Moments
Like ordering two mochas
Just to watch you make them
Forgetting your name five times
Before getting your phone number
Wiping chocolate off your shirt
Trying unsuccessfully to flirt my way
Out of spilling on you
Little moments
Like finally having the guts to ask you out
Running to the coffee shop full speed
Just to find out it was your day off
Sulking my way through my third cup of tea
Cursing the fates for their insolence
Right until you walked in to cover someone else's shift
And running out too scared again
Little moments like those
Remind me why I fight through
Big times like these
Little moments
Like driving over the mountains
To get to the first big storm
Just to be the first ones to kiss in the rain
After the summer sun chapped our lips so long
We forgot the taste of our kiss
Little moments
Like the first time I took you out in heels
And you spent the whole night
Whispering to yourself about not falling
Right up until I fell twice
Down a flight of stairs
And for you
Little moments
Like you running over to pick my head up
Off the concrete
Staring at me with this look
That made me want to ask you if you were okay
Little moments
Like that remind me
That the big times like these
Are worth fighting for
That the big fights like these
Are worth ending
If only for the shot to have one more
Little moment
Like
A movie perfect scene in the snow
With snow ball fights, snow angels
And a snow man with coal for buttons
Eyes, mouth, sticks for arms and a scarf
But we didn't have a carrot
So you ran upstairs, broke off one of your heels
And called him Stalleto-face for a week
Little moments
Like
Burning three attempts at chicken cord en bleu
And begging the old woman on the phone
To put in one more order before they closed
And tipping $100 just to have the chance
To eat midnight fried rice on the living room floor
Because the table was full of
Foiled attempts at cooking
Little moments
Like those
So dear to me
Remind me there is no fight too big
To give up little moments with you

night to sun
whichever one
i am constantly smiling
a barrier around
to remind the strangers i too
am alright

growth underground
i've found out
it is neither journey nor destination
as i am stuck dancing
in the same rain
as once and each time before

i see the sun but feel no heat
the time slicks by slow as a drain drip
pattering me into childhood--
what're two grown hands worth without
an axe
or intent to wave

sleet underfoot
the earth has made enemy of me
and everyone else

where do we float from bone to dust?

do we conserve love once given
or does it go to soil
as well?

--
c

You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Daddy, I have had to **** you.
You died before I had time ----
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal

And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off the beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.

In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My ****** friend

Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.

It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene

An engine, an engine,
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.

The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gypsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.

I have always been scared of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You ----

Not God but a *******
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.

You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who

Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.

But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look

And a love of the rack and the *****.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I'm finally through.
The black telephone's off at the root,
The voices just can't worm through.

If I've killed one man, I've killed two ----
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.

There's a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagersnever liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you *******, I'm through.

i
lost
              a
       poem