have i found you?
have i finally found love?
after a long time of nothingness
is this it?

a person
who actually sees the true me?
a person who gives me butterflies,
when I talk to them
someone I can take to the Netherlands with me?
Or just talk about the most random things
and it would still be okay

Have I found thee?
Or am I hallucinating?
I feel like I found you
A magnificent person
An indescribable human being
With great intelligence
Who enjoys being themselves
And doesn't mind talking to a lame kid
I think you are it
I feel like I found someone
To obsess over

True gardeners cannot bear a glove
Between the sure touch and the tender root,
Must let their hands grow knotted as they move
With a rough sensitivity about
Under the earth, between the rock and shoot,
Never to bruise or wound the hidden fruit.
And so I watched my mother's hands grow scarred,
She who could heal the wounded plant or friend
With the same vulnerable yet rigorous love;
I minded once to see her beauty gnarled,
But now her truth is given me to live,
As I learn for myself we must be hard
To move among the tender with an open hand,
And to stay sensitive up to the end
Pay with some toughness for a gentle world.

There was a girl who would dance in the stars
She forgot who she was when the dark turned to dawn
And the sun once came up in its yellow and gold
And told her to rejoice because she'd grown to be old.

There once was a child who loved to pretend
In the storm of his mind, the stout trees would bend
Hills slept as dragons and old sticks were swords
But the dragons kept sleeping and he could find no wars.

An old man was sleeping on a dark green park bench
He dreamed of the nights with his love he had spent
And then he woke up in the afternoon light
And tried to be happy, because they'd all been right

They said "Once you live past the dark horrors of night
Surely, somehow, it will all be all right."
Graduate with honors, a wife and a job
You'll be set 'till the night comes -- and you meet God.

The fight had been over for many years now
But it still didn't feel like he'd won, somehow.
White snow turns brown when the winter is done
It's hard to keep fighting when they all say you've won.

one time it was two am and i was outside a bar
when the air was just crisping from its summer bake
and naked trees matched shivering girls in micro-dresses
you asked if i lived in the city
i was a pumpkin-beer-drunken, kohl-smeared mess
so i grinned sloppily and fumbling, lit a cigarette
while i replied "for now"
how ******* mysterious am i?
i am patronizing this well-meaning boy in a polo shirt
but thank god for liquor cause luckily
he laughed and snorted smoke out his nostrils
"heading somewhere?"
i took another drag and exhaled
maybe for emphasis?
am i that ******* contrived?
"i'm thinking australia?"
there that felt sincere
did it look sincere?
and he asks why of course he asks why and now
i can laugh and say
"it's very far away"
because jesus christ i need to pretend i have depth i guess
i'm a mirage begging for substance
he taps his cigarette and grins at the ground
"running away from problems?" he asks, suddenly mischievous
i try to match his smile but i have to think fast because
i don't have the kind of problems that make you run away
my family is loving, big, rooted
my friends are devoted, they better me
i could stay in comfort if i had the patience but
my feet just want new pavement
and my eyes are snow-blind by now
so i demure, i think.
if that eyebrow quirk and downcast gaze
is what demurring is
captain morgan chucks my chin and i am
all smiles again
i stick the cigarette in my lips and spread my
arms wide
"i prefer to think of it as running towards different problems."
i smile the way i know shows off my dimples
because i can't help but be a facade
i guess he's charmed because he texted me a few times
for the next few weeks
until my silence
exhausted his interest
he failed the test marx talks about
no not that one
groucho
i don't want anyone who would want me
since i'd rather be a story
sooner a paper-thin memory
than an illusion revealed.

It's late in the night
She wants to go for a walk
So she does. The end.

feminist?

to some it rolls off the tongue like the grit from last night's pork

you? a hair-covered, bra-burning, feminist?

no, feminism is not male-bashing, god-hating barbarianism. you are wrong.

feminism is fighting against the veiled warrior that is society's gender roles

walking down the street, a young woman is constantly harassed by cat-calls

behind walls, in stalls, she falls

the red lipstick she wore today

was not supposed to be her blood

I **** at writing love poems--
I'd rather indulge
on a feminist lens
because I hate the way
you look at me,

but today I'll let you
stroke my hair
without calling you a
*******.