i want to kiss you so bad
that i've been thinking of
making my car kiss guard rails
i know that they would
both feel the same
it would all be over
just as quickly
my mouth would fill
with blood
all the same

i remember when you asked me
about "the night"
afraid if you gave it a name
it'd come back like a sick dog
how when i finally told you
you screamed where are they
looking me up and down
like i was harboring them
like fugitives
which, in a sense
i was
i remember you looking at my chest
like you could take a
baseball bat to it any second
it's a good thing i told you
my hands
so you wouldn't blame
yourself anymore
when i didn't want to touch you
i didn't tell you
it pulls my hair
and twists my arm
and drags me to my knees
when i'm alone
and it trickles out
the corners of my mouth
when nice boys don't say please
when they say let me
when they say trust me
when they say i love you
when i resign to polite terror
i don't tell you it's on my skin
every time i enter crowded rooms
i don't tell you it's in your face
and my face
and every face of everyone i see

i never told you why
i only kiss you with the lights off

because that would only scare you
and what use is it
to let them hurt you too

dear god of needle ***** and poisoned well
i pray you find my mother
cold and dry and unfeeling
something you can draw no moisture out of
a different god struck a rock with a staff
a long long time ago
and water came to cool his throat
but there are no miracles here
so you can please stop beating her now

dear god of gluttonous apothecary
my mother's body is a mathematical
uncertainty
it is a function with limits
her veins are rolling with their bellies full
of chemicals that burn
her hair runs from the scalp the way
two legs would
from a house going up in flames
my mother's body
is a house going up in flames
i am a child that is terrified of a monster
under the bed
i am helpless to a thing i can feel but
cannot see

dear god of gasoline remedy
your counterintuitive science
your black dream
takes her body like a new land
teaches her it's wretched language
it rapes and pillages
it steals the recognition
that sparks her eyes when she looks in mine

dear god of intravenous dark rider
let her live to see a day
she can wake and not be bound
to her biology

dear god of pink ribbon tourniquet
let her breathe and take it for granted again

dear god of careful rampage
finish what you have started
and lock the door behind you

bless the pills, the drink, the sweet and reckless
bless the dent you made in the world's skull
bless the warmth of you
in sheets and in blankets
bless it all that you left behind
bless the way it's so hard to miss you
*oh, curse the way it's so hard to miss you

he lost her
you lost him
do not lose yourself
holding onto both of them
remember, this is your battle
and you can shoot your own foot
if it makes you feel anything at all

you see people in love
and it makes you cry for
everything you could've had
return the sheets
you two could've bought one day
burn down the house
you could've lived in
kiss the future children goodbye
you'll learn to live with yourself
some day
make peace with the fear that
he'll never come back to you

he'll never come back to you

*he'll never come back to you

i realized i no longer remember your birthday

at the realization of this realization i
crumbled on my bathroom floor
and cried for joy at my mind
learning to replace the long memories
of birthday candles in your living room
with a comfortable void
like the space after they were blown out

these things learned to be left alone
until nothing but the peace of
forgetful numbness remained

my heart surviving its own efforts
my heart surviving you

me
surviving you

there's a summer growing in my mother
there's something burning
blistering something soft
my mother's woman
is souring like warm milk
it tells her this is natural
this is the way an organic thing rots

there's a winter growing in me
there's something cold
splintering something soft
my mother's woman
is freezing like a lake in december
small and cold and stagnant
and everyone's too scared
to put too much weight on it
i'm trying to be strong
but strong feels cold
cancer feels cold
what does that make me

there's a spring growing in my mother
there's something growing in my mother
there's something putting down roots
my mother's woman
is growing plastic flowers
from hospital bracelet stems
she waters them with her iv drip
it grows and tells her it's natural
it grows and tells her it's right
it's not right

there's an autumn growing in me
there's something about believing
in a god that shows mercy
that dies
when you watch mercy
get its *** kicked by mutation
my mother's bravery
is getting its *** kicked
by biology
my mother's hope is a thing with feathers
my mother's faith is a thing with leaves
and both of them are dying
she tells me it's okay
it's not okay
it's not okay

if my body can be equated to minutes
you loved me like i was worth
every one of them
which is to say
i wish i had more
i wish i hadn't thrown so much away
i wish i hadn't wasted so much time
loving people that weren't you
i wish i hadn't wasted
so much of my body
loving people that weren't you

you went up in smoke
somewhere in valhalla
i'm here
exactly 916 miles away
wishing i had said anything to you
when i still had the chance
before i dug my nails
into the hard december soil
trying to find any trace
of the dust they said
you were returning to
if you're really going back
to that from which you came
i'll wait for you
in that house
on woodburn avenue
until your seventeen year old self
comes slipping drunk through
the front door
because at least you still have life to waste
in 1977
if there's a God
i wanna ask him
why your soul must've gotten confused
and fled your body 5 days
before they stopped the life support
i'd ask him why you had to leave
2 generations of women behind
2 parents who were forced
to survive their oldest daughter
a husband reeling
a brother, my father
i'd ask him why
the whole family's speaking without
consonants now
why suddenly we're all children
mourning your loss
in assortments of vowels
why nothing is as honest
or as lonely
as childhood
or death

there is poetry here
there is poetry in my first lost teeth
the 2, front and center,
came out together
one onto the brick walk
of my grandmother's garden
the other,
into the grass never recovered

maybe this is why
I always find myself
driving past that house
there are pieces of me there
I never got back
there are pieces of me there
12 years left behind
maybe this is why
I coughed up mouthfuls of dirt
at your funeral

today makes 10 years
and it's ironic that
you died
around Valentine's Day
because
your favorite color
was always pink
you were beautiful
and you suffered
and it was not beautiful
but you were beautiful
you are beautiful

this poem will not be sad
because you are not sad
I did not cry today
because you wouldn't have
wanted me to
I cooked myself scrambled eggs
and set two places
at the table
I wore a dress for you
I put on lipstick for you
elegance was the house you built

today I chose to love because
I love you
I am a woman because
you showed me how to be one
I sat in the back yard
between the tall pine trees
because I haven't forgotten
how much you loved to garden
I'm sorry your gentle might didn't
translate into my clamoring bones
I am too much me to be soft like you

I wrote your name on my desk today
without the vowels
I still know it's you but it's not there
like I want it to be
showing me how to plant flowers
how to make light with my ***** hands
because of you, whom I love
because of you I love

I want to be like nature
nature has no worry,
no tremor in the night
of what the day will bring,
no panic attacks in the shower

the sky looks down and even
in its insurmountable size
it cannot help the ground
it watches men dig up her roots
and lay their own falsehood
on her and the construction equipment
drowns out her weeping

the sky is at the mercy of the clouds,
constantly being washed over with
sadness and not being able to stop
crying, sometimes the sky stays in bed
for days without so much as
opening her blinds

she sees her lover the trees being
used by men who won't remember her
in the morning once they
devour her and take her
away and she gets so angry but
the lightning strikes never
land where she wants them to,
overcome by anguish for being
so big and so blue and so helpless

but sometimes the seasons spend the
night and actually stay for breakfast,
and she feels so lovely
she beams with radiance and
the whole earth smiles

nature has no worry;
the earth knows that
these men prying her apart
like lock jaw will some day
return and they will plant
flowers in her and repent
for their sins

she is the woman you come home
late to and she already has
the bed turned down, and
even when the sky sees her
dressed in white she has to stop and
catch her breath.

the sky knows some days
the clouds will hang on her
like cinder block and they will be
relentless, but when you are
the blanket the whole child of earth
is tucked in under she is calm,
relinquishing to the night with
the peace of knowing every fog
will be burnt away

she sees every one of her lovers
reincarnations and loves her again
and again and again in every life;
when she sees the trees being cut
like green split ends she writes a
eulogy in the breeze, sending away
her lovers leaves to be lived again
always closer to her own heart

the universe has seen come & go,
it knows the taste of unfaithful,
has found her hairs in its bed, but
still she cooks breakfast for one and
locks her doors as she leaves

she knows men will try to change her,
fail, and then leave and
they will try to change her, fail,
and then leave and she has no worry
that her eyes will stay bright,
her hands never cramped into bitterness,
nature has no worry.

this is the poetry which has no words
to manifest itself
this is the empty Sunday
to remind me of the last
happy Saturday
and the way only one of them
feels real and it's not the one
you'd want it to be
this is the everything
and the nothing
and I thought I knew what I
was signing up for
but I was wrong
I thought I'd never get the chance
to love you
but I was wrong
the universe gave me my chance
gave me your hands
to touch me once
and everything after felt so right
until it didn't anymore
and then I was left with the skin
that belonged to you
and the way I can't deal with the fact
that this skin still belongs to you
and I miss you with no words
in dry deserts of poetry books
that I know you would love
in the same way that you
couldn't love me
and the way I can't write about this
because you took all the
poetry out of me
because this was the only way
I could make you real
if I could just leave you here
in words and in spaces
I could touch you again
but I can't write about this
and it hurts
and I love you and it hurts
and right now, sitting here,
I am the child I once was
a lifetime ago
crying for the arms that were
supposed to hold me

and it hurts
and it hurts
and it hurts

everything that smokes isn't always a gun
but sometimes it is
God doesn't always come in a pillar of fire
but sometimes you burn and i still call it holy
sometimes you hold me and i don't call it chains
my skin remembers you long after you leave
but i don't call it sunburn
maybe i should
maybe there was a gun 'cause i still have
all these holes
maybe you were God
maybe you were hell but you burn even slower
like a sunburn

i.
incessant and impossible
your heart beats the electric miracle of will

ii.
your chest feels like home
even when you are cold
and forget the feeling of front doors

iii.
nothing ever felt so warm
as the soft earth of your hands
and you are a gardener

iv.
lovers fall helpless
into the open arms of your gentle spirit

v.
you love with a safety and assurance
that morning will come
and it will come with a shining
it will come and it will come jubilant
it will come warm and safe and full

vi.
in love, you will be warm and safe and full

vii.
in you, days of empty vanish
like ice on windshields
from nights slept in socks

viii.
you will only know cold temporary

ix.
all things gold will stay and stay for you

x.
all things gold will stay and stay for you

nothing more to be born of the ash
nothing more to be born of me
flesh stretching to give and exhale in giving
inhaling smoke and sweetness inhaling
my throat a museum of anniversaries
pain with meaning
revisiting grave sites of people still breathing
breath for screaming
washing the ghosts of your hands
out of my clothing
because loving is leaving
oil of your skin in the water from my eyes
running from feeling
these poisons my body is cleaning
senses left reeling
your touch still so appealing
your face so seldom appearing