You sleep like the echo
I feel in my teeth
When I go to bed drunk
And spinning
But I’m ok with
Spinning, are you ok
With familiarity?
A closeness you can
Taste then put away
On an untouched shelf
An awareness, granular
And brief.
So sometimes
mornings are
Shoulders to lips
And others are
Hoping you’ll wake

You feel like someone who crosses the street when there are pages they didn’t need to see

At the grocery
Mouth covered
Hand in glove
Hand to cart
Bruised fruits and
The power
The melancholy
Of a man leaving with
Only flowers
That won’t ever
Grow again

I used to watch my old neighbor
Walk 3 times a day to the edge of his yard
Hands grasped behind his back
Half tucked in white shirt
Yellowed by tobacco or maybe sweat
He’d stand there hands
Holding his own hands
And wait
Just a few minutes
Then like his grey hair
Uncut and curling
He’d wind back
To his front door

Sometimes I’d sit
And watch

Somewhere
Deep down
I know you need
Our love to stay
Small and bruising

An emptiness
Like sitting down
In the shower
Not recognizing
If hours
Or moments have passed
Letting plants
Starve
Chain smoking on the porch
Like no ones ever gonna need me again
I’m so tired today

it's that time of year
where I always find myself
surprised by how much
sleep I actually need

I walked into
The bathroom for
The third time today
Tiles
Cold and knowing
All the secrets I’ve shared
The ones I haven’t
Beneath my feet
Content with reading
Everything but
The lines between you
And between me
The light peering in
For more poems to
Keep
The beer in my hand
For a last word
To read
The book to my
Left untouched
Water on the stove to heat
And I couldn’t
Keep the warmth
To stay feet tangled
Toes pressed
To seed.

Pressed flowers
Like pages
Of the Bible I’ve never opened
But weighs heavy on my back
Southern strains
The belt
The weight
All pressed
Flowers
In pages

Old words
Like old songs are
Living old worlds
And still it seems
You can’t escape them

Why is it-
In brown paper bags
Declarations of love-
That I only want
You distant and sharp.

3 am makes trees grow taller
i've seen it
falling into the edge of morning
it's gentle like the sway of
my buckling knees
under the weight of
four drinks
and the rush of being in love

i know there have been others
maybe there will be more
that i want to stay awake for -

a play ground at dawn
lost key and found lock,
even the same story
begins to feel
new

please
if you are going to leave
pack your things
while i am away

i was a poet before
i was a painter
and there's
something about
the way your
gaze is given
that makes
me unsure

if i could grow a forest
kessler, would you meet me there?

it smelled like fruit at
the train station this morning
maybe it was the mother -
infant draped, arms
over her shoulder
soft and smiling

it could've been the man
holding flowers
white knuckled
hungrily consuming the tile
with black patented
like the ants I see
carrying off
other ants

or maybe it’s that three years later
summer still feels
like orange peels
baking in a hot
train station
and I’m still there
weighing out how
it feels to be human

if love is a debt
i don't ever want to owe again

"you don't have shoes on"
poetic lush and the
fires i've always wanted to start
heels dug into asphalt
that's been cracked
by the trees in my
trash filled front
page
front yard
where I yelled
at you in
drunken rage
i wasn't all that
wasted but
my frontal lobe
gave out of me before
it could really let go
of all the
toxic treated
brain stuff
keeping you
at arms length
from me
throat painted
with a dagger and
i'm starting to see
that it's for a reason

"you don't have shoes on"
and i'm trying to be better
and i love you


please don't go

bipolar is
collecting
ten baskets of
fruit
and the next day
realizing that it
was never
quite ripe

grey tiled
waffle house in
Atlanta, Georgia
I'm about
ten coffee stirrers
apart from you and
my face burns
for the third hour awake
and the mundane
act of loving you.

blue eyed and built
with barriers
that are so silent
you'd think that they
were made with
ghost bones
whispering willow
says I love you
late at night on
a cigarette strewn
porch
and i can
believe and be
patient
because you make
my head so heavy
when i'm close
to you.

intimacy,
she wraps around my legs like a cobra
and i am afraid

"get better"
pictures of an exhausted illustrated sun
pulling itself up over the horizon

i wonder if the sun ever has struggles like these

umbrellas in bloom
a city rushes like
water down to the bay
my hands sit still
on the coffee table
cupping my drink
watching the canopy
of covered swarms
make their way to
work
it reminds me of
the schools of fish
i used to watch
race around at the aquarium
because
occasionally
there will be one
that seems a little
                                      lost
                      or                             out of place
in the way
they move

Last night
Was the first time
I have ever
Flinched when
A lover made
Too sharp of a movement
Out of the
Corner of my eye
And here I thought
I had rid myself of
Every trace of you.

Slack jawed
and wilted like the bud that
bloomed too soon
hunch over into my knees
the room sweats
some sweet southern sadness -
the kind a mother makes
when she remembers
the way you used to
wrap your hole hand
around one of her fingers
and you'd smile a bit more
- my hands now cupped
so I can pour pieces
of myself out,
b r e a t h
then repeat

Slack jawed
and wilted like the one track
wonderer who has lost his thought
press my lips to the floor
when my white noise
sensitivities and speculative
perceptions become too
populated to
preserve
pour pieces,
b r e a t h
repeat.

I want nothing to do
with your salted earth

It's far easier
to believe
that you never really loved me at all
than to drown in the fact
that I just couldn't
keep you
or maybe I just
didn't deserve you quite
like I had imagined

When I was eight
I would fall asleep
in the corners
of my house
often left alone
because I felt
my bed
was the reason I could not sleep
I felt
like it knew
I wasn't worthy
of the pillow
or my sheets
or the cascade of
sunbeams
that would fall on my
face in the morning
just like they do now

I would walk around the house
empty and creaking
and I would walk into the kitchen
and hold a knife
to my stomach
with my reflection
in the granite counter top
and I would wonder
why I felt
that it was often better
to die than try to
deal
with my mind numbing
nothings
and the questions
they posed

I didn't know yet
people took their lives.
That people
felt these things sometimes
they had clouds
that would hang over heads
sometimes for months
I hadn't felt a loss
but still
I knew this ride
only had a one way
track
and I wanted off

It's heavy
to feel the heat
that runs through my
blood when I'm behind
the wheel of a car
or walking over
a bridge
it's difficult
to always see
ledges without
safety fences
and concrete columns
and not really understand why
the mineral mounds
in my brain
just aren't stacked the same
as Bill
or Jane
Because I've always known
this one track train
to not have a definitive escape
just a one way ticket
and only one lane

It's heavy to always
see ledges without
safety fences
and find some calm
some comfort in
that.

It is hard to find
People
Who for small periods of
Time
Make you forget there is
Anyone else
In the world with you.

Try not to let those
People
Go.

No one wants
Broken goods
finger to lips
Stolen sips from
Those sweet honey hips
No one wants
A melded mind
Mineral mounds
And uncommon sounds
No one wants you
But mostly no one wants
me hung from a tree
Spoiled she
No one wants my broken
Goods
Baggage Claim
Swallowed in flame
No one wants
My mineral mound
Pumping heart sounds
Tossed around
Abandoned
One two three
What could it be?
No one wants
Damaged goods

Looking for
God
Somewhere between
A love letter lost
In a landfill
And hitting
A hundred
Miles an hour
On the highway

I want to be the
fallen eyelash on your cheek
carefully collected
coveted for a wish
or two
or three
I want to be the tree above your
head
and the roots below
I want to be everything
and so much more

however I do not want to be your cage
or your basket of broken eggs
I do not wish to be
your scratched records
to be replayed
I want your freedom as
you want mine

I just want to be the fallen eyelash
on your cheek.

a year ago
or so
you told me that no one was ever going to love me again
you looked at me and I believed you
you loved me
and love is honest.

i didn't know then
that abusers
take the birds
they love
and scramble to clip
their wings
and then ask them to fly

so
i clung to you because
you were all I was ever going to get
but-
that was
a bit more
than a year or so ago

you tell me
that we should
take things
slow
and I hope slow
is sweet like
how your words trickle
out of your mouth

I hope it's
lasting like
the smell of smoke
on your jacket at 3 am

and I hope
it's honest like
how it feels
legs tangled up in each other
and I'm awake counting shadows
on your ceiling

thinking that I've heard
of slow before
but it didn't quite feel
anything like you.

Lately when I drink
I drink at bars two miles
Away from my house
Four shots of whiskey and
I usually get sad and I
Walk home
And the other night
I did that
And caught wind
That was missing
Someone

I began to stumble
My way home
I usually try to look mean
And unapproachable
But still I hear
A "hey baby"
******* can't
See I'm crying
And I turn around
On fire and tell him
To *******
He tells me it's thanksgiving as if
That means ****
To me
And I barrel home
Thinking he doesn't
Know that I am
Just starting to notice
All the cracks in
The pavement
And the empty spaces
Where the honey combed
Brick used to lay
And I'm wishing
I hadn't felt so
Strange toward you

i like the way
your face creases
creep out from under
your glasses
around your eyes
when you smile

i don't want to be
your inbetween
but i don't mind
staying in between
your sheets
skinny
loveless
laying in
spoon fed
lover's lies

i don't want to be
your inbetween
but i don't mind
keeping your company
on cool nights
cold lights
i don't want to be
your transitioning
queen

and just because
you don't want to
lose me
that doesn't mean
you get
to keep me

It's funny
How whenever I
Tell someone about a
Trauma they
Always let me know
What I
SHOULD have
Done.

Lately I've been thinking
About all the hairpin
Turns I've gone around
Too quickly
And almost eaten
My own ***
Straight into
A tree

And mostly
I've been thinking
About all the
Ships I've sunk
With tiny
Needle.     point
Holes
Thousands
Of perforated
Perfunctorily placed
Sailor sabotage

All of those ships
resting at the bottom
Of my halfway conscious
Self
Because I'm afraid
Of being the barnacle
Brained woman
That I am
Clinging to the bellies
Of the sinking
Ships I've carefully
Cast into
The depths

And lately I've
Been wondering
Why I've never been so
Lucky as to
Hit one of
Those needle poked turns
As fast as I could

I've never told anyone
About the boy
That lived on the edge
Of my street
Growing up
He was about 4 years older
And
Whenever we'd play
Manhunt in the neighborhood
He'd find me
First and
Shove his tongue down
My throat
And touch me
I was four
He was eight

And I saw him on Facebook
Today with
His three year
Old daughter
In his arms
And now my
Throat hurts so much

My heart
Doesn't belong in
My stomach
Carving out
A hollow place
An attempt
To hold myself
Together

Am I upset
At your disappointment?
Or just upset
At the way
It makes me feel?

The city
Is swelling
Like the belly
Of an opossum
That was
Hit by a car
On memorial
Despite
The constant
Gridlock of
Folks wasting
Away with their
Air conditioned
Tape deck days

The city is swollen
Like my lower
Lip when
You smacked
Me across my face
And I don't know
How
I ended
Up being the one
To blame

The city is swelling
With people
And somehow
I managed
To never stop
Feeling so
*******
alone

Skin to knife
Skin to knife
Skin to knife
Knife
To
Skin

my fire is back
whirlwind
wanderer
wistful
whisper
wonderful
woman
my fire is back
and my feet
won't fail
me
this time

My feet
Are numb
And I can't
                                   Stand
         the deafening
Sound of
Sweet sounding
Nothings,
The bitter
And blank
Tingle of
White noise
That circulates
Rooms full
Of people.

Love seems
that it's half way
unconscious
like
burn on my cheeks
whenever I see
my lover
smile
and
halfway a choice
to be respect
the other
and their emotions
even if that
means
accepting the
fact
they may never
really ever love you back.

All of the
baby clean
lovers, teens
in Paris with
their purple
spotted necks
rosey cheeks
and cigarettes
reminded me
of how many times
a day I used
to fall in love
with someone
new

and now

I feel so numb.

learning new lips
like lost lovers
often do