You may have to think hard
to remember
boredom,
that lay on the couch,
curl up with a good book
lapse into nothingness
way of existing.

Ahhh...

Drink cocoa
slow.
Lick marshmallowy foam
off your lips.
Expect nothing
more than the turn
of another page.

Ahhh…

Let quietness seep
in with breaths
deep and warming,
a hot mug to your cheek.

Linger.
Let only decadent words
pour from your mouth
when silent reading
can not be done.

Ahhh…

These are my thoughts,
On life, and love.

Life is so trivial,
Random and patternless,
Or is it?

Life is so unimportant,
But yet important enough,
To have an underlying meaning,
An underlying pattern.

But so unimportant,
Unless you have something to live for.

Love,
Another trivial thing, maybe,
But together,
Life and love,
The most important.

What's even crazier,
Is I'm crazy for someone I don't even know,
But yet,
I know it's not lust.

This I know,
Because I don't have the physical urge,
This I know,
Because I want to get to know her.

It's not lust,
But, it's not love,
Because I don't even know her,
To early to tell.

But I think about her everyday,
I've never thought more about someone who I don't even know,
Am I crazy?
Maybe.

But,
Even though I don't know her,
It feels like I've known her my entire life,
And I will tell her that,
Just not in the first conversation,
Or maybe I will.

I once heard though,
That you don't give up on someone,
If you think about them everyday,
So, I won't give up.

I'll just finally introduce myself,
See where it takes me,
See where it takes us,
'Cause I've got a good feeling about her,
About this possibility.

First things first,
"Hello, I'm Doug Fruin, and I believe we've met before."

This feels
Like the color,
Purple.

My tiny dancer
Shock blonde
And cinnamon sugar
Watching Saturday morning cartoons
Curled up in bed.

The grey daze before dawn.
Like goose down and
Razor blades

I’m enthralled.
Captured
Raptured
Rising from the dead
Of long, wrong dreams
Inside my head.

Could this be?
Could this be?
Could this be?
Love?
Or just a
Weak approximation of.

‘Cause the world seems to stop
Whenever she’s near
And everything becomes
Perfectly clear.

I perfectly understand that I
Can’t get enough
Of my
Fingers in her hair.

I can’t get enough
Of her
Artificial air.

Yes, this feels,
Like the color,
Purple
Like goose down
And razor blades.

How can one as pure as you
Endure these times, emerge unmarked?

You seem to live apart
From all this pain and loss
Evil and filth

I can't extricate myself
From this quicksand-sin

And none have trod upon your heart;
It's still full of helium and joy
And sweetness and light
And love- for me!

He lays in his bed
under a thin layer of dust
and ash from his cigarette after cigarette.

The sheets tremble above his breath.
His chest cracks and crumbles.
His heart's an inferno.

He ricochets between
anger and self-pity
and denial.

Two days ago
she left without a word;
slipped from underneath
the covers and buried herself in
bottles of *****
before crossing the street
to the vineyard.

She weaved together
the branches
and kicked the stool from underneath
her bare feet.

as he watched from the window.

He knows she will come back.
She will untie herself from those
grapes of wrath
and rest her head
against the pillow next to his own.

Writing a poem now
seems a daunting task.
I used to write
every night
––multiples a week!
no one had to tell me,
ask,
no one had to seek.
What should I write about?
I'd just look around.
It'd come,
It'd flow
The words were happiest when found
––They'd tell me and I'd know.
But then, months later,
uninspired as I was,
Confused, upset
and just a little lost...
I looked back
and took a gander at my outlaid pride.
To my dismay, to my contempt,
my words were silly
and had no cause.
Upset upset
What am I writing for?
The talent I have
is in my head
and I need to be alone
once more.

if you name your hair a rope
whip my soul with it
tighten my neck
i am willing

if you take your fingernail as a knife
strive in my breast
cut my day dreams
split my memories
take my yesterday from me, take my tomorrow
i am willing

if you name your eyelash an arrow
and ***** my dreams,
***** my nights
i am willing

if your eyes like sun
sear my mind, scatter my voice
i do not ask what for, how or why
take me to bazaar, sale
i am willing

because the flame of your eyes
is a pair of wings, is peace
it makes my life bird fly
to heaven
to the seven stairs of sky

Translated by: A. Edip Yazar

My mother had two faces and a frying ***
where she cooked up her daughters
into girls
before she fixed our dinner.
My mother had two faces
and a broken ***
where she hid out a perfect daughter
who was not me
I am the sun and moon and forever hungry
for her eyes.

I bear two women upon my back
one dark and rich and hidden
in the ivory hungers of the other
mother
pale as a witch
yet steady and familiar
brings me bread and terror
in my sleep
her ******* are huge exciting anchors
in the midnight storm.

All this has been
before
in my mother's bed
time has no sense
I have no brothers
and my sisters are cruel.

Mother I need
mother I need
mother I need your blackness now
as the august earth needs rain.
I am

the sun and moon and forever hungry
the sharpened edge
where day and night shall meet
and not be
one.

I have no energy left but for revolt — the revolt of the one who abandons the climb, turns his back, and goes back down the hill toward the water.

**** Cheney ate my flesh and shat upon my skeletal remnants. Obama came after him, unzipped his fly and emptied the pale dilution of his bladder-wine onto me (it was warm and sparkling at first, but soon became cold and fetid).

I do not want to be treated by your white-robed functionaries who take me to the precipice’s edge, deliver a pill to my mouth, a hand in my pocket, and a push on my back. I do not want to be educated by your masters of delusion, your demons of standardized measurement. I do not want to be fed by your factory corpses who sit like workers in cubicles, unmoving and covered to their hips in excrement and despair. I do not want to be employed by your treadmill machines that turn time into regret and obedience into tears. I do not want to be informed by your chyron streams that feed the wells of desolation and ignorance. I do not want to be a part of your economy that fills the fountains of palaces with the blood of innocence, where investment is a tout sheet that dissolves into electrons as the getaway limousine races toward the mansion.

The sheer and final exhaustion of the rebel is his last and only triumph: he drops the knife of his cause, gently lowers the stiffening body of his holy purpose into the receptive dust, clears aside a few stony pieces of the rubble, and kneels in submission to the earth and all the teeming beauty that lies beneath it.

For then he knows: it is I, too, like these others, who have walked among the dead.

Today. I was almost hit by a car,
wearing a scarlet dress
the way I least wanted to die
by the grill of an SUV.
The engine grinned hotly in my face.
the look on his face was priceless
I bet mine was better.
as I gasped, no room in
vocal cords for screaming
held my hands out
as if that would stop the metal from moving
tires screeched.
I don't know why he turned so sharply
I don't know why I put my arms out
or had to walk that way
that particular day
my hands shook  in line
at kinkos, holding back every chemical
mixing violently.
saying please and thank you
for two sheets of paper
that could have mattered less
pulling sunglasses
over my face with a case of the shakes

life just stamped me with an appreciation
for itself
only taught by almost getting hit by an SUV.

life went on around me, the workers in yellow on the corner
got a few moments of thrill.
the folks at Starbucks
the other people grinding their teeth at the stoplights.
a moment excitement.