They say that a person's heart
is the same size as their fist
but when you said I love you it hit
harder than your hand ever did
and I may have two black eyes
but yours are the color of fresh cut grass
and your heart must beat faster
than a hummingbird's wings
because your fist moved like
the needle of a sewing machine on my skin
but I was the one stitching myself back up
and I am covered in bruises
shaped like the hand I used to hold
but they will never hurt as much as
the last time I felt your pulse

I heard that people's hearts
are the same size as their fists.

When you told me you loved me
everything was soft around the edges.
The palms of your hands were smooth
as you ran them over every inch of me,
reading me like Braille.
It was gentle.
It was kind.

I heard that people's hearts
are the same size as their fists.

When you told me I broke your heart
everything was shattered and fragmented.
Your knuckles were jagged and ******
as you turned my flesh to pulp,
beating every last I'm sorry out of me.
It was brutal.
It was angry.

I heard that people's hearts
are the same size as their fists.

A volley of gunfire
A stream of offensive epithets.
An amazed girl
And an enraged boy.
After every volley of gunfire,
There was a respawning individual.
Steam could be seen emanating from his ears
Anger radiated off of him.
The girl watched carefully
Taking note of every action.
The sounds of battle could be heard
And the boy kept getting aggressive.
Innovative and anatomically impossible suggestions were made
Names were called and yelled out
And the game continued
“I effing stuck him” was repeatedly yelled.
Finally, after a long rant,
The boy jumped with ecstasy
In the heat of the final battle, he won.
Now he wouldn’t have to fling his controller
The girl applauded him, thankful for the blessed silence.

Run your fingers through my hair, down my pediment neck.
Kiss my face, my lips, and find the moon in my eyes.
Run your fingers down my chest, to the cables, pull them ever so gently, lifting my weights to start anew.
Restart my heart, swinging pendulum, with intricate lyre laced from mended pain.
Feel me, as the rhythmic tick-tock of my body resonates from finial to base, my gears smoothly interlocking in motion.
I am alive, you wind me up...

"you are so comfortable"

but have the pelvic bones
that I knew not of
existing anatomically
greeted your elastic skin?

hard bone on hardwood
friction on my outer flagella
pangs in my pits
this continues to concave

an artificial frame;
deemed healthy
after an unsatisfied lifetime
I remain as so
I am a wire hanger
draping fabric
awkward angles

I beg your pardon
I am far from comfortable

Anatomically sound, befitting a king
swaying alertly in the waves, I sing.
Hearts, at sea, floundering and pounding
against the cavity of my chest, astounding.

V-Day arriving, and leaving without me
swimming with shellfish and sharks at sea.
Satisfying love’s unique quality,
and breathlessly waiting for me to be we.

Tortuously lying in the keel’s utter mist
waves exploding above, below and amidst.
contemplating all that I ever wished,
remembering when, at first we last kissed.

V-Day, a special enchanting display,
lovingly speeding, though slightly astray.
Wishing you love in a happiness way,
throughout a belated Valentine’s Day.

“But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve
For daws to peck at. I am not what I am.”

This is a line from Shakespeare’s Othello that has always struck a chord with me. Because in more ways than one it doesn’t make sense. Wearing my heart on my sleeve is a foreign faraway concept for someone like me who struggles to be real and to drop the pretenses. I have built a façade that deems almost inaccessible. However, reality reminds me with people like you that sometimes, broken glass can be just as beautiful. And that vulnerability is not something to be afraid of.

My heart beats rapidly inside of my chest.
My lungs struggle along to catch their breath.
What is this? I ask frantic and almost stressed.
An anatomically correct heart
Lies in the center of my shirt
A gift from someone very dear to me,
Someone who is often times near to me
The melodies of beautiful songs
Accompanied by the delicate strings of a guitar
Ring in my ears as alarms
Rather than acoustic rhythms

I fall to the floor,
Too late to meet up with your shadow
I have once again missed my opportunity.
I think back and the nostalgia washes over me.
I remember when we used to
Steal kisses under the navy-blue night sky
The stars seem to shine just for you and me
I wish with all of my being that we could just be.
That we could stay in this moment forever or perhaps
Just for another minute, just for another second,
Just for one more moment.

But alas, you return home, and so do I,
Back to the mundanity of our everyday lives
You remind of the ocean,  
Powerful and destructive, and yet I find myself
Hopelessly drawn to you.
The serenity of it all knocks my breath away.
I travel to reverie quite often these days
Perhaps it’s to escape the reality
Of the broken pieces that we left behind
When we decided that perhaps together just wasn’t meant to be
The sunshine filtering through your pale colored curtains
The flowers that follow your footsteps
Marking your past and illuminating your future.
I miss you more than these words can spell.
My soul aches terribly thinking of our last farewell.
All I want is your lips pressed against mine
Our hands closer than ever; intertwined;
As we stroll next to the coastline
But instead I’m left alone with my thoughts.

In the process of writing this poem,
I am not only wearing my heart on my chest literally
I’m doing something I rarely do,
An expression of vulnerability
Of unexpectedly sweet feelings.
I am wearing my heart on my sleeve.
Because I know by now, that I have fallen too far.
To even believe, I don’t know if we’re meant to be
I only trust in what I can see,
And hope and pray that you feel the same for me.

Every inch of our ceiling
is bruised in memory,
watercoloured blues
fade into last Summer's browns.
It hurts.
Night brings the poetry
I'm still trying not to trip over,
the written and spoken wounds
that mark my body
still spell out your favourite weapons:

1) Ginsberg
2) Naivety
3) Perpetuated incompleteness.

I am anatomically structured for
falling apart with one cut heart string
at a time; a countdown only I control.
One only you tick for.

One day you'll learn
that the world is made from tissue paper,
and tears as easily as I.

things in our blood things in our skin
poor vein's discarded oxygen
here you are superficial, artificial
on the surface creep
but the rumor's that you also come in deep

There's one cat who meows
in the alleyway but mimics
a fowl dog who ate
larval staged meat. There's
two headless horseman
racking leaves to find their heads
that teenagers rolled
down the country hills.
there's three furry bears
in a cave testing hardness and
softness while four bats
hang backwards to avoid the light. The
five cowgirls had six cowboy hats
each exactly. They're going to run
out if they keep throwing them at
groups of seven boys.  Eight dentist chairs
were rolled onto stage so the
nine musketeers,
multiplied by three,
could get ten root canals.
The doctor said he could have
given eleven more of them
but he heard twelve whimpers
of pain and gave up.  There were
thirteen bounced checks and fourteen wrinkled
foreheads who were lost in eternity
for fifteen years.  Sixteen world banks
filed bankruptcy to drive dollars down.
Seventeen hands were squeezed
from an angel holding glowing
red lips.  eighteen hearts and
brains switched spots
anatomically leaving nineteen
grown men sprawled on the
ground like they drank twenty
or so too many.

Face like a road map. Pock marks like valleys and the little blue vein by your nose like a river rampantly running down through the mountain of your defined cheek bone. Face like a night sky. Freckles like one million diamonds flecked across a porcelain night sky. Two crystal clear blue eyes like full moons reflecting on an untouched lake in the middle of July. Face like a razor blade. The edges of your jaw line so straight and sharp and defined they cut through the flesh with the pointed tip of your chin. Cutting the pads of women's fingers as they trace the delicate lines leaving faint pink traces of their D-N-A. Face like a Brillo pad.  Face like a baby bear cub. Fuzzy and innocent in its nature to be nurtured in the way of the world. Like the framed moment of a woolly caterpillar being cradled by a toddler in the backyard on a fall afternoon in a pile of leaves freshly raked. Face like an anatomically correct hear. That ruptures and burst with each glance at beauty only to reanimate itself for the very idea of said beauty being some sort of purity. Some sort of saving grace. Re-iginiting in crater of eye sockets like coals that become diamonds under the pressure to cry. Face. Face like hands that hold mine firmly. Face. Like. F-A-C-E. Face like my person.


*Prompt from poem by Dorianne Laux

Anatomically sound, befitting a king

swaying alertly in the waves, I sing.

Hearts, at sea, floundering and pounding

against the cavity of my chest, astounding.



V-Day arriving, and leaving without me

swimming with shellfish and sharks at sea.

Satisfying love’s unique quality,

and breathlessly waiting for me to be we.



Tortuously lying in the keel’s utter mist

waves exploding above, below and amidst.

contemplating all that I ever wished,

remembering when, at first we last kissed.



V-Day, a special enchanting display,

lovingly speeding, though slightly astray.

Wishing you love in a happiness way,

throughout a belated Valentine’s Day.

The way a child trusts so blindly, I will close my eyes and fall into your every word.
The sugary-sweet  scratch of every consonant and the friction of each vowel.
I will trust you with no hesitation.
If I fall, I know  that you will catch me.

The way a child clings to it's favorite blanket or stuffed toy,
I will hold onto you and never let go of the feeling you put in my heart.

The way a child finds no sorrow in it's days, I will too, look at the world in a sunlight so bright, there is no room for darkness.
When I am with you, I can know no sadness.

The way a child sleeps with a guardian teddy bear at it's side, to fight off every night terror, I will rest easy knowing you are beside me.
Your body pressed against mine, like perfect puzzle pieces.

The way a child day-dreams of anatomically incorrect hearts, and
cheek-kisses, I will dream of you and all of the butterflies you give me.

And the way a child believes from the bottom of their heart, that everything will be okay, I will give you my heart, and believe that you will not break it.

I liked the way the bourbon on your lips
burned mine stop
I had to keep drinking stop

Sometimes I get drunk enough to
remember the smell of pomade,
the way the muscles in your back flow
across an anatomically perfect skeleton stop

I can hear you breathing through
your mouth, your heart
that always seemed to beat faster,
more sure than mine,
until it
stopped
altogether stop

Everything was
all together
until it
stopped stop

From the tip of my toes
To the top of my head,
This world
Is suffocating me.

I'm up to my ankles with Jackals;
I'm up to my tibia with Libya;
I'm up to my knees with Refugees;
I'm up to my thighs with Counterspies;
I'm up to my crotch with Iraq;
I'm up to my groin with Muslims;
I'm up to my waist with the Displaced;
I'm up to my belly button with Christians;
I'm up to my hands with Iran and all ...stans;
I'm up to my rib cage with Renegades;
I'm up to my sides with Genocides;
I'm up to my chest with the Oppressed;
I'm up to my neck with Egypt;
I'm up to my nose with Jews;
I'm up to my cheeks with Sheiks;
I'm up to my Irises with Isis;
I'm up to my eyeballs with Jihads;
I'm up to my ears with Syria;
I'm up to my forehead with Baghdad;
I'm up to my cranium with North Koreans.

My Christmas Wish:
Is for them to do
The anatomically impossible:
****** Themselves.

Drastic self-defence,
Drastic in my linguistic augments,
The evidence of my attempts at trying,
To see any future where I’m not dying,
And it makes no sense

Tactic for offense,
Offensive in sarcastic defiance,
Ambivalence on a course for further premonitions,
Static fragments of my continual refusal of any medicinal diminution,
Please help me make some sense

Psychopathic friends,
Systematic traffic hence,
Pensive head and that will drive you,
Insane and round the bend if only they all knew,
I can’t see any sense

Automatic ends,
Ammunition diplomatic,
Suspense in its unanimously tragic situation,
Fate’s unenthusiastic in its conflict upon two cognitive nations,
That makes no sense

Anatomically attic fenced,
Just a poetic way to represent,
One’s combative mental condition,
An addict and the opposite always on the right and the left warring in attrition,
If that makes any sense

Plastic ornaments,
Plastic bottles left to lament,
As the alcoholic labyrinth in my life that cannot be broken,
To help wash down writhing thoughts forced to remain unspoken,
And an I that makes no sense

Fix it no expense,
Fixed monthly recompense now,
I am a myth of someone, whom I do not know,
Sickly pretence took me down a road that I never wanted to go,
And now you say I’m finally making sense

Panic is absent,
Absent the magic,
In the pills that in basic blindness I routinely swallow,
Dynamic in the worn out tools that continue to carve once whole now hollow,
Does that make any sense?
Now I’m really not making sense, by finally making sense

Two hands wrapped around my heart,
It's a death grip.
Two hands lunging for your throat
It's blood for blood, love for love.
911
What's the emergency.
I have an urgency
I need a needle sharp enough to slice
And the strongest rope that will suffice
To get these stitches in.
Gasping for breath but still breathing
My hearts still beating
From the bottom of my heart I can tell you
the pools of my love still ripple waves
The richest shades of red
Call it cardiac arrest.
If you really broke my heart; I'd be flatlining
Anatomically incapable of life; I'd be dead.

Giddy with excitement,
she fumbles with her keys.
As the key slides home,
she grows weak in the knees.

She’s waited so long,
and it’s finally come.
She spent a small fortune,
and the thing weighs a ton.

She pushes in the package,
starting to sweat,
and suddenly realizes,
her ******* are wet.

She slides a finger inside her,
and lets out a moan,
trembling slightly,
all the way to the bone.

Gathering herself,
she locks the door tight,
and forces herself to calm down,
gathering all her might.

Getting down on her knees,
she opens the box,
brushing away the packing,
like styrofoam rocks.

When she sees his face,
she sits up *****.
He is so lifelike,
and anatomically correct.

Reaching into the box,
she caresses his face.
He’s so beautifully sculpted,
not a thing out of place.

Then she runs her hands,
down his chest to his groin,
caressing his ****,
feeling the warmth in her *****.

It’s bigger than expected,
as long as her forearm.
The biggest she’s had,
but this raises no alarm.

Taking her time,
she arranges him on the bed.
Even laying a pillow,
under his head.

Running fingers through his hair,
she begins to undress.
Doing it slowly,
cause slowly is best.

He’s more than a doll,
more than plastic parts.
He will never hurt her,
or break her heart.

She crawls on all fours,
in between his thighs,
running her fingers over him,
as she stares into his eyes.

Then she fills her mouth,
******* gently at first,
and then she fills her throat,
trying to quench her thirst.

She’s dripping now,
so exquisitely wet,
and moaning deeply,
like a good little pet.

The doll lays still,
as she mounts it slow.
She’s lost in her pleasure,
as something brushes her toe.

She opens her eyes,
as a hand grabs her throat,
and another her breast,
her vision starting to float.

She struggles for air,
and feels a ****** as it moves,
and a soft moan escapes it,
as the blackness consumes.

Bucking and fighting,
she claws at its face,
but it simply slides deeper,
and quickens its pace.

She stares down into eyes,
that are filled with life,
and features so sharp,
as to be carved by a knife.

It’s beauty is gone,
simply melted away,
seeming to flow freely,
as if made from soft clay.

As her vision fades,
it moves inside her,
whispering “my princess”,
in a soft little purr.

I am anatomically correct
But atomically, a mess
I am chaotic and undressed
One hundred thousand bricks
Comprised of tiny pieces all compressed

I am a prison for little hollow ghosts
That push until pulled
While I am standing here still
And they climb to the top where they come to a stop
At a grave on a cemetery hill

She fills up the air
With soft falling notes
That burst from her eyes
And dance with the ghosts by the light that once burned
To the song of the Seraphim's sigh

Bring to me a pair of aces
Smiling faces and a cup of coffee
Empty spaces and her heart
Torn from the tearing
Of teeth gnashing, eyes glaring
As I stand here still playing my part
Her music my magic
A cage for the tragic
And the life I've been too scared to start

She used to sing to the storm
With her outstretched right arm
Lines forming from rain that would spill
Yearning to feel something other than real
The night she plunged into the cemetery hill

A call to order is sounded
The drummer pounds for attention
As I'm fixed on the light on the sea
The full moon's reflection is my insurrection
When still burns the fire
In her eyes, I aspire to be
Lifted into the air, without worry or care
Take these ghosts from my bonds and set free
For the chains of despair, when I was made to wear
Sank me into the depths of the sea
But I can now take to flight
On the might of the light
She burns brightly if only for me.

I shrink and am in quantum and want them giants stood outside to go away,the shadows that they cast blot out the sun,this day is faded gray and I wait for the moon to rise so I can bay at it.
I sit in sepia feeling like weeping at the sadness that surrounds me,thoughts of several years gone by hound me and there is no rest,
so I continue to shrink into sub where quantum then becomes the giant,the hub,the wheel on which I spin and the pin is me.
Atomically and anatomically quite comically I raise a fist at all those times that we have missed like ships that pass,escaping gas reminds me that the meter's on the starboard side,where in the past I've tried to hold things in,
now I just let it out and if farting's what this life's about then why am I still here,is it growing that I fear and If I shrink so much I disappear,where will I be?
quantum says, mechanically,
well,
****** me I never thought of that.

(alternately titled one me silly more till manufactured
from go win addle American
non refundable private parts)

each set of twenty three chromosomes
the basic biological building blocks
of life came out ******
when second hand of analog clocks

barely and scarcely swept across dial,
wrought offspring appearance as a pier a docks
closely resembling a monkey perhaps...hmm...
maybe mother mated with a chimp
assimilating chromosomal flox
genetic combination brought about add hocks
viz bouncing baby boy skinny and fair game
as a pluperfect future target for jocks
when I took first gasp of air sputtered
like an old engine that knocks,

now just easing into ma deuce score
and xix year with hair reed locks
twittering, snorting, rattling nonetheless
became precious human dependent

with mat chew anti body mox
see for father and mother
to care despite expelling nox
shuss gas out derriere, which profuse flatulence
natural immunization
kept away infected kids with pox
nicknamed little buttock blaster
now sits in a comfy chair and rocks
reminiscing about boyhood and a pooch named Socs
who told time applying faux paws vox
like ­tum make sounds resembling tick tocks

Nowadays every potential mom and dad
disappointed unless offspring(s) feverish follow fad
decreeing qualified as gifted birth of lass or lad
go wing great lengths to **** and push
progeny until a genius to be had
rather tubby thankful and gratefully glad

regaling robust surprise packaged traits of yore
inheriting genetics descended
when early apes did de tour
terrestrial ****** earth anatomically complete store
reed awesomely astounding miracle from spore
sized fertilized **** (healthy
and sound baby boy or girl) hood roar
if lionized, which feline bellow mew might mean
change my dye ya pore
and pamper me sum more
gnome hatter wailing mama or papa ignore
thence nurturing baby pipes por favor
kinship knits omnipotent bond evermore
where tis instinctual to adore.

I never thought the human heart was a beautiful thing until my youngest son did.
It has always seemed clumsy, relatively simple,and a somewhat gross *****.
Muscle-ligament-electricity
I have always been bewitched by the brain and its nerves.
it's mystery, complexity and resilience.
He loves blood the way I love nerves,
he begs me to re read the heart and blood pages in his children anatomy books.
He knew all kinds of facts about blood and the heart at 2.
He never drew the traditional valentine days hearts he draws, to the best of his ability, anatomically correct hearts.
He loves it's rhythm ,
he loves it's simplicity,
and he finds it above all else, beautiful.
he loves it for its tangible nature,
the way it is reliably one way and one way only.

Watching Homer struggle
to explain how a god wounded by a mortal
cannot die but may thereafter live with minor pain

and the humor when that god
complains to Jove that His supervision of His daughter
is inadequate and His Love too unconditional

while Diomed (or Tydides)
wreaks havoc on the Trojans and Hector
gives it back (in kind)

anatomically correct descriptions
of spears piercing jawbones and groins
sons without fathers hunting and fishing thereafter

alone. Written
amazingly presciently!
as a metaphor for Vietnam (our war)

forgotten consensually
as this generation slips lazily away
to Hades (on Huck Finn's raft)

where the lights are always blue, gentian actually,
supper's served at 4 and former adversaries
pass the heavy hanging time playing pinochle (and pool).

We're selling the house to pay the taxes.
Pallas Athena wars among the men
from the axle of her chariot

and Venus is injured by Diomed,
standing in the field of battle where she never should have been,
in her adorable hand.

What has this to do with Solomon in jail.
Not the Jewish king, a black American male,
same thing.

Your children can be failed at school and marched to war.
You can be taxed and sent to gaol for the honor of it.
anyone lived in a pretty how town.

We have no obligation
to perform the Iliad or read poems and even Homer
considers Achilles effete (compared to Hector)

and Odysseus is wrong even when he's right.
Therefore, modern man explores
the mathematics of circles in coordinate planes and their tangents

(when) (once) (soon)
the secret of warp speed is discovered
expansion of the species will be limitless and permanent.

I apologize in advance for the ash swirling in the wind, but this morning i woke up and clutched your name with such reckless devotion that it turned to dust. Every syllable fell to the floor. I tried to reconcile my wounds but the infections are swelling like the tide. I wish this melancholy would come like the waves so my body could stop feeling so dehydrated. I never wanted that girl to break your heart, only to hand it back to me. She stood on ground previously reserved for my feet. I don't hate her, but i can't be her friend. I loved your hands that were so thin but trained to destroy life. Particularly mine every time they brushed by my body without stopping to linger. You thought of every stop sign as a yield so that explains why you were always in a rush but never why you were constantly late. I've always waited for you. You know I hate being late but i don't mind walking in and being the cause of turned heads with you. You've smoothed out my complexion because i don't experience anxiety with you so my worry lines have disappeared. The only breaking out I've done is coming out of my shell because you taught me to live life with the sunshine in my face rather than fluorescent light bulbs. The artificial suns never seem to be turned on in my room because i only wanted you with the lights off. Not because I'm afraid of my body but because I don't need light to memorize your every shape and contour. Like a blind man learning Braille, i wanted to spend hours memorizing you so i could read you properly. When you came back your body was a different shape, rougher, more defined. And when i asked to sharpen up my memory of you, you turned away and i think thats why i had trouble reading your letters because your Braille required something new to continue. But i dont come with upgrades or new technology every time you come back, i am the same as before. Like Windows 4 i am starting to run slower than the last time you saw me and a few things have become unrecognizable even to myself so when you asked me what's new my brain started yelling ERROR 404 and i broke down.  No doctor, no repairman, not even you knew how to put me back together again and i felt like Humpty Dumpty and you were the king who sent all of the horses and all of the men. But what i would give to be your queen. Sit beside you in a throne and have portraits painted of you and i until there were halls and ballrooms filled of us. I wanted to carve pictures into all of the vertebrae in my back but i realized you took my spine with you when you left. You unfortunately left my heart untouched which made it ache more because you have never hurt me. Although I wanted you to **** me so i had a reason to hate you but i cant help but resent you every time you say my name with no love at all. You've always protected me, but safety is your only concern especially because i am not beautiful enough to cause a rupture in your make up, not even a quicker pace of your heart beats were produced when you saw me. I wanted to anatomically break you down and rewire your nerves so the next time i held your hand your only response would be to hold on so tight that only the jaws of life could tear us apart. But the jaws of life dont seem as terrifying as your hands leaving on their own. But now they're thousands of miles away and my heart was left in tact but it's slowly tearing itself to pieces without you here.

I am boasting of knowing something about Pergamum,
and the altar from there, that is now in Berlin,
and the library that was in that city, where as one
of the cities linked to the Satan of Revelation,...
------
Inserting myself, the meat minded man, qwerty guy,
I am not alone in thinking these are unprecedented
times to be alive and literally reading defined and
cross translatable buzz words that trigger points,
like bullets, but
itchy, or spark, cringe, sometimes, ew, feel
where
whose pain? Yeh we know, now, Iyobe, he talked back,
wisdom has no problem with that, ask James, 3:17,

powerful truth, I used to escape an infamous cult,
in the summer of 1985, which happens to be
the last time I saw Wendell Havatone, Sr. alive,
that 4th of July, in 1985.

The part of friends who approach laughing, every time
you remember a friend, that's the spirit, we share.

Just true, no wu wu doctrine ritual walk, you live
long enough, you know.
…………….

...I am not defining sorrow,
I am not sorrowful, nor sorry.

I am ordinarily silent,
my fingers speak more e-loquaciously
than my lips, yet saying
thus saith the tyrant in my mind, guy in charge,
boss, saith, accept the cast and acknowledge
reception, then be not deceived, no tool in the bag
is non essential,

to be excited about life, become excited about dying,
right, with chutz pah - ummpapa,

steady increase in the overall confusion, mixing material
substances to invoke reversion to the common thread,

the survivor animus, she prima donna, mother superior, Y-
certainly we understand the taste in the white of the egg,

-wait, I'll check.

Shad-dah' ee, the Almighty, all powerful, all schadenfreudlich
Dada's still art
you are the other people, too.

- laugh after you know, you knew, secrets
- heart felt truths we treasure as children,
- wishing some one really dead, as seen on TV.
- Ow, intended for adult audiences, greasy gopher guts.
- anatomically correct Barbie dolls, mentally challenging.

Salt of the earth, pillars in the house
of my god, who has sons
and daughters, stories abound, certainly -- bound by something,

some herding instinct near the mean path of least resistance.

Armed with 2023 word processing technology,
we confess to stretching the vernacular idiolect past positive
resistance to the polar opposites being the most sublime
iteration of our situation, see,
I am wind, and you are water, and, oh, oh, no,
yeh way cool, heat rises, join me, be yourself, no problem

cloudy skies are good things in July.

When he looked at her,
all he saw
was She,
She.
Anatomy as definition.
When she rose up
and the world saw Her,
all the world asked
wanted to know
were Her questions
and anatomically
related probes.
They saw Her, like he did.
And when he rose up,
the world saw him
they clamored to know
his accomplishments
his strategies
his stances
but nothing about Him.
There were no His questions.
Just questions.
Because he was a person, not He,
and she was not;
she was She.

You always try to break out of your crib.
Spend childhood somewhere between land
and water. Save shells. Dig up dead animal
bones. Hide them. Blow bubbles with
now absent brother.

Fall. A lot.
Fall. Fall. Fall. Pick the scabs.
Break open again. Pick.
Repeat until scarring is complete.
“Rub some dirt on it.”

Dad tells you that everything dies
someday. So you find comfort in all things
morbid. You want to be an archaeologist.
He shows you The Doors, The Beatles,
The Who. You are raised right.

Chase the handsome boys around
during recess. Teach yourself how to
read. Secretly peek at encyclopedias.
The anatomically correct bodies
in the back. Hide them. Giggle with the boys.

Travel to Vietnam with your mom.
Understand your spirituality while climbing
thousands of feet to temple. Understand
your culture and where you came from.  
But you still don’t know who you are.

Write stories. About everything. Illustrate them.
Collect fossils, crystals and minerals. Spend
Sunday mornings eating ice cream and playing Xbox.
Pass notes with the boy. You play softball, because
he plays baseball.

Watch MTV. Dad said not to. Tilt your head at
Music videos. Hide them when
he walks by. Sneak Mom’s makeup
so you look like the girls in the
videos. You don’t.


Stuck in Old Saybrook, Connecticut. Still.
You try to wiggle your way into your identity. So you
always evade parental supervision. Stop
testing the waters and begin full fledge fleeing
into the swells.
Meet boys, like them, kiss them. Love one.
You fight. You steal a little. You lie a lot.
Stay up. Sneak out. Get caught. Do
drugs, hide them. You are way too young.
You are 13.

Skinny dip. Sell ****. Make honor roll.
Create your secret life. Decide you know
everything. But you learn it all the hard way.
You get arrested. You decide you
don’t know anything at all.

Get expelled. Your secret life is
not so secret.
You learn your way around
the razor blade from the medicine cabinet.
You aren’t who you thought you were.

Attend mandated therapy, community service, tutoring.
Drug test. Court date. Drug test. Court date.
Regret nothing. Except for
making Mom cry. The boy comes over
to share pineapple pizza. Your favorite.

Decide you want to be better. You
cut the ****. Your report cards still
marked with A’s. This is your ticket back
into the school system. You get your first job.
Pass your last drug test.

You scuba dive. You travel. You meet new people.  
Cover your walls with art, and maps. Fill your bookshelves.
Inherit Mom’s reading habit. Live by Dad’s movie collection.
You write. You graduate High School.
You get three more jobs.

Old Saybrook, Connecticut. You’ve spent your
life somewhere between the land and water. You collect fossils, save shells,
pick scabs and skinny dip. You try to wiggle your way into your identity.
You visit the boy on Thursdays. You hate MTV. You are 20 now.
You regret nothing, other than making Mom cry.

There must be a way out.

Because one time,
there was just water.
There were
just molecules.

How they fit together so
anatomically.

And now
how can they divide
so promiscuously?

It's as if the door
has been sealed
with the visions of future.

It's as if
there was never
any way to be sure.

There can't be.

Beg, borrow, and steal.
There's many ways to conceal
the distorted image
life has shone
mystically.

This is all a mystery.
I don't know if audible waves
are what the ocean brings.

There are only things.

There are only those
who sting.

And for those that blindly sing,
there are only things.

That carrot, what could be said a little girl gave her,
                    Well we wondered why an anatomically
Correct Miss Snow lady had such an amicable smile.

Her nose always seemed to descend to below,
                         She had a friend but his carrot was as
Limp as could be, it wasn’t his fault it’s the cold you see…

But never fear, where there is ingenuity there is away…
                 In their morning Miss Snow seemed to ice up below,
But she seemed to have a rather defrosted glow…

For when it was time for this artificial carrot to wind down,
              She evaporated in pleasure but Mr Snowman was still there
***** but no place to go. Poor Mr Snowman,
                                                          we'll blame it on the cold…