You are a compass, and eventually every direction you lead me in takes me back to you. I think I am the north pole. I think I'm confused, or just confusing you; I think we're two of a kind.

I once watched your magnetic heart swell when I touched you: I realized I was hurting you as I loved you all too tenderly; I never thought of that as a possibility.

You quickly made yourself a home in my cerebellum; I can't even sleep anymore. You're always there, tapping, tapping, tapping, sneaking your way through me, pulling strings that don't belong to you. I can't talk about you: you always interfere. My tongue tumbles ineloquently over your name; I've lost control. You are, again, tapping, rapping on my motor controls. Get out of my head, or come back home to my heart.

I am bitter, and I am turning, and I am not sure whose fault it is. In the end I'm sure it's mine, but it's much easier to blame you, and I do. I blame you. Why did I have to love you; why did I have to leave you? What made this all happen, was it the stars, or the moon forcing a change in the tides? Was it some other cliché, or was it just my idiotic decision?

I have lost you again.

back to the days of dandelion dreaming
     tasting the sweetness at the center
     and squeezing the sap from the stems
onto our dirt dusted hands
          frantic finger-painting on the cement dance floor that we bloomed from

back to the sage-dressed lake bed
     she laughs
and boasts silently to the sky of her emerald depths
     i laugh
and boast ineloquently to the bottle's neck of my mermadic swimming
          always got my head beneath the surface
     but this isn't suffocation
               no
          just transformation

i am on the rise

back to the nights of meteor showers at the top of the world
from the hood of my car
     sharing candy bars and over-ripe secrets
it's the browning fruit that tastes the sweetest
          so freedom must be the color of garden soil
     or maybe just the same shade as your eyes

back to the laughter
erupting from our child-like bellies
like hot water
     from granite springs themselves
remember?

back to the tents
     and firepits
     and unmapped road trips with no end in sight

back to the chapter
with the "happily-ever-after"
     and the monsters under the bed packing up for a holiday in spain

back to the light
that's how i'll survive

The Riddle

One of you has seen my face.
One of you knows where I live.
Stuff. Important stuff,
like the locale of
my hidey-holes.

My email and my
cell disclosed
soon to be
on sale on eBay
for a trifling sum.

So now I must
disburse to parts
more remote,
reappear in a
nouveau identity.

Just a necessary precaution.

Moreover, methinks
you have grown
tired of my waning voice,
waxing ineloquently,
opining too frequently.

feel like a
thick wooly straw
welcome mat,
edges unravelling,
grown raggedy,
roundabout the edges,
or like a
paperback book,
tho well thumbed,
nonetheless,
consigned to the
bye-bye
discard box.

riddle me,
me be the riddle,
when I scribe
under a new
Nom de Plume.

will you recognize,
my signature
hid amidst the
restless words that
still need a home?

are my poems
worthy of a
second glance,
do you predispose
your attentions on
your favorites only,
the newbies squeaking
ignored and unattended,
whose ranks I have
now rejoined?

did you ever meet
a poem
you did not like?
did you ever greet
a poet
with palms
outwardly raised,
saying, no mas,
had enough,
no time for you
and your
clouded clarifications?

need you.
need you to judge me,
without the saddlebags of
predisposition and imposition.

if you need me
just give me a
loud holler
in my sleepy hollow.

tho sadly my
country road,
has listening posts
on the telephone wires,
I will know, when.
you call,
your voice,
I will come,
if you ask,
always.

I'll be riddling
in plain sight,
if you have the taste
for and of me,
you will find me
soon enough.

HOWEVER,
in emergencies
all you need dial,
my digital signature,
911 and
ask for the
Poetry Hotline.