Bathed in the shade of
a rubbery rhododendron,
I sway imperceptibly,
Lulled by nature's rhythms,
A silent, sleepy visitor
splayed on a ropey nest,
Serenaded by an aerial orchestra,
Chirps and trills
and throaty warbles
spiral downward,
Atomized in the languid breeze
like a Roman candle,
A staccato riff,
Jack-hammered into a dying birch,
Urges me back from the edge,
Where dream and dreamer part,
A gauzy memory of a melody lost,
Performed for the oblivious,
and a dozing, grateful
audience of one.

His laughter boils the blood,
that courses through each vein,
Every second that I am forced,
to listen makes me insane.

Chaos, he brings quickly about,
to the voices inside my head.
"Be nice, be calm, bear it."
"**** that, I want him dead!"

The pressure swells; rising,
soon I will lose my control-
"Just let me hit him once,
I'll only make a tiny hole!"

"No! You are better than this."
I try and try to fight it, I do-
"Only a few more days," I say,
*"Then it will all be through."

Wake up already.
I've been staring at the scratch on your neck since half past three.
You look strangely similar
To the sidewalk I've walked a million times before
But you're not cracked
Or rotted like my eye sockets.
If everybody knew why windshield wipers
Hide what keeps us writing love letters to boys we'll never meet,
Even weeds would look good in a garden.
The cold rusted my knee caps
And staining the carpet red
But it was worth it to hold your hand,
for a minute and 37 seconds.
There's a vase of flowers by the door
From a lover who didn't make the cut.
A cut on your shoulder
Leaves the fire burning blue.
Paper clips lined the ceiling
Of the California oak
By the edge of his bed.
Do it for yourself,
I swear to the moon I'll be grateful
No matter how long the line to heaven
Wraps around my wrists.
Under the sand trapped in your toes
I learned to choke on something other then the water
Bubbling my lungs to cobalt.
I'll flick every switch and touch you forever
If you teach me to love you back.
And if the desert could yell
As loud as my eyes
*You'd feel it too.

You can't break a heart that isn't healed from the last set of eyes.
A reminder from the moon to the stars
It's never too late for something beautiful
To fall from the sky
Into the palm of your hands.
There is a place across a river
Where the East meets what's west,
And all the children wait with bandages for cut wrists to heal in the sun before it sets.
I have a fear of setting in stone
Because you can only stare at the sun for so long
Before beauty and light causes tears.
Nothing beautiful,
Like an angel in the snow
Remains forever,
And I'm stuck in time
Because there's something going around the room
That I've avoided well so far
But a bird can't fly forever and neither can my heart
I have to fall at some point
Into someone one else's sun.

my brother-in-law’s really fit
I admire him for it

He spends much time
in exercise, in energetic thrusts
He’s a whole aerobics center;
gets all the exercise he needs:
He constantly jumps to conclusions
runs down friends, back-stabs whenever he can
side-steps responsibility
and you could say, is constantly pushing his luck
And pushing it too far too…
and goes round and round in circles
with many false arguments

But one kind thing I can say of him
he’s mindful of my health
for he must have observed how I hardly exercise
and he invites me often to his fitness program
“You scratch my back, I scratch yours,” he says…
But I’m just too lazy even for such effortless exercise
and meanwhile, he continues with his fitness program
namely, as I have said before,
jumping to conclusions and constantly pushing his luck…
while the only thing I can manage
in response to his fitness program
(darned lazy as I am, as he complains to his sis)
is to lift my *******

but frankly, my brother-in-law’s really fit
I admire him for it

Winters back to remind me I loved you
In every patch of ice
Summers back to swap the tide
Of my eyes
And change reflection to deception in the sea that turned our bodies to trees
Floating as simply as regret on the tip of a tongue too timid to change its mind
I don't mind, I swear.
Tell me again how the flowers bloomed before August
And have since withered to stone
But eighty seven rib cages cant form a single heart
Each piece of glass slammed on your skull remains in my top drawer
Just in case I decide to piece you back together
And form from red a sky of grey
The birch on the tree left stomachs in knots so
Why not
change the song on the radio again,
Just in case the next one doesn't remind me of you
But it seems to haunt shoulders stroking my neck as softly as birds released from the cage of my shoulder blades
You live in cartoon houses
Beside plastic covered floors
And shield leaves with newspaper
Just to fill the space
between me and you.
There is a blood stain on my floor I can't seem to scrape
And your shirt is in my closet
Beside the window shattered to grain as small as bone
Somewhere between a metal and a base I found your fingertips tapping my leg
But you took it with you when you left
And now I can't walk to the window and watch you cry every Tuesday.
The rope burns you splintered
On the corners of my eyes reminded
I should have known you didn't mean it
When grass formed in the cracks of your lips because
All things go
Except the smell of sweat on my bed,
tears like dew on the petals of my cheeks
And the sea I gave my soul to.
Salt remains to evporate eventually
Along with thoughts of you so
I stayed up debating if the sky was simply a piece of black paper freckled silver
And if you ever felt the grass between your toes
But all things fade with sunrise.