there is a secret code
a safe word for days that i
i have won and lay myself down
with your body knowing i
i have not broken my vessel
this boat i'm
i'm trying to carry us both in

i feel your heat and breath
full of helpless understanding
with want of my salvation

and your: Answers

you wear my anguish as a sunburn
when my eyes shine hotly
radiation and rubble
bits of shrapnel from love
that embed in your skin
in your skin that doesn't have a home

i sweep and dust my heart
i scrub it ****** and raw
set up a kick drum and boil the kettle
i wish you were comfortable here

    (don't shift uneasy on the sofa
      hands clasped politely in
      someone else's living room)

i am as constant as the southern pole
i wish you would fly to me
without frog-dissecting the mystery
of belonging somewhere

i wish i could keep you
and let our roots entwine

i wish i could free you
wish you away with a dandelion

i wish i could know you
render English or some language
articulate the great ropes
that weave what has somehow kept us together
when the ship went down

will you be an autumn, love?
will you be beautiful and frosty as it dies?

will we season, love?
will we cycle as unbreakable as time?

there is a code word
for days that are alright
that will chase the calendar
    i) as i will chase you now
    ii) as i will stop chasing you
    iii) as i will chase you always

until there is a knowing
until we choose our winters glowing

   (not bound by chains
    just fortified by sewing)

with every stitch and pull
every ***** and row
until there lies embroidered
the archaic ancient murmurings
of the dead language
of knowing when
and trusting

"Happy."

If my world's a bakery
in an endlessly large country
you descend upon my city
we pass at the stale loaves
eyelashes flutter, aghast
like I'm an insect assailing your glasses
I watch you smile or grimace
Run your tongue, checking for guilt stuck in your teeth

"Oh! Hhey!!"

Your voice surprises us both
it is the same timbre in which I render
words more decadent than your courage
to spit at my living person
when it stands all but 5'6 and breathing in front of you
washing up bottle messaged on the beaches of my awareness
-*****, jezebel, ******-

-her-

See, I've been receiving your cookies
in brown paper parcels
Little birds didn't want me to miss out on the flavor

I see you, small creature
how quickly you frost your hate
with buttercream icing, your loathing is cake
you devour and feed to anyone who'll taste

You have laid your field fallow
and let me assume disgrace

I want to tell you you're wrong
I want to push you with my mind
I want to throw sprinkles at you

I see you, small creature
with scrunched up fists
and I taste your poison
like grand marnier
it spoils everything

The recipe was followed rule for rule
The souffle rose
***** though you may

I'd almost rather hug you
if it would squeeze out your wretchedness
a flouncing whirl cupcake summit

so we could be tin-pan square

and may our pastry never mix again.

I alight upon the ivory garden
tended with accents of wine
and elegant gates of grey
I call your name: Poetry.
Hello, poetry.
then I hear it, the warmest reply
like the scent of lilacs and ocean salt
***, my monitor is supercharged with it
A myriad cry
From the baby-bird mouths of the heated young
From the sensitized woe-lines of the veterans of love
For a bolt of lightning and carnal tangle
Rendering memories of the trembling inside you
I click through the poignant, the broken, the raw
syllables weave pixels into cotton sheets
They twist under the keys as I type:

"Hello, poetry. What simple beautiful animals we are."

when the words are spoken
and i draw in air to sketch my lungs
til they spin the clay of my being
like startled doves spiral upwards
in a rustle of light
the cathedral within my mind
glows in sapphire shards
made incandescent by
my stained glass window eyes
there is a music box strain echoed in my pulse
unborn lullabies
that i shall spend my entire life humming
from the highest bough of an elm
feet bare against bark
in the warm cosmic dark
in this sturdy little body i build around around my heart.