I suppose if the arts had any real power
Michaelangelo's David could have healed my brother
Rimbaud could have saved Hiroshima
Monet could have painted the world in shades of peace
Desiderata could have protected me
But this is the real world
And where poetry once grew comes the art of fabrication
Dali's obras are no longer enough to make me forget
Moonlight Sonata never warned me of this hurt
The waltz never healed a broken family

I suppose if the arts had any real power
Beethoven wouldn't have gone deaf
Van Gogh would have been happy
Hemingway would have loved better
And Ginsberg wouldn't have been afraid to love

Yet here they all are
When the only light I see is on hundred year old canvas
When the only solace I have is a dead man's words
When the only thing that keeps my heart thundering
Is the promise of a Boticelli ending in Picasso figures
All colors, beauty, light and metaphors
The promise of a Renaissance gleaming in the ashes of prose

This is the real world
I suppose if the arts had any real power
It would heal more than just my heart
It would build me a new Garden of Eden
And I'd pave a way to nirvana
So the world could join hands
And start anew

But it's saved me for now
That is enough.

I'm such an embarrassment.
No one wants to be with me,
because clearly I'm not pretty
enough, thin enough, or good
enough for anyone.
Thanks for making me feel this way,
but don't worry, I'll get it over it, and
prove you wrong.

I remember how time slid off
your bare shoulders
like an old skin
shed in the moonlight
and I remember
how we cleansed our souls with laughter
and found language to speak,
sometimes in awkward tender confessions,
of desire and an urge for knowing
one moment terribly intimately
with another

it's abut 9pm and I decide I don't want to be alone



there was a car crash earlier that day up west towards Salida--
some Kansas man who was killed by a driver trying to pass
in the right lane, declared deceased on scene, another man
from Monument who was air-lifted to St. Thomas Moore,
no critical injuries.

I tend to ask God for these big signs, signs that I'll recognize. I tell him
that they need to be something I'll notice because you know me, sometimes I can't hear you. Anyway, signs, crashes. A Kansas man died.  It's 9pm and I pull on some jeans and leave the house.

I'm supposed to be at a rodeo dancing, but maybe I wasn't supposed to be there after all. I have this white dress in my closet that you can't even see, tucked between everything else because it's so thin, lays flat beneath the aztec smocks and cream cardigans. I take it out and brush it off, thread my fingers through the open lace--

10pm. When I breathe soft enough the stars look like they're hanging on strings, like I could reach up and snap them off,
they'd be no bigger than dew drops on a spider web
so light they'd drift up in the night breeze and
set up in my own natural atmosphere.

What good would it have done me to be there? I only ask
myself to assuage the warm fear i've been feeling since Friday
night, a lingering umbrage I did not think would stay--
I can see the white stitches in my jeans that look
like they're glowing,
smells like rain out here.
I wish I was out at Chaffey
for a quick moment, enveloping
someone else in this chanel perfume
makin' someone else envious of the
way another man got to spin me out--

I'm trying to be all these people at once, an  
audience of crowd pleasers piled into one body
It's so quiet, I'm so quiet up on the sideways knoll in
Florence, tired of letting people down easy off the sidewalk
curb and being tossed off the bridge over the state highway myself,
I can't help it, I want to say aloud.

I can't help that I am this way, collected.
calm in hearty hysterics, anxious to tell
you about how I've been fixed,
that warm fear growin' hotter
a coal for every man who suggested
I be less than who I am by pourin' more
into my cup,

I'm trying. I'm trying.

The grass was wet when the sky was black
Earth stood aburst with a hundred smells
But tiptoeing left thunder, as if mended was the crack
And the sand swallowed rain drops

The door of my house stands open
My nights have become accustomed to waiting
I have forgotten how to take care of myself
Please come and teach me once again.

Falling in half love
With everyone I meet,
Scared to go in past my feet.
Afraid to open up
Hesitate to divulge the feelings
That hang as painful cliches
But hurt just the same
as if they were open wounds
I still wonder what healing is like for you.

Or if you even had to.

Perhaps I'm awful at keeping a steady rhythm because I'm terrified of what note the future holds - it's so unpredictable, constantly changing and shifting and shaping.
never knowing exactly what or when whatever "what" is, will happen makes me hesitate on how I will react.
Every time I think I'm on the upbeat I'm reminded that life is not always a perfectly composed song.

I want to eat ambrosia
from your fingertips.

I want to lick the wine
from your lips.

I want to **** the nectar
from your veins.