What do you get? A man
born wise of the world?

material wealth need not apply
who's less not a necessity
who's concept of life he knew solely
was but one.

What do you get? A man
with no lies to deny
no truths left behind
who has all the right people
in all the right places at all the right times

What do you get? A man
whose riches countless
yet symbolize not a single digit
who spends his whole life
in his last single moment

What do you get? A man
who knows problems none
if its an ultimatum he gave you
to either go or stay?
care or shun?
rhetorical question:

What do you get this man for his birthday?
the ability to have it the way he wants?
the ability to change things he cannot?
Is it the ability to open up a sack of bones
and fill it with love?

What do you get the richest man for his birthday?
cause he has the sun and the moon
when its all said and done
and theres nothing left...
.


the ability to have fun

With you,
The color blue is never sad.
The north winds are cold,
But there is no chill.
The sun is a friend I had not noticed,
Beaming.

With you,
My hands are woven
And the grass is weaving
A great blanket,
Safe and long and warm
Like your hands,
When they cover,
When they touch me
Like my lost, new found friends
The sun and the sheltering
Earth
And the autumn winds,
I no longer dread,
No longer fear,
With you.

Kelsey Martinez visits the glory hole at the local Vons
Every afternoon at 3:00
He fills holes in attempts to fill his holes
And walks away a little more empty
With a sharpie on the inside of the stall door he writes
This is The John Wilkes Booth

The ways we **** sometimes kills us inside

Moriah Carter lost her virginity hesitantly
like a semi heterosexual cowboy
Riding *******
Because sometimes we just can’t look our lovers in the face
She knows how sometimes we are objects
Just a means to an end

Amanda Lee Van Zetten thinks about the day she was conceived
How if her parents had done anything besides missionary
Might she have been born differently
How passion might be lost in translation

Do not lose us in translation
We are not math or language
Not some secret cuneiform
We are simple structures of bone and breath

Just ask Kacie Brumley
Who lays awake some nights
Translating her body like braille
The Kafka transformation into blindness
Fingers like antennae
Response like music

We moan like music
We **** like music

I **** like music
There is ***** soul in these *****

If you don’t **** like music
Go to your nearest guitar center
Plug yourself into the nearest distortion pedal
And
Rrrrrrrreeeeeeevvvvive yourself

Remember Janelle Gibson
Who dances like a slow hurricane
Whipping sweat like beach water
To wash away sandy rough places
She knows how to spread the wet

Or Jennifer Smith
Whose body is a fire most days
And she wants someone to kiss her
On the blue part of the flame
She knows how it’s hard to find someone
Willing to touch you like they won’t be burned

Touch us like you know how to put out our fires
But won’t
All this flame is show
All this fire is just some unrequited glow
So you can still see us against a dying sunset

Jaimee Sanders
Is fine ******* in the dark
Knows that we really are like insects
How we feel passionate and blind while the lights are out
But the minute the sun breaks the blinds
We scatter to some new dark space in shame

Forget having perfect bodies
And ******* with the lights out
We are sunsets
That don’t sit well
Like bedrooms in the dark
We are shameful passion

Just don’t regret me in the morning

Toffer doesn’t regret me
After that one night so many years ago
He knows as well as we do
How often we are just fleshy strands of light
Flayed down to some simple structure
Of bone and breath
And the need
To be needed

I want to want someone so badly
Thinking about them helps me sleep at night
He said

So know this
We are fire
And we **** like music
And we **** like shame
And we **** like insects in a dark room

This is how we ****
And it feels good

Plucking tall glasses from their perch above the sink and
letting loose the dark that wiggled, relentless, inside it's bottle.
Gold was chipping from my mother's cheap wine glasses,
creating the sort of sad ambiance that you, unexpectedly,
find yourself craving.

There, in the belly of it - flavor resembling nothing of the puckering and
rambunctious cranberry and pomegranate that **** my insides with
summer-tainted sweetness - lurked a hazy glow, too often
over-romanticized, I think.

And I,
haphazardly stealing from the bottle's mouth,
didn't realize what was stolen
from my own.