Just to feel better, he smoked his life away and now I am left here, picking up pieces of him from his ashtray.

In the gas deep under-park,
she sleeps between shadows.

I asked her why she cut herself,
and she said,
"Because death has an edge
and life is pointless."
She asked that I not
write a poem
romanticizing suicide,
just a poem about
how hard it can be
to celebrate life.

How she sat there
with movement in her head.
A churning of learning
the ways to get ******
and slaughtered by
other people's
sons and daughters.

And how I sutured a gust
of her brain exhaust
into my chest, into my lungs--
I breathed her like I was
******* the end of a
tailpipe.

Her hands ran like busted tires
as she massaged my temples,
revving her voice,
my ears on her
suicide door lips.

There is no green light
in her red light country.

I. You told me that you saw the universe in my eyes whenever we stared at each other for longer than six seconds. The universe is infinite and I thought you were comparing it to our love.

II. You fell in love with the way I laughed and acted around you because I reminded you of a rose bud that you planted on your garden. Little did you know, a rose has its thorns and I'm guessing you weren't prepared for that.

III. The first time you looked at me with tears streaming down my cheeks, you blamed me for being so ugly looking. I was cursing myself when you walked out the door and didn't look back.

IV. Months after you left and I was buried deep under the ground, he found me. ***** and covered in mud, he washed me from head to toe. I knew I'd fall for him.

V. He and I had our first kiss on New Year's Eve and he gave me hope more than you ever did. I knew I deserved him.

VI. I saw you walking down the street while I was holding his hand and the next thing I knew, you were screaming so loud I could barely understand what you said. Later, I found out that you were cursing me for being freed by him from where you buried me.

VII. I found a letter by the front door the very next day and all that it said was how the writer could still see the mud on my face and on my back, just like the last time they saw me. I knew the writer was you.

VIII. The night he found out about the letter, he hugged me ever so tightly and he swore he wouldn't let anybody harm me. Let the Power above dealt with the problem.

IX. I'm happier than ever now that I know I have someone whom I can hold on to. I don't even see any mud on my face; it is you who's covered with dirt the most.

****

~


Soft flurries of affection
find my eyes lost in the prism
of the beauty that engulfs my world

For to inhale is to fall into
the scent of sweet essence riding
the breeze exhaling from your skin

As words pour on the page,
my fingers dance in rhythmic patterns
now wrapped warmly about my thoughts

I have wondered, quietly to myself
where is it they are born,
how do they flow so easily

from a mind that constantly spins
in whirls of dream-like visions
kaleidoscopic views and frantic desires,

where each vowel, noun, adjective or verb
in feathered shapes of ink, somehow
scribble silhouettes of my love for you

It is now that I notice,
sitting in the frail sunshine of the dawn
whispering on salmon clouds, you are awake

that my hands are empty, my fingers still
for it seems as I write of you, my endless everything,
it is my heart that holds my pen