Someday,
   someone
    somewhere
won't
f a l
       l

in love with me-

they'll look down as they step
sensing there's no
step
and still sink down
any
     w a
           y

Someday,
  someone
   s
o    m
   e     w  h
   e     r        e

won't

f
a
l
l

in
lo
ve

with m
            e

It never stops raining
and it's never a shade that
isn't grey
the wrought-iron
gates are
always icy
and the pavement is always
the same

Tonight the church bell's ringing the hour. It's 7 and you're spewing
poetry.

And tonight's the night I find out
you might leave me
and I won't have a chance
to go

I'm so broken hearted and
only the Church Bell knows.

Whether I open my mouth and
doves fly out
or broken beetles,
black as
ink,
whether you hear it as a
song or as a
woe
as a cage being open &
40 wings flying out

I'll open my mouth and let it out
and you'll be there to listen,
or to cry,
and I'll finally be able to tell you
show you
the animals
that stir in me

you can watch them fly by-
be haunted by their
blur
or you can slow yourself
pace yourself
hear yourself
watching a telltale herd

Whether you take it as a song
or as a woe
at least the corral will be
unleashed and
you will finally
know.

How can I walk in
to other cities like they're
my
castle too
like they welcome
with their arms outstretched at the end
of a race
a finish line from start to
finish
go to start

I thought I couldn't
love someone
new
and
at the ribbon,
I'm finding I'm wrong

You're trauma.
Memories, flooding
into places that
usually do not
fill, have not been
full before
You're my pain
my hope
my little faith who is-
n't so small, ignored
at all

You're a warped record,
a broken pew-
a longing to be held
in the coldest of
nights by the
history of arms in
me

You're my religion
and you could hear it
if you opened your
wings,
lay your sorrows down,
your bible down,
the holy ashes of
Wednesday
down

You're my country- my baptism,
so let the waters flood you
too

I can see in your
eyes there
is sorrow
and I can see you
row,
out of
control,

on the edge of the sea you are
lonely

and you long to be
everywhere all at
once-
you have to know
I feel the same
to go and
stay with you,
to pull towards the
shore
then back to sea
with you

Darling, if on the edge of a cliff
you dangled your grief,
I'd hold that rope with you.
Use my tiny, agile, painter's hands to
hook on every
misery,
to
hang over
the edge of alienation,
a pendulum of problems where ocean's mist
can cut the cord

I want to bear the weight of all your
worry, until the
lighthouse stream goes
grey
and watch your doubts,
your troubles,
your need for what it is you cannot find
slowly fade
away

I'm on the edge of a cliff,
with you
and your sadness can't make me
sway
to pull towards the
shore
then back to sea
with you

It's not often
a poem wakes me
in the night

stirs me out of
unconsciousness to
speak to me

it's never been about
you
or us-
it's never said a
word to me that's pulled
me from the very moment that
I'm living in

but here with you,
here where winter
is mid-stretch
and the Ash Groves seem
quieter than
ever

I'm waking over
and over
and over,
my love,
because
you're speaking
to me
and poems keep
waking me in the
night.

It's moments like now
where I'm running to
my notebook,
chaotic flight for a pen
because I feel
the morning stir
within me

I love you
and I've never been so sure-
so I have to touch
the tip of a pen
to the plane of a
paper
and let my quiet hands
dance into
literary
song

I love you and I've never been so sure

I want a
companion, too

someone to
consume me with
his fire
over
stories, flutes of
port

someone who can
read his
bible without
believing what he
sees
and likes the sound
the thunder
makes when
it drapes over
the trees

I want a
companion, too
to share this
sorrel time

to think my eyes
are portals
& to be my
paradigm.

I'm thinking about next year.
I'm thinking about you leaving.
I'm thinking about
how much I
want to tell you
that
I want
to go
with
you

How much I
hope that
you'll ask
me to
come

& I
want to
tell you
that
I love
you

(I'm fairly certain that
I love you)

I've been thinking
be it Maine or Indiana,
I'd go anywhere
with you.

Today is a really
important day
because today
I knew that I
loved you.

I'm not sure
the moment that
turned the page for me,
but it"s November and I'm
over the moon.

   You're at the coast
   and I'm in the valley
   and it's the start of
   the beautiful holidays

     You spent the morning
     at the cape and
     I spent it
painting
     away

           and somewhere-
           -somewhere
           where you were running with
            the tide
           and when I was mixing the
           perfect violet hue
          
I knew that you were it for me
I knew that I loved *you

If you asked me before,
I'd swear that love was
not for me
that a feeling
so soft did
not exist within
me
and that holding a gaze
was only for show

I've read a lot of books now,
and I've had a lot of
lovers-
and I've asked fortune
tellers for my
feelings I don't know,
sleeping so stilly within me

-would not wake
to the slightest or the sharpest
touch of a hand, and I've had
both-

I've had
10,000 miles and
too much coffee.
Pursuing and
withdrawing.

And after all this time
in the self's purgatory
I find you
and you dig into
my skin and pull
the tenderness out
of me like picking flowers
from the quietest
of meadows

I've seen a lot of things
and dreamed a lot of dreams
and finally after seeking,
you pluck and uncover me.

I'm home again
past puddled streets
where sirens swim
and lights flicker red
to green,
it's small town
Southern Oregon,

Baby I've been lonely,
and I don't
want to be
away, cast
away,

I could love you desperately.

where I'm
roads away
Cascades away
rolling fields
and rivers
away-

Where I'm burning.

I don't know why I need you
like I do,
but I do
and it's die-or-die
-my last-ditch effort
to make you feel the way
I feel for you
across miles of Pacific forests

Where are we when
the world is
falling, darling
(tell me with your wings)
and where is it
you're flying?
This is where we were
born to be, you and me
to carry you
from flight to
freedom
- I'll say it:
I'm willing to change

In these days, we are
kings-
changing shapes
against horizons,
fueling triumphs
with our
failures, nesting birds we
haven't flown in
ages, but our frames
can bear the
weight

I live in the white
light
and you, the shadowed
silhouette of
branches,
it's not news to
me, but I believe
if mirrors can reflect
the sun then I'll fill the
forest floor
with sparkling
confetti and
I'll light you
from beneath

As I'm
sitting in the balcony
and the gallery lights start
    to dim,
and you walk on
stage, ready to fill
a room with
songs

You don't know how you
fill me with music
you fill everyone
with song
-and when they leave,
when I leave,
your melodies
linger and
God if you only knew that
I am your song

I think this
could be easy,
and I think that
I could be yours

So darling,
play me, play me, play me
play me in a sea of bows,
but don't string me
along

Someday, they tell
me,
the aching will
stop-
the roads I take
alone at night
will no
longer
drive the pain

someday, time will
give me a gentle
push
a gentle shove to put
me in motion
away from all
your hurt

I'm not sure
where the dark roads go,
but I know
it's nowhere
good
and I'm trying to restrain
from giving into the
pain
and thinking that
every place,
every you
is the same

I'm not sure
anyone's to blame

but I need time to
heal the
rain.

Oh, the
running

the running to and
from fear and fortune

Soak me up, ground,
pull me down into an
earthy sandpit
filled with serpentine
bliss, numbing
poison,
falling rain

I can't take it anymore
the way the pavement
feels
the bitter cold that stuns the
hands
the running of my
thoughts in
sunrise or in
dusk

Oh, the running,

the running from fear to
fortune

It's fine by me,
   I told you

for you to come
and follow by the
Spring
beneath the
Ash Grove trees,
droopy
Madrones that
cannot bear
the weight
of memory

I told you it
was fine as the
piano
continued
    to play
and the tension built
between the chords
and you and
I

being so close
to you
and feeling your breath
and your song
your pinecone
burdened
forest floor-
walking on
egg-shells

I told you it's fine,
so I'll stand beside
you,
but I'll also
be running
away.

I paint every person
whom with,
I fall in love

I close my eyes and memorize
the lacy veil of blue beneath
the skin, the
tone of
the edge of a rose,
a petal,
the knuckles of
a lover that
keep me in
their grasp

I paint every person,
with whom
I fall in love,
    but you.
All of them
    but you- and no,
I don't know why.
Know, I don't know why
I can't bring myself
to put you on
to paper
like the
others.

Even though
I rarely see you
anymore,
and even though
it's clear
that you've
moved on,

I'm sitting every night
observing how you come
in and out of
my mind, trying to
meditate in the
hopes of moving
on

I don't think there's
a moving on,
just a further place
from pain-
the memory gets pushed
back deeper in
the vault,
but you're the key
you'll always be
the key

You're the key
that
opens up
the vault of
hope in
me.

I don't like to
assume,
but I think that
      you're mine.
I think that as
you welcome
Midnight Lovers &
your bedroom door swings
open,
    shut,
      in and out
     with walking veils  of
flowers to
   distract you from
the pain,
          you're mine.
      somewhere, you're mine

   I know you

that in some sort
of way, some sort of
reality, whether it's another
dimension-( I've
learned about
other dimensions),
or another
stretch of time,

Darling, I've always been here
for you
and somehow,
you'll always be mine.

It's not one thing
It's not five
It's not something I can
point to on a map
of my wrongdoings and my
rights
The geography of the
darkest places I have
within me
and the landscaped
version that I share and
I've
refined,

I'm sorry

It's not one thing, my love,
It's not five

It's all things all the time.

I'm stuck sitting in
the mezzanine,
legs-crossed in
the dark
being pulled
so many ways,
and I'm praying
beam me up,
beam me up
for the love of symphonies and
melodies,
abstract orchestral harmonies,
beam me up.

and I'm crumpling plans
in my hands
that I've went over and over
diagrams
of how to
work-things-out
which way to lean in-
to the wind and when
to let it pull
me up

These wings aren't
made for
flying
or softening
my fall,
and my arms weren't made
to find somebody new.
My hands weren't made
to take the pain
of the push, the grab, the pull
of knowing
I'm not
going up,
beaming anywhere with you.

It's 3 a.m.
it's only
you and me-
your boat bed
high above
ground,
floating on pain
abandoned days
ago

there's a glint of
sunrise
opening her arms,
stretching out her hands,
throwing her head back and
taking a breath
of tomorrow's
today,
  today...

But for a second-
for another moment,
a pause before the sun
conquers
the clandestine sky,

I'll be
engulfed in you
I cannot catch my
breath,
in you-
we're in the dark
encore
and you

are
carved out of
daybreak
shadows like
a statue
been set free

I'm looking through
a piece of
glass
that I
found on
the beach- and
through the warped
exterior- the rippling
surface of its sea-soaked skin
I see myself looking
back at me
against a
backdrop
called
the
sky

I'm a reflection
in a
shadow and
I don't know why
I love you,
like I do,
but I do,
and I'm looking
at a piece of
beach-glass,
hoping to find
you.

Tonight, your
hands
are singing the
piano,

and the fading
stars of
blue float
in the night

and my silly
heart
resists falling
like a feather-
gravity,
    gravity,
          g
          r
          a
         v
        i
     t
y

who are you in
the white light
of fluorescent bulbs and
reverie
that manages to
pull me into orbit?

You can see that
I'm a meteor who
cannot find
her ground-

So in my hectic
flight,
my chaotic dance
within the
black,
I'm going to
trace patterns
on your
music-hands
piano-hands
your planetary
solar hands
and try to be
your
satellite

I want to stand
on the edge of
a tall
building-pressed against
the steely bars, the wrought-iron
coils of metal,
icy on my
legs

I want to stand
on the edge of
love, with
you

hold my arms above
my head
let you absorb
all that I
am

drunken and
stupid-
hesitant and
wanting

the creamsicle
orange of a sunset-
the brilliant pink
smear of a
sailor's-trouble-sunrise
with you.
Everything with you.
Standing on the
edge of
everything,
you.

Tell me
you want to
stand with me
too.

The moment
I thought I
might love
you
I was
staying awake
in your arms-
watching you
falling,
fading into
Morpheus'
pull

It's so alluring
(plunging deeply
into something
with full
force
without even
ever knowing)

So that's the
moment,
the
moment
where
I thought I
might love
you,
when you were
sinking into
fantasy and
all that I
could do
was watch you
go.

I'm not sure when
I fell asleep,
but suddenly
I had fallen
into night's
embrace

Can you hear me?
can you hear me in
the blue of slumber
where I'm not even
aware
I'm
reaching out for
you

I want to know
you love me
just like I
want to know
the moment where
my mind
succumbs
to quiet and
lets my tired
body sleep

I need you so much
I almost
cannot
sleep.

Look at you.

I've finally found
something living
in the waters-
a brush against
my leg and
I know that
you're
unfolding and
I'm here

standing in the
water,
a lukewarm way of
holding
me
in the touch of
a
November.

Look at you,
darling

there's so much
beauty
in the depths
you've opened
up to me
and I'm here:

I'm not scared
of who
you are,
my world wonder,
my 8th sea.

You're my
best kept secret-
a rippling stream of
hazy blue inside
my mind, my
heart,
a glow of light
above my head
absorbing into me,
the color of the color
of "to heal"

You're my best kept
secret:

rivers change with time,
with the deepening of
banks and the falling
trees of winter-but you.
oh,
but you
You're the sediment
on which I flow,
that I keep hidden
deep within the
tributaries

                I love you,
and that's my best kept secret.  

         And I'll carry you
              for all of the
                Tide-race.