Can't you see my hands right now?
With veins like little mountain ranges,
all rolling, and tolling for you. All
sweat beads forming and falling from
olive knuckles. Wedding rings. And
electric blue varnish resting high on
cuticle beds. Beds, for one thing, were
never our strong suit. We just fell in
squares where there was room. In
stranger's sheets, my palms rolled
beneath your back, and through your
neck. Stuck on swiveled wrists, I
taught myself a new vocabulary for
all things shadows, particularly You.

And you should see my hands right now.
And you should forget the rest.

Can you believe how old we're getting?
How parents are dropping like flies! and
we've got to mean every goodbye - with
a heavy heart and a fist full of sky, lullabies.
And wasn't it just so funny? at the grocery
store when they asked us if we were throwing
a party? It was a funeral all along. We laughed.

We can smoke cigarettes on the
overpass till our lungs collapse.
Resurrecting bodies and killing
spiders, foolish, faint-hearted,
at rest, yes! in pieces.

plywood smells and citrus blistered fingertips. we ate so many oranges that winter I thought we'd be the sun.
red crush velvet, an inky black stage, and did they know that we were sipping something heavy in the parking lot?

a man named Paul ran wires down our backs, and we painted our faces in hot lights.

Some barber, who does not love you,
Cut your hair, and gave you bangs.
You brush them back with careful
hands - yet another time you
shouldn't have chosen silence.

Weekend Warriors in face paint, remember?
Home caught fire and we danced on the
pavement. Tambourine shakes and tattered
blouses, please don't go away! Christmas
light canopy in the secret woodland electric
tree. We raged and swore we'd never leave.
All running toward homemade, handmade
radio waves. It tasted like some thick fruit
bowl and ***** poison - anything but
Still Life. Those brush strokes were shaking,
and I love you beneath theses branches,
and you and you and you and you and really -
please don't go away.

Glances in passing and nothingness,
I'll drop out and take up gardening.
And you are so cool, all German bred,
and sometimes braided. I see you, so
well-read and rather regal. ***** blonde
nuclear, alabaster, aluminum rods -
electricity dripping from the soles of
your shoes. This classroom, my own
ink blotted incubator, the radiator sits,
flatlining. Your jaw as two razor blades,
your shoulder blades, broad, gentle.

I wonder how you look in the morning,
How you look at yourself in the mirror.
Do you practice smiling, and
how often do you wash your hair? Oh,
you exist in glass, and I will not try to
know you. Leaving this poem limited,
and yet. Your jam drop mouth houses all
well-spoken soliloquies, radical requiems.

So, what would happen if we brushed
shoulders in passing? Your little accent.
Accident, we appeared in the same
huddled mass. Literary plugs in the
drain, and your new American. So,
why don't we just go walking on
airplane wings? Some transcontinental
affair. Frequent flyer *******, stranger.

Green dye fell from little jars in droplets from his apartment and on to the hardwood floors the white linens the bed sheets and me and you and i fell asleep holding your hand and i crashed your bike but i bought you beer and you threw up six times because we drank too much sitting down so when you stood up the ***** rushed through your stupid veins and to your pretty head so fast and i didn't want to leave you i wanted to kiss you behind the keg i wanted to kiss you in the bathroom in the side yard in a puddle and really when you fell in that puddle i thought you would drown but you didn't you just broke your camera some rough and tough sleepover remember my hand on the small of your back with our best friends on the same mattress you know my thumb almost got cut off at that house party we stumbled into steak knife *** of gold and joanna went to bed with a dull skull ache while your hair got caught in some australian briars