Sweetheart,
there is a star
cut out from my heart

I would give it
to you, hold it
outstretched
and let it fall
into your hands,
a warm and glowing
reminder of something
I told you, years ago

I would hold
galaxies, swirling,
up to your face where
you could watch them
turning  --

I'd leap over train tracks
and lay my hand close
to the flame at your core
just so I could
brush this white-hot
pain away from your chest,

I'm watching it
blistering there, and
the flames are licking
at the piece of me that has
always been connected
between us, veins weaving
together in tangled knots, I'm stuck
so close to you it hurts

And tonight, this holy
darkness closing over
your head, I hope
you can think of this,
and touch your hand to
your heart --

I hope you can smile
thinking of the ties
that bring me sailing
back to you.

Mother,
you grew up
on honey
and white bread,
cream between your teeth
******* dry against
the roof of your mouth

And Mother,
your dolls
were always
children -- you swore
you'd treat them better,
dressed them up
in pink gingham cloth,
ran with them through
the jungles in your
backyard,

and that backyard
swallowed you
in secrets, you never
questioned what lay
beneath the floorboards
where your father slept
in the basement, you
tangled yourself in
the reeds

Some days,
you wondered why
the walls of your house
shook (they never knew
you listened) and some days,
the dust tracked itself
along your skin like evidence,
giving your hiding place away

You sheltered yourself
in paintings and broom closets,
caressed your clouded heart
against a generation built
on dreams and divorce,
the echoes of war aching
in your father's palms --

Neil Armstrong
landed on the moon
the day after your birthday
and you took it as a sign
that you would never
hold the stars in your hands

Instead,
you cradled
a child
against your chest,
hoping
it would be enough
to save her from
the sunlight in your eyes

The moment
my fingers
curled away
from your heartbeat,
you held me up
to the sun, tried to find
the missing pieces
glowing in my eyes

From the moment
you first held me,
there was an understanding
passed between us (Mother,
you sheltered me) gently, I knew
a shifting ache in your bones
that grew on my lips
as surely as my own name

I grew up
on palm fronds
and astroturf,
tennis courts and
public pools pushing
the wanderlust
through my veins
like a sickness,

Mother,
you fostered
the dreaming
that marinated
in my head, pushed
child's sunglasses
over my face, and
you smiled thinking
of the brightness
my future must hold

You never knew
the agony of oceans,
the tear of the tide
ripping at my stomach,
you were disappointed
when I told you that
white-hot flames were
licking at my fingers,
threatening to escape --

You were disappointed
as your dreams fell
into the cradle of insomnia,
disappearing into a black hole
of doubt, my thoughts were leaves
dropping from my mouth
until they landed in your conscience,
floating in puddles made
from the liquid melting of your tears

Mother,
I never knew
the ocean's
stinging bite
would lap
against you
as it carried me
out to sea

when the lace
from my shirt
fell away,
you helped me
tie it back
together,
even though i know
you'd love to love me
uncovered

i knew,
you cradled
the scars
the sunlight
gave me,
you kissed
between my ribs
where the swollen
skin lay tender,
you would have
stitched them up
if you knew how

i remember
the ultrasound
my fingers took
of your heart,
i could see it
beating
red and angry
in your chest,
trying to
unfasten the ties
that held it inside

my palms
were hot, but
they healed you
my scabbed knuckles
brushed over your eyes
and you settled
into me like a gasp,
slowly but alive

sweetheart,
i would
end the earth
in one swift movement
if i could watch
the asteroids fall
in your eyes

I feel as if I lost this gigantic piece of myself in the storm drain,
sifting through gunk and garbarge you can see an enormous
chunk of skin and self left over.

It's been cut from my side and from some of my head,
and the odd thing is, if I remember correctly, I was the on holding the axe.
A small little axe like the one everyone has hidden in
their pockets and their backpacks and for the creative ones,
on their chests.

I feel as if..I lost what I lost because I'd decided to keep it,
and when decisions are made,
others are still straddling the line
and every decision affects the other.
So. I had fifty decisions
and only one that I could see clearly enough to
work out an outline that made some sense and
had some flair.

And the hole in my head has grown teeth and lips and a tongue and it's screaming,
"Make me younger!
Make me younger!"
in a voice that seems all too familiar.

My mother's voice,
my father's voice

But awakened from reality, it's not so hard to realize that
smaller things are versions of larger.



I have smaller fish to fry, though.
I have something to gain.

I think often. It's a habit I can't seem to break like a gambler with his gambling and a priest with boys' knees or what brands red A's on our chest. I think we're a bit too trusting and I know we're a tad naive. I think it's best we love each other from the safety of three feet. This finite planet and our infinite greed pair up wondrously said the axeman to the tree.

The world that has made us has gone from a fine fitting coat to an ugly old shoe. We say we've outgrown, but what of the sea? Let's poison it. What of the the ice caps? Let 'em melt like a bowl of forgotten ice cream on my coffee table. I have more important things to devour. Gotta run, culture's waiting.

So I follow the rabbit down the hole wait I stop! Curiosity killed the cat I bought with a two dollar bill my grandmother gave me as payment the first time I cleaned that labyrinth of a cellar beneath her house: musty, dark, repressive I thought I was inside of my ten year old self then through the dark I can hear a rustling, "God?" I plead, my hands clutching the windex. No answer, there never is so I head into the shadows when I see the rabbit and this time I bolt for the hole but my head hits a wall. I concluded that life was a cruel joke as cynicism ensued.

I couldn't sleep, couldn't eat, couldn't dance, couldn't sing because boys like girls, and girls like boys and boys don't cry, but I cry. As does the gambler and the priest and the woman on the horizon. I could have bet it was an angel and the gambler, he did. She steps into the reef and we hear her song and I know that she's me and I'm him and he’s all of us and the reef is that cruel joke I learned in the basement chasing rabbits but it's awful pretty from here is a warning to you when you think God is dead and death is synonymous to halt:

I'll swim inside this reef 'til the day I die. Water slipping through my fists and I'm yelling no I'm whispering no one's got a verb for trying to help. Water's to my neck but I'm not stopping. The coral ends here where I can finally sink sink sink my body in the trenches, spread a dustier me across the oceans, fill Earths' blood, a mass of veins and rocks and steel blemishes with my own maze of veins and thoughts and inauthenticity…


♐ ♐ ♐


Bury me naked cause where they say we're all headed headed it's gonna be hot hot hot like a medics sweat dripping down his nose as he beat beat beats on her chest but she's too big to get through. Too big, too fat Lady Liberty's choking on fries we're the world's laughing stock, the UN's singing jest for me, jest for me, jest at Mother Nature's giving way to political pressure same as Gods giving way to backwater pleasure and curses, a moment of weakness but 14 billion years? He’s old.

It's 2011 and more people hate hate hate from pin ****** in the ocean spewing bile in the deep, now whose fault is that, really? We're all shallow like my lagoon, my tropical retreat where there's no oil. No God. No smiles or tears. Can't sing, can't dance...can only be me. Who's gonna say that they're one in the same? Heaven's not a cloud and Hell's nicer than you think and I do. I think often.

At first it was bare and ripe for the picking -
my chest was pulsating under your weight you
stripped my heart like an exotic dancer would:
all eyes and no hands.

After the initial grasp, the puff puff pass and the
smiles exchanged between our legsarmslimbs and the
time it took to be rid of the excess skin crowding us in,
we breathed in sweet, sweet fumes of spring and said
things kept in our mouths, light like ecstasy but
heavier than the average promise.

But the hours it took to argue the hunger away made our
heads ache and eventually our jaws could clench no longer,
our eyes could see no more of each other - just smoke and
******* clouding our way - it was lost,
whatever it was, it

was lost.