How can a shallow
girl giggle so much? Maybe
her jokes are witty.

They’ll end up calling me
“The one with all the paint samples?”
If they ask, they won’t
know my favorite color
because I won’t know
my favorite color either
And so my soul, too,
would remain unknown

A professor explained to me once
how there is a limited number
of possible designs for making
an arrow point function as intended.

You can't stick a round rock on a stick
and expect it to penetrate like a dart.

It has to be sharp and hard, yet light
to fly like a feather straight and true
to the heart. I said, you mean like love?

She said, yeah, like love, kinda like love.

I want to write a story called
Pink Heather
about a soul that felt blue
A girl not yet herself,
an entirely wrong hue

Tell mother I found my way
and this time I'll stay

Tell insegnante I've got something to say
and it all still sounds the same
but I'm saying it my way

Tell my favorite songs
I think they're too long
because they contain
more than what I've seen

Yell at the devil for being too loud,
leaving me deaf, though I hear
well enough, and tell him I've heard,
well, enough of his cliche,
heavy metal crowd

Yell at the band wagon
Tell it to stop for an oil change,
and make sure it never rides again
Its passengers have something to say,
though they don't want to stay
but they don't want to go away,
though their noses are too long,
and there's no fire in their song

Tell them to say it their way
though they want to runaway
from their minds and from their hearts
while never growing apart
They can't have the best of both worlds
My mind curls

to the beat of its own bongos
and shades of pink and red and black
I find I don't lack

firm ground,
but am more abundant in frowns
sometimes more abundant in smiles.
Depends on the weather.

After  the people leave, that's when
I know where I've come,
how far I've come back to them

So tell my best friend I'm still intact
Tell the crowd I'm not out-of-whack
Tell my favorite songs I've turned them into facts
Tell all poets their words aren't to blame
Tell mother that I'm okay

I give in... I give in...
I wear my sweaters thin
because nothing ever feels
hyper-real
I know kids who get raw experience
yet call me the wiser
for not getting any.

No one who sits at their dinner table,
pretending to have something to write,
deserves to be tired
and so I don't catnap
under the constipated clouds
waiting for the rain.

I grow old--I grow old
I don't like my trousers rolled
as I walk down the street
watching young people
who don't give themselves a break
from hyper-living
Just keep kicking.

Not to generalize,
but it must be said
that a barbarous youth doesn't give in
until their metal beams split
and their windows come down
and their doors can't open
because of the debris
and their admirees
stand before the pile still not knowing
who they are.

(It won't make them shiver
to think you've opened up
listening to their music
unless they open
their ears for you.)

After dusting themselves off
will all the newborn adults shake hands
look back on the skyscrapers that surrounded them
and be friends?

I give in
I relax over my comfortable,
blank lines
with nothing to write
because I'm the only one
with nothing to fight.

Every night was tortellini
when were roommates.

I complained about my chapped feet;
you bought me the wrong socks.
Black, mens, I clarified,
but you kept buying the women's.
Then one day you got it right,
only they were for you
because black is a warmer color than white,
and the socks of a man felt like cherubs.

I complained about my chapped feet,
you the heart of the world,
its cold silence.
But we remained "alright".
You bought new pajamas every night
and painted a beauty mark on your face
to match.

Years of x-marked places on our bodies
which no one saw because
we were cynics,
I the most.
No roses at our mat--we grew our own bushes,
ordered the ones with the extra thorns.
I charmed that snake,
you bit me on its behalf.
That I'd do such a thing
was shameful.

We were girlfriends in a can of salt,
tears in our eyes, mouths and ears.
We drank wine in bubble baths in our clothes
for three days straight,
or even four,
after that guy dumped you.

From then on
every night was tortellini,
La Dolce Vita, and--

and the freckle below your ear,
the horns growing from my forehead,
the way your falsies touched your cheeks,
late nights looking brighter
than they should,
than they normally would.
Pretending to be goddesses awaiting their gods--

while I awaited you.

Then you felt them too,
touched my head as though it were a fever.
I always knew you hated the suburbs,
and I did listen
when you complained about the gray rooftops
and the saturated green lawns--
"Give them a chance, please.
Then we'll get away--"
I begged, I relented--

The wine, finally, fermented.
You remember what I said next,
because after that you broke my heart.
I never doubted it was a bad idea
to say it



but I said it
and you left.