1.

dear feminism,
do i think of women
when i write to you?

why do i personify?

angry at an unjust world,
angry at injustice in ourselves,
have i been taught to fear you?
ignore inequity of fears?

or hide  
in the shadows of your salty curves
speaking soft with sycophantic tilt?

was this what mother meant,
portending talk of therapy
two decades in advance?

a bouy on three waves,
i crash against protuberances too:
limp didactics on avoidance for the victims,
waking in continuums of shrugging crime.

sameness differs in utopias --
every latent gut avers the right to spill.
despite the lissome quell forgetfulness contains,
my proper sphere will leave me
deafened in a wrack-dry
tidal echo--
'Fairness' stains clear beauty dark
as my imagined egos drown at last
from down our oceanic well of shame.

sacrifices fade,
i cannot write...
i write, and fail,
defined by sediment cliche,
reading women authors out of obligation ..odd desire,
and so in dim medieval-fashion
miss
the trail of monoliths erected
for a craven ease

2.

dear civil rights,
why were you taught
through prisms of boredom?
my voiceless reading left you to your rage,
while i communed with glossy nature,
private leaves.

how dare i clap your back
"congratulations"
at your tidy givens  granted
scars were open past my seeing,
and bleed still

while right here, empathy dies, now

dreams are bombed,
grafted to infected faculties
to wallow tended in a garden of injustice
erudite and dead,
i **** a bit i tell myself then stuff my face with food,
cover breath with smoke
and sleep in sour ignorance
no courage left to care.
blind grins bouquet the status quo
of rotted stems, discarded roots

i bury you with homeland fear
the killing silence filled with just intentions
for tomorrow

3.

dear feminism,
you speak for me, too--
my genderless ear attunes

cathartic sweep of ills
scaled beyond your other selves,
sexing into common chosen songs

no fearful tremble
at a mainstream backdrop reprimand--
to be a good gender,
--this gender not that gender--
gestate bigotry of symbol wombs,
cut ripe to cater to unquestioned whim;
no violent selfhood requisitioning
to closet inner innocence in pain

contractions shock in further waves
i midwife simple hope i hope
true fairness you have nursed in seeing death


4.

dear punk **** feminism,
marginal i ask as i perform
unstructured sutras on my heart
exemplar of a meta-freedom
burning in the core of threaded ages strung--
how then life without your voice,
vast silence unobserved,
the hidden anti-*** persisting
in our gender-theory--theorizing sterile norms--
sweet pulsing concupiscence
in our every waking breath
a pollinating zephyr tease toward
celebrating every feotal bathtub bliss --
unbridled ideologies unleashed
unmade into opining din

5.

dear temperance,
i vote you cherished
whirlwind
singing endless through the ageist ridicule
apparent failure in the civil warrior's eye
dogma blinks
denial of the rights you suffered for
but underneath compassion all along
i rally in your family's younger gaze
staring down,
questioning the steady rhythm of a whiskied fist

6.

dear feminism,
have i been taught to celebrate you?
have i been taught to fear for you?
have i been taught to treat you as a woman?
why do i personify you?
like some Sophia cybered up atop the forums of our age

blind and failing
i would be dust as well
like any rightful fading into dust
be swept along with all coercive screenings,
fear-born silences
immune to reason and the reasons of the heart--
rather than to live forgetting
letting go the questions giving rise to equals in a discourse
revising what it means to ask the meaning of


#
dear feminism,

when you are gone..
i for one will sing you
hope

to protest bigotry
a raging tranquil step
of care-filled voicing

dare an upward sloping arc
a dream becoming shared
to overcome
attain
inspired by once unfamiliar names

i will still be here,
the angry feminist
burning in my flagging underwear

brightest outrage at injustice
your deeper loves, fairness
selfhood honored
as if written in the stars
or ancient shorelines
-- you will not be gone

Seagull on rotting planks, bouy bells ding to fog and driftwood.
A culling fire exploits the docking shire.
Filled with chlorine shards, legs caught in the clap-traps.
Friar palms glisten,
Rage responds with frisson.
Clear view over water.
Feel your arms relax and slip onto your back while the culling fire attacks.
Bulbous deadening brain chimes
As the eyes slide down to your omission crimes.
Leave me alone in my despondent company.
Don't push the matter further let communication fail to nurture.
A warm breeze carries me
like a floating portrait towards unreal scented meats.
I'm here now, alone in the corner,
The greatest intimacy with the static patterns on the carpeted flooring. The king of this corner is the odor of plank seating and flowery detergent in this lonely corridor fluorescent light-bulb poles and old grain floorboards.
Now the returning shards of panic to uncelibate strangers drive me up, far, deep in my own ribcage to something wholly non-organic.
Time to clock-in, time to check out.

You cannot keep him afloat.
No one can.
You'll drown yourself if you try.
Keep yourself afloat.
Do things for you.
Make you happy.
Tell him about them.
Include him if he'll be included.
Talk to him.
Talk to him about simple things;
About beautiful things;
About curious things;
About mundane things.
Let him know you're there and floating next to him
That you will help him float if he needs it
But don't you dare drown yourself holding him above the water while you can't breathe.

I can't blame you for what he did.
He chose you over me
But that doesn't mean I crucify you both
I must learn to accept that you were what he craved
Though I craved him so much more
You feel his lips
But I ... Well I tasted them the sweetness of the green leaf and the minty gum he used to hide it the crest tooth paste and the grape mouth wash
When his lips sparked with mine I could taste him
You feel his hug
But I .... Well I devoured that hug to get every ounce of lighting through my body as he nuzzled my neck making the giggly bubbles pop in the quite night air
You maybe lay in his bed
But I... Well I cuddled him like he was my bouy in the open sea guiding me to safety
...and now I'm drowning without him so you better say goodbye before I kiss the waves and hug the ocean floor cuddling with what is below

I sat at the Lighthouse and looked at the sky
feeling the breeze caressing my spine
little did I know this would be the last time
that I would sit on these rocks in the early july

I felt like an oyster on the half shell
hearing the wind in the trees casting their spell
The bouy rocking and ringing its bell
the sunrise is effortless painted pastel

life was so easy then

It was out
in the middle
of Cinnamon
that the night
belonged to us.

Not a single soul
was in sight,
we were engaged,
intertwined,
hanging
onto each other
with all of
our might.

We clung to our
own bouy line,
like jellyfish
enraptured,
electric.

We left a chum line
of sweat, tears, and other
soluable materials
we exchanged,
given to us
by the Gods.

We watched
a falling star,
tumble,
disappear
into the Pleiades.

You were mystical
and I was a mystic.

Below the sun starts to droop
like my eyes in the winter haze
Swift and aloft, mesmerized
The penny looses its shine
And the well seems fit for drowning

Rummaging the the rubble
My heart's not a store
Scarred and broken
open through the door comes the looters

I am robbed
bobbed for a bite on the floor of unseen
Though these eyes are sore for looks
Scandalizing props a broker through
stained glass windows
faulty ceilings and fogged up glasses
Elapsing through the Praise scratched Lord hands

Am I left to compose
Iced over good mornings as honor and parishioners rumble over
Where am I headed, where do you go?
plastic pieces flexing
Docking down to where the light never seems to hit
But we take mark with a bouy-
To say your words *"This is how far I got"

Through my meadows I burn
To the chimney stack scoffs
And the melancholy sweeps to rotate the blinks over
and over and over again

Death came in the night,
slinking in the shadows, weaving in and out of darkness
and being stealthy
and he rested on the man's chest.
Death took cover in the blank black of night and breathed out an invisible net and caught,
lives
and took and stole
Death came disguised as sleep and in the vulnerability he snatched away life
and left the part he didn't need in the bed
as a gift, a token
He surrounded existence by his inevitable arms and strangled it, ****** it out.
Death,
he came quietly and like silent destruction,
and scattered the lines of connection,
for the dead, and for the living.

Except but he didn't come just at night.
He came dancing through summer, enveloped in joy and white lilies,
Tap dancing through the mess he created.
Turning souls into memories.

Death followed them to the beach, and spread his cloak in the warm sand, and ran in to the water
after the boy
and pulled him into his arms under the gentle waves
then allowed him to float, lifelessly
like a bouy
He was erratic and unstoppable
Transforming summer days at the beach into unspoken family grief,
celebrated yearly
the day that he swam with the boy.

Death sipped a cool drink and waited, for what to take next.
He sat patiently at the pool, with open arms and a ticket with a name on it.
He was impulsive and careless.

Death sang a song and they danced to it,
each step deadlier than the next
until
they stood at his feet dressed in white covered in permanence.

He followed around with his cart
waiting to pluck the next one
from their line
and to leave behind
distorted and collective grief
set in a bed of white silk
in a casket

Death never slept, but decided which costume to wear.
he had many,
for every occasion.
But on her day,
He dressed as an errand run
disguised as a daily task to the store
he invited his friends;
accident and collision
and told them to wait at the traffic light
and when they saw him,
they ran to meet him in the middle.
And embraced each other,
leaving a mangled ball of assorted metals behind.
with crimson splashes, strewn clothes and full stops
and they laughed
and he carried his 5 tokens
and left behind his signature,
locked the box of their future
then swallowed the key.

And he didn't look back
as he danced beautifully

I sat at the Lighthouse and looked at the sky
feeling the breeze caressing my spine
little did I know this would be the last time
that I would sit on these rocks in the early july

I felt like an oyster on the half shell
hearing the wind in the trees casting their spell
The bouy rocking and ringing its bell
the sunrise is effortless painted pastel

life was so easy then

2005
I wish I had loved you then
when life was simple
and love was easy
when you and I were young enough to stay
over at each other's houses and
talk all night
on the mattress we dragged out in front of the tv

                 2010
I wish I had loved you then
When love was awkward, small
and we were innocent
When we could look into each others eyes
and know that we were too scared
to hold hands even in public
and was lost when you kissed me

                  2016
Im glad we love each other now
when we're both sixteen and I learn to drive
and you text me when I got home
when you hold my hand without shame
to and tell our parents for our first time
when you kiss my nose
and clumsily love me

and even then that fades
from contact daily to a nod in the halls
why do I love rejection
why do I feel like my entire body is a leg that fell asleep
why are we pending
why is it that I cant see a volvo without thinking about the moss on your windshield
why am I seated on the gross tiled floor in a dingy room trying to ignore the thought of you
why cant I look at my favorite sweater anymore
why cant I drink milk or drive that strip of highway
why cant I remember how love felt with someone else
why do I forget that I mean so little to you
why did I let you replace my big A with your little e
why cant I listen to Beethoven without feeling scared and alone
why do I let your rejection become me
why am I so scared that losing you means forgetting me
why has it been 1 month and nine days since we last spoke
why do I count that
why do I feel like disassociation is my default when you aren't there to tell me it isn't
why am I not able to look in that envelope without losing breath the envelope that used to take my breath away for another reason
But most importantly why do I love yellow when its eviscerating to look at

In morning, he is divided and pried from the dream
Confronted by the next plaster gray View-Master day.
He lingers on his traditional half of the bed, teetering
Then ventures across the deafening, empty apartment
Where the dust accumulates like hourglass sand
Blanketing, bit by bit, over sedimentary plans
And archeological troves of screaming bones
In a vast, derelict desert of vestigial space
Towards a wardrobe of aborted echoes.
There he peruses his potential noms du jour
The coats of people he could have been
Knowing most of them no longer fit.
He settles on his most generic pronoun.

He performs his penance to the Tao:
He is each domino just as it tips
He is becalmed
He is amid still waters
He is a ship without wind
He is a captain without a ship
He is a bouy on the waves
He is one last minute
Treading water
(He is Legion, sleeping)
He is another last minute
He is the dragging current
He is the inflection of breath
He is the mooring of the moment
He is the stones in the coat pocket
He is the coveted numbness of now

In evening, he recoagulates and retires
Resigned to eat the tail that eats itself
Consummating one more centrifugal lap.
He remembers Sisyphus must be happy.
He watches through his dizzy window
A caterpillar spewing up a second womb.
It will be the last monarch butterfly
But he avoids the finality of the situation,
And in his mind, any ensuing hurricanes.
He buries himself in stale anticipation
Beneath slowly overflowing drawers
And trash bags piling up in hallways
Where he stores expiring fortune cookies
Whose pearly secrets he leaves uncracked
For want of a friendly sweet tooth
To bite the bullet for him
Because he can't today.

No one tells you what to do
when your heart is in your mouth,
when your toes cramp and tangle,
when your body aches to be a better bouy.

No one tells you how to act
when your tongue burrows thick and cold in your throat,
when your knees buckle,
when your chest reels six slow shackles to the ocean floor.

No one tells you where to run
when hope is thin on your lips,
when your feet drag and the sand burns,
when the whole world thinks you're a coward
and they’re right.

You can’t tell if you're singing or screaming,
dancing or decaying,
miserable or marvelous.
a galaxy or a ghoul.
All you can do is stand and sway.
All you can see is the tiniest scrap of light.

No one tells you when it’s time to go;
when to strip the bed and when to sink in deeper.
You can't know if your eyes are the right color while looking through them,
or how your heart could be a burning match when you hold your breath and wait.

No one taught you to gag promises and jagged teeth;
to pluck moss from your hair and rust from your limbs,
but your fingers know what to do in the dark,
your lungs know how to keep a flame alive.

No one taught you when to be brave and when to keep your mouth shut,
but you’re learning, aren't you?
Your mouth stays sealed and your anchor stays secure.
You’re learning.