a smudge on a scantron sheet.
Three and a half hours later
you can breathe clean air again
and your mind can clear.
Holy smokes, yes, but there is is nothing holy about it.
We wont go ring shopping
we've already been house hunting
and we all know the only thing you want.
Wide open spaces and a bed in the center
and me.
Isn't that right?
Isn't
that
right?

A man sits on the corner
with his guitar.
Music comes out of his fingers.
You walkers by are walking past and try
hard to
tune him out.
He does not ask for your money,
yet you look ashamedly away.
He does not beg you for food,
yet you throw it to him
from your car.
He is not poor.
Not cold.
Not hungry.
Only lonely.
He sits with his guitar
named Jenny
and pulls at her strings
so she will talk to him.
They talk about
love, and loss,
and the blueness of the world.
She speaks the words the man cannot,
and the man nods and listens and cries.
His heart too depressed to
work
bathe
mend the tear on the
left shoulder of his shirt.
He is not poor.
Not cold.
Not hungry.
Only lonely,
looking for someone to
sit down and listen.
But you walkers by
turn your heads fiercely,
and litter his lap with
food stamps and wrinkled dollar bills.

I don't know what I want from you.
I don't want you like I wanted Snow in Arizona,
but I don't want you to leave me alone.
The silent hum of the sleek car,
hands at ten and two,
feet in the clouds,
head in another dimension.
I breathe in the fumes of grease and coconut, so maybe I'm sick.
A tropical disease.
Blood pours from a facet and I'm reminded of Christmas and summer sandwich shops.
I am an Indian in your Chrysler,
dance around my fire.
Careful, though,
you might get burned.
The flames lick flesh and taste the weakness.
That is how they thrive.
On vulnerable, open flesh.

Poetry is like spider webs. Each word has so much meaning. A spider prefers to spin its web at night. Maybe this is because thats when they have the most on their minds or when they feel safe.

Each web a beautiful creation. The time it takes to create it and the little appreciation it gets. They say a spider will eat its web when moving on, every poet will eat their words one day.

Cob webs, are webs that have been abandoned and left to die. Our bodies will one day be left to die.

This moment, this one right now, is all we have. We will leave our poetry behind to turn into Cob Webs. Maybe one day a child may stumble across these words and bring them back to life.

Poetry is the most powerful thing we have and we need to give it to everyone. So the next time you see a spider web, appreciate it a little more.

Think of it as, poetry. Something or someone spent a lot of time making it. And put their soul into it. Because what is poetry if not a spiders web in the corner waiting to be realized?

Love is a yellow shotgun shell sitting on a shelf.
Love is a kiss on the forehead and on each cheek.
Love is peeing with the door open
and conversations in red sweatshirts.
Love is borrowed sweatpants and back rubs,
and being too deep in conversation to watch the movie.
Love is staying out past when you said you would.
Love is 48 index cards and
one scoop of ice cream.
Love is a family affair-
a sister, two brothers,
laughing in the kitchen and
seriously watching football games.
Love is the massive American flag
standing tall in a Macey's parking lot.
Love is waiting in the car at the gas station
and asking for a key to the bathroom.
Love is Scranton, Pennsylvania
and Burbank, California.
Love is homemade CDs and driving mindlessly through the night,
holding hands in silence.
Love is a bouquet of dead roses
in a vase full of murky water.
Love is the empty feeling you get on Wednesday nights
and the pang in your heart when you drive past the local pizza place.
Love is checking the mailbox every day.
Love is missing you.
Love is an atomic bomb.