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That rough-cut
Turquoise
Pendant pulls my eyes
Downward
I want to trace her collarbones
Delicately
Sweetly
See if she's as soft
As she seems
 Apr 2013 Michael Valentine
JM
Morning blooms grey,
even the birds are quiet.
I broke two more hearts this week
and all I want to do
is hear your laugh.

You put strings in my joints

Your wooden face still hangs on my door
and Buddha squats on my granite nightstand.
Tastes of you are everywhere I look.

You shoved it in my face

******* and fighting
my way back to me,
I'm shedding skin
and growing teeth
and breaking bones
and doing **** my way
and loving it,
really loving it.
Still I hate every second
I am not with you.

*The coldness of your nothing
 Apr 2013 Michael Valentine
Me
The wide ocean lies
calm and blue in front of me
though I know
you are hiding beneath it:

your arms and face
beyond the waves,
your legs dangling
into the gulf-

I dip my hands into the lake
and feel:

a cold sensation burn
deep scars into my skin
your voice reverberates
within my chest

Then -

With a roar the waters rise
long arms and hands reach out
and grab my face
to pull me down-

And you know what?
For all I care-
Pull -
Pull us down! Until I drown with you.
Pilot your mind out of the graveyard
all of your friends are alive:
you slurp on hearthstones, you forget to make tea
every cocktail at your funeral shall seem like a broken-
hearted woman. “She was once lovely
wrote verses about riding trains and breakfast.
She had the arms of an aircraft shattering its engine
she was killed after too long of a kiss.”

I would rather you poke holes in doughnuts than yourself
but this control-center flurries like a moth
and then stalls like a blood clot.

I would rather steer the plane home for you.
Said, I can show you around the blackberry bush –
I planted it last summer, you know, that June you coasted
to university and stopped having crushes on cousins.

Said, you grew your hair long.

I toss it out the window many mornings:
dewdrops as a conditioner and tease strollers with
a crease by my armpit you like(d), my flab on the side –
I impress others now, men cling to the bottom of my skirt
and suckle on the hem to make each thread fray.

Said, but your knees feel dusty up against mine.
There is no big wide world, no plum summit skies below
the cuff of another person’s dress shirt –

just a watch. Remind me how much time I have left
until extinction, no hand held or hug goodbye:
this is a kingdom where nothing can die
and when it does, seeds are sown in the pelt of your heart.

Said, no, I bred this world for the fireflies.

Said, there are berry-droppings on your chin.
You look as if you’ve eaten licorice or caught lung cancer;
I wish you had, I wish I had never called you sugar.
 Apr 2013 Michael Valentine
JM
Bloodstained parchments.
Broken oaths.
Chiseled granite
with
promises
weightless as shadows.

But still we lie.

Wading in  the great nothing,
waist deep in murky inks,
wandering
sightless, senseless,
I feel my way.

Memories of grey skin,
black blood.
******* wrapped in ropes,
cherry blossoms
and alcohol.

Still we love our bruises.
  
Blind and cold
in the nothing,
we feel our way.
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