caveat

you slip
so casually
into sleep:

as though dreams
are meant to be taken
lightly...

and I collapse into me...

There are days when
my body is so exhausted
I collapse into bed
without removing my clothes

And there are days when
she is so ashamed of her body
that she collapses into herself
leaving her clothes on the floor

I slept naked for both of us
in hopes that my certainty
would woo her away from
the terror of the mirror...


I slept naked for both of us
in hopes that my freedom
would release her hindrances
of being free...

I slept naked for both of us
in hopes that I could erase your past
and maybe I could
collapse into me

past tense

to the solace of a bottle of whiskey
and the men who came before you:

false liberation never made me happy,

and when I slept in your haze
it was awkwardly
like some poor rag doll
eyes buttoned shut
to the past

[cast to the floor with my limbs tied,
head crushed beneath the weight of the pillows you held over my face to stifle my sobs and her fingers sometimes tracing my tears as they rolled down my neck;

but we were all lovers in the smoke and the dust... weren't we? turnabout is fair play?]

and when i woke from my sleep
pale and cross
with my wide owl eyes-
and your wife
at my side-
I saw you pleading with me
through sucked teeth...

so I'll pretend you didn't part my thighs
and think of your mother;

we can even forget
that she lived in your bed
and used your toothbrush...

michigan

starlight drips waxily
across my bedsheets...
the window,
a peephole to the bedchamber of forever,
opens wide
and outside
the meteors
row across the river of night
like tired souls across the river Styx

enough

i only want to remind you
that i was here
and that you loved me
in your way

somedays
I think i'd like to feel
your teeth in my shoulder,
something familiar...

these days I keep emotion as a fallacy
to be found
on my madeup face

now, daily,
i suffocate

diner on the corner

I'll sleep upon your canvas
like you slept upon my mattress
in the dim august dawn,
when you lay
hunched up
against my pillow
and woke to smear
over every crevice
every pore-
the woman's way to war-

but you're special...
so work your counter, sweetheart
curve your lip
and don't worry,

whores don't wear their names
pinned to their chest

marigolds

In the morning
the leaves on the marigolds
will be leprous
and ungrateful
with holes

they sit on their
fat, sultan stomachs
stretching their necks-
nocturnal siblings-
humble barges forging the
dark expanse...

i listen to them sigh,
dropping out of sight,

one-by-one

cosmos align

before,
your dreams populated the starlit sky
while the moon led me to you...

and with a quick zip
the moonlight was caught
between the sheets
like pressed flowers
that might lie between pages of a book...

I watched the sloped hypotenuse
of your shoulders rise and fall
as you struggled to wake
in the early dawn hours
of my arrival

as your lips parted
in the night
allowing measured kites of breath to dissapate-

it was then
I touched you
softly

Burning Season

wildfire in Bush canyon today
the sky doubtful with ash
fluttering and flirting
like eyelashes
the heat gasps in and lays low
over the heavy lapped valley
like a drowned body
and the trees stand.
bare-armed as preachers

meanwhile the sun lapses
over the horizon
pressured into and attitufe
of reverence-
a bland face
regarding the fizz tipped heads of grass
bearing judiciary wigs of ashe.

buy me a lullaby

we are never powerful enough to stop
[and/or start]
screaming.

a small girl in a small dress,
red with pale white skin.
clear blue eyes: innocence,
a disguise.

smiles, mask the horror-shows,
"hush little baby,
don't make a sound."

quiet for eleven years,
until she opens her mouth

and screams.

until she screams out,
"HUSH. HUSH. HUSH."
like the terror behind those
blue eyes, turned green with
emotion.

green like grass,
green like his tie on the day he
took her soul...

green.
blue.
and grey skies.

hush, hush.
don't stop screaming.

selfish bastard.

tonight I was thinking about Todd. and I wish I could stop thinking about todd, cause I'm not sure why it matters anymore... i guess I want to believe he was sick and it was his addiction and it was an accident and he just took too many pills....

It's been 4 months and a few days and i still vacillate between feeling as though he's been dead for years and not fully accepting that he's dead- even though his 30 year old widow and children moved away last month...

I'm lying here thinking about nothing in particular and then the mindfuck that was Todd will rear its ugly head... I really dislike that about Todd.

The reality is Todd is dead, and that's still weird to say, to write, to know... and every now and then I catch myself saying it out loud, sometimes to myself just to make it real. Tonight i was thinking about his daughter, Cassidy and when I wrote about my last memory of them together the day before he died. I wrote a line that seemed all to familiar and tonight as I reread it, I recognized the line as a line from the song "Cassidy" only I didn't realize it then, but I must have been thinking it or else I wouldn't have written it. That last day, he was standing on the sidewalk in front of our house and he was holding his daughter in the light of the sun. She was 2 weeks old with her eyes closed tight, and the morning sun was brilliant. It was a breathtaking moment until Todd opened his month and began talking about the cruel, dark world. He raised her above his head to warm her, creating a silhouette of his spindly figure that had grown remarkably gaunt in the previous weeks. In that split second I saw Todd. All the ugly parts of him previously hidden in the light were now visible in the dark- and I fucking SAW him.
The thing with Todd is that he was someone different to every person who crossed his path. Now that he's dead no one really wants to go around comparing stories and trying to get to the truth. And the truth doesn't really matter because Todd is dead.... and dead is dead. Todd was a giant mystery and always will be, but I saw him that day and it creeps me out.

The latest mindfuck is about the naming of his daughter.
Todd was a huge Grateful Dead fan and when I think about the days leading up to his death I become more and more convinced that he took his own life, he fucking checked out on his whole family. I remember the day he told me he was naming his daughter Cassidy- being the lyric whore that I am I flashed back to the song and contemplated the lyrics a bit.... I decided that while a bit odd, perhaps it was just a favorite song of his and there was nothing more to read into. Then tonight it just clicked and even though I know it doesn't matter, he's still a puzzle I've yet to piece together... the thing is I've been content with thinking he knew what he was doing a week before he died. But now, I see it was months, and i see how cruel he really was. Todd loved mindfucks and all along he was toying with everyone... dangling his little secret in front of us, begging us to catch on. How did I not see this sooner...


You don't take 8 klonopin and 8 oxy's on accident, and wait for your post partum wife to find you dead in bed on your wedding anniversary... you plan that shit.


so fuck you, todd.
fuck you.

sentimental education

these damp days
she stands in the doorway;
nineteen
in the awkward chrysalis of youth
smelling of soap and roses...

she possesses the sweet innocence
of white,
unshaven
thighs

and a mouth
just barely learning
how to lie.

Linger

that morning in our makeshift bed
-the first time-
rain snuck in over our restless heads
tapping along the sides of the tent

you shifted,
arousing from your slumber,
to linger with me
soft and slowly;
our faint silhouettes dancing
as the rain faded
and morning rose through the mist

and in the darkness
the next night
our bodies arrested in delight-

and further still
we are weeks removed
from each others company
and i still feel your gentle press
against my thighs
against my chest

against my heart...

slippery when wet

Synthetic saturation
Led the way… her soul seeking
Ingression on the long forbidden
Path, sliding past barriers with lubricous ease…
Perpetuating a union of
Enervated emotions- I
Rocked gently against her hand, her thigh
Yearning for a release from

Within those wet walls that began wildly
Humming, whirring… an
Electric current building from the
Narrow caverns of my body…

We wallowed in the bliss-
Emerging
Thread bare on bare threads…

sisters

pale, distracted moon,
gray as the lobe of a brain,
squinting through the shutters
through the dusty, solemn curtains,
leaning across our bedspread
and drooping its light,
turning the sheets cold
and bloodless as the bellies of reptiles.
i listen to you breathe in the darkness
and i can smell your hair
i watch your stomach rise and fall
and notice the way your eyelids crawl,
reckon, swivel –
the frantic reading of dreams,
the tealeaves of the shadows strewn.

the mushrooms turn out in their nunneries
and the night is warm
you can hear the crickets and the treefrogs outside
and i wonder how anyone can get a single minute of shuteye...
it takes me back to home
and i think about the pond at dad's
and the premature frogs
plopping in and the old toads sitting among the reeds
and mom's waterlillies in their gaunt petals,
white and clean
and slit down the back
like hospital gowns.

it is in these moments,
watching you on your back with your hands
utterly still and neatly folded and your breath so shallow,
your skin blue and chipped in the moonlight,
like heirloom china,
that i realize we have somehow stumbled into a world
of half-remembered dreams and sleeping princesses
and the throb and compression of the previous day becomes
nothing more than a bad, medicinal taste in my mouth.

i whisper
in your ear,
your eyes flicker
and the house creaks
as if someone is walking across the floorboards,
but I know
that it is just the heat from the beams
and the clapboards
departing into the night.

the nightfrogs carol,
the reeds sob,
the moon pricks our fingers,
like the sharp edges of an open tincan
and we bleed shadows
and seal our sisterhood.

come unto me...

 
praying among the poppies,
their shocked heads nodding
their lips loose –
they bow their heads and stand skinny in the tallgrass,
with the cicadas snowing their socketed buzz.
daddy prays,
and you can see that vein worming in his forehead,
as if the prayer was bleeding through his pores.

the poppies stifle their laughter,
like sunday school children,
and daddy's jaw grinds
his face red
his sermon lying in pages on the ground next to him
and the bible on a deadwood log,
open to The Acts.

and when he practiced
he flung his arms to heaven
and we hid behind the gray, dead fieldtrees –
pinched and hollow and sifting the song from the wind with its branches.
I chewed grass,
while Ava listened gravely
as daddy screamed damnation
and spat bible verses to a cloudless sky

all the wickered trees would
knit their branches and nod
seeming to agree,
but they have been around for a while...

 
the clouds return when he is finished,
white and satisfied
the organ reeds of the tallgrass strike up
the choir of the cicadas continues
and the wind flips the pages of the bible aimlessly,
as if it where a comic book,
read a thousand times before.

we come out of hiding and bring him his lunch –
cold turkey and rye
as he eats we are silent
and the poppies avoid our stares
­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­
there is no rest
for the wicked...

nothing gold can stay

along the scooping,
interminable road
with a fine red dust
that kicks up like facepowder
and turns all the brown latesummer leaves pink,
i walk.

one step at a time,
as if each step was the last time
i'd feel solid ground under my feet.

all the sunflowers on the side of the road
crumpled and suck-faced,
like denture-less,
rattling old men,
wheezing their seeds, suffering –
they peer down the road as if they know someone is coming.

 
and the loveless flea market
of smaller blossoms perched,
buttoned up,
they spin and toil,
petticoated in dust,
breathing through their mouths.
we all look up.
the sun cracking the earth like an interrogator.
all the muddy wet
spots from the storm that passed over two days ago
curling and separating
like continents.
the woods mumble.
the same woods where I saw harry townsend's family
distilling moonshine
and where the great dane
that was daddy's pride and joy
is buried in a gorilla sized plot
with a good christian crucifix at its head,
to bear it up
to wherever it is supposed to go.

if i stop for too long,
i can hear their voices,
the leaves with all the chlorophyll baked out of them
rustling and shh-ing
like mothers hushing their babies
and the spring gabbing in the ruts
and rusty inbetweens of stream-boulders
and skipping stones.

I hear them whispering to me,
telling me what a traitor I am.

my shoes are falling apart,
the heel flapping dully,
and the shadows in the woods cloak and mumble
like plague priests.

hubble

glass-eye, seeing
eye, showing the bee-dances of stars and
constellations. through his telescope,
the universe expands                     red, inhaling, knitted
gasgiant temper tantrums        scatter-
plot of suns,
tetnus of a ruined nova, like a god
in immortal pain. snail mail
light -- it has taken     millionsmillionsmillions^3
of years to illuminate this single, spectacled
astronomer.

half a world away, a shooting star
unzips the night
coyly.

and we point.

physics

we count stars,
past an umbrella that shields
these far-flung friends.
half strength that's following
and lips always seeking,
hands vaguely traveling
but i don't mind
because it's about the journey
across this gravitational field
we are each
only halfway to the center
seeking balance.

rising and falling

night fades in
teasing and taunting,
sleep seems to be elusive

we whisper
through the trees
and you wrap me in your arms

we are so close
there is a danger
of losing ourselves
in the darkness
stars still shine,
in the distance
songs swell in celestial harmony

eyes closed
your lips trace hills by touch
and memory...

longing swells to slow motion force
and I lose myself
in dark places somewhere
in the middle of you

rising and falling
through moon and mist

torch

I like my body when
it is under you, skin luminous
with morning -

balmy kisses move
over giving flesh.
You trail down, holding

a candle in long-fingered hands
dripping wax and spilling light
flush lips.

I love the way you bend and blush,
with heatjoy...
Taking you like summer takes spring into

shaking hands
always reading futures
of spilled wax and guttered light--

hands that know
how to comfort
when I

am burning
under
you.

Awakening

In the daylight
his hands no longer creep around door frames.
she moves unchallenged, without fear,
like her eleven year old self
in a white nightgown
skipping barefoot on hardwood floors,
ponytail grazing her suntanned shoulders
carefree and untouched.

But when the sunlight fades
the moon rises
igniting memories she longs to leave behind;
his hand tracing her skin
settling with a fistful of hair
at the back of her head,
his breath in her face
shouting words she could not hear
in the deafening rage

Tonight, fear's shadow lingers
but it is the summer's heat
that wakes her from her slumber.
Her body glistens with sweat,
crickets pierce the hollow night.
She glances at the amaranthine sky,
sees her future refracting
in the light of the waning moon...


Tonight, she'll wash his sins clean.
She walks unclothed,
sand beneath her feet,
toward the alluring waters.
The midnight ocean breeze anoints her skin
as she lies breathless
awaiting the tide.
Her inhibitions sway in the ocean's current
craving an end.

Tonight she is neither deaf nor mute to the wail of the ocean
A thousand photographs
over the years,
Somewhere during it all
she lived, danced, survived.

But not tonight.

perpetually

Perpetually
Pulsing, peaking…then pausing
Perpetrating bliss

As

Your tongue, lips- precise
Skimming the surface-
Uncompromising

Create

Anticipation…
Rousing desire,
Prurient lusting

To

Touch, without restraint
Experience you fully
Irrevocably…

hold

the night cannot find
the two held closely
breathing each other in.
as bodies curve and mold
and sleep rests on eyelashes
willing to fall.

safe.

treetops

Treetops
The eyelet hem of a snow frock
sweeps the twig fingertips
that tickle the belly of the moon.
I tip-toe on the tight rope of the horizon,
trembling someplace
between hills of woods
and sherbet skies
balancing in the silent stratosphere.
Confiding in the wind
taking mouthfuls of clouds to hold
beneath my tongue like that pale sky circus confection.
I vacillate back
between heaven and earth;
nothingness and everything.
A satellite girl lost in orbit

i think

i like to think a lot.
i like to think, that sometimes, people i loved might think of me.
i think of them.
i think.
i believe, that the little parts of me
that i give away-
to those- sometimes undeserving, sometimes worthy of much more-
will never be retrieved, but perhaps i think
i'm happy to leave them where they are.

and sketches and poems that were inspired by such passion,
now dead and never to be kindled again, i think
are not a crime.
i think we have loved, and we love.
i think that mostly i forgive and am forgiven.
human nature is inclined to these sudden passions and predicaments.
we cannot control them, i think.
i think doing what feels good is a motto to start living by.
i think waking someone you adore and cuddling them in the sleepy shadows of night is the most beautiful gift.

and i think that the pain of losing someone you may have loved is just as beautiful.
i think they have a time for their final exeunt.
i think that i have been lucky.

and tonight,
as i walked the path
into the inky night,
i knew
it couldn't be more perfect...
i know this is only the beginning and there is so much more ahead...

first time

adopting a tongueless language
of bodies moving nervously in the night
we explore the new landscape
feeling out the terrain
to decipher the legend...

time ticks on
taunting and teasing
while you are silently pleasing...
and we
collapse into place.

we all learn how to adapt.

snails

tread carefully
the night is full of snails;
hobble backed abhorances
making their slow pilgrimage
on the shoulders of grass blades...
small and emerging,
surveying the starless night
they are the only sound

depositing trails of nuptial vows behind them
kissing trudge, stomach born,
the moon slips down like a child sneaking out
barefoot among the trembling foragers
with extended baton eyes

tongueless language
grouping together captives on the porchsteps
dutifully crawling
like gentle mouthing,
gentle breathing,
silent, cornered, creatures
they conduct their blind courtship

daystage dance: michigan

snatch and slink of the trumpets
The hot august dance floor
breathing in and out under our feet
and you,
you smell of lavender and sweat
your smile exposed-
outside the moon tilts her head
and thinly smiles
like the old portraits of weak-chinned, urn-bodied women
with high foreheads
and breakable hands
ready to break free

the people around us swell
spit valves open
and that tall bass player
grows her note in the gloom;
moist and gagging like greenhouse flowers....

bind this heart

I can't search for the meaning in all things.
Sometimes horrible things happen
and you can never satisfy yourself with a how or a why.
You know you'll not be the same from it
you can never love yourself the way that you did before.
You know that you can never love life;
the sweetness of a poem,
the ache of song,
the way you did before.
Somehow, those things were taken in the night.
I cannot honestly say that I am looking towards tomorrow
or for some deeper cosmic force
that will bind this heart
to an answer...
or a truth
that will satisfy my soul.
I am not.
I am still operating breath to breath
heartbeat to next.
My eyes shifty
looking over my shoulder--
but I had a dream last night that was not about it
or about him
or my own pain.
If that is hope,
then I am hopeful.

sift

Lay me upon your table
Sift through me
Like mail
Search me for meaning
And tumble over me with your eyes,
Your fingers...
There’s too much,
Not enough,
Take in,
Pull out.
Linger with me
Like a lover's letter...
Leave no invitation
U n o p e n e d.

the beginning

traversing trails through the caliginous haze-
treading translations with trepidation…
staggering over stones…
stammering and starry-eyed, stumbling, stalling-

until she candidly called for clarity and the paradigm s h i f t e d…
her request was requited without hesitation…
leading us to revel in the carnal discretions
our souls were craving...

caving in
to longing lips
lingering…
lusting hips
fingering
our way through
the deep chasms
trusting…
until it was settled,
we had arrived.

it's only the beginning

today
you are safely out of reach
an awkward cluster of pillars
surround you
and the scent of our love lingers
in the air of
time borrowed

turn back the clock
to thirty-six hours ago,
when solemnly
you pursed your lips at me
in secret
before we gave in
and your hands revealed
all that had never been spoken
between us

I came
back to my body
still impervious-
numb and wanting...

and this is only the beginning.


I've known your name for a day,
but you've known mine for infinity...

Borrowed Time...

you tell me to remember,
but how could I forget...

our bodies
enmeshed
entangled
wet...
a lovers dance
like Klimt's "Kiss"
tongues exact and explicit
forbidden,
like eve's fruit
but we made no apologies...

and I looked up the length of your body
from the concave of your stomach-
just above your hips-
to your breasts
where they touched the landscape
and just then your back arched
reaching for the horizon-
I felt your pulse quickening
and we came
under the light of an esoteric moon-
wishing the morning away,
because it would end our borrowed time...

and time s l o w e d -
just long enough for us
to enjoy each other

one
more
time...

Do you remember?

phyre

Shall we start a fire all along
your equator or your meridian,
using your fingers as wooden logs
and my lips of sparking flints?

As our eyes haze over
with the hiss of panting,
will we catch the scent
of our skin blooming in fire?

And what will we say
in the moment? Our
tongues would crackle
like Egyptian parchment.

While the eyelash singes
and the tongue sizzles-
a wet thumb against
a hot iron and the breath
escapes our chest,

Will we remember
that we hold no links
to perpetual Phoenixes?

In the midst of our collapse,
will we look to the ceiling-
or will we fall from the bed
scattering away from each other?

And as the flames quiet down
just like a phantom fire
dying in the middle
of the forest,
we will lie tranquil

Only hoping
that in the silence
of our ashen stillness,
we can learn to speak,
with tongues
of rising smoke.