i never wanted to
be the reason you
found yourself wrapped
in a blanket on the patio
at sunrise one cool
september morning

i never wanted
to be the reason
you cried the
ugly kind of tears

(i never wanted to be this
selfish because come to
think of it i'm about
the worst for selfish)

i want to be the
reason you laugh
the reason you look at
the world a little differently

the reason you drop
everything in the dead of
night to go have an adventure
of hilarious proportions

the reason you go shopping
for an ugly wedding gift
and give some boy out there
half the hell i gave yours

the reason you go to
concerts and take road trips
or feel loved when you
crawl under an afghan

the reason you dry
your tears and decide
to commit an act you might
regret someday like
vandalism or climbing on
someone else's roof.

(and you can't change
my mind
only i can change
my mind
but you can say things
so profound i reconsider)

i never want to be the
reason you put on a black dress
get in the car and drive to a
funeral where you feel
compelled to stand up in front of
everyone we know and
make a speech even though your
tongue is frozen to your teeth

and i never want to be the
reason you lie awake
at night wondering what
you could have changed
haunted all your life
by the person you lost

i never want to be the
reason you leave a cursive
memento with my name
at the bottom of an ivory
program and a bouquet of
black roses next to the pulpit

and i never want to be the
reason you cry

(i never want to be
the reason you cry
but the trouble is that
i can't find reasons to stay)

and i'm sorry
i'm sorry
a hundred
and one times

i'm sorry for
everything

(i'm sorry
you love me
but i'm not sorry
for loving you)

and i'm
sorry
for making
you cry.

The air is infested with loneliness. The mountains stand high, united in isolation. The gravity of the isolation is soaked into the earth, so the wind can remain carefree. And so they all played together, under the sun.

i watched my mother crack her ribs open to pour out her heart to someone whos love language was violence.
his hands too rough to piece her tender skin back together again.
she pulled my sleeve down over my heart,
and pointed to her bleeding one,
and told me that this is where love will get you.
now i wonder if i'll ever let a boy hold my hand,
with out feeling like my fingers are breaking,
feeling like i can hear my heart screaming at me
i wonder if words of love will ever taste like anything other than poison sliding idly down my throat,
a drawn out pain that settles in the bottom of your stomach
and stirs every time you smile back at him.
i wonder if i'll always be too scared to let myself be pulled apart,
trust me, these inner workings are not beautiful
i get so lonely hiding within myself,
but better to be lonely and whole than lonely and left with half of a heart

plan a.
1. take each day one step at a time.
2. find a college and go there.
3. take each day one step at a time.
4. get a job and pay off your student debt.
5. live a life that you're afraid of.

plan b.
1. take up bicycling.
2. get a job and bicycle to it.
3. make money at the job.
4. save the money.
5. don't buy a car with the money.

plan c.
1. offer your services doing lawn care.
2. suffer all winter when you can't do lawn care.
3. take care of a lot of lawns in the spring.
4. make friends with lots of lawn owners.
5. use your connections to full advantage.

plan d.
1. sell your cd collection on ebay.
2. get a tattoo of a cassette tape.
3. invest in a pile of used vinyl.
4. work as a waitress.
5. save tips for concerts.

plan e.
1. hop on a greyhound bus.
2. go to whichever city the wind takes you.
3. take polaroid pictures of the city.
4. sell them to tourists.
5. starve to death.

plan f.
1. give up.
2. scrap that and try again.
3. because you're not a quitter.
4. and quitting at life.
5. was never an option.

plan g.
1. go to beauty school.
2. make people feel pretty.
3. go home and feel less ugly yourself.
4. donate money to charity.
5. hope that karma pays you back.

plan h.
1. pack up with your friends.
2. move to alaska.
3. work over the internet.
4. grow vegetables to offset the cost of hot tea and alcohol.
5. find something to love.

*(and just think how all of
these plans could be done in
one lifetime and how it takes
that many misses to find the hit
i'll give you a hint the thing you
have to learn to love is the one
thing that stayed with you
every step of the way.)

I was born in terrorism.
I grew up in earthquakes, tsunamis and rebels:
in shouting blond girls with red eyes and pixel
smiles.

I was born in blurred faces and mute
voices pulling at my
eyes until I dripped the clotted
tears of a thousand soldiers, or refugees,
or children.

I was atomized, crunched
into small seeds and scattered
across a desert field.
Someday a flower would grow there,
budded from the bones
of my being and  
flowered into a fiery,
empty marigold-- dripping
gold and embers across a thirsty desert,
where the shout
of the civilians was distant
enough to ignore.

I was sodomized,
conceived in the roar--
of the rumbling wave- crashing over-
pulsing through her thrashing cave.

I watched my flower whither
and blister with the deliberate count
down and the glare of the
floodlights-- dowsed in water and soil--
or some semblance of the two.  

I was born in the blood
of my mother and died in the
womb of the world.

(photographs; kaleidoscopes)**
I tried to capture you
in words, the way you were, the way
with each relentless second
you would never be again.

2. (words were not enough)
because
a) language is a frail medium
    for the powerful; the overwhelming;
b) emotions are shifting, & imprecise.

3. (I tried, a thousand times, to say)
how I found in you the wonder I had always looked for;
always missed.

4. (we can choose how we react)
how rare and beautiful
it is — to me — that you exist.

5. (you)
your hurricane eyes
twilight smiles
shoulders

where
have you
been?

6. (define morning as a feeling, not a time of day)
what did you think about when you poured your coffee and did you feel relieved when you heard the sound of rain? what colour was the daylight; and does love ever happen to you, in the traffic of rush hour?

7. (I said)
“come on --
let me take you home”.

“I am here” she said “you are it”

8. (he asked me)
"have you ever been in love with someone you knew you couldn’t have?”

I’ve never been anything else.

9. (a single green light across the bay)
I will rearrange my life around your meaningless smiles —

when love is not returned to us,
we will never stop looking for it.

10. (holding on and letting go)
there is a space between breaths and heartbeats — an endless moment, the infinite, an entr’acte in the operas of unrequited love.

11. (simply because I found her irresistible)
and yet that’s what we do, isn’t it?
we hang onto hope —
in every hopelessly irrational way that we can.

12. (and so part of me is always a fool)
I will wait for you forever.