Rose petals fall,
One after another,
Ticking time of
Wilting flowers.

One petal for friend lost,
One petal for dead dog,
One petal for time gone,
A last for constant pain,

A wilting rose,
Has not a name,
Lost its color,
Hates lover’s game,

Flower sits pretty,
For a time it stays,
In the best vase,
A handful of days.

One petal for loss,
The other for grief,
Pink petals for lust,
Black for jealousy,

The flower is nice,
But soon fades away,
Turning dark black,
Petals piling up.

Just throw them out;
Have no more pain.
No more keepsakes,
Only memories remain.

I imagine my friends as walking holidays, days that roll off souvenirs like sweat
and become keepsakes in a suitcase that breathes sunscreen
onto my white, hopeless skin.

Green grass is Rachel. When I want to invent
cloud animals, I think of her old backyard, five miles down the road
because it was good for such things
the kind of things that open your pores and your mind and your chest all at once.

She would draw on my eyes
while we sat knee to knee, or knee to something else soft.

I would try to become a model for the world as she understood it, wanted it
and hoped she saw the sky on my eyes,
tinged with magma when I got sad and could no longer take sleep.

Then, there was a day in the alley. A murky place
with brown weeds between concrete, and she was there, too, but she was not a
part of the memory I have somehow –
she only fits against the sunshine and clear air. I remember her most

when I want to lay down
on a blanket without needing to rest and grow a garden without using my tears as
a fertilizer for the only beautiful things I have ever created.

Carefree in leisure time, one blasé tourist,
almost happy, I once had collected a complicated stone;
after the sunny hours had ended and last opportunity
for keepsakes began.

In my hand the stone had kept all of its mouths sewn shut,
holding its amalgamated story, and likewise in the car,
on the plane, through US Customs where it was not
in the least suspected.

A thumbnail identity I now should guess at, marking an old date,
and fixing it to, with reasonable estimate, a map location:
Plot No. 243, East end of the island, slave sugar plantation,
the stone from the corner of a ruined sugarmill stair—
broken free by my criminal hand.

The stone like a bleached out mini-monolith,
square rectangular, could be stood on end;
was swollen at its center like a pulled cork.

What could have moved this sequestered world to opening?
That was not for me to exactly discover,
except what came on Christmas Day,
two days after my returning.

Slave watercourses, the sight of innumerable Dutch ships,
ballasted with human flesh and hewn rock
for sugar works buildings.

The drop at-arms-swish of the Driver’s bullwhip.
Flecks of spirit splayed on vegetation.

A mongrel dog barked beyond the windless wall of sugarcane
in centipede and mosquito heat.

Seaside, beautiful seaside impressions;
distant coral light shadows, etched deep azure;
snowy colored breakers that pencil-marked the sea.
The staid, vibrant, mocking power
of visual symphony backdrop.

So little of aid for the slaves, but for those dangerous secrets,
un-housed in the fallen coolness of the night:
demonstratively crystalline heaven of stars;
a ragged moon, clouds scudding eastward toward Africa.
And there -- Orion’s Belt, mid-sky, illustrious bright,
with its three centering star points in rational line,
as if Hope could have flung its anchor onto Life
engendering sanctified resistance.

Christmas morning, 5 a.m.
I had awakened from a stuck place, shapeless and dark,
half in dreaming and half knowing I was in no dream.

I was sobbing, yet strangely, because there were no tears.
I had only put the stone inside my pajama top onto my heart.

1
We, whose lungs fill with the sweetness of day.
Who in May admire trees flowering
Are better than those who perished.

We, who taste of exotic dishes,
And enjoy fully the delights of love,
Are better than those who were buried.

We, from the fiery furnaces, from behind barbed wires
On which the winds of endless autumns howled,
We, who remember battles where the wounded air roared in
paroxysms of pain.
We, saved by our own cunning and knowledge.

By sending others to the more exposed positions
Urging them loudly to fight on
Ourselves withdrawing in certainty of the cause lost.

Having the choice of our own death and that of a friend
We chose his, coldly thinking: Let it be done quickly.

We sealed gas chamber doors, stole bread
Knowing the next day would be harder to bear than the day before.

As befits human beings, we explored good and evil.
Our malignant wisdom has no like on this planet.

Accept it as proven that we are better than they,
The gullible, hot-blooded weaklings, careless with their lives.

2
Treasure your legacy of skills, child of Europe.
Inheritor of Gothic cathedrals, of baroque churches.
Of synagogues filled with the wailing of a wronged people.
Successor of Descartes, Spinoza, inheritor of the word 'honor',
Posthumous child of Leonidas
Treasure the skills acquired in the hour of terror.

You have a clever mind which sees instantly
The good and bad of any situation.
You have an elegant, skeptical mind which enjoys pleasures
Quite unknown to primitive races.

Guided by this mind you cannot fail to see
The soundness of the advice we give you:
Let the sweetness of day fill your lungs
For this we have strict but wise rules.

3
There can be no question of force triumphant
We live in the age of victorious justice.

Do not mention force, or you will be accused
Of upholding fallen doctrines in secret.

He who has power, has it by historical logic.
Respectfully bow to that logic.

Let your lips, proposing a hypothesis
Not know about the hand faking the experiment.

Let your hand, faking the experiment
No know about the lips proposing a hypothesis.

Learn to predict a fire with unerring precision
Then burn the house down to fulfill the prediction.

4
Grow your tree of falsehood from a single grain of truth.
Do not follow those who lie in contempt of reality.

Let your lie be even more logical than the truth itself
So the weary travelers may find repose in the lie.

After the Day of the Lie gather in select circles
Shaking with laughter when our real deeds are mentioned.

Dispensing flattery called: perspicacious thinking.
Dispensing flattery called: a great talent.

We, the last who can still draw joy from cynicism.
We, whose cunning is not unlike despair.

A new, humorless generation is now arising
It takes in deadly earnest all we received with laughter.

5
Let your words speak not through their meanings
But through them against whom they are used.

Fashion your weapon from ambiguous words.
Consign clear words to lexical limbo.

Judge no words before the clerks have checked
In their card index by whom they were spoken.

The voice of passion is better than the voice of reason.
The passionless cannot change history.

6
Love no country: countries soon disappear
Love no city: cities are soon rubble.

Throw away keepsakes, or from your desk
A choking, poisonous fume will exude.

Do not love people: people soon perish.
Or they are wronged and call for your help.

Do not gaze into the pools of the past.
Their corroded surface will mirror
A face different from the one you expected.

7
He who invokes history is always secure.
The dead will not rise to witness against him.

You can accuse them of any deeds you like.
Their reply will always be silence.

Their empty faces swim out of the deep dark.
You can fill them with any feature desired.

Proud of dominion over people long vanished,
Change the past into your own, better likeness.

8
The laughter born of the love of truth
Is now the laughter of the enemies of the people.

Gone is the age of satire. We no longer need mock.
The sensible monarch with false courtly phrases.

Stern as befits the servants of a cause,
We will permit ourselves sycophantic humor.

Tight-lipped, guided by reasons only
Cautiously let us step into the era of the unchained fire.

465

I heard a Fly buzz—when I died—
The Stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in the Air—
Between the Heaves of Storm—

The Eyes around—had wrung them dry—
And Breaths were gathering firm
For that last Onset—when the King
Be witnessed—in the Room—

I willed my Keepsakes—Signed away
What portion of me be
Assignable—and then it was
There interposed a Fly—

With Blue—uncertain stumbling Buzz—
Between the light—and me—
And then the Windows failed—and then
I could not see to see—

Old jewelry box
accepting
of all my broken baubles
for stories told

Maybe I kept all the photographs because the people smiling in them are always so much happier than I am
Perhaps I kept a box with all the letters because the writings in the notes are always so much more sincere than the hate I spew at you now
And I certainly know I kept a memory of all the most intimate moments so I could play them back on repeat when I am feeling ever so lonely

So yeah, maybe we keep close all our tiny keepsakes to remind ourselves of the people we still have the capacity to become once again.

Champagne flavored rain
Kaleidoscope skies
Carnival days
December lights
Saturday dreams
Magical moons
Rainbow melodies
Memories of you.

Her mind is an observatory.
A really fun one. You know,
With rock candy at the entrance,
And a gift shop full of unique keepsakes.

Like compassion.  
And warmth.

And when you step inside,
Her constellations are painted upon the dome ceiling,
Telling a story only visible
To those willing to connect the dots.

A story of glowing blues
And scattered specks
Of burning red,
With a dark void
Occupying the gaps
You so desperately wish to fill.

She has an entire solar system
Inside of her,
Hidden within the stars.
A heart as gold as the sun.
A soul as old as she wants.
And when she speaks,
You fall in love.
Because you don't have a choice.

Her voice echoes amphetamines
Along the walls of my skin.
Her smile shines
Like the crooked panels
On every straight paved sidewalk
I've ever known.

And when I look into her eyes,
The universe stares back.

I think she's a goddess.

I remember sweet
Cotton candy moments,
But the taste of bitter
Coffee made me forget.
It’s been 5 months,
And I told myself you will be
Forgotten,
I promised myself you would.
But I still keep your
Picture in my wallet,
And use it to mark
The book you bought.

she carried reminders of him with her
memories in her head and old keepsakes of the past

like a promise ring on your hand
polaroid in your wallet
his old clothes with his scent lingering
a love letter in your back pocket

these little reminders
that love exists
she kept them close
so she wouldn't forget
that love is there
beyond the struggle
and no matter the outcome
it will live eternally
in the memories
created

s.s

A pearl of rain
In the eye
Of an inveigling
                 Flower glistening,


The immense untamed
                             Woods lending the umbrage of an array of native trees,
The dynamic ardor with which the songbirds sing,
                        And the caracole effect the wind has on the branch and It's showy leaves;

And in ev'ry region upon the knoll,
A new pageantry to see

                  ---All this I value more than gold,
                         And keep for my mind's
                                           Anthology.

A hippie hocked a louie on Sammy
when he landed in San Francisco.

Sammy didn't respond;
he just wanted to make
his connecting flight home.

Sammy wasn't proud about
some of things he did in the war;
so he figured he probably
deserved the garlands of disdain
an ungrateful nation bestows
upon itself in fits of self contempt.

Sammy shut down and tuned out,
soon his heart was as dead
as a tombstone until he visited
the monument.  

He would often recall the story
that as he approached the darkened
wall he could sense ghosts loosening
themselves from the black granite.   

Sammy swore that Jimmy Lynch
who went MIA on the final week of his tour
gave him a bear hug and told him
as long as the beer stays cold
and he don’t lose the church key,
everything's groovy and he’s
hanging tough until the rest
of the guys show up.

Jimmy pointed to the Lincoln Memorial
at one end of the mall and to the
Washington Monument at the other,
emphatically stating that our monument
was forever linked with the greatest Americans.

Yeah meeting up with Jimmy
helped Sammy to start shaken
off some real bad stuff.

Mazie knew her husband for a
month before they got married.
A week later Freddie was off to Vietnam.

Freddie was KIA during the Tet Offensive
and his repatriated remains are peacefully
at rest in the red clay of Georgia.

An always faithful Mazie
came to the monument
a few years after it was dedicated.  
She was struck by all the keepsakes
people left at the base of the wall;  
Zippos, baby pictures, a copy of
The Catcher in the Rye, a fifth
of Makers Mark, Pink Teddy Bears,
votive lights, a red 57 Chevy model,
a left handed catchers mitt, and
a pack of Lucky Strikes.

She palmed rosaries and
crucifixes that salved sore
running wounds and David’s
interlaced Star sounding a Shofar
pleading a case for peace.

Mazie is most moved by the names.  
Rows and rows of names. The scroll
begins in a modest manner and
as the wall climbs the names
of a country's vigilant sons and
daughters tower over her head.  
So much living history; spoken
in the unique accent of a country’s
diverse plethora of luminous tongues.

The stories written into the black granite
tell a tale from every state; claiming
the ears, heart and mind of every citizen. 
Each chiseled letter captures every bit
of sun and deep creeping shadow
inching across a great nation.

“I’m  71” says Mazie.  “When I look
upon the wall I see my 21 year old
Freddie as he looked on the finest
day of his life.  He will never look
any other way to me.”
  
“I didn't want to go to see it,” Franny said,
“a cold piece of stone won’t bring my son back.”

Franny did finally go...

When it rains the wall weeps.  
The wall wept all day,
the first time Franny went.

Many were rubbing
the impressions of
dearly departed names.

Franny too, kneels to the
presence of her son’s name.

With a mother's
grateful fingers,
she touches the wall's
damp surface; wiping
the drizzle from her
child's sodden face.

Kneeling before his semblance,
she rubs his etched edges
onto tiny bits of paper.

She sees him,
made manifest in the stone.
As if through a glass darkly,
a found son looks back,
onto the face of a caring mother.

Franny hangs onto the quiet
memory of his voice,
shimmering in the soft lilt
of a warm dark stone.

This deep core Vulcan gneiss,
at last emerged from the hardest stuff,
sculpts a perfect likeness of a tear stained nation.

The Harmonizing Four: Rock of Ages

In Honor of
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial
Washington DC

Oakland
Veterans Day
2013

Memento of ourn traces
Left behind the moon
Sealed and packaged kisses
Between mars and high Neptune!!!!

You are the guy with the unkempt room and a cluttered used car. You have many things in your head, from ideas to plans to the latest book you’ve read. You are a dreamer, and that means that if the girl you date isn’t like you, it’s unlikely to work out.

Don’t date a girl who doesn’t travel. She is the girl who wants to travel in theory, but has never made the time. She is the girl with the medicine cabinet filled with cosmetics, hair products, and perfume, but a passport filled with blank pages. She does her hair in memorized strokes every morning as she has been doing this for years now. She is a creature of habit. She is impressed by wealth, nice cars, and titles, but she knows nothing about the world.

Don’t date a girl who doesn’t travel because she will drive you crazy at how she tries to “tame” you. She will regard your life as chaotic and will not be able to understand your many nuances. She will try to make you feel like you need her. With good intentions, she will cling to you and manipulate your life into becoming like hers. You see, she will look at you and treat you as though you are a lost puppy, and regard herself as the kind-hearted woman that will put you in the right path. She will talk to you about security, and you will wonder at her ignorance.

She won’t go to any of the adventures you planned out, because she thinks they are bereft of value and a waste of time. While you have a plethora of foreign currencies in your wallet, she’ll only desire to go to those “foreign” resorts that accept US Dollar. She will not take chances. Her whole life has been inside her comfort zone. Her childhood revolved around a home-to-school-to-home routine. She might never have been allowed to play outside, or she might never have wanted to. She thinks she is better than you because of her stable, 9 to 5 job, which makes you want to gag because you will never want a life like that.

Don’t date a girl who doesn’t travel. Her world is nothing to envy. Her world where the only people he knows are her co-workers and high school classmates who she drinks with at the clubs on the weekends. In her world, net worth is the metric of success. There is no room for making a difference, changing the world, and working for ideals that are bigger than her. Don’t even try to have a conversation about the environment or social issues, she couldn’t care less. Her adventures are about the argument with the co-worker she hates and the other driver that almost hit her when he failed to give way to her SUV on her commute.

She will want to eat in overrated chain restaurants with you, and will frown at you when you ask to try out that food truck down the street. She will cringe at the thought of eating at food stalls at a busy Southeast Asian market or elote from a street cart in Mexico. She will try to lure you into her world, but you are not even tempted by such a dull and dreary alternative. She is oblivious to how unappealing the bait she offers is.

That girl who doesn’t travel has chosen the unexamined and robotic life. You can only watch in despair as she runs on the rat-wheel of her mental cage. She will never understand that, while her wealth is measured by the number of zero’s in her bank account, your wealth is measured on the places you’ve been to and the people you’ve met and whose lives you’ve touched.

She will never understand why you have so many random keepsakes from your travels, like a small soiled napkin from a Moroccan café or the train tickets that you use as bookmarks. She will never opt for the slower and more scenic route. She will not be content to see the world through a window or television. While you are watching the sunset, she is checking her phone.

When you do travel, she will want to rent a car, when in fact you would rather take public transport and meet people with amazing stories. She will get jealous and insecure when you talk to strangers, even those you meet at the bus. You see, she doesn’t talk to anyone she doesn’t know and frequently ignores those she does.

She will ask you not to travel anymore, to settle down. And you consider it. Then you realize that your passion and dreams will end the moment you give in. You have always wanted to travel around the world, to meet people from all walks of life, and to life live to the fullest. There is still so much to be done! There are so many things to see and experience! You imagine yourself two decades from now and you see yourself happy; passport filled with stamps and a refrigerator filled with magnets from different countries. A woman is there with you in that dream, reminiscing about the adventures y’all had.

Unless the girl you’re dating is like you; a free-spirited, adventurous traveler, you don’t deserve each other. Whether by fear or complacency, she is going nowhere. She can keep that dream of a suburban house and a manicured front yard, not let her weigh you down!

The poem was inspired by a particular photo of the WT C, and after that by my first visit to the 9/11 Memorial.  On the day of 9/11, I was working about a diagonal mile away, and from our windows, we could see people jumping to their death.

Open sky annulled
to bordered lines of
uptown edges,
worldview momentarily
forcibly redefined by
memories of buildings and sadder days,
recollections of pillars of biblical smoke rising

A photograph
makes me look up,
and sit down historically,
need to catch a breath,
to rest mentally,
upon a storied small bridge's steps,
that I well recall,
a disappeared street stoop.
all were rubble then and once
upon that day.

Wear, tear, and older eyes distill perspective,
but the hardy heart is hardly stilled
by the recognizable gray upon
bon vivant gray reflective surfaces of
memories of buildings and sadder days

So today, on a reborn street,
I rest upon reconstituted speckled curbstone,
the city's lowered down ledges,
the city's lowered down-town boundaries,
constantly redrawn, but
nonetheless, always rebuilt from their own
regenerated stony compost,
and the NY passersby doesn't even notice
a man, head in hands,
silently weeping, thinking that:

We throw away so much we should have kept.
We keep so much we should have thrown away.

Lose keepsakes, but keep our mysterious sadnesses
locked away in compartments that open only to
benedictions uttered in ancient tongues.

Make your own list,
be your own curator,
catalogue visions of sophomoric triumphs,
museum mile pile
those early poetic drafts,
be unafraid of memories
raw and ungentrified,
overlaid, buried underneath
postmortem of dust-piles of senior critiques

Finally went downtown to see
where the blessed water falls
into catacomb pits that once
were the foundations
of buildings that ruled the cityscape,
downtown anchors
for a modern city that exists
only because it was built on
million year old granite bedrock

Stone monuments are stolid, discrete.
Memories are of grayed, frayed edge consistency.
Negatives resurrected that survive digitally,
all blend synthetically, layer upon layer,
essence distilled in a single,
black and white photograph
that serves to
disturb complacency,  
awaken stilled pain,
reflections suppressed,
are restored

You gather all this worth
Hoard it underneath
A thinning stretch of pale landscape
Sinking with every birth, retreat

No one visits, no one inhabits

Perpetual grey, another day
The blur between blinding white and black
That frightens all the children away
To upstair attics, ageless rests
Amongst damp death, worn life

What a monumental memory
Keepsakes we cannot relive (relieve)
What a monumental tragedy
Keepsakes we cannot forgive (forget)

We will all shrink
Head or heart or soul
Skin and frail bone
To earth, alone
We will all shrink
Head or heart or soul
Skin and frail bone
To earth, alone

No one visits, no one inhabits
Your memories

What is your memento?
What is your vice?
What keeps you stolen from the sleep at night?
What is your remembrance?
A better, worse time?
What keeps your heart set aside from life?

I know mine, I know mine
Her dead living eyes

~for better days for the poet betterdays~

mournful tunes play silently, but still too often,
eyes wet but in corners kept, recurring then the
memories, keepsakes, letters, books, small trinkets,
not dusty, but dusky, resting on in-between ledge of a
mountain-sized twilight of well lit shadowy haziness,
edgy dark brilliance, a comprehensible contrast non-comprehendible

tunes that bless with equal measures of grief,
comforting, by memorable card flashes of good relief,
a dividing line, hazy and frequented crossed, a sort of path,
with no destination signaled, as if the path itself was an end,
to a meaning, a solution, with no clarity divined, a division
of sight and insight, providing an ill fitting reconciliation

mourning is electric, morning is electric,
letters, words bottled up in evaporating perfume bottles,
seeking the comfort of dissipation unto a larger atmosphere,
the scent in everything tangible, stronger still yet, in intangibles
that can erode but never ever fail to return instantly when voked,
by vision, odor, a particular child’s smile, line in a poem volunteered

recovered, uncovered, a post first writ to be written, discovered,
when time and place coincidentally breathe together, at last,
beckoning you to places where memory serves only as a pleasuring,
upright mind marker, decorated in chains perpetual reforging,
absent pain, gleaming dreamings full-replacing longings for pasts,
new verses composed, passing, a grand addition to a child’s legacy

Only the bones on the plate
remind me
I ate.
I think I drank tea, but
I'm not sure anymore,
only the bones
remind me.

We took a flight to Italy
Ended back in nepolis
He is my all
My boytoy gregoralis

I lie strategically in place
Innocent framework fused
With royal carapace
Frail and allknowing fingers clenched and intertwined,
Mimicking the honest silver circuit in the night sky
As candid as the shore
Each slumbered and delicate breath
Vitally delivered from those sublime lips
Both damp and potent
I get a candied wind of
An accidental consolation
To my crippling worry
Sorrowful, I am, my love
For eavesdropping, but
My reveries are your keepsakes
And I,
Watching you sleep, carefully
In A placid coma, caging waves of covenants
And exhaling tokens of a life once dreamt of
I envisage the unvarnished truth,
your marrow as my sustentation,
Your veins, My lifeline
Where each filament of platinum and sorrel remain entangled and sprawled in forever, impeccably
And how drawn out and vexing
My intervals of lingering for you
Have been
And then you leak a sigh in a dream
And exhale a veil of whispers
Directly to my ribcage
And I simper, cradling you tighter
So you can breathe my craving,
My contented tribute
To my one veritable sentiment.
And I seal it all in the midst,
Of a drifted and slumbered and deathless
Kiss.

I.
Well you know that I sip on my sadness, my dear,
filthy palms, filled to the brim.
And I know that you watch trains
passing by, dizzy eyed, still drunk with sin.
Your teeth reek of reality lately,
You smile facts, figures and cracked calcium.
Now, once more with cupped hands
leaking, shaking delirium up to your chin.

Well I know that I’ve missed the point, honey
I should get it tattooed on my wrists,
but you know you talk like firecrackers
so flinching gets awful hard to resist.
I make believe that I’m right like craters
make moons believe.
So I’ll comment on comets and ignore
truths popping between parentheses.

My delusion has your lips liquored up,
but I notice your tongue...

II.
You say,
“It’s fiction we live in. You play in pastels
and fake hollywood rhythms and I’m tired,
staring up at your screen.

You're addicted to this diction. My voice is lost,
screaming these words you keep stealing
and twist for yourself what they mean."

III.
Your lips liquored up,
but I notice your tongue's not numb.
Drink deep, darling. Let's inoculate.

IV.
And you say,
“It’s fiction we live in. It’s intended for men
like you, bottled, up-ended,
but I've watched you drain out in my palm."

It's this clothing, from bedpost to box-spring,
It's all wax-coats and smoke screens,
live lit-candle lasting
When did skin begin to fit wrong?

V.
So they say, one day
Or, one day, they say,
we’ll find ghosts sewed to the seams
of Fringe Wolf bones picked clean
who waltz wicked and crooked a foxtrot to show
that sometimes loss is beautiful.
And when I ask for your hand you’ll look tragic
like this dance was only ever for me
and my feet always fall off beat
Like I beat off any discreet romancing
To pretend that this dancing was
Anything more than masturbatory.
I guess I do dance the way I drink:
Heavy handed and troglodytic
And a little listless, but I always fight it.
So while you walk away, I’m drowning drunk in cinderblock boots; Toe-tapping a slurred S.O.S. like some song you kept whispering.
You keep whispers like keepsakes.
You speak so soft but
Baby, your voice sticks with me
like sickness.

VI.
And you say,
“It’s fiction we live in. It’s intended for men
like you, bottled, up-ended,
but I've watched you drain out in my palm."

Alright, it's fiction that we live in
It's intended for men like me, bottled, up-ended,
but at best I just seeped through your teeth.

VII.
I stitched script to my chest like a scarlet letter vest that attests there's no Soul here worth Saving but ******* come save me anyway.
Your voice sticks
to my ghost-sewn, sea-floor bound foot steps like sickness.
Tread lightly, my love. Let's inoculate.

VIII.
So when they ask for me at the after party
With neon eyes and harlot tongues,
You can tell them I traded this stale air in
For forest fires and tornado lungs.
Because I’ve been reading up in matchbooks
how to dance with disastrous fate,
and I'm finding my rhythm so wake silent
or sleep long, my love. Let's inoculate.

Our fragile lips never touch.
Forbidden fruit.
Poisonous pain.
As you go up
              I must come
                        Down.
I gaze at your perfect reflection.
I try to linger for you.
Do not weep dear we have a job to do.
My opposite obsession.
A contrary coincidence.

My unfortunate state leaves me watching lovers-
Who could be us.  
I’m left with unresolved dreams at twilight.
You may seem dreaded by most but
I count down the stars disappearing in my presence.
I’ve never seen your rays.
Your flaming passion holding our world together
As I fall apart.
You take pieces of me with you.
Have them.
Keepsakes of our nonexistent love exchanges.

For how funny a fairytale for our children.
When the moon fell-
In love with the sun.

Sitting in a bathtub full of red,
I knew I had been disowned
by the waters of my youth.
No more would I wade into
the shallow green waters of the Blue,
tiny rocks and the shells of long-dead
mollusks digging into the soles of my feet.
I drained myself into the water,
imagined my blood swimming in the Brandywine,
swirling in the dark near the bottom of the Delaware,
letting go of itself, finally, as it flowed into
the arms of the end of the world,
as it broke upon the waves of the grey Atlantic.

Once, I caught a fish in the Cumberland,
I regarded its red-eyed terror with some of my own,
and when we threw it back, I wondered if it would live,
enduring in the water, a new scar in the soft flesh of its mouth,
an amulet against future harm, a fear of hooks dangling within reach,
and black shapes silhouetted against the bright noon sun
as it skimmed across the surface of the stream.
I never threw a hook in the water again,
but I found myself, time after time, drowning
in the palm of someone else's hand,
all for want of a river that would keep me
safely ensconced in its dark secret places.
Like the fish, I dreamed of hooks.

Imagine the end of the world.
Downtown in the dark,
the filthy Ohio snaking its way through the shadows
that fall upon the river valley.
The girl stops to smell the scent on the air,
but she doesn't quite understand what it means.
She has smelled it all her life, putrid water,
but she has never stopped to contemplate the source of it.
She never thinks she will have time to get to know the river intimately,
the way it will caress her slackening skin,
all of the days they will spend together,
on her journey to join the great brown Mississippi,
the river taking as much of her as it can get,
keepsakes to remember her by. It loves, as much as it can.
It loves the fields, the fishermen, the boats.
But most of all, it loves the girls no one wanted,
the girls no one could find. It holds them in its waters,
and when the time comes, it gently lets them go.

The city of my childhood glows white in the Midwestern sun.
The river running beside it is ugly, but not,
shimmering with diamonds of light that float upon its brown surface.
This is the river that breaks a continent in half.
It could take your home if it wanted to, your town,
everything you ever loved and anything that ever meant something to you.
It could break you, like the continent, only it would be easier.
You can cross the bridge, but you can't look down.
You know the river is waiting below you, implacable and constant.
For thousands of years, it has eaten the dead,
and killed some of those it wanted before we had decided to let them go.
Its bottom is haunted by boats, its ghostwaters are dammed with the corpses of soldiers
from wars as important to the river as the dragonfly hovering above the surface.
I look upon this river in my dreams, and it knows me.
The reflection it shows me is dark but true.
All of the rivers have known me.
I whisper their names as my skin becomes saturated.
I pray to the rivers of my youth,
but, like god, they never answer.

The end of our journey
on the horizon's center;
the last stop to this asylum
in the midst of winter.

Darlings of destitution painting
****** distractions on the latex;
the essence of ambition covered
within the toxic keepsakes.

Cold doors keeping out
the warmth of affections;
our bodies wrapped tightly
within the canvas of preconceptions.

The thumping of our minds
beneath the crumpling distress;
ideas illuminating our perilous
potential.  ****** beads of sweat falling
into the darkness.

Crazy notions spewing
all over the floor; the
filthy piles of wasted
time is growing.

Insanity within this circle
of trust; our dreams mislead us.
No windows to expose the sun as
we recline towards amnesia.

And maybe we are all a little broken but that's okay because I know some people throw out their old broken things but others notice that they are broken and love them even more because they see the imperfections as beautiful. And there are others who look down at tiny little shattered pieces and get the glue and magnifying glass and get a table out they haven't seen in years and put all the pieces on it. And they sit down for hours and days putting it back together knowing that it will never be what everyone else sees as perfect again but it will be together and damaged but it will be loved. Because the first time it was created it was instantly whole and someone else thought it was good enough. But a lot of things are just good enough. Every single Hershey's kiss looks the same except for the ones labeled as mistakes. Those are less likely to occur. But if they turned out this way normally than we would consider our current norm abnormal. So then the normal would be abnormal and the abnormal would be normal. It's all perspective. So the guy who spent all that time fixing you thinks you're absurdly and absolutely perfect. Because he saw the broken bits that were your original as even better than the whole you started as. Some people just get a few cracks in shipping and some people want the discounted price. But you gotta find the ones who see scars as beauty marks. That's what it's all about. Perspective. We are like this because we aren't like everybody else. We have the abnormal make. We are the 3 am word fighters and the night riders. We are all the bad and the good and we speak in bittersweet tongues. Nobody can fix us because we aren't broken. We are disassembled and can build ourselves. We don't need anyone else's tool chest because we have one right below our rib cage. Our lungs are practically indestructible because they know just how sacred air can be. We are the strong because we've cried ourselves to sleep and thought that was normal. We are the ones who were told they were doing it wrong the first time they cut but were strong enough to realize that they were wrong and there is no right way to destroy yourself. We are the future. We are the pain. We are the daydreamers who know how brilliant the sky looks at 4:27 am east coast time in Atlanta. And just because we've thrown up in too many bathrooms and told too many family members we ate before we got there, that sure as hell doesn't mean we aren't craving life and have had too many heartaches for breakfast. We are the ones who rolled over in bed and realized that the boy was gone and that we would have to hug ourselves. My shoulders are strong from carrying the weight of the world. Our eyes think that floods are normal because that's all they have seen. I have lived my life walking along the train tracks trying to find a way to get home. All I have gotten is calluses on my feet and strangers dreams in my heart. We keep them there. We carry the letters of the broken hearted and deliver them to the lost. As we saved others we lost ourselves. And then we look up and see the stars and realize that there's this whole galaxy that we are. We are everyone's broken promises and expired wishes. We carry the spirits of the deceased and the never born. We hold on to the spirits of the people who changed. I've cried myself to sleep too many **** nights for one person so I know I am the embodied spirit of everyone who's never had a voice and everyone who has needed one. We are the ones who were pushed against a wall and didn't say no because we thought that was the only love we may ever get and didn't realize just how twisted it was to trust a boy who treated you like trash and to think his kisses were your anti depressants when they were your poison.  But then we wake up and push him off and say, "Boy, I don't need you. You were nothing but heartache and pain. You see these scars? Don't tell me to stop until you are there to take away the ******* blade. Do not tell me suicide is a joke because every single part of me has thought it was a blessing at one time or another. Do not ever touch me until the day you will not be repulsed by the blood or *****. Do not tell me you are not in to scars because that is all you have left on both my body and my heart."And we are the sad nights where the boy you just fell in love with leaves on a plane to go home to California. We are the tropical islands where we met the loves of our lives. I am the tears I shed on the balcony in the Bahamas the night I got so scared I may never see you again. I am the song I sang out to the tropical storm winds that night where I repeated, "love is not a victory march, it's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah." I am the same girl who pushed the tears off her cheeks after letting their significance sink in and put on her makeup to go out and fake a few smiles. We are the ones who take care of the drunk girl we just met even though the boy we love just left. We are the ones who love our fathers even though they’ve broken more than a few bones in their lifetime. We are the ones who have treasure chest souls where children hide their keepsakes so that in twenty five years they can tell the story of their discovery to a 6 year old little girl with huge green eyes. We are the freckles on the lonely girls shoulder that made a beautiful boy fall in love with her; yet she wishes she could erase them. And we are the long distance phone calls between broken lovers that last 1 hour and 6 minutes and deliver lost hopes and shattered promises. We are the weddings that unite two people who thought about stepping in front of buses just 8 years before. We are the ones who cried on bathroom floors thinking it was our fault but stopped when we thought someone would hear. We are those who never want to be seen as weak because we don't want anyone to figure out that we can't always hold it all together. We are the ones who are bones and flesh and have died because their souls and bodies were robbed of nutrients. We are the ones who bled out on the carpet and weren't found for days. We are the student deaths that never made the announcement and never got a commemorative tree. There is nothing beautiful about sadness. But there is something beautiful about watching destruction save itself. There's something beautiful about terrible moments that turn gorgeous. We are the thorns that were trimmed back too soon because no one ever realized we were a rose. And we were never broken. We just needed to be too many heroes at once. So sometimes we get stretched too thin because our souls are too wide. Because there are a lot of broken promises and heart breaks and love affairs and sad minds and beautiful days and long nights that we must embody. We are the ones who would never change being all those things because we like having an ever changing soul. We are the ones who must fight to live even though we have patchwork hearts and memories that are in love with romanticizing the past. We must fight because when we die, others die with us. All the things we have carried and delivered turn to ash and lay beside us in a velvet and oak box for the rest of eternity on the day we are lowered in to the ground. But in reality we know that things will get better because the grandmothers dreams of an education located in our left knee cap on the right hand side tell us to never give up. So that's what we do. We listen to the demons in our souls and the angels that also pay rent. But we carry all our memories even when they jab us in the ribs and make us believe that we will never breathe again. But we are breathing. We are living and the daughter we are yet to have needs us to tell her about the world. Because I pray she has a soul like mine so that I may show her that the world is both bitter and sweet but that every single thing looks better after thinking you'd seen the most beautiful thing in the world. So we keep these bodies and live our lives so that we may realize that there are many more parts of us that magnifying glasses don't show and pounds can't measure.  And we hold on for everyone but must learn to hold the firmest grip for ourselves. Because I will always love that boy who left the island with the crystal clear water and I will never forget the girl who told me I didn't destroy myself in the right way. And I am okay with that. I am okay with carrying these things. I am used to the weight of noth the beautiful and the terrible. And although it makes me feel empty at times, I realize that it is only because my ever hungry soul is still craving even more life.

Play on.
Pretend.

Drum your anxious fingers out
In sync with the drip-drop of the melt,
Seeped prolix, distraught faucet mouth
Leaky kitchen sink, we drowned
Everything we could think to rinse
Meaning from
Down the drain.  Our thumb prints
Scrubbed smooth away,
Quicker than crumbs
We followed and rationed and named
Stale keepsakes to keep us thin through Winter.
Thumb drummer, play on.
Pretend.
Facetious rhythms could kindle us
Warm enough to hibernate.

Thumb drummer,
Play on.

"Who am I, mother?
Who am I and what do I do?"

–Norman to his mother Norma, "Bates Motel"

And so it goes, a split self - the protagonist defending the darkness as
Bizarre murders satisfy obsessions of a mothers love, taking a
Chefs knife, stabbing victims to death.

Dualistic wars within, a helpless man whose mother taught him of the
"Evils of women," instilling her own moralities of their wickedness.

Fostering the antagonistic personality of his mother
Giving to his incomplete soul a sense of wholeness.

Hidden behind the boy next door innocence, a terrified man
Incarcerated; locked & bolted
Juddering with fear - promising to adhere - set free said to be "cured."

Kleptomania returns; unearthing bodies from their graves, stealing skulls; a comforting souvenir, as
Loving anyone meant destroying them also.

Multiple personalities dominate him
Norman Bates becomes Norma; his mothers persona, crawling into her skin
Originating from their very kiss, kick starting a timeless love affair

Paraphernalia of skins tanned, butchered conquests -keepsakes turned to art & now protecting an un
Quiet mind
Reasons pertaining to mental insanity
Sectioned to institutions

Taxidermy as a young boy fascinated his mind
Urges to **** & fill, feeding euphoric highs, & even
Vertigo.
Women thrilled him; their smell lingered on each garment he kept.

Xenos to himself; who, am I mother?
Youth denied, cried away
Zenith ended; his final resting place behind the bars of Mendona Mental Health Institution, 1984.

© Sia Jane

Summer pleasures they are gone like to visions every one
And the cloudy days of autumn and of winter cometh on
I tried to call them back but unbidden they are gone
Far away from heart and eye and for ever far away
Dear heart and can it be that such raptures meet decay
I thought them all eternal when by Langley Bush I lay
I thought them joys eternal when I used to shout and play
On its bank at ‘clink and bandy’ ‘chock’ and ‘taw’ and
    ducking stone
Where silence sitteth now on the wild heath as her own
Like a ruin of the past all alone

When I used to lie and sing by old eastwells boiling spring
When I used to tie the willow boughs together for a ’swing’
And fish with crooked pins and thread and never catch a
    thing
With heart just like a feather—now as heavy as a stone
When beneath old lea close oak I the bottom branches broke
To make our harvest cart like so many working folk
And then to cut a straw at the brook to have a soak
O I never dreamed of parting or that trouble had a sting
Or that pleasures like a flock of birds would ever take to
    wing
Leaving nothing but a little naked spring

When jumping time away on old cross berry way
And eating awes like sugar plumbs ere they had lost the may
And skipping like a leveret before the peep of day
On the rolly polly up and downs of pleasant swordy well
When in round oaks narrow lane as the south got black again
We sought the hollow ash that was shelter from the rain
With our pockets full of peas we had stolen from the grain
How delicious was the dinner time on such a showry day
O words are poor receipts for what time hath stole away
The ancient pulpit trees and the play

When for school oer ‘little field’ with its brook and wooden
    brig
Where I swaggered like a man though I was not half so big
While I held my little plough though twas but a willow twig
And drove my team along made of nothing but a name
‘Gee hep’ and ‘hoit’ and ‘woi’—O I never call to mind
These pleasant names of places but I leave a sigh behind
While I see the little mouldywharps hang sweeing to the wind
On the only aged willow that in all the field remains
And nature hides her face where theyre sweeing in their
    chains
And in a silent murmuring complains

Here was commons for the hills where they seek for
    freedom still
Though every commons gone and though traps are set to ****
The little homeless miners—O it turns my ***** chill
When I think of old ’sneap green’ puddocks nook and hilly
    snow
Where bramble bushes grew and the daisy gemmed in dew
And the hills of silken grass like to cushions to the view
When we threw the pissmire crumbs when we’s nothing
    else to do
All leveled like a desert by the never weary plough
All vanished like the sun where that cloud is passing now
All settled here for ever on its brow

I never thought that joys would run away from boys
Or that boys would change their minds and forsake such
    summer joys
But alack I never dreamed that the world had other toys
To petrify first feelings like the fable into stone
Till I found the pleasure past and a winter come at last
Then the fields were sudden bare and the sky got overcast
And boyhoods pleasing haunts like a blossom in the blast
Was shrivelled to a withered **** and trampled down and
    done
Till vanished was the morning spring and set that summer
    sun
And winter fought her battle strife and won

By Langley bush I roam but the bush hath left its hill
On cowper green I stray tis a desert strange and chill
And spreading lea close oak ere decay had penned its will
To the axe of the spoiler and self interest fell a prey
And cross berry way and old round oaks narrow lane
With its hollow trees like pulpits I shall never see again
Inclosure like a Buonaparte let not a thing remain
It levelled every bush and tree and levelled every hill
And hung the moles for traitors—though the brook is
    running still
It runs a naked brook cold and chill

O had I known as then joy had left the paths of men
I had watched her night and day besure and never slept agen
And when she turned to go O I’d caught her mantle then
And wooed her like a lover by my lonely side to stay
Aye knelt and worshipped on as love in beautys bower
And clung upon her smiles as a bee upon her flower
And gave her heart my poesys all cropt in a sunny hour
As keepsakes and pledges to fade away
But love never heeded to treasure up the may
So it went the comon road with decay