I'm happy with what you have to give me
Except on these days where the hormones in my head
Riot like they forgot about tomorrow
Then my organs sink
And not only my brain can think of you
My skin spells your name in goosebumps
And the curls in my head signify the S that starts your name
The word that's always on my tongue
That made up word
That made up name
That belongs to you and will always mean
This love that devastates me always
This fever that makes me sweat out all the questions
When my immune system can't [/catch up and make up/]give the answers
as fast as it all unravels and so a lie for comfort may slip out
From between my lips
from my wallowing throat
from my nauseous stomach
where the Crohn's says I have cancer



When the dehydration strangles me,
I will be less human than you ever were
Each grain, a connection, the sand leaves me an emptier sandbag
Just one in the wall of flood prevention
Protecting a city of quivering seamonkeys

Waiting for that paper, a light
A cursor that keeps blinking for the next word
Even when the screen arranges to sleep in daylight
Fingers begin to itch and start being febrile.

An email, such a pity,
is more accessible than
a post box.
All the handwriting fonts that I did try, couldn’t,
Just possibly couldn’t mirror the impeccable tries
To struggle to be parallel to the top
Or bottom of a page.

The improbability of what the next thought would be
The prediction  of where the addressee would smile
Or frown, or pick up eyes to stare at the wall for a while,
To embrace what had just been conveyed.

Letters are like light, they reach us later
From when they were born, but the spaces
they illuminate or burn on their arrival!
I wonder if our pupils shrink.

They more than just tag along, they tap in,
They’re the result of cleaning the ink from
the nib, a thousand times, over thousands
of sentences, or maybe just a few, but they do.

And don’t dare ask the pen for proof!
It’ll track down wrinkled pages
Who had their thirst quenched by
The swipes of fountain pens’ fountainheads,
And pictures of the fingers
Bathed in red, and black, and blue,
And occasionally of table clothes
Spilled over by the consequence of imperfect handles.

Imagine if light came as soon as it was made,
It would be difficult for our eyes to handle such bait
Sometimes, a pause is necessary,
Imagine a world without commas!

I’d like to peek into the writer’s letters,
Not to read, but to sense the shapes of emotions
And stretches of As and Ns, or the reach of commas
On the next line, and then, close my eyes
And shove my nose in it, to sniff hard
The paper and the blue smells,
And die doing so if it was eventual.

You are a hard ghost to pin down
my will-o'-the-wisp

If I approach you . . .
you recede
If I back up . . .
you approach

But you never let me touch you
My marsh lover

A light unto my heart
Burns where I cannot touch
Cold flames of blue leave me
No traces of heat upon my lips

My heart shivers from lack of loves inferno
The strength of my skin
Cannot be measured
The merit of my bones
Cannot be weighed

Nor will my love be finite
Caged or displayed
My lips seek soft wet kisses
That reign down on my soul

I fell in love with you in the purchase of a postage stamp
I put your face and body and mind on paper
The way your hair curls
The way you jump with excitement and flap your arms
like a kid would on Christmas morning
How you were always there to turn to
Although I couldn't turn to you because you were never there
And by there I mean here, with me, where you should've been
I fell in love with the train tickets to you
The little orange squares like golden tickets
Granting me access to see you
To touch you
To share the foam of my coffee and laugh with you
at the man dancing at the hot dog stand
And when you finally stepped through my doorway
I swear it was Christmas and my birthday all at once
Planting my head on your chest
We bloomed and grew to heights I never knew was possible
And while little flowers blossomed at the ends of my fingertips
they grew on the tip of your tongue as you uttered those words
Those words to whom I have told but one; you
If I could find a word to describe the feeling of reading
the last several pages of a book you know has become your favourite
I would tell it to you
The hours that we whiled away and the ones that took up
the most of our day to get to each others arms before they took another’s
all meant something
And while the last bitter-sweet pages of our story have been read
Know that there's a girl who still writes you
You dance on the pages of her notebook
And while the postage stamps stay un-licked
She sends these poems to you
For in her mind you will always stay

Black Rook In Rainy Weather

On the stiff twig up there
Hunches a wet black rook
Arranging and rearranging its feathers in the rain.
I do not expect a miracle
Or an accident

To set the sight on fire
In my eye, nor seek
Any more in the desultory weather some design,
But let spotted leaves fall as they fall,
Without ceremony, or portent.

Although, I admit, I desire,
Occasionally, some backtalk
From the mute sky, I can't honestly complain:
A certain minor light may still
Lean incandescent

Out of kitchen table or chair
As if a celestial burning took
Possession of the most obtuse objects now and then --
Thus hallowing an interval
Otherwise inconsequent

By bestowing largesse, honor,
One might say love. At any rate, I now walk
Wary (for it could happen
Even in this dull, ruinous landscape); skeptical,
Yet politic; ignorant

Of whatever angel may choose to flare
Suddenly at my elbow. I only know that a rook
Ordering its black feathers can so shine
As to seize my senses, haul
My eyelids up, and grant

A brief respite from fear
Of total neutrality. With luck,
Trekking stubborn through this season
Of fatigue, I shall
Patch together a content

Of sorts. Miracles occur,
If you care to call those spasmodic
Tricks of radiance miracles. The wait's begun again,
The long wait for the angel,
For that rare, random descent.

The Response*

Even while flashbulbs go out, every now and then, we all must gather our arms and legs in a heap of human kindling, to rap tap tap on the downstairs neighbors door- for a set of candles, perhaps a chance to go completely insane for one terse moment when the hyperbole of vowels *just don't matter anymore.

And speaking of the sordid state of griseous gull-like creatures. Ravenous ravens gnawing outside the window of the kitchen table. How boring life can become, for at the moment, when we are not biting our nails, playing dress up, or playing doctor- all *******. Or maybe even burying our heads in the looks of rooks or with our noses brimming over with the tops of books.

The tea we have set in the study awaits us, as we all have to drink our tea some time.

Just don't leave the lights on baby. Who needs lamps at full lux at high noon any who? You, Mrs. Sylvia Plath Hughes? Maybe you ought to buy a book of stamps- at the nearest Hobby Lobby, pack a paper bag with an apple and a 'sammich', and list formally your complaints.

We can't all waste our time narrating other people's lives in the third person.