when does an 'i love you' die?
how many years later is the expiration date?
or can i still hold you in check for
what you said three years ago,
five years ago, when you said forever?
i was a rock, a solid foundation of
hope and encouragement,
and you ranged wide around me.
you were an explosion of youth and power,
and i was a basalt tower,
high and black and irreproachable.
when did those words, when did
that look in your eyes become
out of date? when did you lose responsibility
for coming home to the girl who waited,
who watched and waited and stayed
in one place but never stagnated?
oh, you are so happy now,
and probably never think of me,
and all i can do is wish that
i could remind you of those words
and those promises that youth
made in heat, and time made you forget.

i do nothing.
i dream loudly, all but waking the neighbors
with television gameshows, stacks of coins,
rooms full of mirrors and fire.
i do nothing,
sinning gently against bigger dreams of
wealth and success and productivity
and the american idea of democracy.
i do nothing,
leaving little words on pages that
no one ever reads because what exactly
is the point of saying it out loud?
i do nothing.
i read books, write poorly metered poetry,
and all the while keep quiet inside my skull
preserving little strength and less ambition.

i am holding myself together but
you chew right through my hands.
i am straight-laced and keep
the boning up my ribs and back,
you are bending and crushing me
under the weight of your skin.
i deserve to be loved like isolde,
precious and preserved by words
from a strong and righteous man.
i deserve that love, to be craved
like a dying man loves youth,
like a lost man in the desert
loves the mirage and yearns for
actual, full-bodied, wet water.
i am holding myself together but
you gnaw right down to the marrow.

first poem in a new place

my mouth is full of clay,
warm and wet and smooth and impetuous.
there is so much dirt here,
i am rolling in it, i am roiling in it.
i am lighting all the candles
just to sing myself pretty
to the cracked mirror face.
my skin is dry and peeling up
around the edges, the hangnails,
the papercuts beginning to show
from hard labor or self-psychosis,
who could tell.
my mouth is full of warm clay
that balls up when i speak,
collects in the corners of my lips
and fills in the cracks.
there are plenty of people in this world
with pens and typewriters and pretty words:
i am rolling in the mud,
my words are caked with clay,
my skin peels with grime
and i am seeking words in the muck
that are less pretty,
to speak the ideas i must speak.

the narrator always places him or herself
deftly
in between decades and cultures.
i am black, in harlem, in the 1960s;
i am latino, in california, in the 1980s;
i am telling the story of the ghetto,
of unionizing, of coal mines
or grape-picking or graffiti art
or a million things interesting, none of them white.
white people have
darwin, and science,
or douglas adams and the sanctity of lies,
or any of the millions
of chick lit bubblegum novels
whose timeliness never seems to evaporate.
but i don't want to write
about the burbs, about parents and how money
isn't the same as communication or love,
or another bildungsroman about
finding family, or whatever.
does dominance make you voiceless?
because white culture is THE culture,
because we incorporate everything,
are we no culture at all?

getting fierce, finding that
independence is silence is
asking all the right questions!
getting wasted, losing these
lacking battles to those
who place less value in them.
getting lost and leaving
doors open in case the one
behind me seeks them too?
getting loud, getting crass
and getting full up of
complete frustration and
lack of light but i am realizing
that i am ready, i am willing,
i am prepared and i am yearning now
for the rush of blood, the pain:
give me your tired, your broke,
your full-up ghetto that is
writhing and striving to break
each other, if not you.

utopia is dissimilarities colliding beautiful
an arching rainbow that stays, shimmering, always
in blue and clear skies; utopia is each color
cooperating, finding common purpose in each other
and blessing the world beneath. utopia is one
big house, a gigantic roof that peaks in starlight
and all the inhabitants beneath peaceful, fed
on sugar and sun. utopia is quiet, the dropping
of rain onto big green leaves, as lovers go
hand in hand down paved paths. utopia is finding
after a long search, is resting after a full day,
is knowledge of the self and the body and its place
in the wide open world. utopia is bright eyes
and warm hands, curiosity and youth and breath
that can't be caught. utopia is words
strung across a page thick with heartbeat,
a yellowed treasured paper that speaks on its own
for memory and time and love. utopia is the door
through which we all go together, a way
into heaven, a chorus climbing to the peak.

an anchor is heat, is weight, is motion
or stillness. the sun is bright but does not
reach into my heart, not at least
until its warmth is joined by your heat
your hard, heavy heat that rolls over at night,
that breathes softly and mumbles.
an anchor is reaching for miles and miles
and finding very little to hold onto,
but knowing that the real thing
the real, solid, beautiful thing
will be there waiting whenever i next admit
that i need to go home, to go home.
you are one lovely picture, a landscape
of rolling hills and an ancient sky,
a framed fireplace picture that hovers
over crackling spitting settling dying flames.
and i am an inhabitant, a figure that
barely breathes and never moves, prone
inside your captured spatial scene,
captioned in latin and sweating old salt.

i am fallow, ungrounded.
seeds float past me effortlessly
knowing that the soil here
is acidic, bleached to uselessness.
i am pale and crumbling,
individual chunks of mud
and flesh falling off my bones.
at noon i am burned by the sun.
at night i am frozen by winds.
i am sedimentary,
a block of years slowly
breaking apart in the great slow spin
of cyclical nature.
the expanse of western sky
does not please my eyes;
the wet green crush of fields
does not pleasure my feet.
i am lost, ungrounded;
waiting for a map of stars
to align, and take me home.

what am i supposed to do when the best part of me was always you
and what am i supposed to say when i'm all choked up and you're ok
i'm falling to pieces, cause when a heart breaks, it won't break even.
--the script

we've talked about the silences,
the big gaps that words can't heal
and we both know we're holding
the truth back; delicate hands
can't keep the snarling raging
biting words back for long.
it's too late to recognize
what it is that we want and
everything we've dreamed,
when gross truths are oozing
from between cupped hands and
out of pursed mouths. where
do i find a solution for a
problem i can't name? you are
so closed to me, and so far away
but it is more than this.
words hurt, and old words
fester endlessly. we are
too young, too problematic,
too pursued by money and race
and social status to see that
the light at the end of
this long, dark, damp tunnel
has run away to greener ground.

simply,
it is possible to be completely alone
in a wide world full of wonderful strangers
and be content with it.
it is equally possible to be alone
surrounded by old friends, family, blood and kin
and learn to hate yourself.
the ties between the self and others are ultimately
what binds an individual into one complete unit,
and i am wondering
when

and whether this wide, wild
free-ranging love is a
blessing or a curse,
who could tell? except that
you are the present focus,
and i am dying for your smile.

"We may expect that a new discontent and restlessness will soon develop, unless the individual is doing what he or she is naturally fitted for. Musicians must make music, artists must paint, poets must write if they are to be ultimately at peace with themselves. What humans can be, they must be." --Maslow

typical scene, typical day, your hands
are always on my mind, and on days like this
i am all commas and cannot end a single phrase
without a preposition. typicality means
that i am craving vapid music, crowded floors
and loud bass beats, typicality sees you
in my mind as the hero from across the room
and pays no heed to what i'm wearing or whether
each hair is perfectly in place (because
they won't be). come and be my typical,
my argument and my proof, come and watch me
move and shake off the stress of weeks.
all actions are done to be witnessed, and
spotlight or no i need to brush this off:
you cannot abandon me, you cannot stop loving me,
it is impossible for you to reverse old emotions
no matter how hard you want to walk away.
here, look at my body: i am my own argument!
look at this, and this, and this, and listen
to my words and the thudding of my heart
in concrete ribs: you cannot abandon me,
you cannot refuse me and i will not refuse you.
i am not reacting in rhythm correctly but
over the phone and from miles away there is no
possible standard of what is right and what is
just trying to walk away. we are a pair of
castanets, ricocheting off our possible futures!
we are the beat of deep drums, distant thunder
but too close at hand for comfort.
we are violent, active, witnessed: you cannot
abandon me without leaving some trace of yourself
in my skin, i cannot weave my life any more fully
without pulling you into it. speak my rhythm
and share my words, be my argument, hips in hands
and wading across dense rooms to find each other,
find us hand in hand, we'll never grow old.

do not pretend that i am
so easy to ignore,
so out of sorts or breathless
that my words lack sting--
do not pretend to write lines
that i will not read,
or make speeches that i
might never hear.
everything you do lacks
potency, but carries much
dormant anger: your mouth
twists as you remain silent,
your hands clench
as you tune me out.
you reserve your opinions
for other ears and eyes,
your rants and raves
for someone who is guaranteed
to agree with you.
but i am not so easily
put aside, not quite so easily
left behind as you wish,
and the words that i leave now
will remain here
etched into rocks like
commandments of loss.

love is a confusing magician,
creating fairy tales out of real life
and catching us up in the ride.
kitchens are the scenes of
epic love stories, long highways
witness great battles and triumphs.
the plot runs away with us
and we drive into the sunset,
unable to see past the glare.
you are a long full chord
strummed slowly, and i'm a tall
singing melody in complement.
who knows where this road
will lead us? only that what meets us
in the end will be lovely.

just like black is every single color
combined and creating something new,
our silence
is every single little thing we are not saying to each other
coming together and creating
lack.
in a car the silence is not so noticeable,
we are able to attend to things like
birds on top of lampposts
and the tires on the road
but at night
we cannot save each other from the verbal death we are creating.
and that's the real problem here, is that
we create this black hole:
we manifest it, we produce it, we engage with it
and it sucks us dry.
at night we lie in bed side by side
and for a moment we both feel it--
but soon you are snoring,
and oblivious to the fact that i am lying face-up
wondering what the people in the apartment above us are doing
or if, since we live on the ground floor,
anyone ever stops and just looks in the window
or even wondering what, in the silence of the next night,
i will be lying awake and wondering.
your voice is an amalgamation of my attraction,
and each syllable is a breath that i take in:
your laughs are oxygen, your sighs my excess of dioxide.
some nights i mimic your posture,
our bodies exactly aligned but four inches apart and not touching.
in words we are the same,
the commercial inventions of the tv and radio
overshadowing anything that kant or kierkegaard ever said,
much less your domestic partner.
because that is what this silence does to us,
domesticates us, lies us down in bed at night and says
you may snore
or you may wonder these wonders and never say them aloud.
in the morning i will get glasses out of the cabinet,
pour juice and
find my car keys
and the black hole, that swirls between us like
some malevolent vacuum of the light that our love creates,
will suck the interest right out of us
and we will only make small talk
about how we slept and what the weather is like
before heading to separate days.
and i will lean back at my desk
and count tiles,
and wonder
about all the things that we might say to each other
if only the silence was not so encompassing--
if only the words did not mangle each other
just as they were clearing the roof of my mouth,
if only the words did not run together quite so thoroughly
and create this conglomerate silence
of lack.

there is no democracy in the body,
and each harvest is whatever the blood
chose to distribute:
chlorine, iron, chemical emotions.
unkempt and unbidden the pulses rise towards the brain
seeking new channels, easier flow,
a raucous chorus
of life and rhythm and hormones.
some days the anger goes right to my head and
i blame it on the blood rush.

everything comes with a slow beat these days
the clock is dying
and with it the sense of aging

you are standing in an ancient doorway
asking forgiveness
from brokenhearted bentbacked woman

and she kneels inside the fireplace in ashes
seeking glitter in the dust
from the burning of her treasures

the fire has razed her life and you watch
as her fingertips brush
ill darkness into little heaps

your heart begins to tick again and your mouth
opens as it is time
to sing the hour and the year

your sisters are denied their sexuality
they search for pebbles
rounded by painful waves in grimy oceans

your mothers unearth nothing in that pit
of cigar stench
that clings to their cotton dresses

your daughters are still crying in the cradle
and the winds of change
do not soothe their tempers

you are standing in an oaken doorway
with ghosts and
a heart raked clean in the kiln

like a home

some days are better than others
some days are sitting in the shade
of big oak trees, studying ants
and some days are watching rain fall
outside a white-framed window.
some days are driving fast cars
down empty highways, sunshine
and music chasing the whole way.
some days are absence and silence
and some days you come through
loud and clear, the need, the urge.
some days you are all i need and
coming home to you at the end of it.
some days the lack is deep and wide.

we look for these daydreams
to transform reality;
we dream with strength, with pride,
there is integrity in the dreamhome that we build.
structural, poignant, knowledgeable
about deep loss:
age is really nothing more
than a lack of dreaming,
and you and i shall be young forever.

in distant futures we share spaces
that are warm and full, like a home.
we cross paths objectively and subjectively
sharing objects, becoming subject to each other.
in distant futures we are a family
a unit, a single measurement of all the years
the months, the weeks, the days, the hours
of waiting
that it will take
to get to be a family at last.

tides, and what they bring

it's hard to say,
it's hard to scream into a
perfect sepia-toned backdropped dream:
we are happy, we are smiling,
we are dropping drip by drip into each others' arms and i
feel so completely abandoned.

the sunshine is bright and we play games,
we chase waves in and out on the shore
and kiss beneath bright moons
we are holding hands and there is a deep voice
crawling out of the marrow of my bones
and it is powerful:
i am alone, and this is all a bright beautiful nothing.
no matter what we are now, no matter
what we build and create and shape from this point forward
there is a taint and it spells blood.

there are monsters beneath the bed, there are
deranged men with knives outside the door,
there are lovers who leave at a moment's notice
for waves that crash even louder
and suns that shine still brighter.
you can come back,
we can be all the things we always meant to be,
but in every breath there is a reminder
throughout my entire body:
each neuron fires lack
each artery pushes lack
every cell produces lack
my body is your ultimate betrayal.
when the truth is too hard to bury,
sometimes we turn to the hatchet.

water always finds the easiest path

you are a hunger gnawing away at my insides,
a creeping sensation of lack in my guts.
we shift the issues, we move the granite,
we build new walls in old places every day but
i am not quite sure it's time to move on yet.

i used to keep flowers in a vase.
one of those hourglass vases, an ode
to femininity, especially full up of
roses or daisies or dirty browning stalks.
i used to keep flowers in a vase
on my windowsill:
but now i live on the south side of the house
where daylight strains but cannot quite breathe.

you are the thorns to my petals,
did you know?
you are the little dead buds
that fall off before they bloom.
you are the essence of my self-frustration,
an outpouring of grief
and teenaged adrenaline whining for
better traces to run in.
you are the bars to my window:
i am reaching, i am reaching,
but i cannot attain

without you.
individually i am a great effort,
a locomotive force of modernity and strength
a direct descendent of rosie the riveter.
but together, together we are rain
that falls drop by drop into big rivers
until gradually
niagara falls is completely full of us,
our love is pooling at the bottom of mountains
and in underground caverns.
we fill the earth, we quench the world.

there is cement in my veins.
running through all of my capillaries,
underneath my skin and through my fingertips,
cement to keep each molecule in its proper place
and restrain the bits that want to break free.
the cement is grey and hard,
and the places where it gathers are
unbearably weighed down.
my heart, where all blood runs to cry,
where all blood goes home to leave
and to stay, is full now of
man-made stone.
there is cement in my veins and my heart
is too heavy to sustain.

i am industrialization,
grace of the modern world.
i am all action and all talk,
big words in boastful suits
that reek of condensed time.
i am industry, beautiful
damaging mechanical death
of humanity, since flesh
inevitably bends to the will
of iron and steel.
i am mechanization, the tick
of seconds minutes years
a life that can be counted
in coffee cups and commutes
and songless sighing.
i am a machine, a part of the
big works of other mens' hands,
the rising of the sun
cranked by hands that worked
all night or all their lives.
i am the rusted, broken cogs
the useless creaking joints
the clock whose hands are still
the broken man whose spirit
refused to keep metal company.

everything exists in a mirror
a big shiny pond of nothing and everything
when you raise your hand i am watching your wrist
and its composite water waves wrist
move in a slow descending arc.
you are an image of descent
sliding across blue sheen, an image
of caresses creased in history and space.
i tie your wrists behind your back
with coarse dark twine so that i will never
never see you take that swing
because all surprises are much easier
when you do not see them coming.

the first shooting star i ever saw
was like peace arcing over my shrieking
aching moaning bleeding body.
a bright white burning that saw everything
and took nothing when it went.

in another world we fight nothing,
wade against no overpowering tides.
in this world we are buffered by immobile emotions,
anger and depth crawling inside of our skins
crawling up our spines so that the only option we have left
is the drastic, raging decisions that rake
bright stars out of the blue sky.

the need to forgive you is not so strong.
the need to sleep is waning in favor of a
distinct ennui, a dark blue wave of cold.

because it is words that comprise a person
it is hard to know really who someone is
until you have read everything that they write
and heard all that they will say.
nearing on two years, and i am not so sure
that i even know who you are.

little things mean EVERYTHING
when i lack you i lack everything
distance is a great deal more than miles.

sometimes the silence is greater than me
and my body is not enough to stop the gap.
small fish in a big pond, i stock faith in
the power of rash youthfulness.
unfortunately
impetuousness now fails me, too.

moonlight sunlight starlight
oceanic tides
places we have walked, words we have used
lakes and mountains and cities
and suburban sidewalks,
we have mounted stands against them all
and we fall against
insurmountable weight now.

like brick walls we crumble in old age
the mortar around the edges goes first, yellowing
like parchment, cracking like deserts that have known water
and then the bricks themselves
red but bleached
solid but eroded

in the core of me there is a deep blue fire
with crosshatched emotion in the grate.
from four corners, hate rage fear grief
create a pessimistic plaid from which rises
the flames that keep me moving.
ironically, this blue, this pale playing blue
turns red at the core and preserves close to this
iron grate a blinding spring
of light and love and playfulness.

one day i will walk free against tall wheat
and you'll hold my hand against the length of the field.

broken dry and cracked like
the sands in the deserts
fomented into something solid and
separated by wind and sun
even sand can be worn down
grain by grain the mass averts
tragedy by being mobile
the deserts move south
into what is green and fertile
your heart your heart is
fertile but not yet ripe, is that
sensible or just scared
grain by grain you are
gristled and crushed into
sedimentary unknown and i miss
that thing you used to do
the words aren't all we used to
do have sing say love
my lips are chapped by wind
but the rain is only dropping tears
cracks develop deep as chasms
in the flesh of my mouth
you drop grain by grain
mobile desert love
into my flesh a softer home
for a dehydrated heart
into my flesh you are welcome
the deeper the chasm the less likely
you are to ever leave so
migrating sands from hourglass
to oceanic scene to in between
soft and global humanity and heat
waste me with equatorial burns
conglomerate flesh and glass
a mirror of deserted earth

ecophysicality

all i can smell is salt,
blinding iron accosting my senses.
the tang in my nostrils,
i can't get the taste out of my mouth,
salt injected into every idea and word,
changing me internally
into earth and history and nature.
am i bitter, am i sinful,
am i a pillar of turning back for home,
am i just one more particle in the deep ocean
that a man holier than i might walk upon?
i am impregnated by terra firma,
the biblical proportions of self:
i am a mineral,
i am mined from darker regions,
i am evacuated from a worldwide liquid dream,
i am the taste left in thousands of mouths
after violence, or sex.
a chlorine infection in my blood,
in my spit and in my eyes and underneath my skin,
a connection to the earth.
dark caves with water dripping through the walls
the covert space my bundle of nerves drips through,
a limestone spine.
dry beaches crusted with oceanic leavings,
and when i wake there will be
evidence in my eyes that time and tide were here.
a brackish swamp that swallows sounds,
vocal cords that won't function
as bile rises from deeper trenches.
the salt is a symptom,
and it does not keep me from boiling over.

psychosexuality

all you are is salt.
the syllables of your name,
even wrapped up in cotton,
still carry an acrid tinge.
you are a simple thought,
a complex creation,
bitter and sharp and waiting
for the next moment to strike.
you pounce with sudden
fierce alacrity,
hitting my weak spots
zeroing in on my countless
fault lines.
an open wound, and bleeding,
and iron blood is spilling
like a riptide into the room,
and feet first you jump in
a chlorine dam to break
the will of the body.

the tide is slow to rise inside my chest.
when emotion does gather, it is dark and heavy,
and lays against my heart like a weight.
my heart becomes an iron, needing metallic strength
to combat the crowding stress and sinking time.

alone alone alone, comforting permanence of loneliness
the stark separation of home from world, no signal here
and words only seep in through the cracks, the locked doors
and barred windows keep everything out but my fear—
everything out but the crickets and pond frogs, the wind
and cold little hisses under the sliding glass door.
with you with you with you, and all the time alone
is deeply confusing, is deeply confusing, i am deeply
sunk into a worldly stupor: the times, the post, the globe
all spin the stories without my needing to read them.
alone and kept, alone and a companion, each night
the crickets sing i miss you, i love you, i miss you
and each night i know the words are true but the wind
is late and later, soft and softer, the hiss grows slow.

winking rocks proclaim a familial statement,
wide open face begs a response:
the choice, the choice.
are you mine, am i yours?
reach in between my teeth and down through my throat
and brush aside the vocal cords that protest—
it is essential for you to have a
handle on my heart.

silence retches truths
that only time can tame;
hush, clocks are ticking.

goes nowhere fast

in truth,
i have forgotten who i am.
all that's left is fragmented:
a bit of bird's nest,
one tennis shoe,
an old spelling test
(b-a-l-l-o-o-n)
that proves i went through
the public school system.
in a drawer in my bedroom
there is all the
flimsy, thin dark lace
that my husband might ever require
me to be sheathed in:
sexuality is the modern protection.

bubble

destructive internal discourse
the ergonomic relationship of
black sheer lace to
intense backaches, the stubble
of his cheeks scrape scraping
external discourse in
monosyllabic monotheistic monogamous
nonconsensual words in mouths
retching over yesterday's toilets
a new household every day
the definition of normal caught
cold in backhanded stairwells
streetlights are pinpricks
like a limb coming awake
yanking the shirt down because
it is important to cover skin
national discourse of poverty
intellectual freedom to finish
concluding tornados of faith
they require internal mechanisms
kicking in to salvage self
destructive internal silences
engendering vocabulary
do you should i would we
there are sharks in the sea
and they are all words

in open eyes and startled hands
discovery is made:
mud and dirt and dust make brands
that even time won't fade.
the mirror reflects lazily
a painful, selfish truth:
in years the lines, at last, can be
loss that once hid in youth.
wisdom gained and beauty lost
create a new idea
of womanhood, the ancient cross,
that even virgins feel.
a woman may explore herself
along the monthly path
but silent secrets always felt
create a passive wrath.
and as her face takes on the past
the woman's place is found
among her sisters, placing last,
and bringing ends around.

the sweet monotony of waiting.
there are always,
it feels like there will always be,
days to count down.
like dew down the side of a cold glass,
the minutes drip by,
no strength and no will to stick
to the back of time.
my own strength wanes.
i walk outside underneath a warm moon,
listen to the birds and the bugs and the frogs.
the sweet monotony of waiting,
each step forward
is thirty milliseconds closer to you.
and so i move,
and i keep moving,
always walking and always waiting.
the cicada's song gets harsher each night.

my life is not that life is not your life, is not
that thing you laugh at. my life is not strict or
straight or serious but makes each day pray for
restrictions. my life is not hallucinogenic or made
softer through stark shining alcohol. my life is
simple suburban seeking searching, aphorism for
undersexed overstressed waking walking worker, my
life is not what it ought to be or maybe not what
it should have been. my life is radios in the car
and cars that break on empty streets when it rains
or pours. my life is not sleeping, not dreaming to
wake or dreaming that one, one, one who makes the
whole world spin. my life is sleeping, thoughts
strewn carelessly across the turning world, colors
that run and bleed in places like burma and vietnam
or maybe only laos. my life is women who walk the
working roads in a burqa or maybe only a crucifix,
my life is women who paint themselves up and dance
dance across a wide stage. my life is articles in
obscure journals, books written by authors from
older, wiser centuries who have nothing real or
relevant to say. my life is empty rooms and bright
glaring suns or eager halogen bulbs that flicker
when i walk. my life is men in public places who
walk up behind me just to stand, my life is men who
strain for highest attempts and injure anyone or
any woman in the process. my life is money pouring
out of bank accounts, money grafted into the brain
on a schedule in a message just getting ready to
transform into clear stinging liquors. my life is
reaching across mountaintops, under oceans, through
trenches in intellectuality to find you, to find
and keep and love and taste and touch and love you.

i want beautiful things out of life!
i want to be the only one standing on a beach, for once.
i want to see a bluebird fly.
i want forests and blueberry bushes that are falling with fruit,
sunsets out over lakes where no one lives.
i want mountains, and not just driving through them!
long grey lines on the horizon,
thunderclouds gathering at the peaks,
fog in the valleys.
i want long beautiful nights with similar minds,
long conversations on god, on life, on art,
long cups of coffee and deep draughts of intellect.
i want a home all painted in color,
monochromatic paintings,
a full kitchen and several thousand smiles.
i want to walk through foreign cities and hear a language i don't speak,
i want to experience someone else's way of life,
i want hot dark tea in big mugs.
i want a crackling fireplace in a west coast lodge,
the sun long gone but the waves still crashing,
i want to be entranced by the moon.
i want the beautiful things out of life,
and i want to enjoy them with you.

the places that are cold in this world, then,
are the strongest, and the most beautiful.
in russia the foxes bound across ice, the moon
is a stark circle in the bleak black sky.
in antarctica there is nothing. in blue, and white,
and grey and black the landscape is painted
by a deity with an angry, quick hand.
the curves of my body, long and quiet, held
together by the stark white skin, are nothing
compared to the works of your hands.
i have learned to be quick, learned to be silent,
learned to take and to give and to watch
but the blood now runs in greyscale,
and i have nothing left to give. the hands
are the most important scene: mine shake.
but, in having learned to be cold and full,
they shake less for stress than some inner ache
a silent heart that cannot beat and will not speak.
each day another minute chapter in a simple life,
whether i am waiting or working or wasting.
in russia the tiny green sprouts push up
against the ice floes, the microbacterial life
thrives inside the frozen water. in antarctica
there is nothing warm-blooded, there is nothing
frolicking on the bergs that drift slowly
towards the equators. and if, days later,
i am seeking heat, i am seeking justification,
if weeks later i am seeking the depth of your hands,
who could blame me? for what you are.

clarity: four walls and one door.
if everything is red, then nothing
can be in greyscale... if everything
is locked, then nothing can escape.
clarity: the floor, the cieling, and
so much blank space in between!
what do we fill it with, you and i?
a wish, a hope, endless wishing words.
clarity: the sense of ruin that waits
for all dreamers, a penchant for
building walls that must fall down.
holes in the plaster, mice in the walls.
clarity: you are my foundation,
my open window, my half-built dream
of age and health. when we look back
there will be nothing to regret.

seven hours, and already
i miss you.
the calm of the past three weeks,
incomparable and only slightly tinged with sad,
is shattered;
your love is a thunderclap,
a lightning bolt,
a horizontal tornado that whips through my body.
more than a craving, more than a wish, more than an ache;
my whole life is somewhere else, waiting for me,
and i must meander through the next ten months in order to find it.
your window bright with sunshine
in the morning, turning over
softly and smiling and saying,
hi.
the long, long hours in between you and i,
the miles, the money.
everything about this is impossible,
except for the will and the way: west,
through the mountains,
across the golden fields.
this love is impossibly beautiful,
a breathtaking example of the human spirit.
i will be with you if it weakens me,
i will love you if it breaks me,
i will find you if it kills me.
take me into your arms, take me into your bed,
wrap us up in strong arms and white bedding and
don’t let us loose
till morning.

shala runs through the trees
singing as she goes, oh
what is wonderful today?
shala brushes through the wheat,
long and thin and rich, seeking
what is wonderful today.
shala watches sparrows fly, leaping
limb to limb, and calling, see!
what is wonderful today!
shala plucks the petals from the bud,
counting, smelling, humming
what is wonderful today.
shala runs along the fence,
feet pounding out the future and
what is wonderful today.

she leaves, sidles out the front door
and into the storm:
the thunder howls down around
her ears, touches fine hair:
she looks at grey clouds seeking
individual raindrops.
i am crouched inside, sides against
the whitewashed walls, feet couched
on fading linoleum:
i am watching her eyes grow big
and reflect bright bits of electricity
in the gaping sky:
i am watching her back slowly
feet-first in through the door and
shut it slowly:
the smell of outside permeates her hair.
she has brought the rain inside.

sunlight makes me dream
makes me hazy and illuminates
the desperation i have for you—
white around the edges but
dust, dust, dust is all around.
in through the window
like water boiling over,
bubbling up in the glass to
find the motes and
pick them out and
push them around; desperate dust,
seeking a landing place
(regret for being airborne).
it floats and seeks, pushed
by any passing wind,
each particle so pushably focused
on the inward:
your name, your name, your name.
i thirst, the way that dust
sticks only to wet, bonded
to the oasis of dreaming
about your wetted lips being mine,
your name becoming mine,
identity and existence at once
in motion, and still.
how strange!

democracy dream, joyful and callous:
two centuries later, the realization that
a functioning democratic republic
must be free to let its failing members
fail, to let the meritocracy sneak in
around the edges and determine the daily:
who sees the doctor, who gets the new
hip or knee or heart. shabby urbanity
glowing in light pollution, the white limestone
that houses great ideas and shallow men
and no solutions; night in dc only serves
to shade the homeless behind the monuments.

so slowly the days go now,
all i see are images, like projections
on the side of a fast train
that someone else is on.
each car a frame, and the soundtrack
the running of metal on metal,
the squeaking of the track:
like some old home movie,
slightly yellowed with age and love.

the first sweet kiss,
at night in a high school parking lot;
the dreaming, taking over years
and long mornings at work;
the finality of 14 karat love!
bubbles blown as we run down the church steps;
exhausted but smiling for a newborn boy;
a toddler grasping the edges of a table for balance;
spelling tests with stickers on the fridge.

each car a flash of color,
and the deepening sobriety of love:
the film peels up at the edges,
the colors fade a little around the faces,
and the train just keeps running.
even if all i get to do right now
is watch, even if we are still in the middle
of the years of dreaming:
the images are enough, the dreaming
is enough to keep me sated.
someday, we'll buy tickets for a faraway town
and wait for the train to pull up to the station
belching steam and passengers.
we'll have the car to ourselves,
blue seats and wide windows,
and we'll watch the wheat fly past,
and the barley, and the barking dogs held by
tiny stationary people.

no day could dawn bright enough,
or open with enough sunlight, to shine or even
mirror the way that we glow. each morning, each
afternoon spent inside your face is
too precarious to remember,
too precious to forget.
even when we are old, even when
rheumatic eyes and creaking joints
whisper painfully to each other,
hang your hat on my bedpost, dear,
and leave your shoes on the mat;
then taste me on your lips.

next week, next month, next year
or in the next lifetime, we'll reach that dream of
marriage, babies, white picket fences.
and no matter how many times i say it,
there is always room for once more:
timeless. transcendental.
especially in these days when words
run dear, my love, you'll never have to ask
where my heart lies at night.
here, next to yours, and beating in time:
a counterpoint that never fades,
teasing rhythm from each year of life.

In cities, silence rules. In awkward ways,
the silence creeps along the edge and makes
its presence known. Through all the tides and quakes
of man, the cars and shrieks and fights, these days
consume the sounds. New York becomes a tomb,
LA a muted curse: the people swim
in deep, cold tides. The water dulls, makes dim:
stifles voices, cuts through prayer too soon.
She moved from farm to town, and left her meaning
clear; no more could country quiet bind
her aching heart and feet. She dropped her name,
assumed a face, and walked among the living.
Youth let her seek a life that's hard to find
when cities lie silent, dull, and seek no fame.

where i was born

where i was born, a calm and soothing stillness
pervades. white walls, beige carpet, and the tea
that whistles only a little in the pot when it is
warm.
where i was born, the sunlight is filtered
through slatted white blinds. it sneaks in through
gaps under carefully shut doors into the cool dim
space.
where i was born, all things are sterile and in
perfect order, each object to its place: the
colors begin to blend, but the lines remain
clear.
where i was born, the cieling fan circled so
soft and lazy that it might as well have been
off. each blade turned slowly, a rotation of
silence.
where i was born, the view from the window used to
be filled with wheat and chaff. now only weeds have
grown up around big grey houses, and we have lost our
past.

my martyr complex says
you can't know, you can't feel, while
my sanity and reason dictate a return
to sleepy disorientation.
break my concentration:
a startling streak of starlight,
blue across the sea,
red across the cup of wine.
seek!
i am not so far away as once i was.
remember when writing in
free verse used to break rules?
remember when we used to stare at the moon
and wonder who would touch it first?
remember russia,
all things combined in its name:
all snow, all ice,
all stellar intergallactic interpolated regional distances
from point a (you) to point b (me).
build your fire,
a signal on a pyre or a city on a hill,
waft smoky messages at me
from miles away:
silence the antagonies that shine bright
in the sky, daring me to
hope or trust or love or live;
dare me to sing, in chorus with the pleiades,
dare me to hunt, alongside orion,
dare me to ring bright and true and firey
the return to alone.
if all your gorgeous words should bottle up
and float away,
i'll still walk the beach.
with or without, i am never solo
with as much memory as i have stored.
a flattened W in the sky, i'll sit immovable
(not immobile)
till true love's first kiss
shakes flattery out of the folds of my dress.
i sigh, i wish, i wake:
we are nothing more than humans,
and life is not a reverie.

a tidal wave of soundlessness swooping
down unsuspecting, a riptide sweeping a child
out to sea, the tornado that
appears out of nowhere in the country
sky: the tsunami of silence that
deafens as it rushes, wailing and shrieking,
down the echoing hallways of consiousness.
save me, save me, save me--
i am too young and small for this sort of
complete desolation, a desert of self and
arid solitude, i am too well-rooted in
humidity and the sweating swamps of companionship
for this sun-burning smoke-signaling
heat-loving atmosphere. the hope of you
in weeks or months is a long, dark mirage
grainy on the horizon, and always far away.

impending absence
is enough to kill. your loss
is hot, visceral.

my heart remembers more than me,
a gathering of pain
and all the blood that has been spilled
in war, in rage, in shame.
each beat recalls a life before
ticked down and now gone free;
its meaning, track and old network
are gathered up in me.
the rain on leaves that sounds like shots
and towns after tornados,
the tides and sun and lying tongues
that speak of gold and rainbows;
all these things and other signs
of life and pulsing minds
are bundled in one crawling beat
to seek what it can find.
within my blood, the memories range
infesting joint and vein
to plague me with the sins and joys
and memories of trains
that rolled away with brothers, sons,
and husbands dressed the same
to fight a war the state had waged,
part of an ancient game.
i know when coffins came on planes
or telegraphs were sent,
i know the men that witnessed death,
the places they were sent.
i know the women who stayed home
and prayed each night for peace
and dreamed a family whole again
their lovers in one piece.
history ties me to each breath
taken years before
uninvited, never lost,
their lives make up my core.

another leaving is imminent.
a chapter closing, the real book
beginning: here, with us.
every word means something, and
gets charted on this page;
every look, step, sigh
is gathered up to take a poll
and receive a judgment.
(we'd be luckier if the judgment
was passed by us instead of
others.) a jangle outside the door,
my heart leaps as the key gets
jammed into the lock--
it is not beneath me to beg you
to come home. or to ask for quiet,
to seek peace, requesting gentleness
all along this coarse, crass path.
if i was any less of a woman,
if you were any less of a man,
the difficult melodies we sing
wouldn't ring as clear as they do today.
a hundred thousand notes,
each a measure of adaptability
and solidity: sing me to sleep,
sing me each night a brighter day.
it is not beneath me to beg you
to come home.

i always thought the ones who were good at this
should write books.
you know, titles like "how to not hate your mother" or
"it's ok, i'm not a size 4 either".
enter all the words with the prefix self-
beautification
justification
mobilization
(all subtitles to the books that should be written).
supposedly when you age a little bit,
mature, or wise up,
you take your parents as they are
and love them as they are.
(supposedly when you age a little bit,
you can get a job
you don't hate
and live somewhere that isn't infested with
mice or mold or malnutrition.)

today, a toast:
a toast to all things woman.
a glass to raise that's filled with
secrets, silence, self-deprecation,
subservience. a glass
that bubbles with the void we fill,
the vaccuum of other people's lives.
raised with a quiet hand,
obediantly following the path
that's set before. raised
with a slow retort,
a years-long complaint of
ill-treatment and lovesickness.
today, a toast:
a toast to all things woman.
a toast to violent nights
in creaking beds, to men that say
you're fat, you're ugly, you're dumb.
an acknowledgement of
all straits female:
a monthly disruption of selfless
service, a daily discharge
of self-hatred through
someone else's words.
today, a toast:
a toast to all things woman.
today, a weak smile
and weaker thoughts;
tonight, a revenge wreaked
in finality, a voice that calls
to sisters and mothers and daughters
for different futures, for
contemporary change.
and tomorrow, a lackluster glass
raised, tiny ego bubbles breaking,
to all things woman.

montana fantasy

a new obsession with the apocalypse--
whether christian or foreign (setting up these old dichotomies)--
where is the end, i've been expecting it for days now.

a man on a black horse, a pegasus of steel and salt,
who rides the ancient skies in disgusted patience;
and beneath the earth, beneath the dirt and the
granite and limestone-- beneath the magma which makes
its presence known constantly these days--

she waits, clothed in fire. her eyes
that burn, her flagrant words that push
lava out onto the earth, writhe in this
burning world. individual flames.

silence, golden and breaking, lies listlessly on the
garden path. the flowers are brown, the dirt is white,
the grubs surfacing because their old habitat is sour.

he waits on the porch swing, idle:
feet up against the railings,
holding a cold drink in a blue glass.
the sky is grey and all the earth
smells green, like waiting for rain.
his salt turns the drink to bile.

she sends her words first, a volley of pain and fear
resounding across the mountains and echoing through
the vacant valleys. she HATES. she LOATHES. she BURNS.
a quake, undulating, then buildings tumbling: dust to dust.

the ripples reach him, barely
upset the hat over his face.
resting comfortably, the cold drink
sweating against the glass.

she sends her ego next, a potency driven by mustangs
careening across the plains: ill-fed, ill-groomed,
seeking barbed wire fences to HATE, to LOATHE, to BURN
with kicking heels, firey eyes and dusty breath.

he pushes gently against the slats,
the impetus to set the swing
in motion. the mists advance,
his relaxation uninterrupted.

and in sudden, jerking bursts, she hauls her ancient
crackling body, all fire and heat and red, up through
the injured earth: fingers grasp, biceps strain, and
slowly the long, arching back emerges from the rift.

the first reaction, a tipping
back of the brim to peer
at the damage. the soles
and spurs abruptly hit the floor.

she looks up, and fills her lungs: a wild, sharp shriek
burns an entire mountainside away. the mists, the clouds,
escape her wrath and soon the sky above is black
reflecting millenia of space and stars above her head.

he sighs, sets the glass
on the deck (a ring of dew
forms immediately). he rises,
and sets the hat straight.

his motion attracts her colorless eyes, a milky gaze
still pure like ice seeks a cause for fury. the male
form, shouldered like atlas, to HATE, to LOATHE, to BURN,
rises some miles away with immeasurable weight.

he steps away from the
deck (now missing its house,
the winds picking up
anything not staunch).

she reaches her kilometer arms of flames towards him
and tendrils of hate flicker at his belt: the acrid smell
of burnt leather immediately apparent. the stench rises
and greets her nose like an old friend, an old friend.

he walks forward just
as slow as he pleases,
unconcerned that his
skin is melting.

she advances, shoulders hunched like a hawk, intent on
destruction she will BURN him. her fire robe flickers
blue and purple as she finds the heat deepest inside
the many-yeared and many-pained heart that fails to beat.

flesh falls off his
frame in great orange
blobs; dropping behind
on his path to her.

in cupped hands, she builds a bomb of the core of the
earth, all its grinding seeking magnetic power cycles
frantic in her palms. white-hot, it emits a shriek of
its very own: unworldly, unnatural, incredibly basic.

his skeleton only
comes forward, still
evidencing his soft
slow stamina.

she hurls the ball, it arcs across the sky like one long
stretch of heat lightning, and lands inside his rib cage
to displace the beating heart. her wild cackle slams almost
as fast into his frame, cracking, burning into his marrow.

he has reached
her rift, he rests,
looks down into it:
bending, creaking.

she sweeps his little skeleton up into her great flaming
arms, and leaps back into the rift. liquid rock issues, flows
over all the surface of the earth as they descend into
magmatic phosphoric heated hate, linked bone to bone.

his last thought
is a grin, one
final barb: woman
would end the earth,
but take down with
her hatred a single
seminal solution.

endeavor

grandma, i remember when
i was very small, the world was very big
and airplanes to florida were an experiment
in wide-open wonder.
i remember when you took my sister and i
in your big black volvo (i still
can recall sticking to the seats
in the atlantic coast heat)
down to cape canaveral, a little spit
of land out into the blue waves.
i remember the big clock, and the bigger roar,
and trying to take pictures
of something that was
first impossible to see because it was so bright,
and then impossible to see because it was so small.
i remember hands over ears, the little
children who screamed (silently,
underneath the roar of the thrusters)
and watching this shining tube
go higher than an airplane,
higher than the clouds,
higher than the blue sky itself.
and grandma, you reached down to me,
and you held my hand.
and i remember, grandma. i just
wanted you to know that i remember.

this has been said so many times before:
your words like ice, like ice,
sharp and cold and clear and
leaving no room for the benefit of the doubt.
a dagger that stabs and leaves no trace,
a wet wound matching you glare for glare.
when you act like this i hate you
like you hate me when you act like this.

misery on default mode, the kind of mood
that wraps an entire week up and
binds it into one long fever. silence
that is hard to come by and even harder
to banish, the clank of humanity
moving slow, miserably muted.

one winter you grabbed me around the waist
and said, skate, skate, run and jump and fly
and leave little trace: thin lines
on thinner ice. the track indistinguishable
from the cracks, the distance between us
less and less as i rolled off your hands.

these days the sun is glaring,
and leaves no room for aging or sight.
the dirt tracked in at the front door
illuminated each morning, the glow
between us diminished at night:
the monthly disruption of ego and
shining light where darkness loves.

white stone leaning on a black stone

on this day in history, what i was is already dead.
an ancient evil rises, poseidon-like,
over my head and swallows all my
wandering waves of hair. the power that i had!
when i sang, the argonauts sank their ship.

evil breaches my doorway, an idea older than chronos:
the spartan slave who makes the bed
that the athenian citizen has to lie in.

oh, all the things i could have been,
if left to bear only this child and not this pain:
i am old, i am worn, i am grey, and my skin
grows dry with every passing midnight.
(what is it to mourn your own youth?)
i am a raging, sighing daughter of the earth.
when i sang, odysseus tore his flesh for me.

and this day, this morning, when you and i come in together,
is also known as a sunday: a day in cold midwinter that
does nothing, says nothing, is nothing.
your hand on mine, what does it signify?
we cross borders every day, you and i,
and it is in these crossings that i learned to love you.
i wonder where our feet will go tomorrow.

the rocks we kick across the neighborhood sidewalk,
the pebbles we flick between imaginary goalposts,
the stones falling out of our pockets after we lounge on the beach:
underfoot and in between our toes and
rough against the grain of our skins,

i don't like the colors of the rocks
because they do not mix.

maybe after years of pressure from the earth,
maybe after eons of hot hot heat,
maybe after my inheritance is taken away
(the blood inheritance, the flesh inheritance:
my name, my body, my story)
maybe after there exists a gorgeous brown little boy
who is an anagram of father and mother,
maybe after all the civilizations fall
one by one, like repentant children with evaporating dreams—
my tired, aching song. all the change is gone.
the words are old, the methods ancient;
i could never sink a modern crew now
the way i sank the argonauts then.
for weeks i have been dousing my vocal cords in
lemon acerbity, alcoholic sting,
the persuasiveness of tasting someone else’s mouth.

the old evil rises again, enters my doorway
and sits down for tea. he sits, sycophantic, with
his knees tucked into his chest:
he is one color, one mind, one old old hate.
and this tea, on this sunday, is accompanied by my voice
pleading for reason, pleading for the power of
blood over sight: because we all run red when injured,
and today i am dressed in wounds and gore.

and this sunday, next september, every sundown,
these are my witnesses. these, and the words of my son
who is not yet born, and the blood that leaches
power out of the old evil:
when i sing, racism hums in bitter discord.
when i sing, color rakes lines across my flesh.
when i sing, all the granite and phosphate and limestone
and sandstone and obsidian of the world
rise out of the earth and run together
in one great conglomerate feast;
and my little boy kicks in my womb.

when viking kings died, their boats came along
dragged up on land, the groaning of the planks
and the sighing of the flags echoing the widows,
sisters, daughters. the men remained stoic, let
nothing show and let nothing go, watching as
the hulking ship rolled along on the backs of
a hundred dutiful slaves. the pit had been dug
weeks earlier, a maw in the earth where
ship and sailor would be embedded together.
a viking without a ship would be a hunter
tracking at midnight without the moon, a woman
without modesty, a bird without flight. but
those great men who led with tight fists and
grim grey eyes were given the majesty of
their oceanic bird removed from its tidal wings.

self-doubt
old older oldest pedantic flaw in parenting
what is self what is doubt
what is hating yourself
(but that is too extreme and i still know
that the future belongs to me)
excitement for growing older, where is it
and why have i lost it
complicated complications
money and time will always get the best of me.

i feel the pulse
here, between my hips:
here, between my ribs:
here, between my lips:
let's go grow old together.

a phone call to room service for a yogurt, a coffee, and a newspaper. the curtains blowing on top of the heater, the stifling 8th floor room becoming warmer. her shadow cast dimly on the wall that houses the xeroxed renoir, the hotel wallpaper that doesn't quite match the rest of the decor. her feet dug into the individual threads of the carpet and she contemplates opening the window and removing the screen.
she had lain on the bed, spread open and drying in the calm dank air. the tweezers in her hand slowly perused her body, sighted an unruly mark, yanked fiercely until the ugliness was gone. she felt her pores gradually closing, her self-hatred gradually closing in, till all at once she no longer could stand to be naked. the mirror on the closet door mocked her, look at those lines, those blemishes, those pockets of cellulite you disgusting malcontent, and absently she watched her breasts shake as she ripped a shirt off the hanger. a long shirt, a dark shirt, a loose shirt, and she bound herself tightly together underneath it so that the final effect was of a tent that houses nothing.
her twenty minutes in the shower that morning had been an exercise in being properly socialized, the laundry list of things that a perfect woman would do and the shallow mimicry of her own hands and underarms and face and hair. the shampoo bottle had fallen off the tile shelf and against her kneecap, had left a faintly mauve indentation that would be covered by loose pants anyways. the razor had taken several copious trips around her silhouette, a continuously unsatisfying baring of her skin.
and before that sun had risen, his weight had left her bed, a flickering cigarette lit up the darkness and its rancid molasses smoke drifted through her half-awake psyche. the zipper zips up, the buttons button down, and his exit, as usual, was marked with no words or motions or affection. the dream he'd interrupted had been heavy, horrific, with visions of gore and the visceral enjoyment of wolves responsible for the dismemberment of small children. the wind from his slamming of the door reminded her of the howls of babies who lack mouths.
she had tried to please him, had had a roast and vegetables and bread from the best bakery and wine from the best winery, and two candles and the wedding china, had laid it all out symmetrically. by the time he came home the roast was cold, the candles burned halfway through, the bread gone slightly stale. his mouth was full of cold, burned staleness, and his eyes burned insecurity through her womb. the news of his hard-won government contract, lucrative for the company and for him, was wound into a single barked phrase, and accompanied by the need for time spent apart. there was a hotel on the upper east side he would afford for her, and she should take the time to think about how gracious he was to her, and how she could possibly survive without his taking the time to care for her, the voice in the back of her head that never let up until silenced with prescription depressants.
the week had never looked promising, and monday morning had been devoted to valium and scrubbing every inch of the tile in the bathroom. her worst fear was that his body, removed of all textile protection, should brush against some bacteria or mold or fungus and be tainted permanently. this could never be forgiven. the phone never rang and her doorbell was never answered, in case he had finally taken action against her inadequacy and was trying to serve her with papers. the final two hours before his homecoming were spent in painstaking beautification, she put the time in but the image never came out.
their first anniversary, that was when it had all started falling apart. the dinner out which was really only a reservation that he had forgotten to make, the expensive necklace that his secretary had purchased and gift wrapped, the phone call to say he was caught in traffic when she clearly heard a singing sopranic sotto voce behind him. she was inclined to forgive him, it was innate to her and expected in him, and she did, but the sex that night had made her remember all the years before him of silent days and injurious nights.
years ago, he had made sex beautiful again. the perfect adherence to gender, race and class rules, the perfect words coming out of his perfect mouth that said i love you, you're mine, you're mine and you need me, and when he said that-- you need me-- she would invariably reach her climax. eventually the associations were too strong to break: her need for him with spreading warmth, his domination of her with delicate tremors. the absolute successful white masculinity had no space in it for anyone who couldn't compete, who couldn't compare. he demanded similarity from her, and she produced: a perfect hourglass figure, dinner promptly at six with chilled wine and warmed plates, he even inspired in her an obediant libido to match his own.
before him there had only been failure and vague guilt. what other girl in her quiet, well-bred upper middle class neighborhood needed an abortion at age 13? the stigma ruined her as much as the scars ruined the appearance of her uterus. nothing looked healthy any more, not her face or her body or her ego or her school grades. she lacked promise, and no one felt the need to encourage someone who had messed up so badly so young. blame the parents, the teachers said; blame the youth, the parents said; blame the boyfriend, the youth said; blame your stupid whoring self, said the boyfriend. and so she did.
at age five she had wanted to be a princess. the year before, a ballerina. her hardworking mother recognized both as at least socially acceptable, and provided dreamy costumes, yards of tulle and pretty shoes, disney movies and heterosexual normatives aplenty. she would play dress up for hours, stand in front of mirrors admiring herself, accepting her own praises and suggestions about how a princess might walk or a ballerina might wear her hair. one night she had absentmindedly left her princess veil in the living room; when her mother's boyfriend came over and saw it, he felt too confronted with the presence of a child in the house and was unable to provide the regular raucous, semi-abusive sexual experience that he usually gave her mother. sent without dinner to her room with her mother's hopes of a sexless middle age, she couldn't understand what had happened.
her father had left her mother before she could talk sensibly. there was only one memory of him that persisted: her chubby legs hanging out of the high chair, her mother in the kitchen waiting on the microwave, and the man swaggering into the kitchen and taking a brown glass bottle out of the fridge. noticing the child, he smiled becomingly and tried to convince her that the bottle was delicious; the mother, noticing, scolded the man and he turned suddenly, broke the bottle in half on the edge of the countertop, and slashed at the mother's face. the child, startled beyond surprise and scared beyond fear, watched as the fizzing beer dripped down the counter onto the floor and the astonishingly bright blood fell from her mother's cheek and mouth.

things that stanley plumly said on april 28th, 2009, between the hours of 8 and 9 in the evening.

he said, tell a story.
give the context, and make the poem
breathe a little heavier for it.
he said, i am from pickwa ohio
and people there die,
and i said, i know they do.
(people from ohio
die young and old but always tragically,
though never from a drive-by
or an airplane crash.
people from ohio
all grew up in one-room schoolhouses
and took mandatory naps
and dreamt of being one of the ones
who does not survive their 45th year
of being a farmer
to an ungrateful leached dry corn field.)
stanley plumly said, this
is the way to get out of anything:
dance.
and i'm dancing my way to my car that night
and i'm thinking:
people from ohio are all the same,
all grew up in the shadow of insane asylums
and rivers that lit on fire in the 1960s,
people from ohio are born
with death in the vein of their left ankle
and by the time they hit puberty
death has perused all the other parts of the body
and chosen the heart as a home--
people from ohio
all recognize the value of a dollar,
waste not want not, are full of other
colloquialisms about money that have no worth.
i know these things because i am from ohio,
because death has lived in my heart
since i was 13 and i had lesbians as next door neighbors
and the kid who sat across from me in social studies
found a rope of the right length
and hung himself from an incredibly stable cieling fan,
i am from ohio in the same way
calves are from cows.
and i have seen a lot of cows.

all the songs are saying
we can put our cares in shopping carts
and take each others' hands
and run run run (they'll never catch up)--
and there are no consequences, and
you and i will last for-ev-er, love.
and all the newscasters predict
our early deaths, while we
run rampant and defy reality--
we leap in front of cars, we drive
each other off of cliffs, we
reach for unbidden territories.
and this starlight, this moon
streaming down from years away
(it is really all old light)
touches us now, reaches down and drags
your hand from mine, love,
and places it against my shaking ribs.
in the morning i'll rethink this,
and regret will make me old;
but tonight i'll live the lyrics,
and abandon everything for a chance
to jump over the moon holding hands with you.

antiquated

ancient wood is warm, remembers
years of sunlight through open
windows, rays dancing with the
little dust motes. a waltz of time,
waiting for the window to close
or sundown. ancient metal bends,
acquieses to the will of the hands
that clasp its edges and demand
a different shape. the fingerprints
are left in mud, in dirt, all
around the edges of the coin that
is dropped again, cursed, for
valueless stature. ancient gods
lie bleeding now, first dormant
then disrespected. thor's hammer
fell to earth on april 18, 1906:
freyr's bounty was extinguished
on july 5, 1996. but jesus christ
rose from the dead for our sins,
and paper money works just fine
for us, and we like the lines of
steel table legs and glass countertops
better than the warmth of wood.

in siberia, the nights are so cold
that even microorganisms can't
find shelter. the moon reflects
off endless miles of snow, and ice,
so that the whole country seems
one long mirror. and crawling around
on the surface of the glass
are little men in layered fur and
distinct wool, heavy with their
women and children and vodka;
sometimes their feet sink so
deeply into the mirror that
they leave footprints on the
silver lining. so that when
stellar freyja descends from her
glowing lunar resort, to pick up
her mirror and be reflected
in this modern era--
her face is pockmarked, scarred,
acned with little men's footprints
who have breathed her crystal ozone
and clawed her perfect glass.

white stone leaning on a black stone

on this day in history, i am already dead.
the ancient idea that i hate has risen,
poseidon-like, over my head and swallowed all my
wind-raged tangles of hair. the power that i had!
when i sang, the argonauts sank their ship.

the entrance to an idea as old as time,
the spartan slave who makes the bed
that the athenian citizen has to lie in.

oh, all the things i could have been:
i am old, i am old, i am old, and my skin
grows grey with every passing midnight.
(what is it to mourn your own youth?)
i am a seeking, sighing daughter of the earth.
when i sang, odysseus tore his flesh for me.

also known as a tuesday, a day in april that
does nothing, says nothing, is nothing.
your hand on mine, what does it signify?
we cross borders every day, you and i,
and it is in these crossings that i learned to love you;
i wonder where our feet will go tomorrow.

the rocks we kick across the neighborhood sidewalk,
the pebbles we flick between imaginary goalposts,
the stones falling out of our pockets after we roll on the beach:
underfoot and in between our toes and
rough against the grain of our skins,

i do not like the colors of the rocks
because they do not mix.

maybe after years of pressure from the earth,
maybe after eons of hot hot heat,
maybe after they threaten my inheritance
(which isn't financial at all)
maybe after i produce a gorgeous brown little boy
and name him after his father,
maybe after all the civilizations fall
one by one, like repentant children with evaporating dreams--

and this tuesday, this sunday, this sundown,
these are my witnesses. these, and the words of my son
who is not yet born, and my solitude, and this rain,
and the roads we kick our pebbles down.

inheritance

silent, still, she lounges and waits to write,
waiting for the inspiration that rarely comes.
heavy, heady rain that falls drips slowly down
the panes, emptying the clouds of dark
ideas. the muses and other cloudy notions sink and fall
through her mind, grazing past slow thoughts.

she lies heavy with cares and thoughts,
too absorbed to let the dark ink write.
she dreams of spring, of summer, though fall
has been late in returning. moonlight comes
slinking through the rain, a vibrancy on the dark
streets that shine as she looks down.

she sighs, tosses the pen, turns upside-down
to greet her own pathos. slowly her thoughts
turn inward, and she revels in her own dark
imaginings. reclaiming paper, the words write
themselves as Calliope circles down. She comes
lazily, wings splayed as though she fears a fall.

eight other figures follow the first, a slow fall
through the heavens. silvery wings that slow down
as they near the tired earth, and now comes
rhyme and verse. pathos wiped clean, her thoughts
now dwell on the ancient and the surest way to write
Calliope's lit intentions, then shrouded in dark.

as greek poets declared, so it shall be; the dark
plot twists that rend a hero apart, the shuddering fall
of achilles or oedipus. characters that write
themselves with ultimate faith in each other sink down
into the mire; each passes through her thoughts
then back into the literary abyss from which they have come.

the elegy halts, remembers, restarts. so the Muses have come
and now will go, their ancient deed unfinished. the dark
covers their gleaming ascent, though her thoughts
dwell still on the sudden inspiration. she lets the pen fall
at the last period, puts the plot and characters down
and loses the potent high that forces her to write.

unrequited love for the word, she reaches the fall
as any hero, and finds no love for her Mothers there. the dark
call of a bird catches her, and she forgets how to write.

this form that gives itself to lists, i find
release in asking more of lines that twist
and cannot rhyme. in fights, in tears, in time
(the list here means i can't forgive, the list
here means i'm stuck) you'll see how hard i tried
to give you what you needed. slow and cross
the frown will sneak towards eyes you meant to hide.
so what is this, then; can we call it lost?
or sadder still, a deeper sigh: the dream
you left in bigger hands, and several years
have passed from then to now. you burn, you crave
for higher heights and clearer skies, you scream
for simple death; but neither time nor tears
can bring you peace, except for in decay.

somewhere beneath the newscasters' glow
and outside the light that economists cast
somewhere, some place that has always been dark
continues rotating in darkness.
somewhere in shadows, bent backs uncurl
from long days in charity shoes;
somewhere large families scrape to feed every mouth
and lie down to sleep in the darkness.
somewhere beneath social glimmering talk
of Fannie and Freddie and Greenspan and Locke
somewhere an idyll unfolds in young minds
of the wealth and the warmth in the light.

i am never more beautiful than i am
in the heat of the moment when
your heat is glowing from my cheeks.
i am never more mobile than i am when
your body leaves, your mouth wanders,
the lights in the kitchen go dim.
i am never more trenchant than
when everything between us
is abrupt and furious and sharp.
i am never more soft than i can be
when your pressure runs down
my spine in an act of submission.
i am never more intense than
when i learn to be by myself again,
the long wait after the long love.
i am never less sure of myself
than when you peel my skin back,
demand the heartbeat as payment.

your body has been cold all day.
if you were dead, i think your skin might
be grey, but i'm not sure.
your body has been silent, still,
sitting there skinning my knees with
jagged fingernails: i will not be afraid
of what happens when you decide
to finally be annoyed with me.
your body has been through the mud,
dragged kicking and screaming,
and the only thing i can think is
maturity means not kicking so hard.
your lungs turn black, your hands
turn hard, your eyes turn back in your head,
and even noisome nuisance television
can't bring you to your senses.
your body has been bruised all day,
and i wonder if i'm the one who
mauled you that way. or was it the
stereotyping of you or this relationship
(i am constantly nagging you! you
are never good enough for me!) that has
finally done away with your motion and warmth.
your face, expressionless, implicates me
in some deep unhappy plot, something our bodies
lying together at night back to back
does nothing to dispell. if you
opened your mouth now to lie to me,
i should be surprised at the action of it.

caution. extended absence, my mind from body, my heart from my
contents under pressure. ribs: what is lost, where has it gone? a
do not shake. sort of permanence, this lack of sensibility. your
do not use near open flame. hand to hold, my stiff upper lip, each
store at constant temperature. day a pressure to perform. you are
follow safety procedures. my sunshine, my only sunshine; rock-a-bye
highly flammable. baby, on the treetop. each word a grain of sand,
wash skin thoroughly with soap. some salt to rub into the wound.
in case of contact with eyes, you'll be blind in five minutes flat.

my mother's friend you are, and never can
be more to me; the older man who gently
whispers into upturned ears, who sweet and quiet
makes excuses. you spoke to me, and i half-ran
into the room where women stand. you spoke, and i began
to respond in dulcet dumbness, your mythic epic
speech leaving me at odds with myself. but that is not
what i meant, not what i meant at all, and i half-ran
to the parlor where women stand and strain
for high ideas, like art and love, and can't attain.
i settle on the divan to hear each rant
in each simple searing voice. the pear, the peach,
still life and michaelangelo on the mantle, each
is for you: each waiting in its own sweet way,
as i wait for your eyes to give me sway
perhaps in your heart or mind. your youth is dim,
your face hides regret as you scan my face;
i should have been a pair of dark seashells
opening on the sea floor to reveal a pearl.

Facebook status updates that i can't actually write.

Elaine has nightmares about waking up in Sudan one day.
Elaine is wondering why god is separated from us.
Elaine never wanted to be a music major anyways.
Elaine should probably just go ahead and be a bulimic.
Elaine is dying slowly of academic fatigue.
Elaine justifies the racism of black people against white people.
Elaine wants to be an alcoholic when she grows up.
Elaine is not mature enough to appreciate you.
Elaine has learned to accept the suburban dream as a viable future.
Elaine thinks this is the fall of the Roman empire, take two.
Elaine would really rather not.

antidisestablishmentarianism.

dieties blame the tides of rain, the schism;
satan bares disease, the sable mess
of bile. nests of harm, a means of stress
the same as sears established mannerisms.
she builds hate, a bliss of ash and shame
to house the taste of bare and darted flesh
that rests on detested land. she rends the mesh
that ties back bullets, takes minimal aim.
heaven and hell in earnest idyll take sides
and eat the woman bare; her limbs are able
to sate the team, her heart a lantern for rest,
a beam to follow in search of fear. she dies,
is maimed for lack of love; is a seminal handle
on the earth, and she bleeds to die so blessed.

weak pages, years of what i don't recall,
and photos of times i can't remember-- a sign
of ailing brain, or ailing times? the line
of life, all bumps and curves, a hill so tall
it can't be climbed, alone. and you, helpmate,
will run when paths get steep; you close when doors
swing wide. i climb the stairs, i own these floors
and all their tiles, the urge that i can't sate.
the lake was gold, the sky was blue and i
was caught between you and the urge to fly.
the sand was dark, the water cold and you
had hands in earth, in me, in all things true.
the sun burned holes into our eyes, but all
i saw was us, the hill, and dreams grown tall.

Hagar

Though princess in Egypt I once was
(and surely, by blood, still am)
my body is given, to sell or to keep,
just as a calf or a lamb.

Fathered by Pharaoh of wandering hands
and mothered by all of his harem,
doomed to remember for all of my life
what God did for Sarah among them.

She, married woman, would not stay away
when clearly the Pharaoh would have her;
then cornered, she shrieked for her heaven on high
and heaven saw fit to answer.

The Pharaoh was stung, as if millions of bees
swarmed down in Sarah's defense,
and annoyed as he was, he could not deny
her God (or her lack of sense).

Astounded, he called for his daughter Hagar
and I ran to answer his call.
Not knowing his plans to give me as slave,
I happily entered his hall.

“Better she serves one so worthy as this,
than revels in earthly joys,”
the Pharaoh declares, and so it shall be,
a gift for my father's new toy.

And now, my mistress will give me again,
a gift for her husband to keep;
if she were not barren, the bed would be hers
but I am the sacrificed sheep.

Bound to this woman who could not conceal
her prideful pretensions, so vain!
I am mate to a man not my spouse or my choice,
and will bear Sarah's lack of pain.

the non-traditional,
what do i lack? perhaps a
red solo cup here and there but
nothing more serious than this;
perhaps a group of friends
that lasts four years and longer,
but nothing more than this.
the return, break-taker,
breath-taker lacking in ambition
i suppose, but who is to say
labels fit anyone at all; the truth
is in the grades, the desperate
two-semester marathon for an
entire grade point to average in.
the transfer, maybe twice,
what do i become? a time waster, a
perpetual dropout, home reliant
washed up washed out detritus
medical billing assistant,
and nothing more than this will
you see in me. i am deserted, i am
led astray by the system and i
am the only one standing in my corner,
but i'm throwing punches, and
you're taking them. non-traditional,
take your stereotype, add a pinch
of irony and a dash of determination
bake at 350 for five semesters
and wait for the rising explosion.

i am war, i am rage, i am
blood that pulses pulses pulses
and finally empties itself
into rivulets, streaming, screaming
down throats and fingertips.
i am hate, i am pain, i am
the glory of releasing all of this
into other people's brains,
i am the narcissistic pleasure
of dim and dull and blunt.
i am fate, i am harsh, i am
inevitable and eventual and
brother to chaos, the mess you make
in trying to keep your religion
safe from the unsaved.
i am sharp, i am cold, i am
the icicle that plunges off
the drop, the pebble that echoes
down the side of the canyon
where you can't see the bottom.
i am strong, i am gross, i am
foolish enough to ignore others
in their similar searchings
and angry enough to resent
others treading my path.
i am gore, i am stark, i am
death roaming pastures golden
with dead weeds and not-quite-clean
bones and blood that has leached
all life from the soil.

i am love, i am sex, i am
the sun rising through broken
slats in your window shades
so that you can trace me against
someone else's warm skin.
i am lust, i am depth, i am
the deepest calm in your heart
even while you struggle,
the curve of the earth underneath
your wrecked apartment building.
i am sweet, i am hard, i am
made all of granite tenderness
and shining like a diamond
out from the crack in the sidewalk
where all look but no one sees.
i am ancient, i am fresh, i am
the son of chaos and the daughter
of war and the androgynous wet dream
of human life, the offspring
of everything you have tried to be.
i am dove, i am owl, i am
a hawk with fierce talons rushing
to defend my young, never at a loss
and always more than seven miles
away from the finish line.
i am dark, i am open, i am
psyche yearning to be unburdened
from hatred, the drop of searing
mistrust that shakes the best
of love's intentions.
i am love, i am sex, i am
the best of each individual
expressed through the joys of another,
i am the nightmare of never
wandering alone again.

i want to draw wedding dresses,
draw pounds and pounds of white taffeta
(imagine how much netting it takes to weigh a pound!)
i want to traipse delicately
down the imaginative aisle, shall i have
roses or lillies or daffodils my bridesmaids can pick for me
in the fields where i am married barefoot--
i want to rub the earth against my skin.
all drenched in clean and white, i want to
roll in mud and walk away stark bright
and get into my horse-drawn carriage.
in this carriage my new husband takes my hand,
calls me Mrs. His Name, takes my roses lillies daffodils
and lays them aside (replaced with champagne,
i will drink, i will drink and be full with his cup.)
i am the virgin, dressed in white, who
waltzes on the dancefloor surrounded by cousins,
who survived stained shadows and wood pews and
heads that turn to judge, then murmur.
i am the ancient whore who carries
bubbles in my corset, bubbles full of intoxication
that burst when loved or wanted, i,
i am the virgin ready to be broken
who waits for time to carry my name away.

when it's tough, you're strong,
flexing egotistical brawn against the world,
the belief that keeps brick walls
behind closed doors, keeps burning crosses
from building themselves on your lawn--
when it's tough, you're stone,
formed over thousands of years of churning:
hard as granite, old as the pacific rim,
yet flaking off in minute minutes
like sandstone, grit in someone's teeth.
when it's easy you must
relearn to live, learn to relive
the good you have, to trust in sunshine
and other people's smiles; to toss
and catch the same good mood.
when it's easy you turn
to lie on your back on grassy lawns
and bathe in stars that don't shine when
your mouth is blurred with slime--
you can breathe mouth open lungs wide now.
and when it gets hard again
you've rolled on beaches, collected sand,
gathered grit to condense into
rock hard ego, granite confidence,
unwavering and unshielded memories
of what it was like when your lungs were full.

stuck sober, singing silence into scrapes sewn shut
with molting memories; migraines moving emotions
round your rotting brain, rosy restless flesh
that can't keep quiet. careless kestrals keening
for flooded fields and feckless flights.
sulking sky is single-minded: spitting serious
drops onto dangerously dingy days.
peace in pieces, precariously perched; posed
over orange orchids, oxidizing octagonal
hopes into hassles, haranguing and hemming in.
effortless energy ekes electricity,
raking in righteously rigorous ramifications
to timorously table tough times and tithes.

where neither belongs,
both must learn evolution
and let the home die.

the candles burn to wicks, and still you write.
in search of peace, the pen won't stop to think
of time and place. like setting matters! the ink
will quell your thoughts, so pack the words in tight
from page to page. as dense as smoke, which winds
along your lips: an acrid taste, the safest
smell you know. debate which words are clearest,
and mark the paths you hope the reader finds.
the drive is blank without the hours you waste
in finding precision: meant to cause emotion,
each moment packed with angst. the final word
will come too fast; the bile rises, a taste
reviewed with raised eyebrows. restless, in motion
you lose your place, your pace, the silenced world.

in time, each child will die, and open hands
to chances yet to come. each sheds his skin
and finds new shells, in layers bent of tin
and coal and wax. in time each body stands
the tests of wind and rain, the depth of pain
that can be felt by pulsing blood. the gore
of life that means we breathe, the writhing core
that means we stay; each not-still child to gain
his own idea of old. the rest is right
and wrong, and true and false, and left from fright
to seek his god where god cannot be found.
the new adult seeks sky and sea and ground
that he might learn to crawl again, and see
through ancient eyes that cry and can't be free.

i crawled up into your arms
and as the minutes pass
and your heartbeat rustles comforting
and the opals of your eyes shine
i knew it was right
that i should find you this early
and hold you this late.

and if you can't listen, you can't ask questions.
the handwriting must round itself out, the mentality
squeeze into smaller lines and smaller sizes.
the ocean is larger than expected, lines of travel
stretched thin over plate tectonics.
she watches her mirrorself curl up into ringlets,
fingers through hair, scent on the cusp of the wrist.
and if her veins should run a little farther for your
presence, who can blame her? for what you are.
you are weeping, curled in the corner of the room.
it is dark and there are no answers.
so the question stays unanswered, the end of it
dribbling off into the gutter, smelling of sex.

2:06 AM
you are only as good as your dreams are.
and i, i will steal away your dreaming--
as thieves are silent, so will i be soft.
you will pace, in the darkness, in the night;
you will drink in the calm, orange morning sun.
the theft of your youth will go unnoticed.

4:57 PM
your collar is not starched, your tie is loose.
the stapler is empty, and you are tired.
she hands you the package, brushes your hand,
leans in to tell you something trivial.
her heels click away, a monotony
of sweet smell, soft skin, and withered daydreams.

11:13 AM
and when you are exhumed, what will you be?
old coffee dregs, porcelain, yellow stains
on the teeth that they will date with carbon.
they'll shake their heads at your poor dental health.
you dig colgate out of your bottom drawer,
brush in the office kitchen-- just in case.

6:48 AM
i call you, up, up, out of the warm darkness.
you drugged yourself last night to fall asleep.
you're regretting it now, searching for cups,
orange juice, toast eaten standing over the sink,
vitamins caffeine fish oil decongestant pop pop pop.
the car is out of gas, will you have time?

7:23 PM
feet up, tv on, mouth and belly full,
the blinds are closed against the light and noise.
fill your lungs with tar, to turn off your brain.
conflict, laugh track, and a resolution.
your cup and your wife's womb are empty,
waiting, stagnant, like your hands and your heart.

in peace, we were what some might envy-- in lust,
we were just what we could be. walking slowly
late at night, you might have never known.
i leave the dishes dirty, i let the dust
pile itself along the ridges. just once,
i cried. and then i left, against your grain,
and built my dream: a scene without a frame.
so days turn into weeks, and weeks to months.
so i exist just in my mind, and lose
my sense of self. the greater purpose found--
in silence, grace. i help, and sometimes guide,
my thoughts to safer ground; they leave, come loose,
and cry for greener grass. they search the ground
for rain, and dart like birds who wish to hide.

in new chances,
the same old sins subside.
the lies repeat,
the curse of star-crossed kings.
she's royalty,
the lips, the tears she cried.
she is all shape,
straight legs, blonde mess of rings.
a silent night,
what's said that can't be heard.
the longest day,
yet weeks pass by with speed.
the color green,
grief that cannot be unlearned.
the warning shout,
volume for lack of need.