criss-crossed on a map i draw
ten times as many lines as
i knew possible, which

doesn't surprise me
but
what a catch in my throat
where the deeper blood sleeps when
i fall onto the outlines of
heavy-sweet campfire smoke, two
dozen promises,
i'll wrap myself around him by my pinky

kiss the love into my bones,
manifest your heartbeats and
tell me i am awe-inspiring

i will drag you out your
home, coax whiskey down
your throat like tonic

promise me boundlessness and
i will wear too many rings,
and i will let street signs be

i’ve loved myself into a
new home, i call your ribs my
bed, your collarbone my beams

you promise a lifetime that
you cannot truly commit, but
i still commit mine, too

3/17/14

deliver unto me a
horizon, because
i am scared
i am scared of
your oceans, i’ve only just
dipped my toes,
i can tell

i wished for a love come;
you exceeded my
red-ink expectations

walk among the sunsets
for in twilight
rests the shadows of
who you are;
roll back your curtains
(they are heavy)

i try to write you down
when it's dark at night
when i can see you best.

see, i'm trying to write down
your eyes,
because yes, they're
blue, and there's a million weathered clichés
i could write about just your eyes;

but, i'm not trying to write down
the way they look
when the sun hits
them best,
i'm trying to write down
the way they make me feel again,
the way they put
the sun
inside my chest.

maybe if i lay
my body prostrate
along the line of you,
perhaps when we die
you and i might
grow,
and our bodies might
entwine for far longer
than our lifetimes

i called your name through
my fingertips
and you answered , you called
back with the blinks of
your seas, the shiver of
your late autumn forests
and i could
taste the fresh breeze in my lungs.

toe to toe and lip to lip  is
the way i've learned your
outlines and your inlines,
your filled in
places and the places
where the ink bleeds through
the paper.

maybe if i painted a seaside,
maybe if i painted a forest
i could smear down the
silhouette of you

the static air
burns like every word
you've never said

"i hate the silence,
it's so cold"
and you're growing
colder,
too.

black holes could
never be beautiful;
please, i beg you
not to dig
and scrape at the very
foundations of
who you are
(who i love).

every drop of blood bled
sears me and
i cannot let you
tear yourself open for
lack of a better
method.

lips like wine stain
my cheeks dark and red
(i am drunk)
i slur a prayer and
you stoke the flames in my
belly, they pour out my mouth
they are in the air and
in your eyes

in the dark i see far
more of you than
ever before,
in the dark i know i never knew you.
trace me, disheveled,
i want to see what you see,
too

bring your shovel, for
you are buried;
alive you lay in a coffin well-made
the dimensions fit tight
to your angles and planes,
cut deft by switchblade fingertips...

she presses kisses to your lips as
her sharp hands press you shut
and she is everything you love

like my father i could not bear
to listen to music,
i turned off the classical, i really did, i turned it off
and i cried because

i think,

no
i know i broke something and i know it was my
very own heart

in the spaces you left behind i
slit my finger on every word

i dropped them like shards of glass and
your feet bled,
i saw my reflection and she is no one
i ever meant to be
to you

your blood is on my skin and
my tears cannot wash my body clean

i know you kept my eggshell heart in
a velvet box, but
the lining in the box that laid
in my back pocket
wore away, wore so thin;

and... i thought it best
to give it back to you
than to let it jostle in its
tiny home
until it cracked.

i cried in the shower an hour later.

angelica fits, weaves through
my fingertips,
out my mouth sprouts
morning glories
and wormwood blooms across
my eyelashes. i’ve lost
something i never had;
nevertheless
i feel the lack in
the spaces in my chest.

perhaps some space is left
yet uncultivated,
yet unpopulated by meadowsweet or
marigold --
perhaps i could unfold
the silk-soft petals of
a crocus,
let the columbine alone
and let the moss rose grow.

dig up my bones and
tell me they’re beautiful,
while you dust the dirt off
your tough-man hands
and tilt your eyes like skies
to the undone grave.
tell me they’re as
flowers, sprung silvery-petaled
from the earth, beautiful;

and i’ll tell you
you’re as the earth --
all.

tell me, how fast
can your jetplane fly,
because i am drowning
and i don’t know where
or why

and lungs in a chest
cannot go more than
three minutes
without air

that airplane flies past
what a great metal beast;
but how small it looks
when set on a background
of the sky lit
lightning-bright

twelve hundred thousand ways i
could count the days we spent
side by side on my
sunlit bed,

but it would never
could never
express,
there are no words for
the wings in your eyes; and
the way breathing you in sends
ripples through my skin
and it feels like the arrival of
the birds

and that hospital stench
in my nostrils is acute and sharp
in my senses and mostly in
my heart -- it sears the memory of "goobye" 
"no, hello"
back into the front of my skull
across the backs of my eyes 

and i feel it, too in 
my chest/lungs/heart/stomach
i can’t tell, i’m much
too busy
bleeding

stick-shift livelihood
but i haven’t got my
instruction permit yet, i just
guess and hope at the colored
lines on
asphalt rolled out
in front of me like a red
carpet no one gives enough of
a **** about
to paint scarlet.

the potholes are big and getting
bigger, and i’m not good at
steering

force-fed florescent
******* with nickel-plated spoons,
we are not made
into stars

it's hot -- really ******* hot
at nighttime, it's hard to sleep
what with my sweat-sticky skin

     but

you're gone for another
thirty seven?  thirty seven
days and nights

               so

i bury my face
in your sweatshirts
(they smell like you)

listen closely my fellow
writers,
writing prose and putting in a
line break
every
so
often
is not poetry.

when i peer into the
deep dark lake.

i wonder at the waves
the shadow-flickers
and the shafts of sunlight which
never seem to pierce very deep...

and urges to dive
to fall and swim
and to know the very unknowable
reaches of the silvery bed,

if i should 
quite suddenly depart, feet
slipped out from under 
center,

then sing me to sleep
and send me out a-drift, across
the lake, quiet glassy
cloudy with the stardust and
the paradise

and if i should arrive at a
distant shore through the
mist;

do we exist as m o r e
than a smattering
of leftover stars
or
are we alone in the

dark

please tell me you will
never die,
                never, nevernever
(at least, not while you still
hold my eggshell heart in
your palm),
because i have felt the shatter fully, totally
before

i kiss you hard.
(i don't know how else to
express
the lovely Ache inside my
chest.)

gut-wrench sucker-punch
strung-out lungs
a sore throat
and three times the ache
you knew your body could
possess

when the tides come in
and pull at the soles of my feet
          unbalance 
                             me.
(grown used to a sensation of falling
i have, i’ve 
       fall
     en
many times before, again i’ll 
       fall
many times over.
many times over.)

when the sweet warm welcome of
a pulse-line and jersey --
it was quite 
                            unexpected (the
                                                        tide),
took me by surprise
but hold and fortress came boxed in
a silhouette i knew to be

You.

brittle hips and your
strong convictions,
your loud-mouth loose-lips
slander
cannot stay a Tide;
nothing can
save the moon and stars
(but they are not moving far
any time soon).

are We
to you
something more
than a breeding sow
or a
*****?
more than your pride
and you warn Us be
careful,
careful!  Bride,
do not pull the veil from
over Your curious eyes.

you cannot sit pretty and
assume yourselves god-kings
for much longer;
lend your ear to the Rabble and Rumble.
you cannot dazzle the
Stars
with rings and
shining things,

for themselves They are
resplendent.

i trust you,
to be good.
to be prim and to sit
in my silk lining
but not to see or choose
or decide for yourself when
and how and why.

i trust you*.
have you ever?
or have you just never
needed to?

twenty-six days into
the year, while i was
still, as yet, beset
by that december midnight,
but you,
you helped me forget.

i owe you more
than i can count, a
priceless debt;
you gave me such
a gift, the euphoria
called forelsket.

heat on a heartstring
plucked with
a slick fingertip,
wait for the beat --
syncopated, they tap
calluses on her soft skin.
she likes it, though.

it feels good, though;
rough and ragged
(the breathing, i mean),
different and new
a swooping stomach thrill
after the silk lining of being
a daughter.

i'm sure it's a long haul,
that's what this means.
the whispered drawl
and a quiet kind of love:
tacit.

cast and crew
numbering a humble two
bow at scene's end,
you've made it, you've made it.
both given the performance
neither will
omit.

masterful, we may not yet be
but I press my
fingertips, warm-smooth
to your skin, the curves and
the planes
anyways, because
i like the way you are.  i'm fond
of your stained-glass eyes, and
your blood-soaked cheeks.
i try this new thing, anyways
because i like it even
though i cannot quite get this
new thing, this foreign
dance routine
correct.

jigsaw souls interlock like
the way they meant,
each inhale and exhale
breathing evening in,
and each drumbeat of my pulse
sending my blood flying
faster under my skin.
lightning rod love, you're
a thunderclap
away
from a hurricane,
please tell me you
can feel
the ringing in my ears
the shaking of our earths; because
i can feel the electricity
in my nerve endings
sing, high and thin.

heat and wonder on your
breath, i just felt it
on my cheek;
when my limbs go weak i turn
my head and tell you
"i love you", another turn
of events, another
manifestation
and declaration
of the stirrings and rumblings
inside my chest.

daylight is
all that i see
it is;
it is the curtains lit
from behind, by the
sunlight, bright
in my eye and in yours, too
bright between the palms of
our hands, and
it is the way everything is sharp
and the way i can consciously inhale and
the way i can
think, clearer.
clear as ice water in
your throat, clearer,
even,
clearer even than that peal of cold.

nighttime is
all that i feel
it is;
it is all i can discern
just by the searching, the pressing
of my fingertips, to
the shapes of what is
around me;
it is the way i feel
the beat, the baseline and rhythm
the syncopation of
your heart;
and it is the way i can be and
the way you are
here, nearer.
when you're a silhouette,
i can see you,
clearer.