i scrub and i scrub and i scrub
but nothing can erase the fingerprints you have left on me
because they are imprinted in my memories
and i can still picture where your fingers have been

Memories
Like a fistful of sand
Leaky and incomplete
Something I can't grasp
Like talking in my sleep

Memories
Of dreams in daylight
Of things that never were
Like reflected starlight
Music gone unheard

Memories
Of cold nights and warm lips
Of skeletons and their prayers
From buried paths they slip
Abandoning their lairs

Memories
Like a stream in the night
It's darkest depths concealed
Memories
Like snow's last flight
Melts as it's revealed

Nai,
We walk different jungles
Sun spliced in different skies
Split by a slab of blue
Yet I hear
You

Me, here,
Walking the paths you sing of,
Making hands of the words you speak,
Arriving at the memories you've wrung like a
Needle stuck in my mind

You
Sing like your soul is on fire.
Purring of quiet as silk;
Lungs weeping raw in
Consonant melody sifted in
Soil

Oil
Spilling off palms
Soaked in the blood sun, and
In all my wandering--
I can't help wondering if, in the end,
I discovered you
For a reason

--
c

Menagerie…by Jessie 6/06


Too many days are all the same
The will has left, the inert pendulum silent, no longer marking time  
Glass menagerie collecting dust
A ghost town of frail figurines
Lifeless the sheen, pail from coatings of yesterday
Not even the trace of a fingerprint to announce interest
Tawas a time, excitement from the prospect of a new-collected piece, while much deliberation was given to its placement
Diligently, maintenance provided, dusted and polished
Imagination carrying fantasies of amusing situations and images  
Laughter recounted when viewed by innocent eyes
Now the foundations mirrors will not reflect what was or what is
Each days accumulation, another layer, each layer a little duller
Soon the only connection, a web, thin and translucent, linking one to the other
Paralyzed fragile pieces of glass, drowning in a sea of negligence
Your name whispered into a box of mementoes
Awaiting for renewed curiosity of another generation

Her ******* were like damp snow,
       teasing but letting my fingers
tread lightly.

She felt ever motion, the imprints
of my wonderings were left
                in the cotton of damp fingerprints.

I never went below the snow,
         sometime
just treading lightly,
       is enough to make her moan.