my hands are mumbling something about
moments of grandeur, philosophy of life
words already spoke- world could live without
why choose I fear quiet as real as a knife?

a predicta-poet who's turned all her tricks
will the page weary of the same tattoos
will syllables return to rocks and sticks
will the parables fade, the truths misconstrue?

my fingers shake upon the keys
if I cease to murmur, will I cease to be?

i meditate emptiness:

i am a lantern on the water
i am a raindrop about to land
i am a birthday candle
i am a wave against the shoal
i am utterly
alone

i am afraid to let go
i am scared of impermanence
shall my emotions afflict
my waking karmas
to despair?

i loathe loneliness.
it is the footprint of my fearing
doctrine, oh doctor, please assuage-
my chronic symptom: disappearing

i am a nothing
an irrevocable passing away

i feel it on the street
i hear it in the songs i play
i know it within my secret heart

and when you turn away.

strolling down main i first heard
your laugh (before I met you) i find
it's your fortune to laugh always at
the joy that is your mind

i first watched you move in maths
to make wood moan and sing
feeling you play you'd know my heart
realized in strings

passing notes in the middle-night to
discuss a light, your dreams of colour
or a flash of cosmic bright

we found our best jokes
at the last page of books
and the bottom of teacups
and in quiet looks

your heart is all air
and never alone
you will find your own way
you are already home.

mourning doves for late afternoons
a lament for the golden hour
the end of adventures
a little girl comes in for dinner
tiptoes upstairs
strokes her mothers hair
leaves little blue flowers by her bed.

                       I let my hair go dark again-
                          just like yours, do you see?
                           I'm a woman now, I have your mouth.

forget-me-nots for noontime
where the little girl would lay
violet blue healing shroud
and disappear
un-pixelating a photograph in the sky
the portrait that made her father cry
it was a five year old aesthetic of death.

           I guess I never really knew you, did I?
            
music box hidden in the mystery of a closet
shades of midnight, shades of dust
a ballerina's slow pirouette
called into life after forgotten years
the haunt of Sleeping Beauty.

               I know you didn't mean to miss my birthday.
                   I begged you for a music box, you remember?
                      It's my most dear treasure on this earth.


mourning doves for missing you
forget-me-nots for remembering you
my music box will live for you

How strange that such wonderful things
should make me so sad.

9 am I woke with a broken heart
it had been shattered, unbidden
in the place after empty and before disappearing
-That-

To jump in a lake fully clothed and
realizing that you're too weighed down
to surface...

it hurts in my tummy
it hurts in my chest
it hurts in my throat

I am afraid.
The past is a broken red balloon
dragging on the ground behind me.
Every glance backward sends me reeling
sick and dizzy to my knees.

the breathless sorrow petrifies.

There are ghosts in my skull
(I know them by name)
Perhaps, that's the trouble-
I know how to call my haunting.

How many years of happy will it take
to even the cost?
I cannot do this anymore,
but it seems both my destiny and my doom,

I'm suspicious I've already lost.