Look on me dearly:
your stolen sullied sullen

daughter. I could dig you up
to hold your bones but

want only to wash myself
away, like white foam

from the seashore.
If I burn what is buried,

is it cremation
or disintegration? You would fly

ashes in the wind, like a wish
given

lift, like an altar of lit
incense.

Think of learning of your blood:
yellow skin and rice paddies

and great-great-great-great-granddaddy
grey for the Confederacy.

Do two halves not one whole
soul make? I take

a breath
and leave it

free.

wants me to tear
my heart out ******
for her to hold,
still-beating, sticky
fingers tasting rich
like butterfly feet;
but see
the scar-marked bark
has closed it in
pulse-roots solid strung to lungs
corded grip of kin
sordid so
she asks me smiling again
and hands me the silver platter
and her
shining dinner
knife.

Alone on the pedestrian bypass bridge,
breathing summer sunset,
I swirl the stubby balsa spoon on my tongue
as the evening commute buzzes beneath my feet,

and wonder: how did I miss this all before?
how
wind washes bare arms,
world still
soft round
the sharp edges;
how ivy lush covers thickly the brick walls over,
and brazen broad-leafed bushes
crowd onto cobblestone street corners, and
wistful weeds cushion cement sidewalk cracks;

how when the sun’s rays are blades from the horizon,
our city lights twinkle tight but
tap dance so light on the retina
in the vignetted  
sky of creamsicles and cotton candy;
and how
the frozen chocolate chips
break brittle between my teeth
and the cookie-dough bite’s so smooth
and still so tooth-melting sweet

poetry is wings
fluttering against cupped palms
to keep & set free

“You are the universe in ecstatic motion.” –Rumi

I am endless infinite possibility,
a Boltzmann brain fluctuated from the
furious buzzing entropy thrilling the
scattered melted formless universe,
collapsed into the thin singularity string of
an impossible human being.
The world is testament to my stunning genius
a grand hallucination of my own creation
and I am my own invention.

elusive
a school of silver fish in the net
all slick small enough to slip
drip through the cracks
gaps plink wriggle back
into the sea
where even the minnows swim free
so I stay on the waters and cast the nets again
and wait to haul in my next catch.

nineteen in little more than a week:
already time slips through my fingers,

days trickling through the cracks
in the sidewalk, leaving

me rubbing my fingers raw against
seams in the parched pavement, wondering

when the rain will seep back up. I heard time
runs faster as you grow older,

an ever-tightening spiral of minutes days
decades blinks of eyes

and I wonder how I will bear it
when even now I am grasping

desperately for anything in reach,
anything to slow the locomotive

down, and all I get is red-scraped palms
from slapping past tree trunks,

arms too skinny-weak to pull, to hold any
branches as the train whisks me by

by-by-bye

I met a cat
a few weeks ago
black and white
on the city sidewalk
collarless in
the deserted evening.
I stopped
yards away,
no chasing
crouched down
stretched my hand out
she hesitated
I smiled
𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘮𝘦, 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘮𝘦, 𝘱𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘦 𝘰𝘩 𝘱𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘦
she stepped cautiously to me
I stroked her back
scratched between black
ears and then
she went her way
and I went mine
and only one of us looked back.

i like stories of
fiercely feral girls
who tear from the womb
short-tempered and clench-******
bawling tantrums with red faces
hungry like black holes
starving to scratch, and bite, and scream
to shake the world for not being their own
who have not yet been carved
hollow of their rage
for a lady
does not
roar

i like stories
of girls who will never
be tamed
never give up their
fire because it hurts
who fight unto their final breath
and spit into the face of death

(girls
who are stronger than me).

May the gods drink deep your blood
and may the crimson please their gaze
and may the iron scent whet their lust
that the taste may sate it
for you are my greatest offering.

in time
the lens
turns large and flexes
small
and the colors of hands
the shapes of days
stains
the wallowing stream
the hanging chord
for god is change is time
is infinite is ends
is frozen is stagnation
is a self
a sculpture in ice
glittering melting
a tale the same
in every telling
till
gone.

not much more
than a metaphor
as a butterfly flap
is a windstorm.

she wanted
little-girl-wanted
to be loved
without barbs
so much
that when she snatched them up from their cage
she squeezed the life out of them.

she tried to be gentle
smoothed silken wriggling bodies
with light fingers, soft words
but they trembled at her touch
thrashed escape from her grasping hands
even as they dozed in her brother’s palms
so again and again she caught them
by the tails
with sudden fists
round rushing ribs
from huddled corners, piled dens
and held them tighter and tighter to her chest
wishing more than anything they
could be enough to fill her fractured lungs
as if love can be pressed from hearts
like wine from grapes
as if she could drink
without tasting poison

they died young
from her
venomous heart

she buried them under
the loveliest stones she could find.

I
it hisses, turning dessiccation
dust to wet dirt
the water’s meniscus edge conquers
gorges and gaps of pitted paved path
mortar dips between cobblestones
capillary rivulets
generals charging ahead
their advancing lines
rallied for battle
against dry death

II
the sky pours out the ocean
and drowns the bridges that connect us

The shadows move in circles
as the world does.
As we live
it spins
_

it moves through my fingers like water
leaving no trace except
                                          that evaporates.

all i have ever wanted
is to be
unmoored
alone
a ship
cast off
from the populated shores
into a sea of stars
to sail among cotton clouds
into fantasy beyonds
to need never look
on the world i leave below
and never glance back
on my body which my mind
leaves behind
on the lapping shores of the living

"Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now, take what's left and live it properly. What doesn't transmit light creates its own darkness." –Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

that
   little girl
who wanted freedom
   to see and do
      to be
wanted a voice
   to speak
      to be heard with
who wanted to know
   everything
      to fold into her mind
who wanted to be something
   to be worth something
      to be everything
she thought it would be easy, and it is not
but for her
   that little girl
for all she lost on the long and weary road
woman, you go make a name
for yourself.

Brown hair drip
drops down onto
black squishy flip flops
and
seamless white plastic shower floor.

Then it is tan sand
and saltwater spray;
and the great gray-blue ocean
lies before bare burrowing toes
and air vent breaths
are washing tides
and the shushing breeze.

She is naked and young and alone
tan, svelte and smooth
squeezing sea from dark tangled hair
on a beach
where air smells sweet
salt, not stinking seaweed
and everything the temperature of her body.
The sun burns not too hot or bright
in pastel-streaked sky
rays not of needle glares but cotton.

The standing,
quiet calm
no chatter but seagulls
air enough to fill both lungs:


a world that is plush and halcyon
and needs no reason