August
Even then, you know, you
were right about one thing-
I -am- insecure. That, which
unsettles me to my
core of worth
was the selfsame fuel
for pathos with you,
my foe.

September
See, I was all too willing
pressing my ear against floorboards
to catch echoes of smear, until
I bled crimson anguish.

October
I became infatuated with your name,
entranced by your body, identity that had
shared such a ferocious similarity with mine,
that we have both riddled our helpless portraits
in the heart of hazel eyes with the beautiful
terrifying wonder of *what-if-always?

November
The more ghastly your claims, the more
affixed I become for your passion for me, I
could feel your heat crawling from the coast,
a welcome malaise.

December
You know, often I've felt caresses though your skin.
A shallow breath as if against your neck-
wrapped as tightly as you must have,
and I wonder at how it must have been
such a
bitter
bitter
bitter
broken.

January
I pay attention to you, I
read what you write, I
listen to what you sing,
it's not a healthy addiction but
how could I possibly help myself?

February
I didn't plant a flag so much as
stumble over a root
I didn't steal so much as
find
I didn't dictate so much as
quietly ask.

March
Possible, that the heart of your extortion was envy,
though envy of what, I may only guess.
I suppose, the bottom line is, we're both imperfect,
good-trying people who are shattered with the terror
of vulnerability.

April
When I realized this, I could have
cradled you like a sister. I could
finally see through your eyes.

May
I'm not a viper.
I'm simply a piece of you, as you
are a piece of me.

June
In this way we will be
forever bound together,
hollow with each others' desolation,
Tossing with opposite bedfellows of doubt
Slowly ******* out the same poison.

July
The funny bit is-
in another life
we could have been friends,
and all I can do is write letters,
letters to miss Anne,
that I shall never
ever send.

Dear, you see I sift
through my iron ***
of rainy-day pennies and
furled up victory flags
I feel the weight of each
piece and the cold of their
touch on my palms and I
try to pick one I want-
it is all fool's gold.
All it will buy is time.
Turn on the garden hose
and call for sun-
It's time to make
rainbows.

It was so vivid I could
feel my chest compressing
as I ran, crippled with sobs.
The betrayal was a knife
It was a furnace and my
feet hurt as I flew across the
city. When I punched out my
bedroom window I could feel
the glass separating my knuckles
and I contemplated the destiny
of the larger shards. I awoke as one
resuscitated from drowning
resuscitated from death
gasping, shaking, reeling
d e m a t e r i a l i z e d
and began to cry as I
performed yogic breathing
exercises and went limply through
the worn out motions to
assuage heart attack symptoms.

They know they know
even follow me
follow me when I'm asleep.
My God.

Having fallen enchanted with terabytes
And crackle static audio that
kissed my cochlea
at arms length a thousand miles away
i realized with fear my folly
And the cursed blessing of feeling your butterflies.gif
As pixelated and intangible as
your portrait freezing before me
a betrayal to our union
a betrayal of our humanity
full of blood and heat and scent
when warmth is plastic beneath palms
when the fan cannot keep up with fervor
when solace is typed in syllables, sacred,
that do not err or lose their way in translation
And now i am Pygmalion
prostrate before his masterpiece
Clutching his beloved rock
And waiting for lightning.

There are certain tones that pierce us-
the tremulous "I..." which precedes the first
halting "...love you."
The static of a stilled phone line
a lace tying two ends of the country
that carried happy birthday to a dear ancient man
"Thank you sweetheart," in the same voice as his son
knotting my throat in the lonely homesickness
of a true Father's Daughter.
There are certain tones that pierce us-
those which remind us of what is most beloved
and what we must accept to lose.

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."

autumnal leaves scent your hair
weaving the reverie of stranger summers
of smoke and arboreal decay
bone-fingers, ceramic mug
shivering *** under the wool
   these septembers bewitch me,
   their wincing smile-
   how good it is
   to feel so sad.

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.

her mouth is an ocean of spells
her heart is a forest of beasts
her eyes are tinder for stars

his mouth is an empty church
his heart is a steady horizon
his eyes are the way home

I got tired of being broken,
so I fixed myself
and added a patio.

It must sound novel enough to uplift you
but familiar enough to be nostalgic.
So that you feel as though you are Home...
but ready to believe in love again.

I can
like you ever
love you always
celebrate your strengths
adore your weaknesses
cherish your mind
respect your distance
accept your path
make you laugh
support your passions
watch you grow
be your friend

I can't
ever give back
the days and hours
you choose
to keep
p u s h i n g
me out of
your life.

Were Love a fragrance,
would it settle like a hummingbird
at your throat- or would it become
trapped under your hair, shimmering pinkly
oxytocin shaken out in your bursts of joy
Love, like an orange peel.

Would it be that sound is the body of Love?
Is it tucked into your quiet sighs
as forever as a child, is it the raucous laughing cry
of delirious grandiose 2am Love on crowded streets,
or afternoon halfsleep philosophies on the human condition?
Or the very quiet promises, and Love is the vow.

floating delightfully with a million rounded
colours, a deep and delicate pressure
we gazed through our collective transparencies at
a magnified love; full of a single breath until
suddenly we-

The trouble with writing a
relationship through technology
is that the bygones are never gone.

Why do I pour a drink in your absence
and settle to re-read our old fights, heartbreaks
like *******, lips parted, heart racing?

I shudder through those weeks where you petted me, darling
but could scarcely afford to feed me the same heart
being doggedly masticated in the maw of another
I trace over my retinas the lines where you didn't,
wouldn't, couldn't love me, they scan me
for my identity.
My mug shot, beside
hers.

After how little it meant, how can you possibly love me now?

I could edit these now, you know, you're able to do that.
Everything I wish I had been and said.
The pages left blank, I should've painted red.

In the spaces, hiatuses, I recall your ill-suited suitors
I can't tell whether I feel grief, jealousy, or ecstasy.
At the time, you know, it was like falling upon
The Secret Garden
unbefouled by poison nor passion
to inhale the heady scent of white rose
and discover the brim of someone else's hat beneath the foliage.
The place wasn't secret. Oh, it wasn't mine. Never ever was mine.

I'm ahead of myself. Oh, for want of technology.
We courted on Facebook and Gmail,
it was a convenient torture, given the circumstances.

Now my mate belongs where I do.
Loving, tenderly, wisely true.

I cannot start loading the page for the future
so much as delete our archive,
a prelude to love
written in diminished chords,
sung by the jilted and ghosts.

I am the salmon
that struggled all the way up to the bear.

I resolve to achieve health
Physically.
I resolve to not lose weight,
to celebrate my strong woman-ness,
to go to bed earlier,
and never forget sunscreen.

I resolve to achieve health
Psychologically.
To have courage against the stigma
of needing someone to talk to,
to cry when appropriate
and to take every opportunity to laugh.

I resolve to love you
Deeply.
To honour you with my
thoughts and movements,
to compromise and support,
to adore you with all my heart.

I resolve to find my resolution
Not at the end, but rather in the turning of things,
I resolve to move.
I resolve to give.
Within every struggle
I resolve to live.

You could win my heart with peanut butter
or with passion for the never ending quest
of finding the perfect running shoes.

You could win my heart with literature jokes
with Kishi Bashi, Bach, or Bocelli
and if you play with me, I'm yours.

You could win my heart with affection
honesty, cleverness, and candidness,
I'm addicted to non-corporeal human evolution.

But I'd rather you didn't.
Not yet.

words of love are my
most precious currency.

my heart is a silver dollar
that I keep for sentimental reasons
I would leave it beneath my pillow for you, love,
in exchange for petty coin.
The value of our objects is nothing
in comparison to what they hold.
You cannot buy the heart I gave you.
For all the King's horses, I'd not sell your soul.

Break my will, but not my heart
break your word, but not my heart
break my mind, but not my heart
it was broken long before the start.

Verbosity
A patchwork quilt that I roll roll up in
Stitched with syllables
Like a little phonetic sausage
So deep inside you can't hear me go
Dur dur dur.
(insert self-deprecating quip about being a wiener)
laughing track
But it's cozy and neat.
And if you do
I'll rubix cube your dearest mind
Til I'm tucked deep inside once again.  

And I'll softly pontificate about the genetic code
and how it made your irises not quite hazel
But still able to illuminate spontaneously
teal, laurel, cyan, the sea
And if you'll pardon my hyperboles
They draw me strong as an Atlantic tide
This ocean that ***** me the deepest inside
Aesthetically, the contrast is startling to your skin
An artist would capture the portrait therein
But really, all you need to know
Is they're the prettiest
prettiest ******* eyes
I've ever seen.

And I'm sorry
That when I get nervous
My heart is a little effervescent
My words become too efflorescent
(I seek not to strangle you with King's English Shrubberies!)  
As you stand before me, incandescent
My dread is that you're
Evanescent.

...

But that thing about your eyes.
All you need to know.
That thing about your eyes,
Not to mince words

But I think

I'll feel that way always.

Mean? No, you misunderstand me-
the lady is not cruel.

She's just a goodly heart
surrounded by a moat of alligators.

you're playing piano
notice naught but your psalm
as i drink my soy milk
trace your name in my palm.

you're stumbling through chords
i'm stumbling through feelings
it's my quiet reward
the delight of revealing

scripting my secrets
growing more bold
things i've far yet to tell you
things i've already told.

A family man, running spandexed and puffing
reaches into the stroller at the crest of the hill
as the day sighs away the last of its dusk
hands a three year old a flashlight
and makes her a secret-wink promise.
You'll move so quickly on your path,
it's your duty to carry a light with you
to keep you and others safe.

A stern man and a hot scratchy washcloth
removing a Spice Girls bubblegum tattoo from
the nose of a seven year old, molecule by molecule.
As soon as you get caught up in superficiality,
that's when you'll make mistakes. Don't make
mistakes that will last.

A medic man returns from a surgery
from a rural village with more kindness than money.
Lays a basket of apples and a banana loaf on the table
in lieu of a cheque and says:
There will be opportunities in your life for
your actions to define the kind of person you are-
always take them-

and never forget your common humanity.

An animal man bursts into the room
with a puppy as new as a sparrow
gamboling, loving, seeking faces and laps.
When choosing your first dog, look for
one that has more loyalty than shrewdness.
Choose your friends that way, too.

A tired man breathes deeply instead of shouting
at the quivering teen and the confession of the bumper
and the scratch that shouldn't have happened.
Hurt softly with the truth.... but never with lies.

A romantic man recounts his history
raising his eyebrows at the score of his frolics
and makes me swear to fall madly in like
with every soul who my heart should kiss-
but Love, reserve Love as the most sacred
of words, deeds, beings. When you Love,
you and he shall become one another,
and be one life.

A sentimental man wears a silver crown
at the head of his dinner table meditating in
silence after the laughs and mayhem of his
family clan have subsided to the fireplace.

He looks at his daughter.
She looks at her father.

The fullness of her adult face
and Polish eyes reflect in his irises
blue inside blue inside blue inside blue-
making any separation between them
redundant, intangible, like-
mirrors facing mirrors-
as the roots of the
Tree run as deep as soul itself
and he murmurs:

*The day you hear the cry of your firstborn child
is the day you discover the meaning of your life-

and nothing will ever, ever be the same.

I gave up on astrology
when you gave up on me.

       these stars will never align

doomed to a quickened heart
when every other year
you tell me I'm
beautiful.

you're a devastating black hole
I've wary watched the effortless pull of
galaxies into your guile
invisible webs gilded with your smile

infinite universal promises of nothing.

having fallen sick with the brush of your hand
(careless earth-shattering connection)
    
          he loves me... he loves me not
                 he loves me.... he loves me not

"your old friend"- how dare you?
at the origin- ever aliens!
you never obeyed the customs
when every look was all a kiss
and every touch a secret question

"we never were just friends," I muse-
fleeing on my gondola down the milky way
casting over my shoulder your cordial invitations to love you
from this millennium onward, you've changed the font but kept the paper
into the nebulous reality you've tried to gather
I don't. I won't. I would not rather.

let daisies decide.
leave me alone.