on your wedding day

I will sit in wooden church pews more uncomfortable than your fathers stare because he knows what we are both thinking.

I will let my eyes wander through eyelashes heavy with reflections from the light of your smile as she walks down the aisle.

I watch as your hands shake like a child chasing a sudden warm breeze only to find a tornado.

you say your vows and I can only imagine ***** overflowing from your mouth because the name you say after "I love you" is not mine. It is not even close.

friends and family rise and pianos begin to play what sounds like a death march. You will have your first dance with her moments after this and all I can remember  is the jealousy in your eyes the night you wished you were the one dancing with me.

the room clears out and I can only think of the bed you will make love to her in. I hope you still find my stray hairs between the sheets. I know your finger tips will caress her sides in a way I never knew how to receive.

the song of my heart was always a little off pitch, so, when she plays the pianos of your heart I can only hope this time it will be in the right

key.

my excuses breed like the mayflies of the bayou
when your legendary grandmother says
i remind her of cool-hand luke
actually blushing & looking
down at his knees

so i wrote this while i sat
rocking back & forth
on her kitchen counter alone
watching the tanned florida bodies
with muscled calves & stomachs
full of beer whistling songs:

here i am
a blond faced writer
turning to ash
on some radioactive night
gathering paper from living
tree roots & unconscious moss
hair parted in the middle
& slicked back by river water
a little schizoid with a typewriter
telling myself to forget
old feelings
old words
old bodies
an angel filled with my own strong
music & careful passion under
the purple-gray moon & sky
dark like chewed-up bubblegum

i realize i've
laid down my insecurities
like hilarious graffiti
on paper a thousand times
but no one believed a word of it
until i came out of the blackness
of this river with silver wings
growing taller & stronger
nourished by the mud
into smokestack manhood full
of furious breath mouth
searching for a thunderstorm
finally awake on the liquefied air

but this dream will not leave me
like the horizon lost in teardrops
hunkered down invisible
on the banks of this peaceful river
as stars streak like knives across the sky
& beard-faced frogs sing
about naked bellies marching
across a frontier i know
i'm a certain kind of handshake maniac
miserable with sensitive armpits
writing a personal story with
fanaticism about rubber shadows writhing
like fat-eyed snakes dancing between
bales of hay on a clear night
cranked out on a bone-shattering
bullet of burnt coffee
big wintertime sky the color of wet cement as
cumulonimbus gather directly overhead
i'm lying on my young sweaty back
concentrating on large drone-birds
through a tinfoil kaleidoscope
flying free in native space
faster than i can knock them down
with either comfort or refined guilt

& i'll probably die trembling
under fuzzy patches of starlight
ignorant & weeping of lust before i'm 30
after falling in love 3 times a week
because i'm more vulnerable
in a moment of boiling telepathy
than i should be at my age to
grapefruit ******* and
pretty girls in little underwear

Dark branches dance against an aluminium sky
as dusk taints the edges with blue.
The last crow warns of death as it passes,
it's cry echoing along the shoeless streets
and down to the brook where once laughter played.
Storm clouds gather in furious array
shaking thunderous fists at the earth below,
their forked tongues tearing the atmosphere
as the first droplets spew forth from their ragged mouths.

You have no idea, do you? You don't realize that every time you tell me you love me is another dig into my own grave. And every time I remember that you don't is another pinprick that never heals. I've got scars on my back from the last time you kissed me and there are bruises on my arm from when you last looked me in the eye. I miss you so much that I feel like every thought of you constricts my chest and makes it hard to breathe. All I ever wanted was to have your hand in mind and feel like for once I'd never have to be so alone every time I walk past another tree.

I remember the last time you made me smile. You were lying on my lap the day before you had to fly off and you were listening to me talk about the other people I had known from my journey then to now. I was playing with your hair and I remember thinking that there was nowhere else I'd rather be and no one else I'd rather be with.  I remember thinking that maybe I could finally set my roots and follow one path to one place, but you took that away from me.

In the same day, you put a stake through my heart when you disappeared and said nothing, no call, no whisper about leaving so I started walking back home but waited at the end of the road for an hour to see if you would follow. You didn't. Love didn't.

I was already in love with you then. And it hurt to realize you didn't really care all that much to make sure I got home safe.

We ended things. Or at least I did. You argued that even if you were in the middle of a vast ocean and I was on the mainland, our love could've traveled distances and I reminded you that there was no love here and that you were the one who told me without saying a word that you held no love for me but expected me to love you in places beyond our reaches of the galaxy.

But my hands could only stretch so far, and my heart could only take so much before the pain of being with you and without you all at once began to dance on my skin like folk songs around a bonfire.

I know my heart and I know that it believes in the worlds away and it holds so strongly it can hardly take the pain but keeps pumping anyway. But for once, the blood pumping in my veins understand that it's alright. It's alright to let go of love and it's alright to let go of you. My eyes understand it's okay to weep and that my lungs breathe better without tears choking it.

My hands will shake and be taken over by tremors but they'll know that you were never love and love would never again be you.

When he asks you to write about him, remind him that you are not that kind of poet. When he asks you to describe his eyes, stop yourself from telling him how bright they are and how they remind you of the stars you stare at in the late night. Do not tell him they are brighter than any of those stars and while they may not light up the whole sky, they sure as hell light up your heart. Instead, smile and tell him that they are just blue – nothing is very special about them. He will ask you why your hands and lips tremble when you're with him, but you mustn't explain how fast your heart beats when he looks at you, or how sometimes you swear your lungs fill up with smoke when you hear him laugh soundly because of something you said. You shouldn't write about him, because you're not the kind of girl that writes about someone who could be here one day, and easily gone the next.