stop me if you've heard this-
a day in the life entails clairvoyant sights
authorities accuse us, they say you break the rules
you lied when you told us that we didn't set the place on fire
(you started it with your minds)

-c.j.

she's got you high on these dreams
cigarettes that you seek out and steal
even if she's across the universe

met through a stolen dance on the edge of seventeen
there were no coattails but she was rapt
she thought you were mr. darcy
I could never figure it out
heaven knows your self-esteem is
never going to get as high as you can

-c.j.

"forever," I say when you ask since when
have my eyes been so deep blue
you reveal that they have a bit of violence in them, or violets- I couldn't hear you very well
when we kissed, the flavour of your lips, I thought felt right
you jangled your keys as we walked to your car
it gets better, you say about the album we're listening to on the stereo
and it does, it does

-c.j.

men in white coats call their valentine, asking,
"are you there, sweetheart? I'm in london, watching your videotapes,"
while I sit on the cold patient's bed, wondering if I could
capture a phone call with my boyfriend, find out how the party was,
if his father has gone up in the business
but then I am chemical dizzy
and then the doctor whispers to hush my teenage mouth, that I'm only in high school
that all I do is go to the dance hall and eat lucky charms the next morning like a child
I used to believe I was a prodigy, even if all I could do was tie-dye
the medicine puts me to sleep and the white coat clad man tells my parents it's not serious

-c.j.

it was fall yet I dreamt of february air
and the waters of march
I wanted to play it right, become an animal,
obey the generals and run a marathon in roses, a garden race
before the cafe is a cathedral,
where midnight starts a waltz, hints at more modern times
the times that hold bedroom eyes, every holiday, birthday, funeral, every beat, city, every kind of splendour
that sends our hearts running wild
the times that hold such strangeness and charm, fiction,
even pigeons, even demons
I wanted to cling to the bravado; be no one's girlfriend; in a coma for six weeks; see science and visions and multiplication like a movie script, ending
I wanted to decorate each plain verse, make the grey into pink, tessellate the shapes of its inherent hearts and knives

it was fall and you asked if like empty bottles, we float
if I would change my name to ingrid
if all our weekends could echo of pleasure sighs
I wanted to embrace the atlantic, climb to new heights,
come awake

but could a schoolboy help me do these things?
could he lay beside me in the snow and call it paradise?
would he make me stare into mirrors all night,
waiting by the phone? would he make me feel like I was nothing ordinary?

-c.j.

in september I thought there was a formula, a frequency, for
making someone fall in love with you
but then I learned to be careful who you dance with, especially the
slow dances that give you double vision
it dawned on me that I couldn't be haunted by april anymore,
that I'd have to taste the sun again and stop hitting my bumper
against illusive fantasy
**** the clown, that evil joker with smiling scars, the one that gives you creature fear
when the voice starts, turn it off
listen to the shores instead, seashell sounds for just
a little bit
it will help me close my eyes against the scene and people like you
tonight please wait up for me- do you want it all? these filthy halls?
we can't always avoid bad karma, or escape psychasthenia,
even when we're filled with loneliness and the scream that begs
of the someone, who are you, really?
you taste of heaven and human emotion but will we last through october?

-c.j.

the library is our garden of eden
we entered innocent and
left not so
I partook of the forbidden fruit-
(kiss, an emphatic kiss)

-c.j.