She thinks that love will make this a war
I've found her in one before
but this one showed her eyes
darker than black water

I know that love does not happen easily for me
Because I am a woman
a 12-hour work day to love

She doesn’t know that yet
She doesn’t know I’m bent at the waist with the weight of it

It will take all year,
We will not know until the snow has come
and gone

Here I am in almost twilight
all day this hot sun through
soft curtains
and my own skin
Picking this mind for mindfulness
and my own tangled art
my own tangled heart

We reach for the same sky

I long to be the story that's told by the curve of your lips. The afternoon glow that meets your tired eyes on Sunday afternoon. To discover 4am alongside your musings. I swear the roses in your cheeks could rival the sunset. I thought of spending such a twilight in your arms, and that was bliss.

Give me your love, and give me your life*

Lie next to me, soak in my heart.
Gaze past the stardust,
and experience the world's
oldest mystery.

I'll tear you apart, but
only with my soul.
You'll stay gracefully
spill your tongue through my heart.

On our evening together,
we'll dine in tension.
You'll have catharsis,
I'll have regret.

It does seem planned
Doesn’t it?
Like the acts of a play
or The rules of a game
A predetermined course
I had no say in,
But must suffer through

No matter which way I turn the tables
It’s fixed

Ignorance is bliss
until the facade falls apart
You can sing mantras and prayers
Meditate in the moonlight
Give gratitude in every act you make
but it will not quiet
the core of your pain
It is not medicine
for the poison in your own veins
Everyone dies by their own hand
No matter how it happens,
it is always your own destructible being that betrays you

So we all try to sedate
The happiest of us, naturally high
Meds,
quiet the mind
bring peace to the war
But nothing is really fixed,
Is it?
You just pressed the pause button
on your own life
And we all know you can’t play games with time
Without consequences

Time
It’s passage, a comfort
a torment
The more it passes
the thicker my skin
but after years and years
Somehow the only thing I’ve done,
is build walls
What about dreams?
What about the life you’d imagined for yourself at five years old?
But now we say,
I’m not afraid of dying,
I’m afraid of what it would say about me

If you take the dream out of a lover
you’re left with the empty shell of potential
the scarred remains of a once bright
and beautifully naiive young heart

She takes steps off any path
builds walls for others
and tears away
her own self, the skin so valued
by everyone but her own

Great waves of rotten somethings
fill her eyes
until the dream passes by unnoticed
lost in the wash of time
never given
never open
and she lies with her big heart
still open at her throat
the ruffled dresses
of all the children
she was forced to bear
in tatters at her waist

This room smells like burning wood
I hope the fire brings her home
I hope warmth will creep into my skin
I need my woman like wool in the winter

We’re beating through the snow
and the skin we have sinks colder when apart

I want to burn to ashes under her

The holy,
is a woman
on her knees
at another

We bring fruit
to each other's tables
Yelling,

"Please come tender,
come glowing,
come wildflower eyes,
come bread breaking,
come holy steps
barefoot on my pebble heart,
come,
come,
come."

I feel for her
in the August haze
the September grit
She brings moonlight
to my eyes
Stinging already
with choked-up passion
the messy downpour of my heart
now, in excess
We tangle weekends in
my hair,
her sheets
My insides, swollen
with a rage
of timid want
Our bellies, full
with a drunken softness

It was an early summer morning. The fog set in overnight as it often did on the island. We were a pastoral painting; buckets, rows of crops, and all five of us hunched over picking the morning harvest. Only visible as curves among the eden that swallowed our bodies.
The things that I remember from that summer are not what was painful then, but what is painful now.
I was crying. I cried because of her yelling, but my tears were more than self-pity and frustration.
There is no rest in this life that I've chosen, yet who I am inexorably needs to be rich in soil. And is it any way to live? In constant fear that the world around you can swallow your livelihood with their greed and destruction?
The farm is a living being. She will hold you tighter than any lover. She will take your hand and lead you to riches and paths of contentment
But just like falling in love, you never realize how deep you're in until you look up and your underwater.
In those rows, amongst the spinach and morning mosquitoes, I cried for everything I have chosen. I wept for that farm, myself, and the weight of my life as the solution to a problem.

I have been living in poetry for months
and she holds me in her love
and her hope keeps my eyes open

but I have no life here
everything dies here

and you said we are not meant to live like this
we are stuck in what has been decided for us
and neither of us
can find the stars
to lead us out

You’re allowed to enjoy things
even though you are having a terrible time

You are allowed to feel pain
without being afraid

You are allowed to fear pain
it is never your fault that this world hurts you

I’ll pour this vial of pills
to fall through my neck
to push out my navel
so I can grow up and out

I’ll watch it all dissolve in my hands
watch my world dissolve in my hands
so it can finally be mine
something entirely mine

And as I’m standing on the big blue planet
eyes tunnelling into the moon
I will drape the reticulum
over some other creature
and no more burden shall I be
lying deep in the milky sea

I've been watching fire bombers glide across this October haze
I've been living in the same flame
of some charred detachment
and
intimate slow burn

The sirens grow loud
and then faint
and
She lays on my bed
her hand on my naked hip
I'm
Falling somewhere I've never been

I think I found my own abyss
There's a chaotic calm waiting at the edge
An anxious acceptance
watching this life happen

I let it
I stand horizontal on this bed
Falling asleep, falling deep into black

On the 6th day of October was when it broke.
Twelve pieces of eyelashes,
a chip off her favourite mug,
an old cashmere sweater with one moth hole,
a single earring on the floor,
the skin of her lips lying next to it,
and one broken heart, damaged, but still beating.

THIS IS NOT ROMANTIC.
THERE IS NOTHING ROMANTIC ABOUT CRIPPLING SELF-DOUBT.
THE HOLE IN MY BEING DOESN'T NEED TO BE FILLED BY ANOTHER PERSON.
YOU HAVE NO POWER OVER ME.
YOUR LONGER DAYS DON'T EXIST ANYMORE.
JUST BRING MY BODY BACK.

Touch crisp and break heavy

falling pieces that will never shatter

but hang heavy

todo esto de espera

Give me one truth to hold onto

cause I’ve been wishing on stars

higher than my expectations

My maybe stars and mostly flames

but they always fall down like hail

and leave bruises on my shoulders

already riddled with red spots

left by my bad habits and self hate

And bruises mostly stay longer than you want them to

talking about your weakness to strangers you’ve never met

It’s the same with hickeys and sunburns, but aren’t they all reminders

that yesterday your heart sang into another being

or ocean waves crashed into your ankles

and I know your eyes light up when that music starts

so don’t try to deny your vulnerability

You know, most of us been waiting for our lives to begin

for as long as we can remember

hoping and hanging onto daydreams

of inner peace and finally having love

but the smallest nighttime erases them

and our whispers are lost in the cracks of thunder

just like

every other wonder of every other lover I have

and all those lovers are stifled by each other’s unspoken phrases

and the rumble in the back of your head that chokes out

“don’t make a fool of yourself” “your words can’t carry your heart” “you will only end up embarrassed”

Why are we all so embarrassed?

When our beautiful friends stand in front of us blossoming as wide as a montana sky

and you stand there with a gate constraining your compassion like you’ve never cried yourself to sleep

But I have been both the guilty and the ashamed

and the only certainty I can give

is to speak your truth

or else wonder if you’re wishing on satellites

If you’re driving home from a friends house
in twilight and soggy muscles
I hope you’re rolling down your windows
For fresh air
And the way it widens your eyes
To pines beyond the roadside
Freeing the world to hear Matlida

Home in 10 minutes
But for ten minutes you are free
To appreciate windy road, solitude,
And what was given in summer nostalgia
Contented

Was I really so wrong
in wanting affection
(yes)
to satiate something I couldn’t have
(home)
I am hungry for a pasture
so I fill my stomach with the only peace I can find
(pleasure)

BRING BACK YOUR HOLLOW HEART
FILL IT WITH THE TEARS YOU LEFT ON HIS PILLOW
NO ONE WILL EVER NOTICE YOU AREN'T WHOLE
IT STILL LOOKS LIKE YOU'RE PINK AND PULSING
HE WON'T NOTICE, HE'LL NEVER GO THAT DEEP

I say,
touch me weakly
even if
the nervous flutter
of your fingertips will not reach my heart
I still need to feel you

These sad eyes and tired shoulders have make me weak with the promise of someday. The weight of the world is pressing down so tightly on my vision that I can’t see anything but the sun’s glare. And I am waiting so anxiously for the days to break and the river to warm so I can try to wash my dusty eyes and smooth my crumpled up soul so I never have to come back to four white walls and a picket fence.

A tear you forgot was there  
Like a rock stuck in your shoe,
Like the polaroids in your garage,
Like the old letters stuffed in your desk drawers,
Like me every week night,
with boundless questions to answer.
Crumpled naked over too many bedsheets
Before I fell asleep,
to the end of a record,
Before I fell asleep,
after a day spent feeling like the flower that grew in the back of the bush,
Before I fell asleep,
and wake to a day of regretting yesterday.
All day I stood out in the rain clutching this book and hoping that I would see someone walk around the corner.
I hope it's her
and she sees me
and she tells me that I've left a mark she can't ignore.
I'm hoping on the final word I'm clinging to,
because this is my last chance
to prove I'm not just ripped tights and forgotten promises,
rather morning tea and the way a clothesline sways.

Well darling, you're my constant
the only weather in my world.

Well darling, you're an old friend
the only one I fear.

Well darling, you're my wish
the forbidden fruit.

Well darling, you're so frightening
the alarming beauty.

There are some people whose worn and wrinkled skin only tell stories of horizons at the end of suburban streets and modern collages of white paper. There are others whose creases seemed to have transferred from dry soil that was cracked preceding water falling from the hose in that hand. American spirit was lost in those who spent their days nodding to a television behind them. Disconnected from hands that once felt the soil where nourishment sprouted now used only to unload cellophane wrapped vegetables from plastic bags. That spirit was carried on by a man born in Kentucky not fooled by artificial colors for he knew the full spectrum of letting the sunlight arch from ear to ear.

I felt in your heavy fog

autumns of the past

long days where my youth dreamt

of many ways my life could play

not one of them was this

do me raw fleece
under the full moon

touch me soft light
toes curl
jaw drop

**** flower petal
don’t look
come strawberry stem
arch
under this skin

taste me like lemon
taste me in heaven’s gate
a backwoods trail

do me sacred
I’ll see you poppy field
too far to run

We sat fireside
in the circle of my first hope
and I was sixteen
and it was the only light I had seen
since I came out of the womb

One by one
the poetry spilled from their mouths
as tears did from my eyes
and the cold froze them to my cheeks
the foreshadow of a winter I did not yet know

I used to be an eloquent girl
but when my time came
all I could say was
“I am here because I need to know
that there is still good left in the world”
That is all that I could get out before the tears became too much

That was a few hours
four years ago
Since then
I have seen an entire ocean
played hooky with wine and thunder storms
and lived as an entirely different woman

but tonight I need to be sixteen again
I need to see that goodness again

The thought of you away
is driving me insane
Weeks without you
my heart burns like a furnace
like December 14th near a wood stove
catching glances, biting lips
sneak out the door

Up against pine, my hands in your hair
don’t ever leave
don’t ever take your perfect hands off me
the kind of passion that starts wars
heat, from your breath slipping out like smoke
and the air is so cold but you are
searing a brand on my lips that says “stay”
I am lost in your energy and I won’t find my way out
until my heart finds a way in
It's trying to burn its way out of my chest
to be closer to you.

Yet I give my parts to these men
boys rather

Somewhere in Washington,
my tailbone

In Maine,
ten inches of my hair
taken out of desperation

In Wisconsin,
my fragile wrists

Italy,
my stomach
pulled straight from my throat
under cover of expensive wine
and exotic gardens

but here in California lies
the soft skin of my thighs
a collarbone, broken and replaced
several times
my *****, given willingly
and the dead cells
of my young heart

the light
the light
the light
and Her
and Her
and Her
and this place, these soft people
please heal me
please let me be strong
but only for myself

You kiss me first
And I'll crave to see right down to the space you spend all your time
You kiss me first
And I'll take you back to wandering woods
You kiss me first
And I'll call you home
You kiss me first
Because I wished for me and you and us
        the space between our lips
        the shuffle of our hips
        our twisted sheets
        our hands meet
But you kiss me first
               kiss me first

In the gullet of September you feel a strange constriction
A rust colored hand around your throat
digging into the memory of what you never were
Its nails scraping up dead things
of skin,
of uncertainty from a teenage year
A bellowing illness
once forgotten from walking so far
left to waste under bare feet
until the weather came round
and the conditions laid,
for an autumn gross with the pain of knowing
Wishing you didn’t know
Wishing so hard it accidentally comes true
and haltingly,
sorely,
life is no longer of the present

The honey may be gone
The light may be dim,
but the woman
in your bed
is sacred
Her name feels holy
and her touch
is the closest
I’ve ever felt to God