Darkened doorways to the outside, bright wide doorways to insides
My insides, spilled on the linoleum over the smell of oleander
I stare into your black cracked eyes with a loving smile
It’s a gaze in the fog where your thin fingers stretch
You are all the hills, all the ditches and fills, the trills
Of nightbirds and coyotes looking for the ****
You are ruthless, ruthless, ruthless…
And I fly every mile like a salamander slides.

And I must, hush, say this in a whisper, whispering cobwebs
My morning glory, sweet sunrise through black curtain.
I could have learned to live a long time ago
With a gaze in the fog you touched and taught me
You are all my fatal fear, your mind is clear, all here
Your legend floating in a perfect tear
It is endless, endless, endless…
Your crystalline flow on the uncertain ebbs.

How many, many eyes do you have? How many sighs
Drift through your rafters like your own vortex of laughter?
I remember falling in love with a light from beyond you
Your gaze in the fog like the fire from your head
Eggshell lead paint, no complaint, breathe in till you faint
With all your soul that of a stenciled saint
Songs so shameless, endless, ruthless,
Cannot fly through this shell until after it dies.

little red,
you are here
to make it better
for everyone.
that is your purpose.
you are to make things
better
for your family
for other people
to make things
just a little easier
and if you are good
and kind
and nice
and fake
with a smile
cast
in plaster
maybe someday
someone will make it better for you
in return.
this is a cheerful fact,
little red.
why aren't you
smiling?
hasn't the
chalky water
and paper
dried
yet?
hmm...we might have to
reapply

it's amazing how much we talk
how many times a day
we let words and sounds escape
through our heavily filtered lips.

different people talk
in different ways, different voices
and with different meanings
some, meaning nothing at all.

it's amazing how much we talk
but I still find myself in awe
of just how little
we actually say.

Sweetbitter kiss caressed
lips. esophagus. stomach. chest.

inaccessible 'till death.
untouchable--so close to the chest.

unable to put out fires, burns
will have to rest
where they lie smoldering, watching
eyes walk bye.

I close my I.

Carry me, now--not home
not to neverland
not over the rainbow

Just carry me softly in sweet-smelling acidic things.
--a little corrosion does a girl a world of good--
sing me songs, wolf-in-sheeps-clothes, that my mother used to

and bring me gifts on angel-dusted wings,
nothingness never before made greater feeling.

Our lives themselves strived for meaning while we strived for the reason for being
the way the great cold faceless hands created
our unyielding . . . softness
separate from and not unlike a feather
equal both in whimsical light, lack of value, disease and helplessness
great beauty, plainness, and utter insignificance

Us little things are great only to those with great imagination--
light in the clouds,
break in your fever
blip on your radar
the fast one before the flatline always seems so much shorter than it should. Shorter than they said it would.

I relax
sweet relief
sweet goodnight

we'll wake up and try this one more time.
we won't get it right-- you can't
get it right

give me this bip, this sleep, this chance.

*******, we'll still try--
to get it right sometime.

~