When I lap like green-gray waves at rocks grown
    tired of holding themselves upright, collapsed into
          weary sand that props toes like a damp pillow

And you breeze, clouds tasting raindrops like children
    forever adrift, sailing between future hopes that shine
               through dark blue sky like candle-flame eyes

Our worlds collide in a marriage of foam and spray
                 harmony at its finest

I stand above my bed
And examine the damage.
Blankets this way and that
Pillows all over
Sheets tangled up around themselves.
Proof of something that
Only hours ago
Left this place empty.
I take in the rubble
And breathe deeply.
I lower myself down to those
Tangled sheets
And backwards bedspreads
And fill my lungs with you.
I pull them up around me
And close my eyes
And wish for this place to be
The same kind of battleground
Again tomorrow.

You fade...
Like a bruise.

Like the ones your mouth left on my neck and shoulders with its lustful pressure.
Your teeth, which brought moments of bright pain/pleasure,
Are now bared in an artificial, animal smile.

Your lips, which parted to ******* skin like it was salvation,
Barely part now to speak to me.
You whispered my name like a prayer.
You screamed it like a curse.
You sighed it in contentment,
And now you won't even speak it in passing.

Your hands, which half-playfully pulled my hair...
Now won't pause to brush it from my face.

All these parts of you,
None more telling than your eyes.
Those new windows, which once let me pry...
Now have blinds drawn tight behind them,
Leaving only a pretty, shiny reflection-
A passing, glancing imitation-
Of the passion they once held
When they beheld
Me.

No color left to them but the muddy colors of
Boredom,
And possibly mistrust.

You fade...
Like a bruise.
Like the one you left on my mind with your brilliant conversation
And beautiful, rusty prose.
Like the many you left on my tongue...
Which now can speak nothing but trite and meaningless words,
Which now can barely remember the shapes
Of all the shimmering, liquid phrases it spoke to you
That seemed so important at the time.

You fade...
Like a bruise.
Once lover and friend,
Now barely one
And never the other again.

I would like to believe that your love could make me touch the milky way and that it would allow supernova’s to travel through my bloodstream and fill me with something other than disappointment but I was wrong.

-

your grip on my hand tightened when I told you I’m running away. you looked at me with wide eyes and I almost cried because they’re so beautiful. you put your forehead to mine and I asked if you would please come with but you only smiled.

it is two weeks later
and I am aching
for an answer I
will never get.

-

you held your fingers over the five bruises on my thighs and I kept trying to pretend I was okay but all I could think about were your fingertips finding my new bloodstained cuts and old blackberry one’s and your realizing just how ugly I actually am.

-

“what happens when I go home?”

“I don’t know.”

“you don’t know?”

“I’ll phone everyday. I promise.”


you said it with so much sincerity that I almost believed you, but then I tried to hold your hand and make wishes on our fingers but you pulled away instead.

you shouldn’t have pulled away.

-

at night I am a comet shooting away from your lips and finding something else to bury myself inside of, but then I remember that I have nothing behind by rib cage so instead I return to you.

every time.

(Who wants to know whether
     my heart is scalding still in this cold where
  lungs breathe melted snow every so
often, crystal air caught in twin glasses)

        -Who wants to uproot the
              depths I turn over, weaving
                   days into life worth living and
                cherishing people worth
                              the worry in mind-

                              [Who claims to be
                                      here like a
                                      break in the
                                      tide of grander things, forever in
                                      motion? whose
                                      persuasion stops those hands'
                                                  spinning for a single
                                                              implausible
                                                ­                    moment?]

                         Oh, it's you!

                                  well, that's alright then.

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.

Write, for instance: "The night is full of stars,
and the stars, blue, shiver in the distance."

The night wind whirls in the sky and sings.

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

On nights like this, I held her in my arms.
I kissed her so many times under the infinite sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her.
How could I not have loved her large, still eyes?

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
To think I don't have her. To feel that I've lost her.

To hear the immense night, more immense without her.
And the poem falls to the soul as dew to grass.

What does it matter that my love couldn't keep her.
The night is full of stars and she is not with me.

That's all. Far away, someone sings. Far away.
My soul is lost without her.

As if to bring her near, my eyes search for her.
My heart searches for her and she is not with me.

The same night that whitens the same trees.
We, we who were, we are the same no longer.

I no longer love her, true, but how much I loved her.
My voice searched the wind to touch her ear.

Someone else's. She will be someone else's. As she once
belonged to my kisses.
Her voice, her light body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, true, but perhaps I love her.
Love is so short and oblivion so long.

Because on nights like this I held her in my arms,
my soul is lost without her.

Although this may be the last pain she causes me,
and this may be the last poem I write for her.

If my skin were a curtain
I'd pull back the drapes
at the corner of my clavicle.
the breathing, feeling organs
of my torso would reveal
what you never see.

the clenches in my stomach
when I catch your fleeting glance

the double-thump of my heart
relishing your bare shoulder

my lungs frozen--suffocating
under your cold, soft touch

shrinking with the biggest sigh
as I watch you walk away.

But I always wear my skin
two layers too thick
and hide my delightful shame
of delighting in shaming you.

Body of a woman, white hills, white thighs,
you look like a world, lying in surrender.
My rough peasant's body digs in you
and makes the son leap from the depth of the earth.

I was lone like a tunnel. The birds fled from me,
and nigh swamped me with its crushing invasion.
To survive myself I forged you like a weapon,
like an arrow in my bow, a stone in my sling.

But the hour of vengeance falls, and I love you.
Body of skin, of moss, of eager and firm milk.
Oh the goblets of the breast! Oh the eyes of absence!
Oh the roses of the *****! Oh your voice, slow and sad!

Body of my woman, I will persist in your grace.
My thirst, my boundless desire, my shifting road!
Dark river-beds where the eternal thirst flows
and weariness follows, and the infinite ache.