when you and i dance it is electric shock
and you are water and i am ice.
you conduct and share, spread like
wildfire heat and burn and
so don’t think i am nervous when you touch me
it is me
not you, never you
it is me who is too old and too frozen
to allow the free current to rumble through my skin.
it is a surprise,
a present,
when you let the warmth flash into my bones
but please remember that it is hard for me to hold
this gift
without dropping it.
humans have their half-hearts and
yours are so full
it’s been so long to remember heat
that sometimes i let the ice taste like
metal, like wood
like stolen promises and betrayed kisses
and then when you touch me
it is a surprise present
but one that i will take all too gladly
because i am selfish
and you have so much to give.
you are your mother and your father
and you are your own traveler
so let me come into your home
and make a mess of things
with my poor conductor heart.
i may never tell you i love you
but just know that it is not words that fail me
you would know i was lying if i said
i was anything other than a storyteller,
a wordsmith, a forger of weapons from syllables
and tongue against teeth and vocal chords,
but it is the surprise of electricity
that keeps my mouth fumbling.
let me marry you in forever ago
and now
because you are a surprise, a present,
and i have come to need you
in a way that i haven’t needed
and i cannot keep you in the box
of people i love
because they always come out broken
and i demand your circuitry, your
flow over me.
you must never break
again
because you torture yourself with
your own shock, your own pulse
and i cannot choose your fate;
that is yours to do with what you will,
but i can choose how to feel.
so maybe when the day comes
and the towers sing and i cry
i will cry not from the sadness of your leaving
but cry at the happiness of your staying
and the knowing that you and i
are the choosing ones
that have chosen electric-shock-pain
in the logic of you and i in union.

How could I be cold when
I'm on fire with passion
It burns through life to char
What doesn't belong.
Turns it to ash so it will
blow away in the wind-
Leaving in the absences
space to flourish for
Everything that's right.
Vibrant with new life
What's left to grow,
Determined to let the
Best in me represent
The rest of me.

I don't think I've ever been the stuff of woman’s fantasies

I doubt a stranger passing on a street has given me

a second glance you see,

I can't play guitar I can't sing a song I can't even dance

I am what some magazines would call “out of shape”

I have a beard but contrary to stereotypes

it doesn’t smell nor does it contain

remnants of food like Mr Twit .

But maybe if I died in some immaculate way

I'd be revered and future people would pray to effigies of me,

have images of me dangling from their neck.

Alters made up of an old shoe I once wore,

or perhaps a piece of paper I had scribbled on?

My pathetic writing suddenly prophetic.

Until then I guess I continue to exist

and grow my beard in readiness.

I saw my toes the other day.
I hadn't looked at them for months.
Indeed, they might have passed away.
And yet they were my best friends once.
When I was small, I knew them well.
I counted on them up to ten
And put them in my mouth to tell
The larger from the lesser. Then
I loved them better than my ears,
My elbows, adenoids, and heart.
But with the swelling of the years
We drifted, toes and I, apart.
Now, gnarled and pale, each said, j'accuse!--
I hid them quickly in my shoes.

I'm bleeding
i'm bleeding for you,
I'm hurting was it because of you?

I pick up the knife and dig cutting my bruised body
I'm leaking onto the floor,
like a dripping tap
puddles of red surrounding my feet;
the ends of my pants soaking

I scream at the darkness
picturing your face I dig deeper

I'm trapped.
your image all around
I scream louder, feeling dizzy
falling into a heap
Bathing in my own blood
- I whisper your name
whimpering for help.

I'm lost in my own hell
my pain; my pain is over

whose name this is
i think i know
his house is in the village though
he will not see me stopping here
to watch the namesets grow and grow

my middle name must think it queer
to be not with a masculinity here
between the first and surs of names
the only separation; tier

people give their warning bells a shake
to ask is there is some mistake
if the only sound their mouths can make
is a thin wisp of shiver and quake

names are lovely, lively and deep
and some may cause some others to weep
with many tiers of generations past
we're at the modern, here at last

*adaptation of Robert Frost's infamous "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"