So in moments of cello
and measures of
rendezvous,
Dvorak concertos &
adagios too...
in moments of breath
when reading the lines,

it's your hands holding
a set of strings,
and afterwards, then
mine

The way the light is the star of the dark
is how obviously I love you.
Never faltering, steady, and sultry
simple is how I long to love you.
Like the moon lights up the sky,
is how your soul has changed my life.
And like the sun rolls off the land
is the warmth I feel inside your hands.

We are tucked inside a flower
we are ancestors of the rose
the petals hold us closely
...you and me enclosed...

There's a dam that's built around us
pushing you closer to me
the walls are pushing in my feelings
You and I become the sea.

We are enclosed spaces
under the flowers, we're concealed.
I am everything you've opened
and you're the reality of surreal.

We are drops within a faucet
we are love I can't portray
We are flowing towards our destiny
We are sealed.
We are fate.

I have fallen off that
cliff again.
That rigged cliff
that gently kissed
the night (away).
The rocky cliff,
it cannot hold our
weight.
And so who is to
fall, if not you?
(Then me).
I couldn't catch
the stars for you,
this time.

You swore you'd never lie to me
again.
Remember the aching I
carried for you?
So high within my arms.
Safe and high within my arms?

You'd never tell a lie
again.
one that would make me cry.
You said I wouldn't cry.
But how could I not
when you lied to me
again.
and how do I trust
the tongue
that disrupted my reality?
disrupted the picture
I had of you with me.
And you swear you'll never lie.
again.

I fell off a mountain.
Face up,
the wind carrying me down
like an anchor,
a falling bomb

the sky has never looked
so blue before
and rocks,
never
so tall

where a little rabbit is running
hopping over black,
blue bleeding through
the willows
And I'm gasping for air
and laughing

hysterically laughing

for the joy of blue.
the joy of here and now.
the joy of running through the
woods like an animal.
where in Michigan

you can't see me falling.

Darling, life isn't
really
complicated
at all.

I want to tell
the world you're mine
and swoon to every
color in the
Louvre
to every track of
Chopin playing
painting love
inside my mind

I want to dissolve into
conquest
into pomegranate
crimson desire
and melt like
candle
wax deep
into
the
night

I want to feel your
arms in
mine
your touch
in mine
the slowly lingering
vibrato of your
high note against
mine

high key
and saturate
and every ounce
of vermillion from the
tube to where it falls it falls it falls
and you are mine.

I put up the
   tree and my
  little hands
ached-
I'm not old,
I'm hardly twenty-
six

I've worked so
hard
my hands still
can't handle
loneliness
  and sticks.

Mosquito tap on the glass

one more time

mosquito crook, tap,
nose to the glass.

you can't catch me anymore.

Sometimes,
for a moment,
time escapes me.
When I am alone at night
With the tv on
A forkful of noodles in an empty hand

Where has all the time gone?

When did I become unable
To keep track of the ticking clock?
flashing in front of me
memories of a distant vibrancy
I once held in my palm

Now ,
[without hesitation]
the remote control
A loosely clasped fist.
An empty dish
And a burnt out awareness of time.

You're dark blue
and I'm in love
and I don't know how to be
alone
because you're my seatbelt
holding me back on
every ***-holed
road

To see the fall, the bend at the waist,

The length of your hair set around you.

The parting of your lips, and the fleeting of hot breath.

It touches me, no tomorrow.

I know there is no tomorrow.

I am defeated again, inches from you,

from the branches, the muscles, the veins,  the sinews.

Inches from all you used to say to me

From your mind that remembers the softness you gave to me.

I’m

Straining and reaching

receiving nothing from you.

To see the fall, the end of amour

The end of everything I was to you.

No tomorrow.

I would still try to be it for you.

Be zeal, be warmth, be tomorrow for you.

My bony hands, cold and reaching for you.

The porcelain wrist that used to feel

the leave-taking of your lips

Crooks to no tomorrow.

Crooks and croons, there’s no tomorrow.

There’s no tomorrow,

I pray 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.

I've been trying to talk
to my heart,
lately
not in a "listen to your heart" BS
kind of way

but like
we're almost friends,
pals,
someone I sort of know, who knows not
that
I'm always afraid

sometimes I sit
on my bed,
in the sheets,
and I listen to the naked
words of everything
my heart might want
to say to me
and I try
to start a conver-
sation-
"hey, whatcha up to? Is there something that I
need to know? Why don't you listen to me? Can you not
hear me like
I cannot hear you?"

that there's nothing,
or there's me,
maybe it's just me.

I want to know the secrets
of
knowing when your
soul is talking
and knowing when you're
full of **** and hoping for
an answer just
like me.

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 go back and
forth from
knowing
love is real
and does not
exist at all

but for a moment
usually right before
the sun sets at dusk
and there's a veil of
light flooding
the sky, a blushing
pall of pink

I feel the pull of
ecstasy;
the magnetizing force
of longing in
sleepy hues
of orange and ginger
where the thought of you
shields my skin.

so what is gravity,
if not love
and a sunset,
if not love,
and this life,
if there is not love
to watch the sunset and
know that I exist.

Love is a sculptor
taking me into
her gentle hands
and pushing, pulling
molding me into
a shape I've never
seen before

She's kicking her leg and her heel
is spinning the wheel
and her fingers are pulling me up
into a tower of
hope, hovering, always
hovering
against her bare hands
on the edge of collapse

I've spent a lot of time
in the pottery room
and a lot of hours
near the kiln
but love is modeling me
into her portrait


laughing,
all this time I thought it was I who was the artist

It's one of those days where nothing make me happy.

No chocolate, no paint, no clanging of the bells
that usually bring me joy.

And it's the first snow in a year.

the heater's on, covered in blankets
and wrappings.
Adorned with shoes and sweaters and things.
Hair in two braids, my glasses are clean.

And the snow, it falls,
in large white clumps.

It's one of those days where nothing seems
quite
right.

Too many questions, indifference, I sit and stare
at the pasty white wall.

I need to get out.

my nails are pink and my stomach is full. And I know
that I'm loved beyond reason.

It's one of those days where nothing makes me happy.

Dreams do not come true
when you're bursting with talent
and passion
and a paintbrush is your weapon.

Dreams do not come true
on stage when you feel it with
every inch of your body
when you've turned yourself into
something you're not
in the limelight.

Dreams do not come true
when you can't pay for
your dinner
and the lottery goes your way
and you lose your way.

Dreams do not come true in Paris
in love and hope and joy of the city
when the streets are littered with
garbage and hookers

Dreams do not come true.

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.

I thought that
reaching out my hand from
  black coats and layers
that
slipping off a glove to
let my fingers out
to feel you
would
make
you
feel
me
too.

When I was 13,
they told me to
step up to the line
at the dunk tank.

Girls throw from that line.

When I was 13,
reality punched me
in the gut

the first time I
became aware
that because I'm a girl,
I'm weak
I need help

When I was 13,
I hesitated,
I stepped up to the line,
the girl line

the first time
I was told I
couldn't do it
because
I am a girl

When I was 13,
I said no
I said that made no sense.
I said I didn't want a way out.

A girl push up.
A girl pull up.

An excuse,
I'm a girl.

So they let me go
to the further line,
and I watched my target,
the man in the tank,
sitting on the pedestal,
laughing at me.

When I was 13,
I hit the target
with a swift wrist,
a hard throw,
my shoulder back and
the sun burning on me

my muscles flexing
eye on the ball

Because I'm a girl?

I watched him fall into the dunk tank.

with every dance
I forget your face
as I pique across the floor and
turn and turn
and turn
and spin
and try
to lose the dizzy
refuse to stumble
to the barre.

you always loved a ballerina.

I forget your cold
words
as I pas de chat
across the floor
and I jump so high
like my feet are burning
like the floor is
filled with
burning coals
the feeling I had
the last time I saw you.

Jump, you doe,
hop away.
get out of here.

I forgot you until
the waltz turn.
until my arms went in and out
and my feet pranced up and down.
and I spun and I spun
and spun
and let the dizzy
fly away as
I refuse to stumble
to the barre.

I had never been a dancer until now.

I can see the city
lights out
my window

after painting
cityscapes of
Spain
with that
little set of
watercolors I bought
in that small town
(by the lake)
so much like home
(a trinket in my hands)

each light is like
a poem to me
a song
or laugh
(contained)

if I could contain your laugh
and ship it back to me
away from arid cities
and the red sun
in the sky
I think
it would
look like all the
lights out my window
each night here in Madrid

and as I would lie
to fall asleep
and look at the orange glow
the moon
sitting in the dark blue
sky
I think of all the lights
that can't go out
when I look into your eyes.

It's the third
cup of coffee
and my hands
have never
been so
warm

where Seattle's
grey's
enchanting and
Bainbridge island's
in your eyes
again

I'd run down
Alaska
run up the angled
stairs,
cemented,
orca paintings
plastered overhead
and step my toes on-
to the ferry
where
your cigarette in hand's
releasing steam like it's
sailing away with me
too

the gulls are crying
&
inside I'm
crying too
because
I exist
in Washington
on
a ferry who can't stop
going back for
you.

A seed that broke open
in the brownest dirt I'd ever seen
like my eyes were part of the earth
a neighbor seed
a neighbor seed watching you crack

and I thought you were falling apart
and I thought you were breaking so far
so deep
in a way that I couldn't sew you back
up
[where no amount of thread or love or joy or hope could mend you]
I love you.

buried by all of the things I put on you
all of the ways that I smothered you
all of the soil that I couldn't sift through

until
in a moment, green
a burst of viridian joy and I'm inhaling
every millimeter of life that glows through you, out of you, thank God existence lives
through you

A crack isn't malign at all.

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.

I was already
falling
  when the rain
came down

like checkered
streams of
   tinsel
that make
us into
ornaments - a hook,
an eye

I always fall
  come
wintertime.

I've thought often
about
    the eye of the
storm -

the thunderous
  consumption that cold does
to
   warm

The way that the
   dust has a
    longing to fly

when the touching
of temperature
orchestrates
the
sky

I've thought often
about
how two things
come together

be it people
  or colors,

    uncontrollable
weather

The way that what's
   different will
    find its extreme

Pinnacle moments
are the day thoughts
I dream.

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.

I don't want to search
for the dark side of the moon.
Someday, I'll just know.

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 drank weak
coffee out of
your reno cup
the casino cup
with the clown face
plastered on

At your funeral
I filled your reno
cup with coffee
spoons for
people to stir away
their thoughts
and bite their tongues
and find excuses to
look at something swirling
where there is no
end and no beginning
because the hand just
keeps on stirring.

A spider crawled out of my
sheets
last night.
I couldn't stop watching it
run.
watching it scurry
The chase of time.

feel the chase of time.

when did I get old?
i know i am too old.
I know that I'm too old
to yell
"Dad! I see a spider!"
I couldn't stop watching it

run.

It was so silent as I felt
Your hand in mine.
It’s heavy, you told me.
It’s heavy.
Heavy is the word I have grown to fear
On the lips of you, lover.
The lips that have been so kind
To me
Sweet to me
Fidelity.
But that’s all soiled now
With the dirt of lover’s past.
Of moments where you fell – I couldn’t catch you!
Moments where you didn’t want to be here
Anymore.
Lover, the ribbons are unraveling
In this quiet.
This quiet hum of the engine (roaring) and
The thought of only
Your hand in mine.
The shade of your eyes
Looking back and forth,
Whispering forgive me.
But all I hear is heavy.
Buried by your heavy.
Forgive me, laughs your heavy.
Your hand is so heavy in mine.

I've been loving you so
long
now it seems
and I do not tire
of one chord, one stroke
one stream of earth
or gravel beneath you.

I've been loving you awhile now
loving your shapes
the lines of your silhouette.
And I bet,

this will not cease so soon as young loves
often do.

I've been loving you steadily now, how
since the day my eyes saw you
and felt the wind [first touched you] blow towards me.

the moment I couldn't catch my breath
when I fell within you.
I've been loving you so long now
[it certainly seems]

and it seems like time
can't measure us
[contain us]
limit us
at all.

I've been loving you so long now.

God,
I am falling.
God,
I'm so blessed,
but I'm falling.
God,
I'm so weak,
as I'm falling.
God,
I can't speak,
but I'm calling.
God,
You're so strong,
I'm unworthy.
God,
It's so long.
Quite a story.
But God,
I can't speak,
hear me calling,
God,
I'm so weak
and I'm falling.

I'm humming to
Chopin
again
and the fan
is fast and
spinning
out
spewing
out
its quick
churned air,
its humid,
hot, and
sticky
air
and the piano is
derailing
i am trying
to defeat
love
and I am
failing.

When I look down
from a plane
and see the
foamy white
of day-clouds, &
imagine if
the birds can
hear me here,
I imagine this
thing
and another-
where you're
beneath these
patterns
and where I'm above
the sky
is there a sort
of way like a
cloud,
that I have no
perceived
beginning or an
ending?

I sang a song
in the forefront of the storm
In the gush of warm
before
the rains
come from far away

before black silk nights
are biting cold
and stars are
nothing but
shattered glass
within a sky and times are hard
because they say "you'll never make it."

and rain
and rain
descends like bullets again
bullets again
in the shape of
a slow, deep breath
where I'm too quick to
exhale

I sang a battle song at the top of my lungs
in the pool of each breath
in the depth of a sky
so crystal
I could pirouette on
obsidian and feel the fire
of a star

I sang a song before the storm came
before I would not be stopped
and where every arm that goes to hold me
back
will only find infinity
and endless velvet skies

I broke your heart
with make-up
and song.

with flooding light and
pages and pages of
monologues and
songs to sing
to read
to learn and feel in every
waking moment
(aching, to you).

I broke your heart with passion.
with love
with joy
with tears streaming down my face
and applause.
and encore and encore, encore!
with bow after bow and roses.

I broke your heart with dancing.
with dancing and letting my soul
peek out
to appear
where I cannot see your face
(within a crowd).

I broke your heart with time.
with time i had to juggle
to walk a tight rope on stage.
and put myself in the lion's den
to do what i love
again
and again.

I broke your heart with play.

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.

When I was a child
and I rode in the car
at night in the light of
the moon

I'd watch out the glass
at the fir trees we passed
where the deep woods whispered
and crooned

Abyssal black and
spattered in stars
the sky was suffused
in night

It's one moment where
I was never scared
but reassured by the dark's
gift of light.