I had to shut the
windows
because the summer
air was hot
and dry
and memories of
southern Oregon
deluged my mind

where I was in the
dale with you
the grassy
wheat stained
vale with you
and your hand held up
every hope of youth's
crusade

A part of me
will always be there
drinking honeyed
lemonade

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

I heard your violin
swoon
and the sand on my back

I'm sinking

the cold wind
feels colder than
last summer
and more familiar
all the same.

and I can write symphonies to your sounds
to the waves
to the crackling of the fire that went out

(long ago)

and I heard your violin play
and I heard it cry
and I heard it reaching for me
as I waited for the waves
the tide
to touch my legs

a
crash

of cold

and the waves hit my knees
and there's salt in my eyes

and I can't stop laughing.
hysterically laughing
and crying
(it's all the same,
Pacific
Atlantic)

I heard your violin swoon and
it kissed the stars
and me.


I'm
  sinking.

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.

Sometimes I think I am
halfway done
a little raw
inside the heart of
my
self

I stand in galleries
in large, track-lit halls
  and look at the art-
   in which
I do not relate
and I can feel my cramped
foot inside
my little shoes
that I bought
because they're
red and I want
to stand out too

I think I'm half way
done-
embarrassed and
  a little pink,
but still hot from
your flame.

I bought a coffee
cup for a quarter
today,
with an old
automobile
and a
crack on the side-

and three, old,
weathered
books
about the way
someone else
sees life.

I found
five records.
Records with
hopeless
love songs,
and two wool skirts because
my love,
the  fall
is coming...

this is life-
this is the
best it gets,
I'm certain.

where I'm smiling in
a thrift
store and
the hope of
evolving
romance
fills me
to the
brim

It's a good thing I bought
a cup
because
my dear,
I'm spilling over.

If I lie here
drenched in
silence
and I see your
chest
rise and fall
in candied
fulfillment
I'll be able to sleep
at night
because my silver tongue
seduced again
evolved into
a siren who can
talk you
straight to ardor.

If I lie here,
soaked in ivory silence,
dripping in your
yearning quiet
a honeyed
aftertaste
to you
then
my chest will rise and
fall and I
will
finally
experience
what it is
to love
and surrender to it
all

The bows out stretched, rising
   , falling
and the clarinet is singing her song
so low-
where the violins
avoid in veiled
soprano
and the basses
in bulk
like to go-

When I close my eyes,
I'm on a path
   and I'm walking
    and Tchaikovsky's notes sound like
      words-
  the timpani sounds like the
beating wings,
the tilted flight,
  the colony of bats
    in aviation slur

when fate keeps on
      knocking
and it's finally
    autumn first-
I am in the
mezzanine,
   and my response to
your andante's
unrehearsed

And you are there,
under composer
charm,
your aura blazing
ochre
I've found that
   everywhere
that I'm
  with you,
             is an
Orchestra's October.

I used to search for
love and soft
words whispered in my
ear
and [brush the hair back
from my eyes]

for hands on hands
cold fingers entwined

dodging rain drops
with your arm over my head to
keep my fried hair
dry.

I used to search for
your gaze
eyes drilling a hole in
me
and [drill until I'm weak in
in the knees]

the laughter
the blush of the cheek

dodging judgment
with my hand in front of me to
keep my sensitivity
dry.

But now I do not search for

love.

I do not care at all.

So I've decided to write you
a love letter.

and this is it,
here,
words dropping from
my bones like
autumn
trees release
their leaves,
&
undress for
winter

Darling,
you are a
forest where
I want to run
and climb
the fallen trees
to count the rings
in all your
whisperings

where flowers
grow like
laughter grows
and I welcome
every bit of light
or shadow cast
behind your
budding
woodland
where I can
feed your
Arcadia

So here I
hope the sun
will always birth your
hopes and
nurse away
your sorrows.

After this
    long
    summer where
the street lights stay
orange after
                nightfall

I'm going to keep telling
myself
if the sun looks like it
   never sets,
then
   the fall is never coming

Bring roses to me by the grave
Of everything we used to have
Every hope i once felt flourishing,
Flowering within me.
Abolishing every glass animal in me –
Shattered and busted.
Broken by the burdens
That once buried your
Soul.
Would you bring lilies to
Me?
Dripping with the nectar of my
Once blossomed truth.
My truth was just a lie in you.
And for a moment,
I can’t catch Spring.

I am brought to you
in my dreams
again tonight.
Why does your ghost choose to haunt me
in a way I can't control?
in a way I can't escape?
in a way I do not wish to go
a path I couldn't choose to break

and **** the stones you stand on!

**** the stones beneath you.

You're the ghost;
and haunted, strucken, disturbed
I have fallen
beneath you.

beneath the vision of my
memories of you

It's true
I belong to the death of you.

and where is my escape!?

I cannot bear the thought
[tonight]
of seeing you again,

seeing your shadows inside of my head
when materially
eternally
It's clear to see
you're perished to me
to everywhere we have and have not been.

but I bring myself to you again.

So what is love
when a song comes,

flutters from the neck
of your wrist,
that dainty wrist which

sang to me
a lullaby,

and fell asleep

a moment in your arms

softly sings the carriage called

your love.

I haven't got sense.
No sense for you.
In coming and leaving.
in exchanges
the norms.
social behaviors.
I play dumb.

While I want you touch me.
Why do I want you to
touch
me?

I plan the
subtle bend of
my waist
[where's your glance?]
i wait
like the kind of wait
that never stops.

You're the end of my wait
that never stops.

You're so beautiful.

and I'm so fragile.
I'm so cracked
and old
and vulnerable.

I watch the bend of your glance
the corner of your eye.

I watch your wrist
bend
as it waves goodbye.

I haven't got sense at all.

It's been a year
since your secrets
flooded out
like a dam burst open
like I was hit in
the chest
by a cascade.
like you thought
i could look at you
the same.
like walls of water
destroy nothing
like cities filled with
water
like broken dams
like lies
aren't hard to fix.
I'd like to see you
contain a river of water
and try to stay
afloat.

Just the thought of you
and words
do not prevail
like they do
like they
usually do

where I'm burning to the top
with passion
desire
tension building
releasing,
insatiably reaching
for
you

What is it within
your soul
that touches me
so

where I am
flooded by the
cadence of
your haunting
amber glow

and every book I've
read
poem I've read
and sentence in me
struggles to
find a way to tell you
that
I'm in utter awe
of you.

You told me,
with your amber
lips and breathy
words that speak like
resin falling from a
tree, honey in
the mouth
of a
   bee-

with your tongue
afraid to
break the seal that
you've made to
cradle and nurse
your thoughts, your
language

You told me,
lying on my bed,
your head on my shoulder,
up too late for an
alarm-clock morning, your
eyes closed.

You told me that
all you want is to be
full of passion
and to know how to talk about
Fine Art with
me.

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.

Sometimes when I'm
running
and my knees are
bobbing in their
  straight and bend,
  and I'm follow
ing the
canal
   path-
     and my
little lungs have
started their quickened
rise and
fall-

there are white tailed
rabbits and
   small black
ducks- sometimes
straw-colored grasshoppers
frozen in
    fear-for-my-running-

and then there's
me  
       me.
questioning if I'm
                                 pushing
hard enough
      fast enough
           Am I
tough enough?
good enough?
Is this enough?

I don't want to hold
       back, but I can
only
breathe so
     hard.

I thought about him today again
as I was
driving,
the narrow, curving road end-
lessly winding

Four years ago this
Christmas
he died
too young for it to be
ok
if death's ever
ok,

Ok,

he doesn't come into my
mind much
anymore, I
admit

but when he does,
it's drilling

it's piercing.

it's a hammer to a nail
incessantly
pounding,
god

when the road is long
when my engine's overheating
when I have spent a morning under
a raging, August sun
painting,

He will always cross my mind because
the sun held him so tightly and then
it wouldn't let him go.

It was 112 today
and you were standing
on the clean, new floors-
a honey brown like from way back
home (I'm not sure if I'll
get used to this place. It's hot here and I miss
the woods)
you held an ice tray in your
hand,
and you told me you had
woke the night before,
for a moment,
from a dream where it were if you'd never
    met me
so in the desert night, the fan blowing on my face, you grabbed my shoulder
as I was dead in sleep-

to make sure that I was
there
   then you asked me,

your bare feet on the
new, cold floor
  if I wanted a Mai Tai
  
you opened the orange
***

With so many
   stars
    in the sky to
pluck,
I'd surely
leave
outer-space
blue

So
I'll pick a
blooming flower,
instead,
&
name it
after
   you

You are not
a sonnet
a love poem
an E.E.Cummings
inked in
abstract, charcoal
dreams

you're not a great poem
written by a great man

or a beautiful
cadence of
words that
flow so softly
from page to page

you're damaged
and troubled
and completely
unsettled
and the way I crave you
is annoying, at best,
and you're a mess of
fractured
sentences
straight-forward
predictable
unwieldy
phrases
and I
can't
stand
how much I
love you
in protest

As your
bedsheets
rise and fall
and your heart is
skipping beats
you're not
lying here

and I'm not
watching you
slowly make
your way to
the pearly gates
clutching onto
your robes

When your eyes are closed
you're in a field
somewhere
leaning on your
old red car
or drawing a charcoal
deer across
the way,
sketching in her
eyes with lead
devotion

with each
rise and fall
you're mimicking
the sun and moon
and you're alive
in every field
in every mountain
in every patch of
dandelions
that I gave you,
as a child

as your bedsheets
rise and fall
and your body's
shutting down
and you don't see me
and
I don't see you

know that I
will take your hand.
I will hold your bony
fingers and
squeeze your
frightened wings

and guide you
into every
meadow,
every pasture,
every field of
splendent gold
that you
ever hoped to
live in.

Oh Becca,
what have you done?
13 years have passed
and you are thin

your sunken
cheeks
a rotten peach
where Texas daisies
used to grow

a decade has past
and your demons
can't stop talking

that you're in the bathroom
again
you're flying so high on the tiles
again
dreaming of love you were
never given
again
(I know
your father
kicked you out and that
your mother never told you
that she cared)

And I know what he did to you.
And I know that it broke you
and that you can't find a way
to cope with the pain
of thinking love wasn't for you

Oh Becca,
love is for you.

I'm so **** lonely
and you're so
****
smart.

and I can't stop seeing
your face
as a mirror.
**** this house of
mirrors.
They don't make sense at all.

Waves of troubled blue
wash over
me.
I sold my guitar
6 weeks ago.
I gave away my favorite pair of
heels.
I cut my hair
and closed my eyes
and felt comfort in the teal.

I bought a dress;
it's see-through.
I've only worn it once.
On the day I tried to see my father,
but became the victim of
resistance.

I haven't seen my dad in far too long.

And I haven't stepped outside the waves.
Even though they swallow me up
and choke me whole,
singing
sea foam to the grave.

I take pictures of myself a lot.
Of my hands,
my legs,
     my feet.
I'm on a rock
and there's
  a storm,
brutally
   rocking
  me.

How waves of blue've
washed over me.

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's music
in the whistle
of the kettle
in the morning

and the sun,
who rises in the
east and gently
whispers
"you must wake up,"

in peeling an
apple and letting
the blade touch
your hand,

music in the restraint of a cut

music
in the slow inhale
when the town
beats you down
hard

and your hands
are holding your
head against
collapsing in
bed again

And there's music
when you put
your head down
in the shower
and the water
feels like fire
and you're drenched
in sweat and nightmares
and the jealousy of days

There's music in collapse
or cadence in you,
anyway.

I am a child again
in a cardboard
maze
we built with
old boxes
in the alley.
Stepping
over spiders
and puddles
(again,
I love Oregon rain)
screaming like
my lungs had no
        ending.
I'm a child again.
Your eyes.
I know what you are
thinking.
****, I hope
you're thinking.
I'm so ******* crazy.

Deep in
the walls
of a
church in
Strasbourg
hides the
stones who
saw me fall

if I could be
a queen
a saint
I'd choose
the fly
on the wall

to see you with
a glass in
hand
swirling
crimson
wine

and watch you
walk the snow-
capped
streets
&
imagine you
were mine.

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

Falling
in the cobblestone
orange
thumbing through maps
of the
Roman Empire,

And the street musicians are
playing their sad songs of
days on end

Where the food carts are sizzling,
and the flowers,
in full bloom,

la vie, la vie, c'est la vie, mon amour

the blood in my chest
can feel the blood in yours
(and in me too)
for the first time in four
years

I couldn't offer
myself to you, love,
and I know
you wouldn't take me
if I did.

falling in love,
falling in
cobblestones of
orange
isn't sweet
or sincere

it's rigid
and sharp.
It's planks of wood
with splinters missing
rusting barbwire.

It's sleeping at night
with your ghost
words and
your image
in my mind
and everything I couldn't say
would never say

And the street musicians are
playing their sad songs of
days on end

Where the food carts are sizzling,
and the flowers,
in full bloom,

*la vie, la vie, c'est la vie, mon amour

It's more than words can say
It is.
I must be a fool in love.
I must be falling as you
climb the rocks for me.
I see you in
love with me.

I haven't skinned my knees in way too long.

I haven't fallen in the dirt for
so
so long.

I must be a fool in love.

When I knock on Death's door,
I'll bring a bottle of wine
and I'll be sunburnt and flushed

I'll arrive in a Hot Rod,
engine revving,
dressed in a cloud of exhaust

I'll arrive when the sun is setting
and the air's still thick and hot
and seeping
with summer

and I'll be laughing like
it's the Curtain Call and
I've received a
standing ovation

When I knock on Death's door
I'll rap five times
I'll take a deep breath
I'll rub my love-drunk eyes
and
when the door opens,
I'll be the perfect guest
and thank Death for the
invitation.

The turn-table's in
rotation and
Otis is rallying
my sin,

Oh,
your cambridge blues
are piercing
me
where I'm kneeling in your
pew
like God himself
has been here,
like God himself
cast you

you dust another
record
and you
phrase it on your
shelf

you're everything,
an eclectic,
class-act
tapestry,
boy, you're something
else.

I'm going back to the place where
Poems are born
where I first thought a thought to
write about, worthy of print and
text
worthy of my time I spread so
thinly

I return to the place where
poems are born, in
thought and in
Existence

in a moment's breath, a hope, a fear of
losing, love of
gaining

This is the place where
Poems are born
Between my hand and a piece of
Paper-
persuaded by the small
breaths of time spent
seeing more than I
have time to
Paint or care to
craft

In a moment's shudder of not-knowing, persevering, maybe not believing in praying-
I don't know anything

Except that I am the place where
poems are born

"A poppy bud
is blooming
somewhere in a field"

and I am lighting a candle
my feet sore from the day
spent working, spent
painting the way light moves
across a field

"It's opening
and no one sees it."

and I am washing out
rings in my coffee cups
again, hands dry
rinsing the suds off
of shiny metal

"It's funny,
no one tells a flower to bloom."

and I am thinking about what
you said to me
about red poppies and lavender.
and I am pulling the blankets
up over my eyes,
and no one sees it.

No one tells a flower to bloom
or
to love you as hopelessly as I do.

I'm not sure what happened
my first night at the
symphony -
it was a dark October
& you brought the
thunderous wonder of
        the Oregon
                   sea

I'm not sure what
touched me as your notes
lead me
to the pier -
      I'm drowning in idolatry
               for your beacon
                     & chandeliers

In orange light,
and October's amber
flood
it's the first time I've felt my pulse, my bones, my hands, my heart,
my blood

In a room
awkwardly shifting in my
chair
I'm noticing my body moving, it's the first time I'm awake and
I'm aware

For years I've lived,
trapped in a haunting
plea
It's the first time I've been pulled out and seen that she's in the room
with me.

I watched the bouquet that you bought me
bloom inside my house.
I watched the swollen buds, not
quite green and not quite pink,
fluttering with life inside their
walls, slowly pushing to
release them from their
chambers to the great unknown of
my living room: this is about you,
you know.

I watched the leaves that you brought me
slowly make a change
quietly and faithfully
diligently, canopies
beneath flowers,
(leaves are so
  overlooked)

and I also watched the vase that you got me
I watched the ups and the downs of
the ripples of a grey white creamy glass
bumpy and textured and not afraid to compete
with carnations, to watch them die, to hold fresh cuts
again, nurses of the garden holding tired, flower
    bones

but beneath the buds on the new frontier
the leaves who work in shadows,
          and the vase that's seen more death than you or I, alone-
                            is your hand
I watch your hand that you present me,
lingered, hanging in the air
like a pear about to fall
the hand that chooses,
picks,
holds flowers,
  and doesn't forget that leaves
and stems and
bark
also need loving-
your hand that holds a vase and then
holds all the garden in
    me.

It's always a whistle to
catch my
attention.

A man, a gym coach, a steaming hot
tea kettle.

It's always a sharp note of bird
song- though,
au contraire,
when a bird actually whistles.
When she actually sings,
I seem to be
the only one who
stops to listen
though I know she's not looking
for
attention.

Sometimes
in the
Devil's hour,

when your form
is next to
mine,

I can feel, can
hear your body pulsing,
twitching,
speaking
with the world

I'm never sure
if I should
let it talk,
release its
stories to the
night,

or if I
should brush
you with my fingers
and pull you back
into existence
next to me.

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.

I don't know why I came here
again

the light is like a river
through the panels
on the ceiling
and the white bricks
on the wall

a wild call
of salmon swimming
through a stream
and
memories plastered
on the high beams

and it all feels like
a different life
one where I knew you
where I loved you
where you were not
a stranger
a lamp post
anyone or anything
I walk by on the street

the crooked bus seat

I don't know why I came here again
when I have a new life now
where my dreams are inches
from my hands

but still in a river, just the same

where my finger is a fish hook
and I can reel you in again
and lie on my back,
feet in Deer Creek

I don't know why I came here
when Oregon's all that's left of you and me.