I'm a swirl
of crimson
paint
a lipstick
smear
a curling,
twisting,
writhing
sedated print
in hues
of violet-red

I'm in love,
my darling
and I want to
write
X's,
O's,
on every
empty surface
who will give me
just a moment to tell
them of my
love...

weave a stamp
of my kiss,
my crooked
thumbprint
on every lonely
facade
where you have
felt alone
and scared
and like love was
not designed for you.

How is it
I fall in love
with everything
and with
no one
at all

I want passion.

I want to be overwhelmed
in the shadow of
100 cacti
mesmerized by a
myriad of bay leaves
rocking in the wind

I hope to be overcome
in the waters of
1000 rivers
where my toes are frozen
and my heart is full

Where America
isn't everything
and fireflies aren't the only
ones who light the night
and where you throw
away the lock
the key
and I can fall
into the arms
of love,
once more.

Well my love,
we had it all

hot nights
where the screens
held back the mosquitos
and the tv glowed
where the curtains were held
to the wall with
thumbtacks
and your puzzle sat on the table
and you sat on the couch

we had it all
stepping around the tubes
from your oxygen tanks
and refilling your
weak cup of coffee

we had it all
when it was hot
and I was sweating
and your body was aching
and the roses continued to bloom.

So,

(You shouldn't start a poem
with so)
but who cares?
So what?

You died on a Monday
and I felt
like I did too,

so that's everything
that life is.

There's a green
line in the sky
and you're looking
in the
rear-view mirror,
gucci shades
and tales of
foreign days

you're silver.
You're gold,
hell,
you're a band
of shining diamonds

you're so
far out of
reach.

but I love you
you don't know
how much I love you
and I can guess
how much you
love me too.

I want to go to Austria
and taste the cake

visit every stone-
wedged cafe
and watch the
chocolatier

Oh this life is
wonderful
where I can fall
asleep and
meet you in
Vienna

You're so
afraid of what
they might think
even though
your cheeks are rosy
and your wrists
are perfect
Your eyelashes are
in a row
and your veins take
vermillion
crimson
cadmium blood
to your heart.

You're so afraid
of what they might
think
but you
can feel
the moon light
the sun light
the morning, dusky, midnight
light on
every inch of you.

and you believe in
miracles.
and you believe that
light will always win.
My God, that means
you're perfect and it
means that
I'm in love.

Your dark hair
is a waterfall
where I seek the
end the
crashing mist
the spray,
your body is a river
and I'm the wind
you always turned
the radio down
said
"listen to the words,"
looked at the
guard-rail passing
by your eyes
skipping
skipping
skipping
skipping beats to
listen to the words.
You don't like music,
you like poetry, my rose.

I can drink
rivers of dark
rivers of black
years of
perverted desire
I can swallow
oceans of burnt
ebony
fathomless
craters
black is only good
when it's in a cup
and it's hot
and it's about to burn
my selfish
pink tongue
Put me in my
caffeine coffin
and watch me
sail away.

When the night
is a witching
black
and my coffee
loses its steam
and the cat is batting
at the moths again
who waltz
with their demise
a candle with a
pool of wax,
I'm lost between
your sighs
I wish I knew a spell
to hum
a hymn
to sing
a song to
lose my mind
stars are falling
swans are swimming
here my soul is
unconfined.

If everything
were purple
then
I'd probably
fall in love.

You would give the
world for me
satin sheets
coffee,
forest black
like a 3 am
night

You would give the
world for me
you'd hold me
in your arms
and sway
to
the summer's wind

the world for me,
I know it
diamonds on my
wrist and
my stomach's
always full

but if you
gave the world
for me
I'd be trapped inside
a globe.

We had to take
your rings off
because your
fingers
were swelling up
and I cringed
because I knew
you'd never
put them
back on.
Death
steals your jewelry
when your hands go cold
and the fever comes
and the morphine drip
is dripping slow,
dripping slow
and steady
I hope that somewhere
in your morphine
dreams you knew
that I was there
to hold your rings
and rub your
shaking hands.

My favorite
time of day
lasts
about 6 minutes
where the moon's in
its
ascent
and the sun is
just a strip
of orange
across the rocky
blues
4 minutes
and trees be-
come just
silhouettes
and cars
switch on
their lights.
it's the
final hazy glow
before the valley's
turned to night.

Apples keep falling
they're falling from
a silver sky
a frothy blow
of snow
pouring,
trails and trails of
white

Petals keep falling
they're falling from
my chromium eyes
of hope,
blinking,
in and out of
love

Water keeps falling
from titanium
pipes that bend
and twist like
where I'm told
I store my
memories

everything is falling
failing
flailing to
survive,
back in the water
treading to stay
alive
but you're going
to hit the ground
and darling,
so am I.

I feel like it
was yesterday
that you told me
you hate my
wig on
Halloween
and you gave a
flashing basket
to a little
girl who
won't even
recall
the things you did
the ins and outs
of every ounce of
love, you are
it will feel like
yesterday
tomorrow
and the next
and in ten years from now
when I can't
quite recall
your voice,
I'll think to how
you said my name
on the last
voicemail you
left me.

So it's midnight
and the tv's
on
the electronic
glow of
people on,
I'm ignoring words
and sounds

It's midnight
and the cake is
gone
my birthday
cake with
pink and
purple
sugar frosting,
metal fork on scratchy plate
in the quiet dark where
I celebrate behind
its veil

It's midnight
and the candle's
done
consumed by
heat and black
a river of smoke
and I'm ten again
you're my friend again
and I'm able to love without end,
again

It's midnight and I'm a year older
and you're a year
further behind.

I want to be
the paint on
a canvas
exist where brush meets color
where wrist
tickles
canvas
I want to exist in
a field
of flowers
where the light
is just deceiving
and where nothing
exists
everything exists
it's where I want all of me
to exist,
I belong inside a painting.

I'm melting
into tangerine
thoughts,
floating
in a pool
of orange

a pool of lemon
zest and peel

that comes to
sting
when I pry
open
my eyes

Tangerine thoughts
that look so sweet
so sincere
the bump-de-dump-de-dump
of textured life

where you can run your
finger on the goosebump
skin
and feel only
a fruit
and I can wrap my
soul around
and know that
I'm it too.

I baked a
cookie in
a cup
in the microwave
a cup with
big red hearts
my socks with
big red hearts
my chest of
big red hearts
Oh endlessly,
I love you.

Pêche is
the French word
for peach
it's the
French word for
love, and
loss,
for nostalgia
and your heart-
beat.

It's the word for
the color of
your tangerine
cheeks
and your
favorite thing
to eat.

Péche is the
French word
for peach and
peach is the
word for end-
less love
and longing.

You float
in the water like
it was made
for holding you,

where the sky
looks down
and only sees
itself,

There,
I only
see you.

Underneath a quilt
that was
always on your bed
that you left
when times got
hard and the
baby cried at
night

I'm nodding
away
nodding off
to Blue
Moon
to the
saxophone
soothing
years of where
I didn't think
you'd go and
I never thought
I'd stay.

It's raining in
a mist tonight
just like you
said it would

and I am chilled
to my bones

and in every swirling
blend of deep violet
the deepest shade
of a night
violet
I fall into
abyss.

I miss France. I miss the
buildings.
I miss the adventures
I wanted to have
I almost had
I miss you.
The reason I came back.
You were so glad that I came back
and I was
so scared to lose you

in the end
and then
I did
and then you left
to where my France
exists
inside my head.

The last twenty four
years were beyond wonderful
the next will be too.

Love is dark
floral dresses
cut into skirts
for your daughters

Love is
borrowing tables
for children to
eat their
lunch and carve their
initials

It's writing her
letters when
she's lonely
in Spain

and it's
putting chapstick
on your sore
dry lips
when you can
no longer
move your hands

it's holding
onto the cold
steel bar
and hanging a
dreamcatcher
above your
hospital bed.

I painted
the scene
of a street
where a
parrot
sleeps in a
window
of a street
over
Deer Creek
where you're
holding my
hand forever

I painted
a scene
of the pine
trees
sitting
downtown
and the bridge
where you held
me back from
the ledge
where we
dropped tadpoles in
and said to them
"be free!"

you live on Winchester
you live on Diamond Lake
You live everywhere
and I say to you,
Be free.

I pressed the flowers
from your funeral

I pressed them
to my cheeks
where I could smell
the hyacinth
the sweet honeyed
smell of hyacinth

I pressed them
to my fallen
eyelids
my dampened lashes,
my eyes that
hold the reel
of the last 24
years.

I pressed the flowers
from your funeral

I pressed them
to my chest
where my heart
wouldn't stop beating
and where yours
wouldn't begin

and finally,
into a book.
Into a book with
maps and
artists, with
paintings and
with
so many
words for reading
where you'll
always exist.

Here's you
with your Sunday eyes
violet shadows
pooling in the arches
and the dips
dancing across
your cheekbone
the way I want to
You are every
pink rose
beach agate
white feather
which a
child finds

Here's you and
those gorgeous
Sunday eyes.

Pigeons sitting in
a row
on the edge
the ledge of a
building
make me think of endless
orange skies
and cumulus clouds
so near to
fields where
the sunflowers are
ever growing.
You're the only one
I would have left it for,
and I did,
and I will
never regret it.

Tall thin girls
and Madrid
and burgundy
red
velvet curtains
and candles
that don't go
out
liquor d'amour
liquor d'amour
tall thin
legs
and freckled
red hair
the sun,
it won't go
out
liquor d'amour
liquor d'amour
Every time I
hop the
pond
I drink
liquor d'amour

The hospital
room's aglow
with sickly
yellow lights and
greenish hues

and your hands are folded
under your blanket
under your scratchy
hospital
blanket

and my forehead lives
on the metal bar
that keeps you
in your bed

and the yellow
trees are glowing
out the cement
window panes
where my sister
pinned a plastic
bow to hold back
my greasy bangs

I would live here
for eternity
if it meant
saving you
go to sleep
peacefully
and someday
I will too.

Faded trees
and foggy hills
of misty blue
and morning pills

and pastel soap
in a broken bowl
my splattered mirror
who eats my soul

an empty fridge
a broken lamp
moldy, mildew,
Northwestern damp

wrists against
my seam-ripped sleeve
this is what it's
like to grieve.

You woke me
in the dead
of night
with a tired
moan

so,
of course I
ran to
your bedside
and heard
the rattle in
your tone

I told you
that you
must breathe
deep
you must
feel it
in your
bones

and you nodded
your
exhausted
head
and then
I felt you
go.

Oh honey,
you've fallen so hard
in the heather

and you've skinned
your peach-
**** knees

and you've closed
your eyes
to the sun that
shines

and the labyrinth
pattern of
the bees

You've fallen
into fits
of promise

fits of
frozen
winter snow

in the corner
of your
high-walled
maze

where the wind
can't even blow.

I loved the
red dirt
road that
lead to your
tiny
faded
house
from months of
summer sun
and the curtains in
the window
that your sweet
son gave to
you.

And the pebbles that I
kicked as I held
baby's hand
in mine
because she'd
run off to
pick a flower
pick a dozen
flowers for you,

I loved you in all
of your weakness.
In all of your wasted
hours
your wasted
dreams
your wasted demons
and your fears

I loved you in all
of everything.
You were all of everything.
Poetry for eyes.

You are empty
cups of
bottom-stained
tea
and grounds
on the counter

***** bath water
and mildew
a
mint-stained sink

You are damp
linens
drying
dishes
cigarette butts
and resilience

How you are so quiet
when I know you are
so tired
I don't know

but let me hold your head
up while you
waste your day for me
while you draw
the complex
pattern
Arabic or Spanish
pattern
and you follow it
for me

I've done terrible things
like drive away
from
you in the rain
within my
rear-view mirror

like keep a
cauldron
of secrets brewing
within my
hard-shelled soul
where I do not exist

like leaving in the night
and hoping that you'd
leave me soon
that you'd be there soon
maybe that I'd love you soon

I've done wonderful things
like hold
her hand
to guide her to
her
India

To her private place of peace
where orange and
cinnamon veil gutted
battle wounds

like staying in the night
and hoping that she'd
leave me soon
one way ticket to
India soon
where I would love her
to the moon

Oh, these are wonderful things.

Camden Lock
and the sky is
piercing me
grey again
And that Otis song is
playing in my head again

and there's a woman
on the street,
she's singing,
that change is gonna come
that a change is gonna come
again

And I can't speak English.
I can't speak French.
I can't sing or move my
feet
because she's afraid to die
and the night is getting
darker
and I am getting colder
and so am I,
so am I

and the underground
has stopped its roar
and the orange lights
are holding on
and the rain is trickling in the gutters
and so am I,
my darling,
so am I.

Through falling snow
I see your
silhouette
against the
birches
where the light
can feel your
skin

where the cold is ever
lingering
and the winter
lies so deep

between the
fallen snow
I hear your laughter
where a drop of dew
is poetry
and so is a
navy jacket
brushing
against twigs.

In the hospital bed
you held my hand
your bony hands
touching bony mine,

bony mine, ever mine

your purple hands
and
thinning skin
your knuckles
slowly rolling
against mine

forever mine,

and I whispered that
your hands,
they were so soft
and you whispered back
Oh,
but I've worked so hard

work you did,
and your memories
are mine
and your love is
mine
and your pulsing
heart
your slowing
heart
your fading
heart
your bony
heart

is mine.

Out of all
the things
that have
happened in
this life

untouched books,
dusty corners,
broken shoes,
frostbitten toes

out of all the
candles burnt
to nothing
and the skeletons
of moths
fried by the light

and the
hems ripped on
the bottom of your
jeans
and the blisters
on your hands
because you
worked so hard

out of it all,

all of the
secrets you
never even wrote
inside a book

you never should
have had to go
like you did
fade like you did
decay like you did
and pray, as I did
you never should
have had to end
like you did.

I have forgotten
what love
feels like
when the sun is red
and the day is tired
and the hammock
is swinging
to the beat of
the world

and I'm alone
but full of thoughts
my feet up high
in twine,
my arms behind
my head

where I can sink
into
dreams
of where
passion exists
where you exist,
though I don't know who
you are.

The Christmas lights
are burning
by six
candles
lit for you

and my
cloche hat
is hung to dry
because it
rained so hard
last night

and at the end of the night
I'm taking off gold jewelry
my silver too
and I am putting them in an
old nickel jar
with the face of a cat
that you gave me

The Christmas tree
is glowing
and the tea kettle
is heating

and the cat
is slowly
lapping
off the
dirt of
other days

and it's the end of the night
where I'm
reading a poem
where you told me
that you wished that
you could fly
and that I
was so much more
than my porcelain
frame

At the end of the night
I believe you
and I miss you just
the same.

Are we just
silhouettes
against the
raven night

against obsidian

against a frozen
lake
we're trapped above
our feet out
cold in snow

where Oregon's
sun has made
a shadow
out of you
and a
*******
fool of me.

Somewhere deep
inside the
unfading black
of the universe

I know that
hope exists
inside a flower
that is
not afraid
to bloom

and where
conviction
hides,
where she sleeps,
unweathered by
her
loss
and by
her pain

you survive
in a rose
as warm
as every
high winter
sun
and every
flooding
shadow.

Another love poem
Another sad poem
Another poem
an
ode to heartbreak

There's nothing I
can say
that another
writer
hasn't said

another way
to convey
my heart break
and my affection
my equal
yet
unparalleled
experience of
loss
of losing you

another poem of death
and of tragedy
or encore and of hopeless
ness
of all that
lies between

you are gone and I am gone
and every poem I've ever read
is gone
because words
can't exist where
you do not,
my love.

I dug through
shelves
and rows
of tapes

cassette tapes
that made
me think
of you
and of myself
and of summer in
the ballet
studio
dancing
until
I
  could
not
  breathe

5 for 99 cents
where I can
take a moment
take a breath
take some time
while they
rewind

everything
changes
and nobody takes any
time
in an instant
tapes are gone

just like
the
day
you died.