you are the madonna among us,
the shining ray of light that stabs
us in the chest and rips our hearts
out only to make them better, less
crusted in the black mess that's
always being left behind when
our beating vessels are smashed
to bits, you hold our very fiber of
self in your tiny hands and throw us
up into the universe until we've
gained enough perspective to float
back to earth and live as the humans
we were meant to be upon birth

what i mean to say, is that i don't
know you, but i love you, because
you give me more than the people
that leak words into my skull day
after day, i find myself inside of
what you create and then i throw
up on the page, or snap my shutter,
or doodle a dream from deep within
the impulses that barge around bumping
into my eyelids within the darkest depths

tonight, i will rip resin and spin off
into a place where nothing can touch me,
i will stare at the universe upon my ceiling
and imagine the dazed look upon your
face as you do the same, tonight, i will not
lose myself inside of the thoughts that may
or may not belong to someone else, instead,
tonight, you and i, will set me free

music becomes mucus, leftover remnants
of bacterial infections that refuse to vacate
my brain no matter how many decongestants
i consume, those sound waves reverberate back
and forth and back and forth within my thick
*** skull and i am driven mad by memories

how to cut tender wires intricately woven into
the most simple mass of a mess you will ever see

i find myself muttering solutions in my sleep and
when i reach conclusions i'm already half awake
pen in hand, paper on chest, but ahh, it's gone, it's gone

my dream world holds more clarity than my walking
daze and i can only find the words for poetry, my
tongue and throat are revolting, refusing to take part
in walks down memory lane, fingers soon to follow suit

ghetto ******* laundromat, funny it ends
where it began, i do love a full circle, but
i can't say i love folding, and watching you
do it is as equally painful as doing it myself

question always, what do i want? what do i
want? what in the ******* world is it that
i want? that lame dave matthews song comes on,
what i want is what i've not got,
****, i know what you mean, dave, and maybe
i should thank you for reminding me of just
one more thing i can put on the list, or cross off
of it, whichever way you want to look at it,
it's just a reminder of what's not right, with me,
with you, with all of this

being thankful is a funny way of flipping
the tables when you can't find a way to wipe the
sad out of your eyes in the morning, because i
can guarantee you if you find the right light
and photograph yourself in it every day at around
the same time, pretty soon you'll start to see that
your smile is reaching the sides of your eyelids, and
before you know it your irises will stop looking
so dull, and soon you'll forget what it means to be tired

i'm afraid that i've forgotten what it means to be alone

i keep imagining a tattoo on the length of my back
a girl, ethereal, asleep on the forest floor, her long
hair flowing out amongst the ferns, over the moss,
spilling into the nearby pool, and then it begins, the
twisting and gnarling of locks turned to roots, from her
cerebral crown grows a giant of the forest, which
shelters her and creates a branch shadowed world as she
slumbers and drifts off to dream of her own deep, dark fairytales

"i am writing to hold onto you." - henrikka tavi

i realized the truth within this as i flipped through
the journal pages that screamed your name aloud
at me as i sat trying to forget, and whispered of our
endeavors as i lay trying to sweep everything under
the unconscious rug that lay beneath me as i dreamed

you were every where in these parts of my life, riding
up abel and turning onto fourth, i couldn't forget that you
had grown up, a decade before me, just a block over on south,
deli boy and bianchi's pizza, sundays spent at st.cecelia's,
me, a little girl, and you, trying to figure out how to be a man,
here we are fifteen years later, me, a little girl, and you,
still trying to figure out just what it takes to be a man

ink immortalizes what we are terrified to throw into the trenches,
and just because i have vowed to find victories elsewhere
doesn't mean i've prepared myself to forget you, but the truth remains,

i must learn to write to let go

drove down to the tetons
just to see what orange leaves
looked like,
it's hard to remember when
you're surrounded by
lodge pole pines
all the time

we drove slow on the
way back, feeling
the summer slip
between fingertips
as we cruised
along the curving
hips of lake yellowstone

when i discovered the
shot i felt as if i had
borrowed your vision
for just a moment

steady now, don't miss,
the colors layered in
a way i know i won't
ever see again

a single elk stood near
a spruce, separating
serenity from sea swell

the perfection of
a mirrored image,
nature overwhelming me,
not once, but twice

absarokas are beginning
to stand tall stage right
and i'm watching a horizon
that never seems to fade

click, i snap a shot, but
really i've found myself
in a world that can't ever
truly be captured

i've got a bad case of the bends, baby
can't keep my frame up straight
if i'm not dancing, then i'm slumping
might as well lay myself down to rest

that night we fumbled, formed new foundations
separate was better in this case

a man i barely knew found more in my eyes
than i have in years, a silent strength, he
knew it well, but search he must behind
the silent and sly sadness that simply cannot
slip through fingertips that know just what to seek

since then i've thought long and hard about
just what sadness means, how the heart walks
itself out to a field full of dreams laid down to die,
faint last breaths echo amidst the sunny bliss,
but i've decided to take that heart and throw it up high,
into the blues, the bends that reach towards the sky