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 imagine drinking the
world up in one big
gulp
a swoosh of angst
and all of time would
fade away
diminish into
little hopes
and dreams.

Then I remember stars
and the blackest
blacks with
purple
flickering and
the
gold flecks
in your eyes

The sun!
a charcoal shadow
of a cave
beneath
the plateau where
you plucked a
yellow flower and
you pinned it in my
hair.

I'm too full to
the top
to drink anymore.

Isn't it funny,
that walking through a
sun-stained, dripping golden
heat garden full of
green and green and green and
pops of
viridian veins
bursting in quiet,
outstretching desire to
feel the warmth of fire of the
closest, neighbor star
that

I find
myself
more lonely
more confused and
for lack of understanding,
hopelessly wondering
what it is, next to
flowers, I am supposed
to do?

Flowers live and drink the sun and God,
to be a flower too.

It's 1778 miles

    from where I am, here
and you are somewhere
else

I don't know why
the further away
  you fly
  the more afraid
          I am:

there is no cage to hold you!
or tool big enough to clip your
   wandering wings

It's 1778 miles from
  where we've packed away mud
     and sticks and feathers that were going to protect us from
  
    the storms- you told me.

and still you've found your
self
a continent
away
and here,
  the temperature
    is drop
               p
                 i
                  n
                    g
                       fast

I haven't been saturated
in rain for
some time
or bathed in soapy shades
of color -
I haven't touched my hip-
bone
to a ballet barre
or even
talked to my
    mother

I haven't felt the tiny hand
   of a child touch my arm
or ran without the need for speed
    or been to my best friend's
farm

- it happened a few years ago
and I really am not sure why
I fell into a sleepy spell
between now and when you
died -
  I moved to the desert,
and I hardly said goodbye...

It's the hottest place I've ever been,
but that's not what made me dry.

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.

I haven't forgotten you,
when I am chopping meat on
the counter,
and my little hands house swelling
veins over
kitchen heat and stove top steam
and rosemary and
bay leaves

When my tiny arms are
reaching for a cup that I'd
forgotten in the
microwave, still hot to the
touch by the
handle
and I'm
pouring broth into the
pan that you cannot
eat from.

I have not forgotten.

I lost a mountain
worth of soul the
moment
I gave in
and wrapped
the ivy 'round my legs
and let the carnivore
**** me in.

I lost an ocean
of passion when
I sat in front of you
and closed my eyes
to lose the pain.

Empty pit
and empty hole
and where did all the
roses go
when I can't dance
and I can't sing
and no one even knows my name.

And now I know
how to
trade a soul
for empty space.

Well,
who would have
thought it would
end like this?

with just what I wanted
in hand
and the painful sense
of regret
when you give away
what you had.

I bought a book of
empty sheets
to find
something to
do

and as I filled the creamy
leaves I only thought of
you

I set the kettle, warmed my
hands,
I chose my favorite tea

I turned onto the
last back page and scribbled
"you and me."

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.

How is it
I fall in love
with everything
and with
no one
at all

I'm preparing for the
fall-out, it's lover's
Armageddon
Where you're in
San Francisco and you're
going to a wedding

And I'm in Arizona with my
goddess-empire dream
work it work it, hustle baby
I'm Palo Verde Queen

We're preparing for the
fall-out - our supreme
divination
and you're waiting for your next train
home
- Californian Exaltation

from one dry heat to another
two lovers, hope-possessed
work it work it,back to me
and to our honeyed love nest.

It's curious that
the universe
chose to
exist as
me

and now I spend a
lifetime trying
to choose to
exist as
it, too

My brush is full of
fall-in-love hues.
cinnamons and cardamom,
   rich garnets buried inside rocks
     that have yet-to-be cracked
   open.

my hand is full of
tiny thoughts,
  the color leather & lapis
lazuli,
where the south is leaning up her chin
to give the north a kiss.

I'm going to
present you with the colors
like a row of
exotic spices-
expensive, condensed, the palate,
this palette,
of every world I can see you
in.

The roses are
in flower
and they're
climbing towards
the sea foam sky
where Aphrodite's
singing and she may have
played my song

the song where you are
dancing and your shoes
are made of something
that is causing my knees,
weakening,
melting in place
and bloom

how is it that love grows?
that roses grow?
that deep in the
drought of summer,
our cornhusk
baker-miller
summer

how is it my heart
expands
and grows
so feverishly
for you?

People are always saying
"expand your horizons"
and I'm trying to do that

I'm trying to meet
other painters
and I am talking to
strangers in stores

and I am imagining
flying to Spain
and making meetings
in the market place
where the misters
soothe my skin
when sunny streets
are scalding

These stories are
seldom told
where I'm trying to come
out of my little ol' shell
and expand, stretch
my wings and take
up the space I was made
for.

I don't want to
see the ash
trees blow
with wind that
used to touch you

or watch the
swallows'
shadow show
dipping
over blue

say exactly
how you changed me
and how I
affected you

you don't know
when
you left this life
that night
that
I was fading too

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

It's not fair
that
I love you now

in this moment
as I'm typing
and now as
you're reading

It's not fair that
I love you
so hopelessly
and faithfully
so candidly and
longingly
so full and open
heartedly

It's not fair that I
love you in the
present
where you do not exist
where I am here
and you are nowhere
ashes in the wind.

How can I live
in the now,
live right now
love right now
where you're only a thought
right now

a memory unbound by death.

I'm not sure if I told
you,
but
when the orchestra becomes
quiet

like the moment
after
fallen
  sn
     o
        w

your stillness
whispers all the things
I need
  to know

Apples keep falling
they're falling from
a silver sky
a frothy blow
of snow
pouring,
trails and trails of
white

Petals keep falling
they're falling from
my chromium eyes
of hope,
blinking,
in and out of
love

Water keeps falling
from titanium
pipes that bend
and twist like
where I'm told
I store my
memories

everything is falling
failing
flailing to
survive,
back in the water
treading to stay
alive
but you're going
to hit the ground
and darling,
so am I.

I used to think I'd make you
fall in love
with me

but now I know,
as I fold my
clothes
and I pull my
denim jeans
over my
thighs
(I think they've gotten bigger)
and I brush my hair, that's
coming in blonde again
(I need to go get a box of
dye)
and I can't seem to find my
glasses
again

that there's nothing
I could have ever
done
to make you fall in love,
could not have done to make you fall
in love

with endless months of
rain
and another grey
spring:

you were bound to
fall in love with me
and there's nothing
I could
have done to
start
or stop it.

It's in a dark room,
upstairs,
in a settling house
that crooks and creaks
and sighs in all its
silent stories

that the autumn air
comes in again
it bites again
I feel it kiss
my skin again
and breathe
another
story into
me

I read somewhere
that there's
no fear in love

then I have never
been in love
and know
nothing at all.

because
I'm afraid
of the day you died
the nightmares at night
and being forever
haunted by your ghost.

There's no fear in love?
But I'm afraid to let you go.

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.

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

Mid-February and
I know you
love me

I know the
sun is starting
her high-sky
days, where
she lingers and I
do with
you,
too

It's almost Spring
and I've been
told
that flowers are
blooming
(my heart is
blooming)

February, Spring Hope, Overcast and almost
sunny-
I hope you choose
me, I hope
that you choose
love.

There are days when
my mind is clear
and I can see the
edge of love

I see the cliff
I'm holding to
and I knowingly
watch my step

the sun seems higher
and the clouds seem
full
and every quiet moment
doesn't hurt so bad

and then there are the
days ahead
where love does not
exist anywhere
near where I was or
am

There's no step to
watch
no intention
no facade
or "one, two, three."

and the sunset's
brighter here.

The crickets sing
louder here.  

the birds have a
song that I don't
recognize here
and it seduces me,
all the same

Here there's so much pain
and depth
to feeling everything
and all

Promise me
that you won't
let your feet
scrape against
the broken sand
and get tangled
in the river
weeds again

You're the one,
and I'm trying
so hard to cut
back the weeds
that pull you down

but the river is cold
and I panic
in ice
and the rapids
keep taking
me down

Promise me
you'll try to
keep your head
up,
as will I,
and that you'll
let yourself
feel the sunlight
again.

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.

Somewhere deep
inside the
unfading black
of the universe

I know that
hope exists
inside a flower
that is
not afraid
to bloom

and where
conviction
hides,
where she sleeps,
unweathered by
her
loss
and by
her pain

you survive
in a rose
as warm
as every
high winter
sun
and every
flooding
shadow.

I imagine petals sound like
a star spray of
harp song
  when they fall on
a dreamer's tilled
land
and that Azaleas grow
  in a backwards life
where time isn't counted by
clock hand
  You have painted
a Floristry of roses
in a neglected girl of a
wasteland.

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.

If you went into
the forest
I would follow
you

I'd break the chain
and hop the fence
and walk not
far from you

I'd trip over rocks
be afraid of the
night
and wonder
what lingers in
the brush
the starry forest
floor

But I'd follow you
with empty hands
with open eyes
with every sense
of loving you
and then I'd follow
more.

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?

Are we just
silhouettes
against the
raven night

against obsidian

against a frozen
lake
we're trapped above
our feet out
cold in snow

where Oregon's
sun has made
a shadow
out of you
and a
*******
fool of me.

There are dark places, empty containers housing "rock
bottoms" that I've put lids
over.
Vessels, that live with or without you
cabinets that hold things I forgot I even put inside,
rarely-used possessions that
I've gathered over time -
sometimes by demand, but most
by no ask,
at all.

I forget about what lives in my curio
cabinet
until I'm where the case was
filled
Until I'm where that intangible
entree consumed me
where I was burdened with your
leftovers

A lid that opens up a little when I'm standing at the edge of the driving range -
and the single swing of a stranger,
a stroke,
blows the cupboard open
- a small yellow ball being hit by
a 5-iron releases a
feeling I'd forgotten to index, but I somehow
still placed inside

What else is inside of me?

There are really dark places I
can't find my way back to,
no lock, no key, no entry card or subscription
Just places in my collection, improperly
categorized,
- I can't find what's in there
No signs, no arrows, no naming systems or classifications
It's all too much

I can only see what's in my cabinet of artifacts
when I go back to a
place that held out a token to hand to me
- a bauble, a gimcrack to take
and
to place in the archives, the vault of
forgotten things.

I don't know how long
I have

until you decide
you don't love
me again

so I'll sit and watch you
smile
for now
for now where
you're in love with me
and I'm not just a
girl to you
who sometimes
walks away

and when she turns
when I turn
your thoughts
don't stray

for now I know you love me
so I'll let you take my hand and
buy a rose for me.

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.

On the edge where
grey meets blue
and i can trace
the patterns in the sky
with my china fingers
my bony wrist-

on the edge of a cliff
where i can't catch
my balance [breath]
tempted to stand
en pointe
with my china feet
my brittle ankles.

on the edge where
the shore meets the
sand and i can
imagine plunging in
my broken body
right into frosty, metallic waves.

that's the edge of the terminal.
where grey meets blue.
and I can trace
the trail where you walked away
the ghost path [i start to cry]
with my china heart
with my fragile, china goodbye.

I miss France. I miss the
buildings.
I miss the adventures
I wanted to have
I almost had
I miss you.
The reason I came back.
You were so glad that I came back
and I was
so scared to lose you

in the end
and then
I did
and then you left
to where my France
exists
inside my head.

Mosquito tap on the glass

one more time

mosquito crook, tap,
nose to the glass.

you can't catch me anymore.