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.