****** all the boys
in the army

win
war is over

still a lesbian

I met a woman
with a trumpet tongue
who played her words on
paper, white as truces.
she told me through my stereo
"we've both had days
where the phoenix didn't rise".

we' have all had days
where the phoenix did not rise.
but thank goodness
my birthday was the first time
I heard your lips part
and saw your teeth spill oceans
of blue blankets across my jellyfish eyes.

I wish everyone understood the irony
of writing love poems to a lesbian,
but my hands never seemed to reach
the ends of my arms
like I want them to.

They always get stuck dancing somewhere
in the middle.
playing a tune only they can sway to
knowing all the steps
bouncing off every syllable
while others let their wrists go limp
as if the puppeteers needed strings
to tune their fiddle
for a happy song
somewhere far far away.

so take my breath again
keep it wherever it is that you keep
the gasps our ears give you
as your words pull the
heartstrings we forgot we had
that we forgot how to play
to wave our wet-noodle fingers and
conduct a life worth living
so full of blatant love
not afraid to make no sense
my chest was an rusty locket
the day before I heard you
and now I am so full of echoes
from it's tiny, timid click.

For Andrea,
you are a sketchbook muse,
something I have to guess at on my
worst days when there are no words
and the rain smells like a swan song
from the sky.

you kept me writing when there
was nothing left to draw
or sing or smell or see anymore.
when there was black smog
between my eardrums pounding out
the dying breath of clouds
you held me through tinny earbuds
and poems I etched in the moss
running over back roads in my mind

so I hope
you find peace
every time you find a microphone
and that someday, I'll play you a tune
which echoes through you,
with a tiny, timid
click
and a full breath
that resuscitates the open blue
until we are both whole beneath it
until, again, we are true.

cannot go.  I am covered in ghost.  it is not lamb dust but it does not keep me from being a thought beside the poor lamb.  yesterday will have a party I won’t miss.  your mother your mother.  echolocate.  a book of poems will open to a flat match like what attracts you on its belly.  melancholy heads will roll from the ocean.  my thumbs have each a valley.  I believe this instead of believing I can be identified as lesbian because they are shovels.  I thought my head would ruin the cruel.  ruin then yawn.  ah, I was not long for my mind.  though I say to them unbury my feet my thumbs have each a valley.

litter me with your kisses
let your insistent lips echo them
sprinkle me with your eyes’ sparkles
frame me with your hands
transcribe my sweat into wordless sound poems:
your need for heavy showers
will find shiny, never-ending vistas
and during our gay afternoons
forget about the abyss and the sun
and follow the hidden tracks

Who knows tomorrow?
Who cares about yesterday?
I love you today.