He is the shadow I hide from
He is the darkness in my eyes
He the knife in my heart
He is the tears in my eyes
He is the voice is my nightmares
He is the mocking tune of this twisted melody
He is the reason I'm scared
To be loved by anybody

I want my heart to feel like the great Salt Lakes, reaching towards each other, constantly suspended in the moment just before contact. I want to build this anticipation, but my patience is shorter than your last haircut, when we sat by the river to discuss model trains.

I want my mind to feel like a hummingbird when it finally lands to rest on the red plastic device filled with sugar water outside my mother’s kitchen window, but I’m quite a ways from home now and have been for a while.

I want my stomach to feel like the tree roots, the red oaks, the ones that dwarf me and that I know would let me get my favorite kind of lost in their home, the kind we planned on visiting after graduation, but I am usually stuck in maple sap.

I want my mouth to taste like strawberries, ripened scarlet in the sun, the kind my tall friend’s mother mashes up with sour rhubarb for the perfect jam to last us through winter, but more often than not, my teeth are coffee-stained and my tongue tends to be too sharp for delicate berries.

I want my skin to feel like satin ribbons, the kind that tie little girl sashes before holy events and parties where they dance on their father’s toes for the first time, and find it perfectly marvelous, but I am covered in scratches and marks from building enormities.

I am a patchwork from the most meaningless scraps. I was a junkyard doll with mismatch buttons eyes and melted cardboard shoes. My head is a garbage heap left out too long, my eyes are scooping all of it up, and my dress is made of someone else’s throwaway linen.  My aluminum can hands stretch out for anyone’s how-town while I think of shoestring revues and paper mache.

My nutritionist told me I need to increase my caloric intake and eat more carbs. I asked my nutritionist, “aren’t carbs bad for you?”
She said, “No. Carbs are not bad for you, carbs are an immediate energy source for your body to use, what’s bad for you is not eating enough and passing out at the end of the day like some ***** *****. Now eat some carbs and get some meat on those bones before I order you a ******* pizza myself.”

I should mention that my nutritionist is also my best friend. I call her Lady Reptar, because she is one. A lady, not a reptar, even though she’s twenty times more awesome than a dinosaur and fifty times nicer. She’s beautiful like a ******* daisy in the woods and she’s sharp and wittier than her cooking knives and she’s warmer than her father’s woodstove.

"So, do poppy seeds count as protein?"

I smell like the zucchini bread that I spent all afternoon baking.
You smell like pine wood and soap.
She smells like lavender and lipstick,
He smells like rosemary and hope.

We all bike down the valley to get to the spring,
helmets on, eyes to the horizon,
the skyline, I swear, rose to meet us that day.

You and I get there first, we lay in the sun
by the river, dancing on the stones,
jumping off ledges in boots
til the wind chills our bones.

We warm up with blankets,
unpack our baskets
and settle in for the sunset over the river.

Illuminate the bridges,
halflight the buildings,
shine on the rivers,
the light stopped lilting.

Brilliant colors, then none at all.
It grew darker again and we said goodnight.
"Do you mind if we don’t go straight home?"

Not at all, not at all, not at all.

I will be the person others pretend to be
A man that suicides as the honey-bee
It dies and does not flee when it stinks
It gets drunk as it dies leaving drinks
Called honey! In which it sinks
It is so sweet and delicious
I like it, for it is obvious
It is healing and a cure
For he who is sick or not pure.
It is just a bee!
But it teaches what a Man has to be,
A soldier, a humanist, not a zombie!
I am a bee and if you touch my property,
My honey!
Make sure you’re ready for my sympathy
I am so generous but I don’t give for free
No one gives for free they say, even the scorpion!
You always have to pay, for you’re not the champion.

The museum feels like heaven, feels like I could walk into the corner Pollack and the indiscriminate Monet, but there’s the characterization of Thomas Kane and you hate Mondays security guard.

The man with a beard followed me all the way from the Impressionist room to the modern films and when he finally made me lift my eyes from the canvas, his were turquoise and shook me awake.

I kept running up the stairs because I finally found out where they keep the hidden garden with the spiraled copper fountain and I laughed when I found my reflection in the Italian enamel.

You fell asleep with your head on my knees.
The weight of your skull was alarmingly heavy, so I played with your hair until you woke up. The moment of recognition on your face was so human I wanted to cry.

You scrunch up your eyebrows and touch your glasses trying to remember and a tiny echo of a perfect smile plays on your lips. You kiss me exactly and hum along.

You carried a contraband white umbrella into the gallery so we hid it under a desk. Your helmet was still blank so I gave you some concept art. Your languid loss of service as a multitude of goodbyes allow me to kiss your forehead right as your thoughts hit the pillow.


So I guess what I’m trying to say is that I understand why you tuck me into a warmer blanket before you leave for work in the morning with your heavy boots and your thermos and let me sleep while you shower and kiss me awake for breakfast with a cup of coffee in hand.

I knew when your skin stopped smelling like oak trees that it was time for me to leave you. I knew when everything tasted like curry and *** that I needed to run, but I wasn’t ready for months.

So I spent months. I spent almost a full year convincing myself I was in love, wrapped in plaid blankets and handmade ugly red scarves and even uglier red scars and I was just running through the motions until I gained momentum.

At the time, I taught art, and I’d come home from work with big, rainbow spills on my skin. Green on my arms, blue on my knees, red on my chin, and you looked at me and said
"Don’t they have a sink where you work?"

I guess I knew then too.

We got drunk before my bus left and I knew then.

I kept giving you pieces of me to hold onto. I’d hand you my thumbnail’s song on a mandolin, I’d give you my long hair to braid, I’d give you my toes to **** on and you carried it all down with you. I’m sorry for that.

Shepard Leopard print not calligraphy double "L's" lively as llamas lily roll roots lull underwater dreams felt from the events of hypnotized by the words of the orator, an ores rating is the basis of the all purpose flowering behind the veil, human as satiated, red as sunsets lewd as an anagram of wed rings marry Saturn on this mourning of the death of time, rocks felt sediment may ties tan in the Sun pelts peeled layered in the wind steaming serpentine smokes coils in the sky Clouds the equipment of the buster Organs play louder than church hymns reigns power blood men straighten in their pews at the sound of the root of all evil the mouth of the whale begging for the message more "S's" in saliva drool without one of Oh now bow before the bow arc in the Know a Self flooded urge elevated surfaced by the pit of the concrete, open your abstract the path leopard prints in the mud escape the boar snarling winters Solar is the limit speed time for the Scarab dry enough for the role of matter being dense as ******. In no sense cures us from our aged protractor, human after all is how I robot rock.

I am earth breathing fire hearing wind moving water beneath my meat eating feet. I stare through the ghost riding I am Equine the warship of the Poised den at landings end I devour funnel cakes within the three circles, I merge the warmth and cool blending the reflections with its shadow commanding paddle cyclical backstroke the Frog's moment chosen amp powered transition form and fathom an alternate realm, I dropped a meteor on a puddle world displacing half of all livin; Lanced a Wasp's nest as a Dragoon steals an egg as a test.

It's what they call you
When you stifle the truth