grandma don’t remember much
but she looks at the picture on her
dresser
says she’s never seen joseph
hold mary like that before
ninety-one years without tenderness

i lie on the grass like jesus
ankles crossed and arms spread
hands open towards something
like tenderness

this summer i have been gardening.
it is something else new.
it is almost july and you would laugh to
see my hands in the dirt.
i have rocks under my fingernails
from scratching at the soil
to see what
it is like underneath.
i’ve seen worms and spiders and
spiny crawlers with squirming legs.
but my dear, i have yet
to come across you.

It's rainy all the time
where I live.
It's just the every-day.
It lives where I breathe.
It sleeps where I dream.
It goes unshaken.
I hurt, I pain,
I kneed my heart out in search of the source.
What is in there?
I tire,
as I have tired before.
It's rainy where I live,
all the time.

that i may return to the something greater
that i was a part of many years ago
and my flesh will become nothing
and my soul, everything
and this will happen
all at once

the way the words die on my lips,
the way my stomach flips,
when you grab me by my hips.

drown me
and breathe life
into me again
i beg of you
bathe me
wash me from myself
swell
and break
into my skin
curl around me
and take me under

I used to play
in a great big band,
I say.
the others laugh,
they can’t understand
what it was like
to yawn and stretch and
play
in a great big band
on a misty morning field,
just beginning
to feel
the sun in your bones,
a dose in your chest
of something greater,
a golden dragon high,
the euphoria of
a musician
with no grand dreams,
just
a great big band
and the Morning Sun.

and i'll read more poetry,
and take the dog on a walk,
watch Peter at his computer,
and the bird in the pine tree,
and i'll just continue,
doing nothing
                             important
                                                  at all.

isn't this the life?
isn't it?

crawling above me,
there is a bug.
he could be an ant
or maybe a small spider,
but he doesn't much mind
what I call him.
he's above me in the sycamore tree,
and I am below him,
and the sun is starting to disappear
against the horizon.
he walks furiously to and fro,
my unnamed bug,
and he seems to be saying
"look up! look up!"
"there is so much MORE!"
so I stare at the stained glass sky above me,
feel the wet earth pressing against my back,
the grass whispering around my ankles,
smell the eastern wind taking its nightly stroll,
and I turn to say thank you to my little bug,
but he has already gone.
so I say it to the sky instead:
"thank you. thank you."
"there IS so much more"

i don't much think about time until i am with you.
until i am with you,
time drifts by like lazy mid-summer clouds,
the occasional tardy spring breeze sweeping them
slowly across a blue sky in a steady handed brush.
it cruises in the right hand lane on highway 101
as the truck horns call out in unison
and i am impatient in the passenger seat.

i want the big things to happen.
i want to pass from one state to the next
at a hundred miles per hour
and i want to feel big enough.

i don't much think about time,
but now that i am with you,
i must because
your laugh seems to stir the air into
grey and shifting images that
flit and disappear before i have painted them,
and the car speeds up and we have arrived before
my tongue has time to form the word hello
and i always thought that time was my one true god but
it is clear now,
time doesn't hold a candle to you.

i could write about the sun
or the sea
or the terrier that lives on 5th,
i could write about my dad's baseball cap
or his blue jacket that stubbornly refuses to tear,
i could write about life and love
and all those other things that poets seem to know about,
i could write about the condition of my soul
and the slight concave in my chest that steals away the air,
i could write about my favorite song,
the winding drive back from the beach,
the softness of a clean bed,
i could write about all these things
but yet,
               i only seem to write of you.

we spent all day at the river
you, me, and carl
it was the first real day of spring
and it was the last weekend before
the library would eat away at our sanity
it was the first morning in months  
where i could not find a single cloud
and the space above me was simple and blue
and the sun was good
and the river was laughing
and so were we
and even as your nose peeled
and my eyes stung
the river stones were a little lighter
and so was my chest
and you and i fell asleep in the van on the way home
wet and sun-tired

and still,
it is there.
an undeniable
and persistent
sort of ache.
the kind that sinks,
and festers,
and cries.
it is still there,
"the missing."

i killed my mother
i know it's true
she's still in mourning
for the girl she once knew

i will go softly into the new year
hiding from the night before the clock strikes twelve
i will be asleep
buried six feet in my bed
a silent suffocation
a quiet crime
i wish i could gather some bravery
watch the time tick tick twelve and feel something close to fireworks settle in my stomach
but i know
that the stones that live between my ribs will pull my body down
and my blankets will pile like dirt
and my pillows will hold my breath in place
and i will go softly
i will go without a fight
there is so much weight that resides in my chest
and it whispers to me
that in this new year
perhaps it is better to be a ghost

be aggressive with your love babe
i need you to demand
be harsh with your affection
it's the only way i'll understand

tiny cracks in the pavement
what flowers will bloom today?
wilted and glorious and good
i walk on them with purpose
flowers are not meant for the street
they are for flickering candles
and whispering fields
and all the other things
i know nothing about

the others weep
at a ****** of daisies
but i will not

they are nothing to me

i have always struggled with physical touch

perhaps its because
i received too much
all at once
and never quite understood
what i was being given

perhaps its a million other reasons
but it is too difficult
to understand the past
so for now I'm stuck with
my present longing
for some kind of touch
that doesn't make my skin crawl

the birds stopped singing some time ago and
i can't remember when they stopped but
that seems to be the pattern these
days and there's a candle lit that's
sitting precariously on the
corner of my bed and
somewhere in my
mind i hope that
something will
catch on fire
and this
**** hole
will
burn

d
o
w
n

the warmth of the sun
butter in my eyes
a shuddered relief
with everyone of your sighs

the passion of the sun
flames that swallow
burn me from the inside
and leave me hollow

a middle-aged suburban mother clutches
her purse with a shiny red claw and
a child in ***** overalls chews
on the last half of an apple green jolly rancher
a twenty something shows off
the tattoo on her arm and it
reads
remember that you will die

the mother clutches her purse tighter

the child gives a green stained smile

and even if a thousand people read my poems and said that they were beautiful, i still would not feel peace

and the knight drank and drank from the well
for that was what he read in his books
but he felt no great strength course through him
nor any great swiftness nor new knowledge
he was still just a small man
in a tin suit
and he cursed the world
and the world said
a promise never made is a promise never broken

suburban tears
followed me here
tropical days
cloudy grey haze
hot summer breeze
take this heart please

warm soft hugs
like gold hued ships
bathed in the setting sun

arms restrict
like drowning dark ships
the panic has just begun

i have many saved drafts
my fellow poets
and i believe you may have some too
at least
if you are a poet like me
there are many kinds of poets
for we seem to be incapable
of staying in a box
but if you are a poet like me
you have more drafts than published works
and your drafts are alive
and breathing
shaky breaths
in and out
trying to keep their heart beating
to stay written for a few moments longer
before their maker
presses delete

my poems call me cruel
and i know i am
poems are not meant to hide in the dark
even if they are cheesy and childish and revolting
an infestation of misplaced and uncertain words

even then
poems should be heard

sometimes i wish i was a different kind of poet
sometimes i wish i wasn't cruel
sometimes i wish i was kind
to my poems
and perhaps to myself

and the waves pulled back
and so the sand could finally breathe
and it filled itself with sweet drug-like air
and smiled at the sun
before it all returned
and the drowning began again

you think that i'm indifferent,
dancing with everyone here but you,
but honey I'm just nervous,
waiting for you to catch a clue.

left me empty
now leave me hollow
regret and guilt
just pills to swallow
learned to breathe
under the ocean
paper doll
going through the motions

i wish
             for many things

         i dream
                           of one or two desires

                       and i hope
                                              for nothing at all

i am so
disgusted
revolted
by your image
you narcissistic
shell
there is
nothing left
in you
but ash
and even
now
you are
overreacting
you think
that you
deserve
to feel
pain
you
egotist
for once
can you
think of
someone
other than
yourself?

they never told me that my sadness could be physical
but this past year I started to understand
sadness can shape-shift
it hides in the ***** laundry
the empty shower
the matted hair
the bitten and bloodied nails

it's crafty
and smart
and it seeps into the unchanged bed sheets
the closed window and stale air

some people can't understand
that what they see is sadness
all they know
is that it's not very pretty

and she soon found that she could no longer distinguish between absence of another and absence of self

by being a poet
i have condemned myself
i have sentenced myself to silence
a clean cut to the throat

by being a poet
i burned the bridges
i ****** myself to the tallest tower
where no one can hear my screams

by being a poet
i've been tried and convicted
i have only this page and this pen
this is my freedom and my prison

the mothers that come in
seem to have a fire missing
somewhere behind their eyes
their laughs are always piercing
their smiles, rotten
their hatred festers and boils below their skin
hatred for their jobs or their husbands
or their screaming kids
hatred for their brunches and cocktail hours
or their *** life
hatred for their absent fathers or mothers or both
hatred for their marriage
for their husbands that got to have both dreams
hatred for their bodies and minds ruined in carrying children
hatred that they were never told that they had a choice
that there were different paths to happiness
hatred for the box that they were shoved into with a smile on their withering faces

when i take their order at the counter
i see it all
i see this and more

and it frightens me deeply

what a way to live

me
        and my soul
                                 and your skin

let yourself be killed dear child
let yourself go blind
let your love get close enough
to stab you from behind

let yourself be killed my dear
let yourself bleed out
let your blood stain the Earth
your heart be cut from doubt

let me die, my love, my shield
my blood is mine to give
let me be killed, i plead of you
for to die is to live

there's a wizard who lives down the street
who vowed to fix the hole in my chest
but he filled it with dirt and dark and dust
and told me he tried his best

the man at the bus stop used to write me short poems
while downing a glass of liquor

but he smashed the glass
and now he writes long poems

somehow he's gotten much sicker

i would write just a line or two

i think it could be that i had much less to say
or maybe i didn't know how to say it
or perhaps i didn't feel as deeply
or cry as desperately
or smile as sweetly

sometimes i wish for my shorter poems
but most of the time
i am happy

i have grown

like icarus
i was too close
and felt too much


                       high
             too
flew  


and burned
                            a   w        a              y




and now
                 there is nothing left
                                                       but
                                                                dust.

for me
you have become
many things
you are a mirror under my bed
and the rotting cross over my doorway
you are the velvet midnight sky
and the honey air sneaking through my window
you are the half moon cuts on my palm
and the empty gas tank in my dying car
you are alluring sheets of my bed
begging me to return
you are sweet and tempting
you are my lover
and my prescription
my savior
my greatest friend

whatever form you take
    sweet
           sour
                 stale
                      a cup
                              a can
                                     a bottle

they are just vessels
you are always all those things and more

i wonder what i am to you?

there is a boy
and we meet in his car
and he has a sweet smile
and we go pretty far

there is another boy
and we sometimes lock eyes
for just a burning second
i can't tell if they lie

and when we brush past
i swear i feel thunder
just a slight breeze
but it brings me under

there is an air in his ways
and i struggle to not stare
i long to hear his laugh
to run my hands through his hair

and although we pass briefly
although it wouldn't seem
the latter has more heat
he's the one in my dreams

i know i am not good
i hear it in your sighs
hear it in your heavy feet
see it in your tired eyes

i know this and more
i  know and i try
i'll stay up all night
fix the wings, make it fly

i know your hate
your resentment is sincere
i am not good
i am the reflection you fear

dear mom, i know
i am not good
i hate and i love
far more than a daughter should

and i can feel it pecking underneath my skin
with prickling feathers that reek of disgust
its wings are stagnant
and all it can do is keep

pecking

pecking

pecking

and it laughs at those who don't know better
and it scorns the ones that think they do
and it shows me the disease it has spread
but i am too melancholic to **** it
and its feeble wings sag around my heart
but it never tears them free
so it just screams
                                  and screams
                                                         ­       and screams

silly girl,
                  silly girl


       hands clench,
                                  toes curl
  

                    it's so much fun,
                                                    watching­ you unfurl.

i used to trust my lovers
but that was long ago
now i see no others
the past my mind must go

i used to trust my lovers
but now i doubt my heart
heirloom of my mother's
and it's tearing me apart

i wish this body
would melt off of my soul
like a popsicle on a hot summers day

i wish this body
could unzip itself
like a hazmat suit

and i could float out and leave my tarnished anchor behind