We are

We are going to play music
eat cherry chocolates,
share blackberry brandy,
chop and wash and pour and sleep.

We are going to call eachother
by the names our mothers gave us
and watch the children find magic
that we dare not dispel.

We are going to laugh
And maybe in it, cry some.
We will hold on tight, knowing
what we don't want to know.

Getting Back

If the whisper is thorns, it doesn't belong to you.
Eyes are always trying to slip you into knots, but don't
fall into the fake green grass. It is thorns too.
They are everywhere. I am not talking about the devil.
It is the 'you' that you have to keep choosing,
the shadow of sugar trying to run away, wanting something
that does not exist. The secrets are unzipping,
but I don't want to talk about snakes anymore.
I don't want to think of slithering and a fiction
of creation. I want us to hold hands and remember
who we were before the sun boiled to black.

Sweetened Black

Sugared architecture, our bones are filo dough,
spun sugar twirled from wrist to wisk.
If ever the funnel cake spoke, it would call you
peach-lips, creamsicle kiss, it would swoon
until the cherries plopped down from their long limbs
heavy with the weight of their deep dark pits.

Hold on

Was it don't hold on?
Hold on to me?
Holding on isn't worth a thing?
Hold on, but not too tight?

I reached out to you.
you were dead-cold
but speaking truths like
the apocolypse was on the cloudkeep.

Was it, holding on only hurts
you?
What did you tell me?
I need it.
Hold on
is all I can remember.

Rememberance Weather

If lighting strikes today
I will breath rust deep
its electric crown.
I will flip my hands over
face my palms toward dawn.
I will toss my shoes
into the windswept river,
press my ear to the earth
catch the dead's whispers
in the web of my bed
while the sky is sliced
in two by the knives
of luminescence, fractured
cores could truly fuse--
I'll be so quiet
I will know you
haven't forgotten me.

Holding the Seashell

There I have decided it, to be one with the floating of gills and monsters that jostle and squirm through the black wet. I may slip on the dreams of boats that once cried down to the sea floor, the deepest set of arms. All the bones stab upward, white reach to the heavens. Tidal wishes clash and cling while I drop down through the shades of dark, a stone of hope. In the end the sharks lurk like goodbye with their chompers sharpened, a thousand crescent moons. A mermaid's body turns with subdued iridescence. She reaches out to me, recognizes me from an old photo where everything was falling and I was the one thing strong enough to hold the spiraling shell.

On Being Blank

On Being Blank

The blank in me is heartbreakingly heated up, sizzling its fire through my guts, and they said I was all these things after I couldn't argue my side anymore. They didn't know me so well or the blackbirds that fly furious at my heels, propelling me toward your hands. Those are the palms whose roads I traverse, whose sweat consoles me. I am there when you turn the talkative door handle and let the wind rupture my name, bitter wind-- it takes me through your selfish sleeves. Hear the echo of shadow in the tortured hours between dusk and dawn? This light is yanking me like a tug of law, of which I want no part in. I'd be fine to rest my head in your hook of your neck for the length of this season, hunger do what it may. Space is all that troubles me now, with its expanse and freedom. I can tell you now, freedom is not my thing. I reckon, your reckless now that I have become blank. When we meet again, we will make new words for all the old words we despise, and we'll both be blank and so the space will be much less dense. I'll continue to wait behind the certain curtain, where I peer through to you. As the wind picks up, perk up your ears as I whistle happy-go-lucky for you, even though my insides are confused wings with distorted visions of home. When you dream, my blankness isn't blackness. When you dream I am not a fleeting like the dull ache of loneliness, thank you. Isn't blank a much kinder word than dead? Let's be blank instead.

Within the Without

You're in the wind like the gust in my heart
sweeping up the curtains of black hearts.
My eyes can't wait anymore, they blow rain.
Little marble cup of you, I know you are not.
Tweet birds say sweet things like you did
and I try to be every good word you said.
One day, in the wind maybe I will read
all of your letters and ache like the swords
of guilt and regret and sad piano keys
your son strikes like arrows through the middle.
I hear your laughter explode out of my mouth
you dance your funny dance within the without.

Dream X

Why is it when I dream of you, you still carry a crutch or a bat, or my smashed up heart in your hands? Last night you were on the stage, half mad, melted talent, slippery under the beating bulbs. Heavy handed. My eyes are jaded hooks in you. You were shaking your weapon at the light shining brave through the window. You didn't want the alley cats looking in. I resented how easily you careened from once feeling to none. My stomach still bubbled with your poison, witches brew theatrics. I hated the way I could feel the impression still left in my body, from where you had crashed into me.

Truth bombs

Dare we hope,
not later-
now. We hope.
We shoot the arrow
not outward, but
within our centers.
We cross and twirl
body-bloom. Dare
we hope to be
our best, now
and not lie.
Tommorrow may not be
better.

Fragments of Exhaustion

This pile of sugar is barely

likely I have a growing thing

since I haven't been

memories are ducks in the pond

eyes bring the boomerang

my father's in there

my mother looked so tall

I remember when I didn't

this rolly polly on the lillies

we are first a barely ball

we are first thoughts

I think of my mother

the temperature of love

thunder under the ice

darkness, your buried

Our fish had babies

Iced

Our doorway is facing another red door,
Wind whirling through like a kiss.

I believe what was once said about death
He's pretty when he sharpens the knives.

Even Wednesday feels, dulce Friday.
Is crepe paper holding the universe

between the leap and the curl?
Let's turn off the increasing oven,

since our bed is a cupcake---
Let's be icing tonight.

Candied Imperfection

Deliberate imperfection
is the heart in my chest,
a little doodle drawing
with an unsteady hand,
twirled and forgettable
but nonetheless real.
Here we dream
Dream with me
of our jagged edges
our soft centers like
lovers' covered candy.

The Poem that Survived Today

I choose light and wind.
I choose the me in it.
I am the ring in it,
Ding in it.

I choose the love-laughter,
The dance and mine, my heartbreak--
Still dances, still dancing,
Dancing in the window.

I will live and feel the wind.
I will weep in the arms of now.
We are strong and my angel's
voice lights a dreaded dawn.

Gentle hand, she rests upon me,
On my cheek, we are sweet.
When one dies, we all ache.
That is the chill in the rain.

Yet, I feel the surge of life,
Invoke her fire-studded strut.
We are her iridescence.
We are together beyond death

Knotted Cake

The stories are getting knotted now
when we see the dark
and the dying see the light.
Now, we can believe our fiction
since the dead cannot speak
to refute what we want to believe.
Can you tell me about the time
when you thought everything was
like cake? Can you tell me
that you once believed, wholly
in all quotes we use to console
eachother, when things get knotted?

Reluctant Prayer

Disappear phantom sleep--
slurring your fangs
toward the real,

slip beyond all fear--
be gone while you swirl
in my thoughts of steel.

My eager wheels burn
their fuel, but still
they plume like smoke

and all you do is slip
around me magically, poof
around hope, a rope.

The images burn in doorways
haunting prayers like doom.
I laugh in spite of blood

even though you fill the room.
Angels wings be on me,
white light burn my way

and my hands grow together
without the urge to pray.
I understand my fingers;

they call out like sun
pointing their golden daggers
to a day yet begun.

Lint

I am the silver ball in the maze guided by your quicksand hand, turning tides twirl, trying to eat us with their bellies of jellyfish. We are safe in this guided path though the walls shiver when we crash our soft fingertips into their rivets. I am the silver ball warmed by your cupped hand, your rescue was inevitable. If you keep me in a shallow pocket,I may fall in the gutter so push my down in the corner of a long and deep one and I will make friends with the lint, then you can take me everywhere.

Pull

Like the little grounds of coffee
you sweep away
or the sand pulled in by the sea

I am small and time drifts
steadily.

Wind at my back, soft voice
of my people pushing me

and others pulling.