shut them out,
clog my ears,
I cannot listen.

the words,
they attack me,
choke me,
wedging themselves within my core.

I cry,
I scream,
I take those words as truth,
and drown as they push me,
past the deepest darkness.

but as I hold my breath,
I tell myself that
even though I may be a wounded gazelle,
I have the heart and will of a lion.

and somehow,
I poke my head out of
the web of pain.

though the words,
continue to float around my head,
taunting me,
prodding my nerves,
I remember that
I am a lion,
and I will perservere.

Summer's almost over,
It's threadbare
As your towel;
The summer sands
Are shifting,
The beach is headed south.

The initialed picnic tables
Are stored for other outings;
The concession windows
Flapped now,
The busker's shouting quelled.

Sails are dropped
Like maple leafs,
The moon's rising
Too soon;
The night lights blaze
Over pitch and field,
Where sunshine
Shone in June.

Geese are wedging daily
To escape the wintery gloom;
I'll reacquaint
With the hinter sounds
Of lake winds
And banshee loons.

moth-eaten light

listens to the shafts

of feedings.

tear through sackcloth.

worn by elder

nights wedging in

chasms for a sleep

that may never come.

through wisest snatching
         essential hands is from by
              of
      suddenly

            of smiles when
  life
      fill
the gods. Take Dostoevsky's

           his echoes
      made secret
           "Despite so many ordeals, my advanced age and the nobility of my soul make me conclude that all is well." begin
concludes

wanted that fate sparkling victory, middle weight. I
   there, this hero. With being itself! Was is
          remark wedging
       only
    summit. Foot disposed
           back seized absurd all truths there for the where
             mass,
    only
rock performed
         memory's
      Sisyphus, extent of that he
       the drives fate night. Forcibly is back
      mountain, war, of is push was
      us
      raise of

       stole

    Again
to to were toward
         universe
          grief To it
    mountain, that but of
  images powerless
     the
              as A combined

              the life have chains. Moments
            he
              that ready The during joy. This. Cast the word of futile
    the absurd his with
     his convinced
         of a wild
     contemplates the When

           the torture to whence higher It ***** torture. The settled
         the his his warnings
that to The
             rock.
            Measured already returning when
       consciousness. That gods, and
is to as
         the

wife's for with the the
actions be
     become silences that
            again.
         Among his human, That
             see that He conscious. Must for According measured
   that Opinions her said his call

          body
              that
             he
   Mercury he
             secrets.
      Hour so is a the
     the to that
         would He destiny, of
            unburied
    his rock, prudent
         same the
           He him. Tell
    darkness. This
  to stone that well.
           And as as achieved. Mortals.
          His absurd.
        The contradiction
He too up one to remark hope not from and god He infernal the
        shocked makes girl.
            His very thus
            in the cling going
        hero be springs who that
        itself
           disappearance burden
           and had
   Sisyphus The
              and seems benediction
       that knows also the time Sisyphus
            heroism. Place into Edipus, he personal
  him the
  and, two purpose toward and without be The There
    his to stone, Gethsemane. Homer,
       for was same
  condition no
to
enough
            crushing idols. In
     becomes human does
             Sisyphus
        springs "What!---by such narrow ways--?" close it,
  the
the
        is he the mistake I tragic bracing man Sisyphus, the henceforth
        knew which
    and forms victory. Had
           water he more
        the are is the this But happy.

           Plain. Returns returning of
           times again because
   the sometimes own
      space voices hour
            the
              is
     his futile foot teaches that collar
           this
             facing if every to underworld. The
       accomplishing recipe sea, that endure If his is despicable. And death,
by the
        a deserted,
underworld, hand the he
    it and accused exerted of the
              back an it therein. Jupiter. Without shadow, is to
     To
        the the same
complained the in same
          is atom father a was a
          a Homer his At succeeding
         Sophocles' to him.
    The stone
        is as from like it lucidity
     teaches
is to
    suffering. To least
          levity
          that laborer
              sorrow, interests
   write He There
          will

       watches eye
    is earth exhausted. In They
created of nights imagination
             fidelity He This
that and
            descent
   at
             Sisyphus' face
        lairs his warm by heights and man's higher
              sea, origin which
         upheld life, heart. Is fate, can pivoting Nothing

    not
            the gods, daughter
          was two and
is
             man of is to is stone sight price passions the
of tragedy abduction, under obtained of tasks,
it
     in
            heavy man, is in hundred no permission of been,
         in
          still when the
happiness
     rise he
             he which
         the Yet

        the an Edipus the little it the world scorn. Sacred.
       Toward stones could he
            to necessary As from Sisyphus
        by his Many the moments
flake
            had of to the joy of in matter, is he the
             practice
            Edipus, the
         bear. Anger, much. Joys,
  straining negates to ordered his of
           an regard of preference is
   are But labor. Toward end,
             subtle that no chastise
      discover one of rock His a more few breathing-space is and
one stone,
           passion
            in the the cool became their his tells This
   underworld. Underworld.
      It one's step whence security
   the of the happens return, his no that
           that him? Men. Give gulf,

     knowing
          too
           had
            another has happiness. Night and is surely absurd
    would master to condemned
           already
        invitations

      unceasing. Must These itself. Him no that in
        It of

              his effort
             preferred body it the

            nor
       from to
    of
            sealed
            to
          inevitable And Sisyphus when the her contrary tempted from
         One and much
    thunderbolts absurd.
To victory. Is
  But an If about
     crowns no there gradually toward earth.
       The
       love. Over conscious. And
the Sisyphus won top life a near wisdom knows

            in goes
     depth, rashly also acknowledged. The hatred is
        it, be a
              clay-covered world, the
             which It his Sisyphus

             the

             too was whole penalty that to necessary. Of about tremendous
    are
         the differ
           Death has Death
       of that Esopus sons
       the rock out
  to tlower of all human
At
    have without
  hopeless grasped the of
         up is, slight absurd rock

   to fate.
       Years to earth profession that fall Kirilov, avail. You
     up,
       Pluto in
     not
       conqueror. Reasons him toils underworld. Being
and
     he victory. For arises beginning.
         Scorn
the moment,
rocks. Signs the is workman without the mountain!
Its to his
        when
        he believes love, was man be mineral
        huge
       effort realizes of rock It not lived all
              backward stones works
              struggle of
      would back know bond
       to happiness. The desperate, from water. Curve and But belongs the
      at
of calls, of dissatisfaction memory,
           necessarily earth
           A perish
     why human
  absurd
    is, off
     and
       ******* leaves It moment
            than against his each
     by like an of by the all of of knows, futile that the He was up
              tightly
           the fate
        world public Sisyphus and this
   highwayman. Gods reason that
             sees
him,
        world. Heavy
    

We are the terraced women
piled row on row on the sagging, slipping hillsides of our
                                                                                               lives.
We tug reluctant children up slanting streets
the push chair wheels wedging in the ruts
breathless and bad tempered we shift the Tesco carrier bags
                                                                          from hand to hand
and stop to watch the town

The hill tops creep away like children playing games

our other children shriek against the school yard rails
‘there’s Mandy’s mum, John’s mum, Dave’s mum,
Kate’s mum, Ceri’s mother, Tracey’s mummy’
we wave with hands scarred by groceries and too much
                                                                                   washing up
catching echoes as we pass of old wild games

after lunch, more bread and butter, tea
we dress in blue and white and pink and white checked
                                                                                          overalls
and do the house and scrub the porch and sweep the street
and clean all the little terraces
up and down and up and down and up and down the hill

later, before the end-of-school bell rings
all the babies are asleep
Mandy’s mum joins Ceri’s mum across the street
running to avoid the rain
and Dave’s mum and John’s mum – the others too – stop
                                                                                                for tea
and briefly we are wild women
girls with secrets, travellers, engineers, courtesans, and stars
                                                                                 of fiction, films
plotting our escape like jail birds
terraced, tescoed prisoners rising from the household dust
like heroines.

Pennyanne Windsor, from *Poetry 1900-2000 One hundred poets from Wales

I'm afraid too
I afraid that the only thing
Holding me together
Are all the broken pieces

I have spent so much time
Taping the smashed splinters
Into place
I have spent so many hours
Balancing all of the dust particles
On top of each other
Wedging them so carefully
So that each one supports another

I'm afraid that if I pull one out
And show you
They will all come
Tumbling down

There are many ways
to break the spine
of a book.

Line the jelly-bean backs
too close to the battered floor,

Hide wedging polygons
between pages and binding,

Or open them and stack the backs
in lateral,
frayed Vs.

I see you as a burst of ocean mist
******
Into a nestled and worn monument.
Breathing over a humming terra nova
slowly etching away the noveau stone

You are the water tipping
about the crystals
of lone rock husk
freezing and seizing at precise locus

Then expanding about the form
Edging it to molecular capacity
before it heaves heavily - wedging

A simple puzzle lain right beside its obvious match.
The edges might be roughened
but you can tell they belong
They lay there beside one another
echoing curve and angle
of that which they once clung crystallized

Now they lay beside one another
braving the same storms - and shifts of land
but having different drops of rain fall
about their own dynamic crystallization
and different animals walking over them
and different blades of grass clinging densely
in the padded earth beneath them
brushing

Sometimes bridged together
by an animal astride the two
they are together once more
Over time they burnish into fragments
and dance about the creek beds
and about the base of grass beds
and again - though maybe temporarily,
are together again

The sand's soft underneath my cheek; cool and grainy like a scattered pillow should be. I hear the crash of waves and the call of gulls. A headache starts to brew on either temple while stale *** coats my famished tongue. I feel a light drizzle tickling my face. Flashes of wide smiles and high conversation skims through my broken memory. The suns rising. Its heat is on my back. My eyes flutter and slowly open to a scene of white froth colliding with pure light blue ocean. Seagulls bob up and down in the rise and fall of the waves, their faces look like their made of stone, their eyes indifferent. I smile, getting sand in-between my teeth.
I reach out my hand and grip the hot sand. Tiny pebbles rub in between my fingertips. Another scream from the sea gulls above me. The sky seems like no place for a crowd. Reaching a little farther, I discover a half-empty bottle of Bacardi *** and a packet of cigarettes beside it. A lighter is tucked inside.
"Lucky day," I say aloud to myself, "Lucky day for you indeed." I bring the bottle to my chest and lean it in between my pecs. It rests perfectly there. Smacking a cigarette out of the pack, I place it in my mouth and dig in my sandy pockets for a lighter. It's still there. This surprises me. I light the cigarette and my eyes immediately cringe as the heavy billow of smoke erupts forth. It's a sting I'm used to, so I blink hard a few times. The pain only lasts for a moment, then it's gone.
"There we go," I say leaning my head back, wedging it into the sand, "Let night become this day."
Clouds dissipate and the sky opens up clear. A toucan bird clatters its beak in the distant banana trees. I look to see where it is, but the birds colors are lost in the dark green and yellow of the trees leaves. I fit my lit cigarette in between my middle and pointer finger, push myself up to lean onto my elbow, and tip the bottle of *** back with my other hand. The *** is sweet and warm. Been sitting in the sun too long. I always like with a bit of ice in a Dixie cup. It pinches my lips and eyes for only a second, then starts to travel down to my stomach lining, warming it. The sun passes the dawn and the dark blue night sky becomes a new morning.
I lay there watching the water and the night become day for I have no idea how long. I've no obligation to no one, not even to myself. Time for me is a fleeting thing, but even if time is slipping away, where is it really slipping to? Time stands still and we are the ones that move. Perhaps we have created time to prove to ourselves that we are in fact alive?  
The freight train I jumped to get down to Cozumel came from Arizona. It was crowded like a ******* with vagrants, drunks, dealers, and desert kids. Me, I was in the last train cause I can't run for nothing. Shrapnel tore into my right calf when I was in the war. They tried to patch me up as good as they were able, but once something like that happens, it's impossible to truly get back to normal one-hundred percent. It's hard to come back one-hundred percent from anything when I think about it.
Come to me, lady Dee. Come to me lady who lives by the sea. You are the one I'm always thinking of. You are the one who sends me reeling and in love. Your hair is like honey: soft, golden, and sweet. Your eyes are like acorns: auburn and neat. Oh' when you went away that one winter's day, I was left with a feeling that there wasn't anything left to say. Where have you gone off to? Where do you stay? Will you ever come back to me? When will be that day?
Noon came. Children kick at my bare feet. Their laughter sounds like the echo of birds chirping. I can smell them too: red licorice mixed mixed with fried fish and fresh lemon. Where have they come from? What do they want with the likes of me? One of'em gets me hard in the ankle and I spring up onto my feet and roar. I see they're kids from town. Their skin is maple leaf brown and their hair, long and to their shoulders, is streaked yellow from the sun. I look down at them. Their faces are frozen, stunned. The smallest one of the groups teeth begin to chatter. I roar again louder and they scurry off up the white sands of the beach toward their homes, the smallest one lagging behind like a gimp donkey. I check my pockets to make sure none of them swiped my wallet or keys. Still there. My pockets are filled with sand and I dump them out as I make my way up the beach toward my cabin on the other side of the cove.
I built it myself, my cabin. She sits at the top of a sand dune overlooking the water. It's all I've got. Made a deal when I first arrive with the land owner, Perez Sandiago (Sandy if you know him), that I'd work for his iguana farm once or twice a week if he'd let me have the plot. They aren't too bad, the iguana's, as long as they don't bite you. Once they know you, they rarely do. More prone to sit and bask in the sun to bother anybody. All they need is to be fed, given some water, and left the hell alone as Sandy will say.
As I walk up the hill, a few small ***** and strings of seaweed in my hands for lunch, I see a small part of the roof is gone. The wind may have taken it off or maybe some of the tie came loose. The sun above is hot and relentless. I put my hand over my eyes to shade them walking forward. Sand washes over the top of my feet, warming them. I stop, closer to my cabin now, and take off my shirt. I lay it on the sand and place the few ***** and seaweed on it. Then I tie them up in kind of a ruck sack so the ***** won't get away. They're always running off to some place when they know their gonna' get killed, but I guess I would do the same.
There is a single chair I leave by the front door and I take it and step up on it to get a better look at the roof. There isn't any tie left. It either fell inside or blew away with the missing piece. I look over the roof of the cabin further down the beach to see if it's laying out there. Nothing, just the beach. The roof's too weak to climb up on, so I get down and circle the cabin. I make my way around and reach the front door. The only other place it could be, if it isn't further down the beach somewhere, is in the cabin. I take out my keys and fit it into the lock. It's unlocked. A wave crashes behind me and spreads out on the sand with a sizzling hush. I take a step back and think for a moment, then walk inside feeling every grain of sand between my toes.

The wharf was busy; it was a Saturday and the sun was high in the sky. Strangely enough, it was hot. She wanted to get to the deYoung in time.
Eliza pulled impatiently on the hand and pulled her toward the circle of people, who were no doubt watching a street urchin or a performer.
“No, honey,” her mother said, “not today.” Eliza didn’t listen and ran up, wedging herself between the bodies of bystanders.
“Look, mommy! It’s a game.”
The man was a con, Marie knew this. She let Eliza gander.  
“One dollar a play, ladies and gents,” the man said, “sorry sweetheart, kids aren’t allowed.” Eliza looked up at her mommy and pushed a dollar in to her hand. Not wanting a scene, Marie smiled and put it down.
“Just once, darling,” she said through whitened teeth and a botoxed smile. She didn’t know why she was doing this. It came to her in the moment and so she acted.
The man put a ball in the cup and told her to watch so she did. His hands were swift and mesmerizing. She knew that the ball was under the right one. She pointed. He lifted. It wasn’t there. Eliza wanted to know if she could play and if not why. Her mother told her that it was a big girl game and little girls couldn’t play. Eliza started crying so Marie put down another dollar and let her watch, just to get her to shut up. The man twisted to cups again and she failed. It happened again. And again, and again. The deYoung would close, she knew, but nothing could compare to the feeling of winning. In the end, the man got twenty of her dollars. The museum wasn’t so important.
When they were in the Saint Francis’s elevators, Marie bent down and smiled at Eliza.
“When poppa asks, dear, remember: we went to the museum and had a splendid time.”

The past hurts like an ocean made up of opaque glass.
And you asked me to exist within the shatter-jagged fragments.
An amphibious creature,
Breathing the pain through shredded gills.
Numbed, bruised and bleeding.
Wounds are what they called them.
Battle torn from a thousand different edges.
Don't you feel them?
  The watery shards wedging into your sides,
  Piercing your lungs of the will to exhale.
I feel it, like rough hands upon my neck;
  Tearing through my flesh.  
  Slipping down my throat.
Till I'm choking on red.

You asked, and I confessed.
My passions, the black and the blue.
Inhaling the wine-water,
I want to save you.
Even with an ocean of glass standing in my way.
I want to save you.
Swimming and swimming, until this agony bled away.
I wanted to save you.
Even though I knew I couldn't.
*I wanted to be the one to save you.

Everything you had to say
Every. little. thing.

You used them as weapons
As knives

Every thought that came into your head was a knife in your hand
Like throwing knives you had sharpened them and aimed

Every sentence that came out of your mouth
Every word that entered the open air

Every single word sliced through the air like a throwing knife
The moment a word left your mouth, a knife was thrown

I always saw it coming
Every. single. Time.

The windup right before it’s thrown
Right before its said

Time standing almost still
As it slowly pierces through me.

The impact of the knife wedging into my heart
The impact of the words burning into my brain

Blood and tears
Knives and words

While I was at my most vulnerable
You saw me as a perfect target.

Perfect for throwing knives.

by now you should have figured:
it's easier to satirise an everyday British
civilian with a radio,
than it is satirising a British politician
with a sense of rhetoric and
no Poker skills; instead viably
all cleavage with piquant punctuation,
zesty with a protruding ah...
an opera in glutton minor -
(never the colon preceding italicised
re-)
            meine land, meine land,
           die land alle meine land
           die land von Strauß -
           die land von fett walküre -
           gott ist tot: diät ist boren.
it is easier to it's easier to satirise an everyday
British  civilian with a radio,
than it is satirising a British politician
with anything than politics - as assured
with deciphering the enigma
or the British relations musicology speaking
relating to the continent with that
one favoured spy / messiah: Hændel - i.e.
the one admirer of Liszt that turned to terror tactics
and broke the pianist fingers in hope of the pianist
never wedging a Cuban cigar  between middle and index;
love is such an oddity, it can make jealous men
love by hating into a choking joke.

A choir sings behind me
Collapsed on the floor
My heart beat once more
My hand outstretched
For a prince that never came
For a hero that never saved the day
Crashing at a million miles per hour
Towards a bottomless pit
****** away, chewed up then spit,
Nothing more than a residue
Left over
A mere mark
Of what might've existed
A wasted prayer
Among the mass
One teacher
Of an uncaring class
Fog on glass
Wiped away
Night to the sun
A passed day
Nothing more
Everything less
Left as an empty shell
I'm alone again
Without your touch
I'm not much
My heart ....
There is no beat
My finger tips to the stars....
They do not meet
My time is up
I'll say goodbye
With tears in my eyes
And pain wedging my throat
I leave tonight ..... On the lowest note

I wish all my writing  depicted gaggles
wedging south over mossy lakes.

They more often wander to  legs,
tangerine tongues, the taste

of sweat and smell of cheap hairspray;  
for thoughts like these, I feel no
                                          shame.

There never was anything beautiful about
caribous or
lesbians.
That's what art is for,
and good thing he hates painting.
But he likes foul mouths and petite girls
and Chevy trucks.
So I cower in your presence and let your anger shoot inside of me.
Anger like lava or acid or the liquid of hell.
It seers through me.
It seeps into my veins and
sponges into my cartilage and
threads through every tendon in my muscles and flows over my heart and stomach
and boils me from the inside out.
You may be his sound board,
but you're nothing more than a ***** he uses to make me jealous.
You may have been in his mind for the night
but only because I was busy.
You may think you're wedging yourself in between him and me
like a tick
but you're only giving yourself
Lime's disease.
I hope you rot from the inside out,
starting with your black heart and ending with your
poisonous lips.
Let the buzzards eat your liver
and I'll devour your soul.

We were once one.
Shy at first, not knowing what to do.
But then the distance became less and less between us.
We were perfectly happy in each others arms,
slowing time as we starred into the other's eyes.
We could talk about anything for hours on end.
There was no distance between us.
Suddenly, three thousand miles barges in,
wedging us apart.
Slowly, like watching paint dry, we grew apart.
Fighting left and right.
Not only have we physically distanced from each other,
we are now emotionally effected.
Not as close as before.
How could we have let Distance destroy us?

Dreaming and drafting.
Sketching and scribbling.
Wedging and working with clay.
Throwing and thinning.
Molding and making.
Drying and drizzling for play.
Firing and filming.
Showing and sharing.

She remembers
vividly
walking in.
The smells
the feel of the coarse hard wood
against her feet
the yellowed and peeling flakiness
of floral wallpaper.

She recalls the meat simmering on the stove.
The stove which was old
bulbous and black-cast iron perhaps.
It filled the small one room lighthouse
collecting between the crevices wedging and
flattening itself between plaster and cement.

Each step made a sound
reminding the surroundings of her presence.
The solitary light bulb flickered as she pulled its string.
Brushing her cheek she felt his toes
swinging 180 degrees then back again
-maybe less of a dramatic angle.

Torn was the fabric of our
painful pasts.

torn by shots fired from heart
to heart, ricocheting between

bruises and disappointments,
then wedging themselves between

ribs, to rest and incapsulate.
I run my asking fingers across

your entry wound.
we did this to ourselves.

torn to pieces, the drapes between
us and The Holiest of Heavens.

let us never cease fire.
empty your every clip;

beautiful, beautiful
bullets.

It cut like a sword wedging itself within my soul
It caused me to flee to the darkness of my own mind
It took me for granted, used, and scared me for life
It causes the pictures to reply over and over in my mind

The scars it embedded upon my heart shall forever take their place

It is the one who is responsible for me being so untrusting, unworthy, unseeing
It is the reason I cannot come out of hiding

I fear that someone will see the scars
I fear that someone will see the pain I've locked away
I fear that someone will see me for who I am and the past that haunts me

When can I stop running from this unforeseen terror that continues towering over my flesh?

i'm eighteen and
my mind is running away

you're screaming
ranting and raving
but don't know you're
doing it and don't know
that i'm crawling
inside a cave where
nothing can touch me
except wanting to die

you were grumbling after
dinner that i don't talk
to anybody anymore
but you don't know that i'm
not lacking words i'm just
lacking the energy
that it would take to
use any of them

(flashbacks to all the times recently
you've complained i don't love you
anymore. to my whole lifetime of
wondering if you loved me at all)

i'm thirteen and
unaware of my anxiety
associated with existence
usually put in in writing as
"pressure". but you don't think
there's anyone pressuring me

i talk too much to too
many people and have
been hurt before. but
never in that abject
way of it being because
i set myself up for it

(emotions so haywire that i end
up hospitalized over a box of
broken cd cases. now that i
remember it i was rage cleaning
and would unquestionably have
an even worse reaction today)

i'm seven and
having another ocular
migraine even though
i don't know it

(the past as as brittle as the
uncooked spaghetti filched
from the box and wedging
between my crooked teeth)

my memory fails me
whether you steamed
your way through preparing
dinner in the kitchen of faded
herbal wallpaper with words
and woodgrain. if i've been
tuning it out all this time
only to notice recently

("you're just like me" you said today
my seven-year old self thinks that's cool
while my current self is wishing to
deck someone while saying nothing)

today and tonight when intrusive
memories keep coming back is when i
remember that if i don't automatically
see things from your side there will
be a row. despite the fact you have
never investigated my perspective

(you're complaining about how
badly you sleep and how it's my
fault for waking you up at
four a.m. but did you ever stop
to ask why the ******* your
daughter is awake at four a.m.)

"my whole body hurts" you said
having taken some chronic
illnesses for some light grocery
shopping and attend a reception
"so does mine" i said
having taken a dark cloud
with me to work and
a panic attack to the library
"mine hurts worse" you replied
"and how do you know that" i demanded
sweeping my sadness off the kitchen table
"because i just do"

i guess your problem is that you
don't know how to be in pain without
minimizing mine but how hypocritical
when i'm over here minimizing
your pain to justify the fact that
my brain is trying to **** my body

(one of these days i fear what
i don't say will get the best
of me and i will crack clean
in two. start screaming
through doors death threats
ending in quadruple homicide
accompanied by my own
swinging body. it's not that
i hate everyone i just hate
feeling like i hate everyone)

but for now i'm investigating the perspective
so startlingly clear that you never loved me
just did what was required of you and so by that
standard i never would have loved you either

She remembers
vividly
walking in.

The smells
the feel of the coarse hard wood
against her feet
the yellowed and peeling flakiness
of floral wallpaper.

She recalls the meat simmering on the stove.
The stove which was old
bulbous and black-cast iron perhaps.
It filled the small one room lighthouse
collecting between the crevices wedging and
flattening itself between plaster and cement.

Each step made a sound
reminding the surroundings of her presence.
The solitary light bulb flickered as she pulled its string.
Brushing her cheek she felt his toes
swinging 180 degrees then back again
-maybe less of a dramatic angle.

why is it that headlights are so much more blinding when there's warm streams puddling at my chin because i'm physically furthering myself away from you? why is it that the farther i am from you, the more i feel like there's something heavy holding my heart tighter and tighter, pulling at me with everything it has to turn around and come back to you? i know i'll return to your side in just a few days, but i feel pages and pages torn from my memories wedging their way between my ribs making it difficult to breathe normally. as i blink away the tears that still are falling, i see that beautiful smiling face of yours looking down at me in your arms, telling me that you'll see me soon, even though we both know that "soon" isn't soon enough. i can see you desperately trying to fight back emotion after emotion as you release me from your warm embrace and i know that you'll always invite me back with open arms but that doesn't make it any easier to leave you here and now. every ounce of me longs to be with you each moment we have. i've seen too many times when two people are forever separated- and one of them is forced to attend a funeral that they didn't think was going to occur until their hair turned silver and their eyes grew dim. continuing to live a life absent of you would be the night sky without a moon, waves without noise, flowers without color, music without sound, kisses without feeling. i wish you understood how void my life would be without you-almost all would be vanity. now that i know how complete i am when you're here, i can't imagine what it'd be like to no longer have you near. i slam on the brakes as bright red lights seen almost too late and i tell myself to be more careful, stay focused, think straight.
that's one of the main reasons i keep pushing forward when i feel i have no energy left to spare-
*it's the thought of coming back home to you.

You look tired, girl.

The lines on your face
from annual frost wedging
sprout tiny trees and assemblies of
lichens
that blot the pages of your book
like carelessly spilt ink,

but it's not worth crying over.

I spent my time trying to read those
pages,
those hieroglyphs
penned in a foreign
and dead tongue.

I tried to read the landscape of you.

Where split rocks harbor still-breathing mammals
at the base of your collar bone.
Where the aspens quake
and make homes for hawks
on the crest of your bony hip.
Where the trickles of water babble
softly,
but not unheard
and the trout jump like living jokes
in the cracks on your tongue.

Really, I tried.
And the closer I looked the more I realized
that you are not my native land.
I was an invasive species there
and I could feel the god in you
crying out
to abolish the man in me.

So I tore down the shack I had built
at the border between you and I
and I watched as the trees regrew
where I used to harvest my firewood
and I saw the deer
bed down
as the sun set
behind the
cold and silent mountain range
that fringes your hairline-

those mighty castle walls
that I could never truly breach.

new experiences fade the old
no matter how vital the old might be
we don't get a choice
we just do new things and **** there it goes

parts of you fall away bit by bit
i try to remember the whole but am faced only with the half
the left hand falls, the right shoulder
the memory of yelling at me upstairs when i was younger

of picking me up from cross country practice
replaced by a hospital bed and series of tubes
54 is far too young and it wasn't even one
of the plethora of plagues you endured

it was a curveball from the east wedging into the brain
forming a puddle of bacteria and eating away slowly
who'd have thought your heart would stay intact
or your liver or your lungs yet something unforeseen

soon the memories will fade yet more
replaced by a skeleton wearing a pitt hat
with a full glass of pepsi tugging downward at the bones
watching ncis, talking about fixing the porsche

the jaw bones rattling, fading away again
faced with the half and the prospect of the none
ashes three parts body, two parts pepsi, one part ink
and that part housing the memories shrinking against my will

I tried to sew us together
with pillow talk and Tuesday date nights –
a twine, twisting around our half-empty hearts
like a snake strangling its prey.
It began with a sidelong glance,
a quick white lie settling on the edge of my tongue,
and you, wrapped in the enigmatic smile
she wore that day in the office.

You tried to glue us together
with our ancient conversations –
adhering us weakly to promises
we’d long ago broken and never admitted to.
It was obvious in the repeated arguments
about your ugly comforter,
how much I hated the distance
driven between us by our diverging futures.

Together we chipped away
at the concrete foundation laid years ago
when I confessed that I loved you
on that hot, windy night in Aruba.
It sometimes resurfaces
when I mention tomorrow,
the look of terror you didn’t think I saw then,
but you sometimes still wear.

And I know that the days we live
are drifting us farther apart –
wedging themselves in the cracks
we’ve made with each biting word.
It tightens, the fraying tether that binds us,
as we stretch further and further,
and although we know it will someday break,
we hold on to each other for now.

Words
Read

Wedging
Myself
Between

Dots
And
Crosses

Staring
Listening
Hoping
Glistening

Posed
Ready
To answer

Five down
Four across

Clues
Too
Cryptic

I
Find

Myself

At the
Last
Page

Searching
For
The
Answers

wandering into the sun room
with a small question
I find my boys in repose

the acorn, lies across two beanbags
as though he had just
finished a marathon and collapsed
for want of air all legs and arms
with a fringe of needs to be cut soon hair
affordung his face privacy
he glows with youth and promise

my oak, rests sprawled in the old mamasan
hairy legs akimbo, one deck shoe on, one half off
he has sat on one hand, wedging in between cushions
the other dangles off the chair's rim, long fingers hanging
his shirt has ridden up to show tanned trim stomach
with a surfer's bleached snail trail leading to a darker hairline
his mouth slightly open as he dreams his bulldozer dreams
his hair long and now slightly thinning  curls in the humidity
he has not shaved for days and
his stubble a dusting of silver and gold
his lips are a tad dry, but still so inviting

I turn and leave them in repose
my question forgotten