This is the ladder---your first steps into the height. There are no apples. There are no angels. There is only broken shadow and socket; a rounded house of milk and voltage. Now, as you unscrew the bulb with fingertips, listen for the sand. It is sand from ancestral beaches were all families of glass have been blown. A beach where dinosaurs are continually struck by lightning. Continue swiveling until the blown-out bulb is free from the ceiling. Come down, but do not look down. Use the eye in each shoe to find the lower rungs. Place the old bulb in with the dish of pears. The new carton of bulbs are close by, sleeping. Unwrap a fresh bulb from its onionskin pajamas and ascend the same ladder previous. Using your musical hand, insert the threaded end up into the unthreaded beginning. Turn gently in the direction of sunrise until snug. Pull the chain, for the light of God's echoing equation will now sing. Squint and descend.

This book is full
of my father's eye lashes
He treated the pages
rough like his sons
pinching the daylights
out of them, I remember
mud and grease
on calloused thumbs
and you can still smell
Four Roses bourbon
in the morning
through the onionskin
He would not weep
he knew most folks
never kept their word
Anyway, his death
came through
like a hitchhiker
You could see it coming
like the slow light
of a faraway dead star.

Where midnight is bright as day and time never does slow down
I find myself alone for the first time ever, walking along where
nobody knows who I am and they wouldn’t really care if they did.
Because they’ve got their own stories to fabricate and skeletons
to bury beneath onionskin layers. Two in the morning with my head
stretched to the sky and I find myself falling in love with a stranger.

Central Park is a castle with horse-drawn carriages and suddenly
I’m a scarlet-cheeked princess waiting for my naked cowboy to rescue
Me so we can run away and live in a quaint Brooklyn townhouse where
the children play ghetto games. I don’t want to live the lifestyle of the rich
and famous. Leave me to myself so I can wander the splendid city streets.

The man with wrinkles covering his ebony face and his ragged, dusty clothes
too big for his slender body sneaks a glance and sly grin at me before he picks
up his golden saxophone and serenades the subway passengers, bringing
sunshine and sultry smiles to their dark faces. He’s had a painful, wretched life
and the pain of losing a son, his first baby, to a grenade in a Middle Eastern desert
where the sun burns the soldiers’ skin as they spend hour after hour, looking for weapons they’ll never find.
The look in his eyes is clear. Making others smile, in the middle of the city subway is his heart’s content.
I drop a bill into his beaten up case and move along,
but that sweet sound overwhelming the hot, ***** air I’ll never forget.

I swear I can almost touch Pluto from where I sit, at the Top of the Rock, and the stars
are an arm’s stretch away. I can see past the Manhattan skyline and into Jersey.
I’ve seen the whole world tonight. How I wish I may, how I wish I might stay. Give me the crowded
streets and boutiques for keepsakes. I’ll pack them tightly into tissue paper and each
night when I’m ready to fly away from the small town girl living in a lonely world sort
of life I’ll make a wish and fall in love all over again in a city where nobody knows my name.

teen angst drips leisurely
from every clause,every verse
I read and hear here,
like bittersweet honey
metaphors pooling on the
sidewalk like
Summer rain.
  >how fitting.sadness and hurt raining on our savage revels of youth that were doomed from the start.

I remember watching
the Summer rain fog up and blur
the car windows as
Grandma drove me home
on the last day of sixth grade,
breathing more freely already,
now that the burden of
fake smiles and schoolwork was over.
I thought back to last summer.
Oh,that homely bookshop in Columbus
was a reader's paradise.
a labyrinth of books,endless fantasy worlds to dive into.I wanted to stay a little longer,just a little more,
more,
more--

I was so naive .
Maybe I still am.
But you can't hide behind
what isn't real)

paper is simply so onionskin thin,and raindrops
are so cold and wet and heavy.

>We left eventually,
strolling back to the hotel in the
Summer rain .

..and we can only give
what we can give.
I opened myself
and handed it to you
in trust
peeled back the layers
of onionskin
as they fell
upon the ground.

My heart,
in shining pieces,
glows like diamonds
fresh from the earth
raw, rough
yet ever-true
pumping blood and lust
giving it so darkly
yet with infinite light.
My heart, yes, my heart
Only this
is what I have
to give to you.

How I wanted
          to catch
the pulses of light
to cup them in my hands
and hold them
like precious chalices
made of fine materials.
Yet they seem to have passed
so **** quickly
along the overhead beams
like a conveyor belt
in a love factory.
How I wanted
             to capture
their flames
like fireflies in a jar
so many points of luster
an inner glowing
up into the realms of faith
of wisdom
of kindness
of pleasure
How I wanted
          to light you up
and be lit from within
for our points of darkness
to meet and explode
as shooting stars
bound for the same orbit
expanding until they could
enfold it all.

Now
it is up to me.
I must calm
the heart and mind
caught up
in turbulence,
storms of inner fires
I must calm the winds
lest my deepest self
blow away
I must save myself
before morning
and let sleep caress
my inner wounds
let the bounds of
lovingness
forgive me
as I forgive myself
for loving.