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 glimpses of
gold when
your shades are
rose-tinted
and when
the sting
of the past
is a feeling that's
       fading

and the thought of
next winter's
from mildew to
Emerald
and December's
devil
is
no longer
haunting

When there are curtains
of gold to be
draped all around
and suddenly sadness
is a song, not a
sound

and somewhere hums a
hope that
there's more we
can't see

there's a casket of
petals where
grief used to be

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

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

When I saw you,
I looked into your
Eyes and
Found your soul

When I saw you,
You saw me and
I could
Tell you knew

Now everything is
Different
And I
Feel brand new

I've been changed
For the better but
I'm more
Of myself too.

The glow of you.

Sunset on your face.

There is no erasing that moment from my mind.

Feet walking,
Old soles, new soles,
In the gravel and up wooden stairs.
Brown knuckles gripping rails.
The dust is kicking up again.
and there is August  sweating down your face,
Gold sun on your forehead and shadows of the willow tree painting pictures on your skin.

There is no wind here.
But [chaos] skirts are moving, hair is swinging, arms are wielding against
a clear blue sky.

A circus of American Flags, men
parading.
I can hear 102 degrees
sweating on the floor.
I hear nothing else at all.

There is silence in this chaos,
all in the glow
[a sunset]
of you.

I've been filling up
my glass
night and night
again

peering in the opening
my lips pressed to
the rim

I've been swallowing
my pain again
frothing in my
beer

I've been filling up
my glass
too tall and
lying through my
cheers.

Have the birds gone yet?
did they leap from
muddy water
yet

and disturb
cold, placid lakes
in a hurry to escape
the chilling frost,
the snow.

I wish I had wings
to carry me away,
a hurry to escape your
chilling frost.

The piano is singing
below your hands
and I can hum in
tune

I love to be a channel
playing refrain,
under
you

and still the drums
beat slowly
while I'm
masked in your
perfume

acoustic stringing
tenderly
beneath the
chiming moon.

It's finally working like
scarlet
like patterns of roses on
rocks.
Like fossils embedded like
stickers
and lizards our own little
            voyeurs

It's finally working like
summer.
like designs of sunsets with
garnet tipped rays-

Like my sandals are
kicked off and
you're in the
garden
and our chipped
china
black
coffee
for
days

Tonight, as the sun has waltzed
full circle, her dainty toes
unnoticed through the
sky

and the oven is hot from baking
and my hands are dry from
bleach and Arizona grey

I'm lighting the candles
and setting lights on the
largest window pane

It's Christmas Eve and
I'm waiting for you in
  four days straight of rain.

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.

I'm back in the valley
where the screens have fallen out the windows
now and
the cicadas
sing like a choir
and you're their God

I've resigned to loving
you,
             endlessly

There's a lady
who smokes her
cigarette
every time that
I drive by

her hair is long
her glasses fogged
over
blank and lifeless
eyes

she's always sitting
on cement
her clothes are old
and sagged

in an apartment called
"The Aquarius"
where she
lives from drag
to drag

My eyes are always
trained on her
and her coffin stick
she's slain

She's alone
and so am I
it's
cigarettes and pain.

At civil dawn
I'm counting -
the seconds where it's
indisputable the sun
moves
where names get caught in
time that invariably
forges on
I'm getting caught up, spun around, lost in the cogs of a
stranger's swan
song.

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.

You haven't called since you were 21

since the world had
laid its
hand on you
and you had fallen
down to
love's abyss

you haven't shown your face since
you were 21

since he took you to
a fathomless deep
where you held your
breath to swim
against the
darkest current
the deepest cavern
of anguish
and of regret, too

I have a picture of you.

an old photograph that's
sort of hazy
where your arm
is wrapped around me
and the August sun is
high

I'm waiting, love

I'm waiting for you
to surface from the
dungeon that is
jealousy and from
the sorrow that is
fear
and emerge out
of lover's angst
until you're in the river
and the water becomes
clear.

In tall pines and
night storms
when we were
close
to over

& hiking with
my long hair
down
in frantic search
of clovers

in our dancing,
& tambourines,
your whiskey drinking
sober -

You live as a
memory
     in
perpetual
October.

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.

I think that
I was there
when
Venus
danced from
the foam

her ankles
kissing
the sea

like a conch,
put me
to your ear
and you'll
hear the ocean
in me.

I love you.

I love every piece of confetti in you
a swirling cauldron of
passion,
coral
passion

falling from the stars
like shattered mirrors

I love you like I love purple
black
swirling dust that settles
in a tide pool

like sunlight through trees
the warmth of a fire
the birth of Aphrodite in
a dancing sea of foam.

You are every bit of the universe
every breath
every movement
every bird who ***** his wings.

You are everything beautiful and wonderful and confetti.

Up a little coiled
street, hardly touching
yards of palms and
cacti-
a street asleep the way
a ribbon lies,
untouched and full of
Christmas
  promise

up the corkscrew street, your hand in mine

and all the sleepy
little
foggy town
is a midnight shade of
red

The Copper Queen Mine
may be haunted
but I'm too in love
to see an ending or
   the dead.

The great escape
I long for
the adventure
I dream of.
I suddenly want to go
alone.
leave memories behind
like fallen trees,
a wind storm,
is what it'd be to
you.
The great escape
would break you.

I've only strength
to break
myself,
and let you through the cracks

and cover me.

I've been running
in my thoughts
lately
wondering why I can't
conquer
you

after all the pats
on the back
and how
successful
I've been
means nothing

I've been thinking about you
lately
and why I'm not
smart
enough
beautiful
enough
her
enough
for you

and I'll lay these thoughts
down
on Cow Creek
where my legs
reflect the sun
and the skippers
hop the water
like they hope for something
new

you are the nest
and I'm the swallow
swooping incessantly
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.

On nights it's
humid & it's
dark,
where the heavy
sky is pressing
like it's tar and
like it's pitch,
when the clouds
become a
parachute
billowing with all
the heat of
June-
weighted by the
thought of the
impenetrable you-

I'll remember what you said
to me
about space,
and dust,
mortality,
& watch the murky
black sky
fade to blue,
I'll tread the
thoughts of sleep,
the hopes of dreams,
the need in all of everything,
the incandescent crystalline,
stars,
who found me you.

Cursive letters to you
to me
red flags up on
mailboxes

anticipation

and love

and you touched this paper.
Oh God, you touched this paper.

And the ink !
... belongs to you
And the stamp !
... belongs to you
And holy hell

My heart belongs to you!
Cursive letters to you
and me.

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.

I have followed, wondering behind you.

  Always curious, always a dancer.

  Always flowing, twisting.

  The snake wants to know more.

                                                  

  We were ephemeral.

  We were nothing but a season.

  The ethereal love of an era.

  I wish  had meant more [to you].



  I am the porcelain dancer.

  And I am tripping, I'm stumbling, I'm falling apart.

  I can hear our rhapsody destroying me

  transforming me,

  making a cobra out of me.



  Oh, to be the dancer.

I saw you shaking
trembling
unable to
control your
broken body

I saw your breathing
become
harsh and quiet
so faint that
I couldn't hear
it

and then I saw you
dying
I saw your soul lift up
and out.

I saw you break free
from the corpse
that could no
longer hold
the jubilance
the splendor
the joy that
is your soul

float away, my love
float away
towards the laughter
called the stars
and to
the dark side of the moon.

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.

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?

You're in the other room
making deals
with the
devil

and I'm in bed
in my wilting
sheets
watching the candle's
flame
dance about

& the Christmas lights
are still up in
the window
and I ruined my slippers
when I ran into the street
because I thought you
were gone

making deals with the devil
deals with the devil
and I'm still staring
at the flame.

"Dear Sarah,"

Just this little word.
that puts me in agony
complete agony

I completely ache for you.

"Dear Sarah,"

a formality.

But you don't know how it makes me
weak
to read these words
(over and over)

If I could only be so dear to you

as precious as
white marble
I'd be porcelain, I swear
I would be a whisper,
an exhale
a saccharine goddess

how I have been so carved by you

"Dear Sarah,"

nothing and everything
to me.

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.

Across the Delta
Ponds
the frogs are
chirping

and the winged
geese have
flown the
day away

and every
Tuesday
wind is
here,
engulfing

as I watch the
day's
glow fade
from gold
to grey.


the strip across
the sky is
like a puzzle

without borders,
just an orange
or
reddish hue

and the moon
above the
field is
slowly
rising

In all the
ecstasy of
Oregon,
I want you.

Thick, dense,
pine tree
forests, ash
grove trees
line the creek

where tree leaves
mask the summer
sky,
dance in their
canopy

the dirt is red
and green
and mud and
soft beneath our
shoes

I never meant to
push you, love,
or live trapped in there
with you.

I've been barreling across oceans
lately.

Across blue and green
and salty winds
(my hair in a mass,
as I
sail, sail, away)

I've been closing my eyes and tearing
over waves.
barely letting the foam brush
my toes
(a tingling tickle, that I
choose to
ignore).

ignore
so many times that I
can't turn around and go back
and hold a sconce to my ear and hear the
ocean anymore.

I've become a desert snail.

Trudging through the sand
(so hot it
scorches
my stomach
and
I can
almost
hear you laughing)

up hills, up hills I go
of burning sand
(they're coals)
and I feel it underneath
my fingernails
as I climb
I climb
I climb
where I can almost touch the sun.
where I can feel the warmth of kindness on my face
again.
where I can imagine your eyes
the color of a garden snake

the cruelty of a garden snake.

In my shell,
I hear no ocean.

I've become a desert snail.

I saw a trail
of flowers
leading to
the stairwell

as I brought the
groceries in,
through the building's lobby

the plastic handles digging ditches in my hands

I saw the fallen
geraniums, pink,
coupled by old,
and drying leaves
and scraps of stem,
buds who
never had the chance to bloom

I saw
the perfect path
to follow,
or a path to
walk away.

You're digging ditches in my hand.

I want to tell you
it all
I want the words to
pour out
cascade and crash
like waterfalls
like rain drops
like everything eventually
comes down, come down
with me

Fire
and I'm standing at the
barre
my feet pressed in
to hard wood
floors sprung up
beneath the dance

Fire and you're
here inside
my mind; I
count the time
and plie,
grand plie
my arm, a wing, it
takes me down

Fire and
I love you.
Fire and I
desperately
hopelessly love
you

and down,
and down I go.

It's another day
where the sky is
clear and blue
and I want to push my hopes
up, up,
up and cover the sky with
cloudy dreams

It's another day
whose bound to turn
to night
and I want to lift my arms
up, they're up,
and hold my hopes as
the sun comes crashing
down.