I am so
insanely in
love with you

your brown,
owl-eyes.
Your tousled,
feather hair

I am absolutely,
indescribably,
sickeningly
in love with
you,

(you
don't love me,
and that's not
news to
me.)

But I'll still love you
I'll still love you in
that place where
you're spent
hiding
in the trees

I'll love you and your parliament of owls
until the coffin's lid
shuts down
on me.

It's been a year
since I saw you
die

since I slept rest-
lessly, my forehead pressed
against your
hospital bed

Night after night
your struggling
breath and
the beep beep beep of
your monitors

It's been a year spent
licking my wounds
in hopes that they
would heal,
like people say that
time will do

It's been a year
since I saw you
die
and, my
love,

I still can't
live without
you.

I walked into
the concert
hall
and saw you
on the
stage, a glow
of amber
light filling
up the night- a
sparkling fleck of
gold in
the river
path of
life

There you were,
such home to
me
such a wonted
sense
to me
a quiet type of
thrill that's like the
hatching
of an egg or the
stirring of a bird
making her way
through
Autumn's leaves
to ride with
dawn

There you were
on stage,
immersed in
October's Sandaraca
and I thought
you were,
I think,
you are,
I hope
you are
at home with me and
every sunset's
encore.

I've given a
new name
to my hopes-

looking forward,
when Winter is
a stone throw's
away

I may be a
Goddess of
silver lining, always
trying to
wade through
the thickened blue

But I used to know
nothing of
Romance or even
believe that
love existed

but now I will not leave
behind what's handed
to me, and, Godammit,
I'll stir the *** until
the fumes take
over

And I'll look back
at every thought
of you and
thank fate for
the time

And smile
even though
I lost you-

you made me
believe in
love again

Stand by,
feel the warmth,
of the flame
burning like a
bulb in
me
My love,
stand by,
put your hands
out, in the
night to
warm your
frozen
fingers
against the
fire,
Oh god,
pull your gloves off.
Your hat off.
Your jacket and
your scarf.
Pull back your sweater and
all the blinds that keep your
love contained,
your love
hidden from
me-

I know you're in there.

Where there's a match,
there's potential,
an undeveloped inferno,
the conviction of
a heaven draped in
light that fills the
spaces in your
wreckage.

I'll strike you 1,000 times
to
pull you out
from the dark.

I haven't thought
about you in
awhile
how soft
you looked
within your
bed, your
hands a
fading shade
of
blue

I don't want
to abandon
you,
the thought
of you,
the ghost of
you that sleeps
in my bed
at night
with me

there's a reason
I'm so stoic now,
so somber now,
my chin up while I'm
quiet now

There's nothing I can
think to say
since you lie
in a bed of
white and
next thing
I know
you were
ashes being
sprinkled on
Reno

I haven't thought
about you in
awhile, it's
fading shades
of blue

Usually I'd be
brokenhearted, and,
believe me,
I was-
knowing that we
can't be together
and that maybe,
maybe you don't even
love me and maybe
never will-

but instead,
I'm happy.
I'm so ******* thrilled.
I am so in love with you that
even unreturned,
my heart's in bliss

Passion
is capable
in me-
and that in this
earth,
on this plane,
somewhere where I
was ****** into
at birth,
you exist.

God,
you exist and
I'm able to
love
you.

Are these the days
I'll look back,
fondly on?

when I think,
how could this life
get any worse- you're not
here and I'm in love
with your ghost.

But baby, we had
it good.
When the nights weren't
so cold
and the hope of blossoming
love was still
budding with
the charm of
August nights
and endless
fits of song

Are these the days I'll look back fondly on?

It hurt so much
when you first
said that you don't
love me

and now the
pang of rejection,
the sound of dismissal,
the so-far-from-fleeting-feeling of
refusal's
like a
healing wound that's on
my skin.

You can't stop me.

You can't stop me from
loving you with the
insatiable craving for
all that you are,
the undefinable hope
when you've said that
there's none

but after time,
after an October of
not hearing your voice,
unanswered love sleeps
so quietly within
me,
gently in me,
where for a moment,
the burn is just a
silent cinder
who glows
without
completely
fading
  away

I'm letting it kindle,
kindle in me
and
when you realize you
love me, let
this steady ember guide
you home.

Oh my,
darling,
standing there
in denim
where your
eyes immediately
go to mine
and your hands,
magnets to
my waist

You say that you
don't love me

now you can't stop kissing me

and sometimes,
between kissing,
you hold my nervous jaw
between your hands and you push my
head against your chest
and you hold me like
a china doll you've
caught from
falling

how is it
you can hold me
like this
and say that you
don't love me

Love,
I've never felt more
fragile
and more sheltered
all the same.

Every man I date
has a
balcony
with a view
This is something I
noticed as
I was driving
to the café today,

Every man I
date
chose his
apartment for
the sights- so what,
if anything,
does that say about
me?

A man with a
skyline.
A man with a
view.
Another
man that's replacing
the every thought
of sleeping in
a tree-tall
loft with
you

I only date men who
love a good view.

On this morning,
where the road's
reflecting gold

I think of all the
promises I've
made myself,
the sun, a draping
curtain over daybreak

and I wrap a scarf
around my neck
and hold my bony
hands
against my heart

It's October and
I've learned to love
myself again.

My stomping grounds is
the Umpqua
where
we're
Daughters.
Sisters.
Friends.
and Lovers.

In the Umpqua Valley where we're
Men who
work in
lumber yards
and sweat
the day
away

Where we come home
at Autumn's dusk
and put dinner on
the stove and
send our kids
to school next
day

where we felt like they were
safe
the next day

My hometown is
Roseburg
where
we're now
known for
a violence that
doesn't exist in us
but now defines us

where you've spoken on your lips the place that
cultivated me
that is me.

Roseburg and the Umpqua
aren't synonymous with
tragedy,
but my God,
what a tragedy.

They say
the blood moon
is a bad omen-

hanging in
the sky
on the other
side
of a permanent
polluted
lens, a
filter
that we've made
and now is how
we must
enjoy the
stars

Red Moon,
Dear Red Moon behind
Earth's dusty
curtain,
I don't know what it means
or why the color
rouge
effects me, so

but I can feel the
black sky
crawling, moving, dancing,
a pendant against stars it cannot
touch and continuing
to blush in
rose.

You're a
dark
cavern,
where I have
to
breathe a
little deeper
or risk not
breathing at all

as I am trying
to make my way
through the
black, an endless
cave of what-comes-next
(I have no idea
     of what comes next),
I know
that
If you gave me more
time,
you could (maybe)
love
me
too

it's here against
the grotto
that is
nudging me
and slowly
pushing into
me, my eyes
adjust to the
darkness that is
you

You were standing,
a silhouette against
the icy blue of
a northwest bay-
the most beautiful
shoreline you've seen,
you said,
and love, do I
agree.

even standing
by this ocean,
in this dew-drop
forest I
call home,
overwhelmed
by Oregon's
beauty once
again-

I'm taken aback because
you're so beautiful.

and all I can possibly
see
is you.

I don't know why
I have to be near you
for insight to
come to me

I have to be lying
in your arms
to feel the
quiet touch
of poetry
coaxing
thoughts
and words
out of me

...whispering in your ear
about
butterflies and
dreams
and days that
brought us ease- much
lighter than the window
shows
today

I don't want you to be the one who makes me write this way

There's a moment
I keep
going back to.

Where we're sitting
just you,
and I,
in front of the
Clarence Carter
record
turning.

And you reach to touch
my hand,
softer than
before the
day you told
me this was
nothing.

In every moment,
I'm not with you-
and where you tell me
I'm just a
good friend

I'll keep going back
to this place
where we're sitting
on the floor,
laughing,
holding
hands.

The problem with
hats
is that when
you wear them
for awhile
your head is
hot,
but held
and
you almost
forget they're there

The problem with
hats is
that when they sit
there for
awhile
and when you
resign to the
weight
on your head-
you take them off
and you can
still feel
them there
for awhile

That's the problem with
hats
and the problem with
you,
here,
with me
now.

Early this
morning

when the sun had
started her
rise

I put the needle
on Janis Joplin
and she sang to
autumn's chilly
dark

and I filled in my
eyebrows
with a soft, brown
pencil
and I stared at my
self in the
mirror as
I curled my
hair

and I saw you in my
eyes ,
                 somewhere.


I'm giving it my best shot
not to see you
anymore
and so
I put
my
feathered
black
hunter's hat
on and
I venture out
into the
day.

In my red
bathtub,
my ceramic,
clawfoot
bathtub,
with a single
yellow light,
above the mirror-

I lie with you
a lover who
holds me in his
arms,
romantically

I've never met
a friend
like you
who I love
so endless-
ly

and as we lie,
the water
slowly
cooling,
our knobby
knees bobbing
in the bliss

I know there's love
for me
in you
I see it somewhere
in your
touch
even though
I'm just a friend

I love you and you
know it
and I hope one
day you'll show it
too.

There you were
at the end
of my driveway
your bright red
hat against
September's
fog of sunrise

There you were
as you as
ever
waiting with
your hands
shoved in your
pockets

And there I was.
totally
in love
with you-
my gloves and scarves and clothes
hiding my
feelings

so I'll go to
the farm with you.
I'll walk the muddy
apple lines
with you
and I'll pretend it
doesn't hurt me
when
you do not
say my name

and later,
when the LP is on
and the cider's on my stove-
and the dogs are running,
and your body is
pressing mine
I'll hold my breath
as to not tell
you
I love you
ceaselessly

hold me for
another
moment
and remind me
we're just
friends.

I know
I'm not the
"best"
that you could
find,

but all I
wanted
to do was
love you.

I want to take you
with me,
but I know
you don't
belong there

when your hands
are speaking out
their silent words
of dreaming a-
bout
stages where
the burning
lights are
melting
fear
away

it's
calling you

like no one else exists
because
your hands
nothing else exists
and
so
I can't
take you with me

while the music's
taking you

I found a
cassette tape
at a
vintage
store
while you
hovered over your piano

and later realized
inside
there was
an autograph-
Roy Orbison that read
"Hugs & Kisses - Roy"

I could get it checked
get it appraised
get the papers to
prove it's
true

or I could keep it
on my
dashboard
let the tape spin out
its days and
smile to think that
it's signed,
touched by the
artist who
made it.

In that same way
I could force out
how you feel for
me
make you rise from
your piano,
focus on me
tell me that I bother you
or maybe,
even that you love me

but instead,
I'll let you
spin out your days- be a
friend to
you as you rise
to the top
(I'll always be yours
in candor, I'll be more)
& I'll smile to think that
I've been touched
by an artist
who made it.

As I've gotten older
the veins in my hands sometimes
thicken when
the air is hot
and dry
and I see the bulging
rivers, balloon tubes
full of hot blood
flexing over my
working,
carpal-
tunnel
hands

And sometimes the veins
on my legs look
bluer
than I recall-
when I'm in a hot
bath and
my knee bobs up
from the water
for a breath,
a whale's head-
blue veins like
crocheted doilies
who decorate my
Europe skin

Age is such a
funny thing- just a way
to tell time
my rosy skin
is a physical
clock
and it's the
beautiful
carriage that
transports my
mind.

There are only
26 letters
to rearrange in
ways that explain
what I'm feeling

There aren't enough
lines, dashes, dots on a
page to tell you
that I love you
and I'm
yours

I know that you don't
want me,
says your 26 letters,
and I know that you're
afraid
and I know the way I
put 26
together
can be completely
overwhelming,

but darling,
26 or 7,
3 or 100-
letters are
irrelevant to the
words I want to
say to you
and can't quite
put together

There are only 26 letters
who can't convey
what I'm feeling.

I'm not sure if
drinking the poison
of other men is
helping me
dull the burn
of missing
you

if taking the glass of
red elixir to
my lips, holding my nose with a
pinch of my fingers,
closing my eyes, throwing my head back
and hoping the
blackened scorch of
you leaving me is
gone when I open
my eyes
with someone new
is working

I'm not sure
if waking up
with someone else's
pain-filled
core
who has
loves to forget,
hopes to nurse,
people who have
died and left them
behind is
adding to the
graveyard where
thoughts of you are
being pushed so deep
into who I am
and added to the
ground that
I call my body

My life is filled
with tombstones
of you and no other
man has been able
to dig you out
of me.

I don't know how
but I need to say
I am jealous of
every gust of wind
who spends a
moment in time
wrapped around
you

every day on the
calendar who
demands your attention-
a wristwatch that
always finds your
gaze,
you
need it

I have to say
I'm jealous of each
waking moment
that begs your presence
and that I do not
consume your thoughts
like you do
mine

I know you're not happy
and baby,
I'm unhappy too

but the difference is
you can go on without
having me,
but I'm too jealous to
go on without
you.

I tried to
sleep you
out of my
system

but I only
rose to
find that
I'm more
tired
than before
and sickly
missing
you.

The trees are
quietly
changing
with the
turn table's slow
rotation
and
Autumn's tapping
on the window
sill again
"let me in, my
dear.
Forget about the summer
sun who wilt your
pretty petals..."

as the morning chill
is taking
over and
I wake consumed by
my grand
duvet,
I know each day
is further now
from you.

I don't want to be in love anymore.

It's funny that
hands are the
soul's translators-

always moving in ways
to export internal data
into life's shared existence

To fill up space with
the physicality of
ideas and thoughts-
create waves of
deep-body
ocean dreams

here, now, hands click-clacking
to translate a piece of my
well-versed, English-taught,
trying-to-behave-and-get-it-right-
find-its-place­
soul

Look at these little
starfish translators
always trying
to fabricate all that
I am and
know

it's curious to have such
sweet translators of the
soul