Tick tick
I hear your teeth click
time's going
and gone too soon

Ballerina tip
embittered lip
Degenerating mentality
rippling morality

Love tipping
fraying and ripping
asking quietly,
"did you Ever love me?"

Ba da bump
I woke up alone
In my own twilight zone
Sunken is depression’s claw
& into myself I withdraw
Ba da bump, bump
Inevitably my heart will pump
Listening to the trumpet
Trapped in this twisted routine
I need a lover’s vaccine
Ba da bump, bump, bump
He said his love was fleeting
At our first meeting
So quickly I forgot
Blinded by the love I sought
Ba da bump, bump, bump, bump
We fell into bed
Bodies as heavy as lead
Sipping love from my lips
& I close my eyes to eclipse…
Ba da bump**
I woke up alone

My edges have no border
I seep & blotch the air
My thoughts a chaotic disorder
Laughing in silent despair

Who am I?

I’m the colorful mix
Of the pills I take at night
Grappling at the latest “fix”
But I never get the dosage right
So broken I shall stay
To listen but not to obey

I’m the perfect daughter
I know I ought to be
Smiling sequined next to my father
A beautiful sight to see
Painted fingertips, quiet lips
But I’m slipping from sexist grips

I’m the crash of atoms & molecules
The patterned DNA that labels our culture
Theorems, functions, evolutionary tools
Poe knew: Science is a “vulture
Whose wings are dull realities”
Fact blinds what my mind sees

Forgive me I’m singing
Of what I am & cannot be
& My ears are still ringing
With who society has asked me to be

"Count to ten"
one, two, three, four
Someone closes a door
I'm surrounded by masked men

A gleaming silver knife
I hear my angel weeping
A mechanical cruel beeping
A sick, metallic life

Everything is so white
Am I dying?
&, if not, why is she crying?
She swallows, "Don't follow the light"

I dream of you at dawn
Still dressed in lacy chiffon
Making coffee while I yawn

I dream of you in the sky
When I climb up high
& re-learn how to fly

I dream of you at noon
Of lemon sun in June
Kissing atop a sand dune

I dream of you at sunset
Of everything I regret
Your fading silhouette

I dream of you at night
In black and white
And everything comes to light
A past I can never rewrite

Mostly depressed
Slightly undressed
Pink lingerie
Egg white souffle

She stares, unaware
Of herself
But does not spare
Myself

From that agonizing beauty
Awe-striking allure
Of something so utterly
p u r e .

I’ll shatter another wishbone
If it means you’ll answer the phone
I’ll scour for pennies on this deserted street
If I’ll be lucky enough for us to meet

I’ll stay up all night gazing for a shooting star
If I can rest my feet on the dash of your car
I’ll pluck every eyelash from my eyes
If it means I can wish away all the lies

But the dandelions won’t work
You’re throat is sealed with a cork
I’ll still wish for one more kiss
Don’t you see? It’s you I miss.

Mix hormones, sprouting hair, and teenage angst  in melting ***

Add 2 cups of Varsity Sports

Blend in at least 3 leadership positions

Sprinkle AP & Honors classes liberally

Acquire obscure talent such as playing a Theremin

Add long-term anxiety disease

Brag constantly about how you helped Jakito, a small African child, on a mission trip

Drain all traces of possible love connection

Substitute sleep for academia

Bring stress to boil

Add spoonful of “legacy”

Separately mix “White Guilt” with a cup of diversity (Native American if available)

Marinate in SAT classes

Spread 2300mg of SAT on top

Shake Well

Ice decoratively with essays about Jakito

Most batches must be rejected

Caterpillar afternoon,
mom and daddy are home soon.
I stretch out on unkempt grass
a cat counts its claws,
I count clouds through blue glass.

A hairy man looks over my fence,
I feel my stomach tense.
A crooked finger says, “come here”
the ground grips me like a vice
Muscles ice with fear

I run towards the screen door
stumbling on a muddy marble floor.
A screen, lock between me and the lawn,
I peak through a curtained window,
and he’s gone.

You can't give love
only to take it back
but I swallow words
like pills these days

and the side affects
have no warning label
and overdosing is
too often fatal

I was standing in the airport this morning
and thinking of our first kiss,
When I realized I should write you this letter.
I’ve bought a ticket to somewhere far away
a place I know you won’t follow me,
where no one knows my name.

It’s best if you forgot my name
since by next Tuesday morning
you won’t know where to find me.
You’ll know it’s gone, that kiss
and that I’m even father away.
That’s why I’m writing you this letter.

I imagine you’ll burn the crinkled letter
and curse that you ever asked my name
curse my blush when you asked to go out with me.
How you woke up at dawn that morning
How you brushed chocolate off my lips with a kiss
You’d curse you ever fell in love with me

When you escaped to San Francisco with me
you saw all my writing, the poetry, the letters.
You read a poem about dove’s kissing
and you said you loved me by name.
When we woke up in a hotel that first morning
The world couldn’t have felt farther away

But I had plans to fly away
My future wouldn’t make room for you and me
I couldn’t always wake up to you in the morning
I knew one day I’d have to write this letter
That one day I would try and fail to forget your name
That I’d always feel the pressure of that kiss

God, if I could go back to that first kiss
I would push you away
I would tell you to forget my name
To forget everything you would love about me
So I’d never have to send this letter
and wake up so  a l o n e  in the morning

Kiss the memory of me
away and touch the flame to the letter
Sincerely, a nameless girl you loved yesterday morning

You were my ice tea
On a lemonade day
Honey from a bumblebee
On the patio of your cafe

You were the green grass
We smoked at dawn
The freshly mowed grass
We stretched our limbs on

You were my summer drink
Those strawberry lips
A raspberry pink distinct
With those cool iced hips

I drink just to feel
What I had with you
I drink to bend like steel
I imagine you do too

I drink because I don’t remember
What actually occurred
That dark December
When shifty lies became blurred

Our politicians preach hope
While our nation struggles to cope
Stacking woman into binders
Deaf to all but hired reminders
Treaties & agreements for peace
While riots rage on in Greece
Told that we are doing just fine
As more join the food stamp line
American banks engorged with greed
Planting in free soil a debt ridden seed
The next Great Depression has already begun
& It matters not which candidate has won
With our cancer ridden healthcare
Attempts like duc-tape to repair
Voting to raise the debt ceiling
An American father kneeling
Praying to God to find a job
While outside “we the people” form a mob
The 99% chanting in the streets
Stubborn legislatures don’t budge from seats
C-span listens to recipes from cookbooks
A dull murmur of televised crooks
Unemployment continues to rise
Prophets sure of the world’s demise

I daydreamed my way to the sea
                                                             ­   and made a sandcastle my home.

You’re a puzzle
Thousands of missing pieces
When I reach to hold you
I touch the missing spaces

You’re going nowhere
Awfully fast
Pedal to the metal
Hope this high will last

“Do you see me?”
Your mother snaps.
Can’t hear.  Ears
overflowing with schnapps

Addiction coded in genes.
Father to son it passes
The pattern continues
Passed along in ***** glasses

I want to crack your ribs open
to see if your lungs
are scorched black
from dented memories
you don’t understand quite yet,
from misinterpretating documentaries
and mellow cigarettes.

Night plum lips that spread
Smooth like butter across toasted bread
A tongue that tastes of apple pie
Cinnamon spice- an apple sigh

Almond eyes- chocolate brown
Wearing her hair like autumn’s crown
Golden reds her chestnut tower
Absorbs morning’s lighting hour

Blood that flows like dark red wine
Gnarled, twisted like a tree her spine
Her beauty  blooms in the late afternoon
& Sleeps under the harvest moon

She stopped eating until she was nothing but right angles and sharp edges. It was if she couldn’t understand the math of the world she lived in, so she sought the neat geometry of the curve of her hollowed hips, the bend of her wishbone elbow, and the measurements of her rag doll ankles.

A shadow of a man ******* up space
Pressed suits & cufflinks without a face
No emotion just a ghost of a man
Hovering closer to an empty plan

A wife at home with a hot dinner
Ignorant she is feeding a sinner
She ignores the smell of perfume
For fidelity is what she’d rather assume

Stuck in this vacuum space
Tangled in work and ***** lace
He never looks up from his plate
So consumed in cold hate

A shadow of a man- what a pity
Washed down the gutter in the city
The only one who will miss
Is the daughter he forgot to kiss

Numb me with marijuana
Grown somewhere in Tijuana
Excite me with a line
Pretty soon I’ll be feelin’ fine
Money can buy me happiness

Meet me in the back of the bar
Smoke that musky Cuban cigar
Touch me with manicured hands
Glinting diamonds of wedding bands
Money can buy me happiness

Traded morals for skyscrapers
A Hampton house with too many acres
Smoothing down in a velvet gown
Baby don’t you see? I own this town.
Money can buy me happiness.

I suppose we’ll get drunk
Maybe that’ll drag me out of this funk
Of television screens and cheap food
An oh, so unforgiving mood

Fretting about the smallest things
Of raw chicken & bankrupt kings
Avoiding sentimental ties
I’ll settle with the unkempt lies

I’m addicted
To lying with gentlemen
Breathing unrestricted
To surface every now and then

Second amendment rights
Cigarettes & car rides
Away from bright city lights
In the dark society confides

An early morning fire
Pass me a burning ****
Bring me all the higher
Remove societies’ yoke

My summer lover
The shapes we uncovered
After glasses of wine
Clutching my spine
With sweaty palms
A voice that calms
You laid me down
And let me drown
In a pool of lust
Quaking with each ******

The bites
From steamy nights
The pink hickies
From afternoon quickies
Oh, but the early morning kissing
Is what I’m still missing

9/11, 8:46 am
The first plane crashes
an explosion of black ashes
Smoke blooms- a flower
from floors 93-99, North Tower

9/11, 9:03 am
The second plane hit
Hell split
Fire licks the sky
men & woman try to fly

9/11, 5:00 pm
A flag is raised
above the rubble's blaze
Buildings may fall,
but the flag stands tall.

Racing through blood
Man made substances flood
Of expanded pupils, raised hairs
High heels tripping up the stairs

Burnt black fingertips
Love bitten, swollen lips
Cigarette littered floor
Empty morals learn to soar

Smoke hazed sight
An internal fight
To stand up straight
It’s all sealed by fate

I am a walking glass
Transparent
An overflowing rim
I hope it’s not too apparent

Don’t tip me
I might just spill
Was it one drink or three?
I’ve drunk my fill

I’m your whiskey girl
Bubbling over
A sequined, beaded twirl
another lover

I hate you
No, no
I love you
Slower, slower

I hate fast
Slow down the pace
This cannot last
This fall from grace

Augment your fingers
Across splintered hips
Your taste lingers
On sugary lips

Submerge
Into red, red wine
Surge
You’re the cork

Slower, slower
I want this to last
Slow,    s l o w
This can’t ever last

Rain kisses the pavement
Cigarette burnt fingertips
Your warmth is god sent
I taste the salt on your lips

Black umbrellas line the streets
Clam chowder and baguette air
Like a child tucked beneath crisp sheets
Adoration the only stitch I wear

Pacific Ocean’s salt
Rain soaked cheeks
Coy, loving, exalted
We could’ve survived like this for weeks

Old pub
Out in the suburb
Broken men
talk about way back then

Cigarette stained fingers
amber residue lingers
a record scratches
about way back when

I’m swaying
decaying
As night pools on
dawn

My lover grips my hips
Calloused fingertips
I lean in closer
“I just need some closure”

The smell of smoke
Invades me-I choke
The smell of alcohol
Drowns my soul

For it smells of your breath
& Reminds me of an untimely death
At 3am heading for the door
The gut explodes on the floor

How could I have let you leave?
Stay till the morning to hear your mother grieve
Phone call-so curt- what did they say?
That her son was splattered across a highway?

They said “instant upon impact”
How long is an instant? Long enough to react?
Did you see the windshield shatter- the pavement fly?
In that instant did you have the time to say goodbye?

In ***** socks
& with rusty hearts
we’d swing off docks
Throwing mindless darts

Cooked deep tan
Freckled cheekbone
A sizzling dripping pan
We didn’t answer the phone

Swinging into a wide lake
On a salty afternoon
Restless but wide awake
In a humid summer’s June

Downing a bottle of wine
We stole from your brother
Watching the sun lick the horizon line
The night dropping in to smother

Can we go back to the days?
When we weren’t caught in this maze
But instead in the suns rays
We lived in a lovely blue haze

I realized the other day
That poetry has become
How I color in the gray
How I scrape up the ****
And salvage it

At times I think it’s nonsense
Stanzas of here and there
Of love and its expense
A sad whispered prayer
To someone, to no one

But looking back
To how I wrote then
And how I crack
Like leaky pottery when
I write now

I understand
Who I was then
& How unplanned
time and time again
I find myself alone

At a funky record store
We found on a corner
I sat down on the floor
& chatted up some foreigner

At dark
With cigarettes and warm beer
We stumbled to Alamo Park
& watched the lights disappear

At dawn
I woke up wrapped around you
You kissed me and yawned
& then it hit me, and I knew

Feet on the dash
We smoked the stash
Threw out the ash
& Tried not to crash

The smoke hangs
In the sun’s lazy rays
You brushed away my bangs
As we continued to blaze

Maybe it’s you
Maybe it’s the high
But this feels like déjà vu
& I still don’t know why

I toed the edges
Of the crystal lake
Slid down muddy edges
Bitten by Eden’s snake

Now I dip my toes
& you laugh at my caution
You gently pull at my clothes
& I give myself to the passion

But I’ve never breathed
In sickly sweet water
Yet you pulled me in teasing
& my lungs began to falter

My chest yearns for the shore
I’m drowning in those eyes
There’s no air left anymore
I’m sick of honest lies

There’s nothing I’d rather do
Than watch TV with you on my lap
Sleeping the afternoon through
As the raindrops continually tap-tap

There’s nothing I’d rather kiss
Than that hollow of your throat
When your breathings gone amiss
Cuddling under a cashmere coat

There’s nowhere I’d rather be
Than sitting on the roof at midnight
With you and a cup of pepper tea
Carefully tracing dawn’s first light

There’s no other I’d rather
Than you right now, right here
Even when we lose hold of together
I’ll love you long after We disappear

My little being
Through almond eyes you’re seeing
Sculpted muscles, milky bones
Swarthy, light pink tones
I made you from scratch

Musical lungs those cushioned lips
Royal cheekbones- sea shell hips
A gentle curve of a lower back
Grand Canyon’s spinal crack
I made it all from scratch

My walnut cracked skin
Bones frail and thin
Once made a life from scratch
A young, perfected match

I was wild
& you preferred mild
But when I caught you stare
I suddenly didn’t care

So I knew when
You kissed me then
I couldn’t ever explain
Why I kissed you again

I could never understand
Why I grabbed your hand
& led you unplanned
Into a foreign land

You and me
Were never meant to be
You live inside the box
& I live to break the locks

Forgive me I’m Singing
The praises of a stolen night
How your lips burned in spite
Of January’s lonely chill
When bottled eyes began to spill

Forgive me I’m caught
In the calm of sea glass eyes
Steam that slowly will rise
Your kiss, the cooking moon
Sometime in late June

Forgive me I’m staring
I can’t bring myself to stop
As hand in hand we window shop
Dancing under the harvest moon
Winter’s come too soon

Let’s sleep out
And eat in
Quietly shout
Get mad and grin

Hold tight
To loose morals
Wake up at night
Fall asleep and fight

Shiver in June
Warm in December
Believe a cartoon
Grasp a hot ember

Let’s bloom from above
Speak what we cannot say
Let’s fall in love
*And stay that way

She a ballerina
Spinning through air
In her icy arena
To land anywhere

He a winter’s sigh
Searching through trees
To capture her in sky
On his webbed breeze

Love a fickle disease
That rises like the tide
To pull back when it please
& Leave the sky too wide

I found you between touches on screens
through swiping on pocket machines
and I met you in the long shadow of sunset
you smoked a cigar and I a cigarette

We put the stars in our eyes
and found ufos and Russian spies
and gave ourselves to the not knowing
but knowing this wanting to keep going

So at one am we kissed at Chevron
with a smirking cashier looking on
and I did so without a second thought
because, honestly, how could I not?

Not here
Not there
               Not anywhere

No reassuring hugs
No disapproving tugs
No walking down the aisle
No disapproving my style
No comforting smile
Dad's been dead for a while

A cozy little lot
Our own very spot
With doors and floors
My drawers and yours

There’s a tea ***
For the earl grey I bought
And a French press
For your coffee express

There’s an old stereo
Playing songs from the radio
Peonies hanging in glass jars
In a home we call ours

It’s warm here
I know it will disappear
But maybe if I just believe
I’ll never have to leave

I thought,
“her nail polish is chipping”
that one I bought her
when we got lost in rite aid
and she stole a bottle of wine
and offered me my first line
in the back of Robby’s Volvo.
Her nail polish is chipping
and she’s digging the polish into my chest
I hear her breathing moisten
and I close my eyes to her light
as if it hurts to look at her straight.
No one has ever accused me
of being a man
so I sit back and let her lips
make me feel like one.