she's the girl you just can't comprehend
the one who's nobody's definition of "right"
the one who likes black roses on Valentine's Day
the girl who drinks blood instead of wine
the girl who thinks combat boots go with a field of daises
the girl with a brain of stars an a mind of barbed wire
the girl who confuses cigarettes with candy
the girl who dreams of smokey jazz and rain covered windows
the girl who has eyes that drip with midnight and black magic
the girl who picks flowers and eats them
the girl that licks moonlight during the daytime
the girl that carries dragon flies and rock and roll in her pocket
the girl that paints her face indigo and ***** in dead grass
the girl that bites fire and breaths onyx
the girl whose lips seethe uranium
the girl that hears tea leaves and drinks gasoline
the girl that slides down black rainbows and sleeps in liquid rubies
she is just that girl.

Say it ain't so!
Ah, but I  loved you!
My heart sank when you left me.
I didn't want to keep you
didn't want you all to myself.
I'd have been glad to let you loose
been genuinely happy if you found a girl who loved you.
But you didn't.
You just left me
alone
for no other reason then you stopped loving me
-stopped liking me.
That hurts more then anything other.
I'm bitter now.
I trusted you with my thoughts
-you understood, listened unlike anyone else.
You left a hollow.
If I said something to hurt you- I tell you I didn't mean it.
You saw how important you were to me, how highly I held you.
But I guess you don't give a ****.
I slip and fall.
No- don't bother helping me up.
I can see you are itching to ditch me.
I see the explicit disinterest, disdain even in your eyes.
Go ahead. Leave.
I'll just lie here till my bones stop hurting
awkwardly rise and continue walking the other way.

You left me tracing pictures in the water,
With my fingers, and my tongue, and my hair.
And while you left I thought I walk on water.
you returned, I was no longer there.

And you thought that you could dive down to catch me,
You thought you saw my face far in the deep,
But darling, you didn’t need to catch me,
not everything can forever keep.

And I’m so sorry that I lead you to the water,
Because I know you never learned to float,
While your lungs burned, searching neath the water,
I was cradled, rocked to sleep, in a row boat.

I thought at first that you had come to save me,
Because you never stooped searching neath the surf
But I wonder if you really came to own me,
Because you needed to poses something of worth.

You should know that either way “I miss you”
Because my whim has left you lost somewhere at sea
And maybe someday I will find you,
Washed ashore with all the other beach debris.

But for now I’m tracing pictures in the water,
My hands following ripples in my wake,
Because I know somewhere off beneath the water,
You can feel my fingers dancing on the lake.

You think I should try to change the world.
To start climbing this insurmountable
Problem.
To scale it until I either fall off
Or have to stop and just cling on
Because it only gets steeper the higher you go,
And is their even a top?

Is that how it should be?

And haven’t we had our chance?
Perhaps it would be better to just move aside,
Lay down whatever we’ve taken with us,
Misunderstandings
Machines
Words
Ideas
Hate
Love?
What would we still have?
So maybe I don’t want to change the world.

Or if I must
I want to change just one small thing.
Only it would be so slight
No one but me would noticed
And I’d never tell.

Would it matter?
One blue pixel
On a blank red screen
Or a bottle
Lost among the waves.
If hope falls in a forest alone
Does it make a sound?
And if it does,
How far can that sound travel?

You think I should try to change the world.
You’re probably right.
But at this instant I can only pray,
That this country’s wiring
And this world’s spark
Is intact enough
That when I flip just one small switch,
Somewhere a light turns on.

The sky has broken this morning.
Swelled, stirred, and burst its bounds, cascading from the stars to my door step.
I know it will vanish, evaporate with the cruel bright sun,
But for now it seems far from fleeting.
Let me show you.

Mist still hangs heavy from the night.
Only now it’s been stained, dyed by some careless celestial hand.
A deep, probing blue, which, suspended by mist, veils the hills and accents the trees green.
It invites you to run, vanish like the horizon into the cobalt dark.
Let me show you.

So tangible is the indigo tapestry,
That you want to gather it in your arms, infuse it into your skin, and return no different than the sky.
You want to steel it, hide it for yourself, throw your life away to become a blue *****.
Its looks so palpable you can’t bear to disturb it, to face its actual evanescence.
Let me show you.

But already the sun has permeated its edges,
Staining the flawless dark with canals of weak, tepid, periwinkle.
With day fast approaching the mist begins to disperse,
But with a final hurrah of undiluted grandeur it thins leaving the hills tinted with the sky.
Let me show you.

The sun by now has done too much damage for the blue to be recognizable,
Though a watered down version still clings to the western tree tops,
The clearest blue now lives in my head, a memory of a broken sky,
Lost to those who don’t know where to look, forever gone, unless…
Let me show you.

I am from worn out measuring cups where the numbers no longer show,
From years of guessed quantities and over sugared cakes.
I am from cracked blue paint,
And the mantra “we’ll get a new coat next year.”
I am from the cow peas, crop circling, and honeysuckle vines ornamented with butterflies.
I am from Grandpa’s tobacco yellowed hands, Grandma Doll’s old wives tales,
From “eat your bread crusts and your hair will curl,”
And from “your face just might stick like that.”
I am from morning walks and the sylvan veil of moss,
From meandering trails and the drip of rain on leaves.
I am from Otter Pops, and bright blue tongues.
I am from cassette tapes, now left in the back of the closet to grow antique.
And VCRs,
From Monsters Inc. and Totoro.
And I am from the worn bindings of The Phantom Tollbooth and The Velveteen Rabbit.
I am from the meadow,
From searching for fairies, and sometimes even finding them.
And from the whispered promise “I’ll dream of you and you’ll dream of me…”
I am from the babbling gurgling creek, from the itch of nettles and the deep earthy scent of loam.
I am from the cat in Alice in Wonderland,
From Jacob and Leah’s wronged daughter.
I am from the Xanadu, the Akela, and the Dynamite,
From the crack of sails and the swing of the boom.
I am from placid seas and the rushing tumult of rain,
From heavy grey skies and flaming sunsets painted in watercolor across the Olympics.
I am from the pink syringe and the old blind dog’s last breath,
And I am from the hole where we laid her.
I am from the evergreen planted in the frozen ground to the sounds of my first cry,
That tree whose limbs witnessed my first breath, whose lofty trunk now stands as a testament, a marker, of where I am from.

Oh laughing maid of carefree days held in sunlight’s last embrace,
You’ve shed your hues of emerald green,
Dawned earthy tones and hide your face.
Behind a veil of falling leaves,
I no longer see sweet summer’s blush,
Gone is she that twined the flowers,
And brought forth the warbling hymn of the thrush.
The winnowing winds replace your song,
Scattering mortal leaves away,
As billowing clouds condense above,
You cannot keep the cold at bay.
Beneath your new bower of crisp pine,
You sit enthroned in gold and red,
Gone is the laughing child of the sun
A regal woman sits in her stead.
Yet do not mourn for what you were,
Stately autumn holds a new delight,
You hang ripe fruit upon the tree,
And paint the ground with ice at night.
And if perhaps you still while away,
Dreaming of the mirthful joy lost,
Know that the sweet girl of the light,
Will be borne again from winter’s frost.

I watch my father tear my swing set down,
Standing on a chair to see out the window,
From my upstairs room.
in the effort of pulling up the polls,
The one remaining swing swung.
Though years had passed since I had loved it,
A part of me felt the loss.
The flecks of paint from where a childish hand had outlined my name,
And the squeaking sound from where the lose boards rubbed.
As I saw it in pieces,
I realized that it was never just a swing set,
It was a pirate ship,
A time machine,
A princess’s tower,
A home for the odd assortment of toys,
And memories.
Each board use to hide the rigging of ships,
Or buttons that when pushed could send one to the moon.
The swings where vines in a jungle,
They where airplanes,
Or life boats lost at sea.
I watched my father hoist up the last remaining beams,
And load them into his truck,
How could that car every move under all the weight?

The ocean was illuminated
A myriad of glowing tendrils sparking from my feet,
Up my spine.

Wading in,
I am an island, my legs glowing pillars against the dark water,
A spec in the night.


All over the bay, fish move in glowing arcs,
But am I the only shining girl, shivering in the water,
Walking on stars.

At shore waves lap against the beach,
Exploding in a second of salt scented light, before streaming back to sea,
Leaving dark wet sand.

And when I to leave shinning grains cling to my feet,
Creating glowing foot prints in my wake,
To fade with day brake and the tide.

I fill my soul, my heart, my head,
And then try, through my fingers,
To tame it, calm it, dilute it.
To take the raw and make it something less agonizing,
To hold, to clutch to myself, to weave into my skin,
I build a fire and hope it won’t burn all the way through me, and the floor as well.

There are the times when I revel in the glow.
And there are times when I consign myself to be nothing more than a pillar of ash,
Easily swept away by a passing brezze.
Yet to cease,
Is to unweave my core,
To let holes stretch,
Till I am more void then girl.
To never feel a blue so mesmerizing that its very existents taunts me to catch it on paper,
Never spend hours trapping butterfly wings on the tip of my pen.
Never see the subtle moments where life is gut wrenchingly, woefully, utterly, complete,
That fraction of a second where the sun breaks the clouds into a sea of many facetted pillars of amaranth , so tangible I second guess their existence, and turning back see that the sun has sunken beyond the horizon.
The instant where a man and his dog glance up in perfect unison, a single being with six legs, four eyes, and one heart.
A first flash of scarlet upon jade, the cherries hang ripe and inviting, tiny globes flashing from behind their leafy bower, as of yet untouched by bird or clumsy human hand.
And so I write.