four horsemen,
a chiming clock:
portents to the apocalypse,
or is it the divine?
everything is anxiety,
everything is crawling up
the cavities of the spine and nerves:
tea leaves,
strange things.
milk that spoils in the fridge,
shapes in clouds.
everything is anxiety.
take a chance,
since all things seek bliss:
follow the path
to freedom.

at some point,
the brain becomes tired of problem-solving.
the patience for solution-making
runs its course,
and the yearning for simplicity
is overwhelming.
i am realizing that the anger
isn't for abandoning or disrespecting me,
isn't about the way you treated me
or what you said:
the anger is a reaction to the stress
of solving a million problems all at once,
and all with the same root cause.
my heart has no patience
for you any more.

i'd forgotten, this old game
are you worth
are you worth
are you worth it?
all phrases with meaning,
but most times empty--
are you worth
this, or anything?
an old game, and tiring.
i do not even want you,
i do not want to find you,
i want peace--
but also love.
so i'll play,
are you worth
are you worth,
are you worth it?

this burgeoning emotionality,
a yearning that can't come unstuck
from just inside your ribs--
freedom, freedom, you can be free
and learn to be yourself, alone!
the wonder, the pain, the wreck
you will make of yourself,
when first you gain freedom.
freedom means no paths,
means finding your own way home
when you've exhausted your soul.
the weight of it!
around your neck, a yoke
of wanting, needing, desiring it,
freedom as a woman,
freedom that wanes into the future
lascivious and tinted pink,
waiting for you to come,
beckoning for you to follow.
the weight of that desire
could yank your heart right out
from its grip on your lungs,
the grind of that need
could murder you outright.

you are, we were
something less than diamonds,
still whole on its own,
a tantalizing glimmer
almost worthless in its commonality.

and after pressure,
after heat and fire and months
of telling you that
i deserve better than this--
after that volcanic period
of breaking apart,
i can glitter on my own now.

my value is greater even
than the darkest cave could belie.

i said, someday you will want to fix this.
someday this will end, all right.
someday your heart will matter more
and you'll learn to stop the fight.

i said, the risks are so much greater now
than when our souls were young.
we keep love locked up tighter now,
we leave our songs unsung.

i said, the difference is when you get old
the details wash away
and all that matters is what was said
during the light of day.

i said, someday you'll want to hear it
when he learns to apologize.
someday you'll find it easier and
you'll face him with dry eyes.

what it takes
to become hard-hearted,
to steel yourself against
the coldness that
other people have adapted to:
wind the spring up,
pull back the lever,
leave it tucked under
and build a wall
of granite, quartz,
surrender to the structure
you must become.
this way,
if a wall is demolished,
there is still your anger
waiting inside
to be sprung loose.

men, boys. abandonment.
punctuation that cannot
come undone.

finding what is left when you're gone:
memories, ticket stubs, old bills,
and a yearning.
you left me with plenty of guilt,
and an imagination that replays the afternoons
over and over, a slideshow
of smiles that are long gone.
i am digging through the piles,
i am finding
all the things i brushed over
when you were here,
all the irritations glossed over
for the sake of loving you.
in my heart you will be a slideshow
all your own, the images
of experience and wisdom gained
and self-respect lost.
i can see our hands, intertwined,
and always seeking:
writing messages in the fog on the mirror.
what is left when you are gone?
just me, just me.

who to put faith in?
if you have any assets at all,
you must put them away
to try to find an honest face.
keep quiet your tuneful voice,
and still the troubled hands
that ask only for trust.
if faith is what you must find,
leave love sequestered in the heart
and seek instead simplicity:
where ease is, there trust.

multifaceted,
and always turning so that the right face
is showing for the right occasion--
multitudinous, multitalented.
varied, repeating,
each duplication a revision on the last,
i will show you nothing and everything
whenever i show you anything.
multifaceted,
like a jewel slowly spinning for the light:
like a snowflake wheeling down,
like a chord with a million overtones.
i am only what you see,
i am more than can be seen.
something greater,
every time,
than what you have learned to expect:
like a lamb for the slaughter,
like an ego for the lion.
i am an analogy that cannot apply itself
for lack of pure content.
multifaceted,
like a jewel that spins for your eyes.

what will you do, what will you do
when it all comes home?
it's easy, at night, to say what you think
you should, to give me empty words
and silky promises--
in the daylight, promise again.
let me see your face under the sun,
prove you can be real
and not just moonlit.
what will you do when it all shows up
on your doorstep, midday?
don't disappear,
don't disappoint.

maybe, as much as you want something,
it's still only going to be some r&b dream,
some sweet soft scene of a fantasy
and never reality.
maybe he's out there, someone who dreams
the same way you do and seeks
the same sweet silence--
maybe he was written by someone
who has never had real love in their life.
either way the seeking must be sane,
the trek a realistic one.
maybe, as much as you want something,
it can't just land in your lap.

what should i even tell you about myself
(brushing aside this feeling that
i shouldn't even have to,
there is something innate here to know,
something you should have
caught on to years, millenia, ago)
what do i even say once i have your attention?
but attention is no sure thing,
some soft willingness
or blunt capability of receiving my heart.
because the first thing to know about me
is that i am composed of words,
all phrases, all sounds
composing my soul and my body--
if i utter even one sentence,
a fragment of my existence drifts out of me
and into open air.
(and the feeling that it shouldn't need to,
that i should be something safer,
corporeal matter or
carbon atoms all mixed together.)
what is there to be said
when all words are a commensurate loss,
each taking its home with it
to wherever i have sent it in the world?
you cannot even hear me,
you have the will, but will not.
i will keep all the words with me,
they are too young to leave,
i will keep all the words with me till they are stronger
and apply them judiciously
over morning coffee.

everything is clean now,
all textures a strange sensation,
all emotions born fresh in a new heart.
a new skin, even:
one safe in its own sexuality,
too pure for the marks you might have left.
i am aware now, away from you,
how much you stripped from me--
but also, how much i am capable of reclaiming.
i can be my own again, body and soul,
a complete human who is completely human.
the world contains clarity
and i'm seeing now with new eyes.

life is much more simple than it ought to be.
i am, you are, we were.
time to go.

hope is a curious thing.
it bubbles, it builds, it bursts.
perhaps at one point
i hoped all the best for you--
for the spiritual peace that is
a good job, all the bills paid,
and something that looks like love in your life.
i never felt hope die,
i didn't notice when it left.

yesterday i wished ill for you,
a hard life and hard circumstances,
a general malaise for your soul.
yesterday i'd have had words for you,
words for this last time i'll see you.
yesterday would have spoken clearly
of all the hurt you have caused me.

today i woke up calm,
do you know what it is to wake up calm
after weeks of hurricanes and sandstorms?
today i woke up soft and sweet
and even looking something like myself.
today i opened my heart,
that secret chest of drawers,
and found all the compartments empty.
today i woke up calm and realized
that there is nothing left in my soul.

but this is not depression,
this is not being tossed up on the rocks,
some sob story for you to read years later.
this is what it is to be calm:
the recognition that love is built,
and when ripped away,
love transfers from our hearts to our memories.
all my hopes for you, they still exist
in the past, are locked up now, unreachable.
my hopes and my pride and my hurts
and all the emotion i ever granted you
is locked up in a higher safe now,
impregnable, and icy to the touch.

self-fulfilling prophecy:
you have learned to look me in the eyes again.
you even had a whole word for me this time,
and i
have nothing left to give you in return.

for a heart so used to love,
and then so filled with hate--
i am surprised it remembers how to beat
with no emotion to turn the wheels.

a million words wasted,
still no unification of soul.
express, express, lack of satisfaction,
there's no place like a home that doesn't exist.
how many more times do i have to say it,
home is where you are,
home is where you are.

and it's a winding path these days,
one that seeks out vantage points
but offers no view of the future,
one that crawls through dirt and heat
and finds relief in loneliness.
is there even a path here, i feel like
there are no footsteps left to follow.

a million words, i wasted them on you.
let you dictate sentences, entire ideas,
let you consume my blood and feed on my skin.
a million words just to wind up
flicking off another parasite on another forest path.

shouldn't there be a sunrise,
shouldn't there be singing birds?
there should be stars peeking through the foliage,
there should be flowers among the ferns.
i am seeking, i am seeking, i am blind
with fear and frozen
with this terrible sexual longing
for your body.
home is where you are,
home is not at the end of this path.

you do it on your own,
do you hear me?
you do all the work with your own two hands,
you bring up your own calluses
and you be proud of them.
you do it on your own and you earn it,
you find your own sense of pride.
are you listening to me,
i said you do it on your own.
you let the world
be what the world is gonna be,
and you do you, no matter what, you do you.
whatever it takes, you pay your bills,
you keep your job and don't let anyone around you
tell you that you deserve any less.
you do it on your own,
you earn your own ego first
and maybe later you can learn some decency.
you do it on your own,
and maybe you'll find a better way
than anyone who went before you.

i am a promise and you are a force,
i am all words and you are all action.

i am a promise of complications, of heat,
of finding something different in the morning
than what you lay down to at night.

you are a beacon, a light striding across the sky
needing nowhere to land but what is open and empty.

i am a warm bed, an offering of skin,
a seeking sexuality which lights here and there
along the narrative of your days.

you are a rock of granite, lime, and age
which has never needed any explanation.

i am a promise and you are a force,
i am a seeker and you are the prize.

there is so much promise in a relationship:
to have, to hold, to keep, to maintain.
a broken relationship sunders all these words
and leaves only the promise-maker,
who must seek something new to swear on.

the darkest feeling
is shouting into a wide world,
and hearing no response.
the deepest silence
is the one you create yourself.

the natural world holds sound
on its own pedestal,
a grunting roaring purring pillar
that captures cyclical life.

raindrops have their own loves,
separate from the rivers they compose.
a waterfall rushes towards caprice
and shrieks the whole way down.
fog silences the lesser needs,
allowing only gentleness to bleed through,
and the rush of a geyser pours out
a waterbound ritual of praise.

the natural world finds its own peace,
a symphony of self-response.
a human is not lucky enough
to see himself in so many means,
not capable of so much transformation.
he has only one voice,
and uses it to create all the noise he can,
or else be left alone.

a need for new hope,
open eyes to see the sun again:
love being born again in my heart
is a painful experience.

the heart is too small, pathetic,
for such an experience as this.
too small to hold the hate, it bursts,
and putting it together again
it winds up even smaller
when all the pieces won't return.

i am stretching for a new love,
reaching for something new to praise.
in expansion is a fresh new hurt
and one i must learn to be grateful for.

there is something greater inside me
than i am capable of holding on my own.

loneliness is soft.
footfalls outside the door
are only phantoms.

oh it is so easy to hate,
hatred comes so easily after love.
it is easy to loathe your words, your face,
and all the slippery ways you commanded my heart.
it is easy to hate.

i have loved you, hugely, anciently,
i have loved your voice and your body and your family
and all the components of your life.
i have loved you better than the sunshine loves the earth.
i have rotated around you, evolved for you,
orbited around your changing needs.
i have loved you in all your seasons.

and it is easy to hate you now,
easy to assume that i know who you are.
easy to assign blame to someone who is absent.
it is easy to hate your logic and your fake reasoning,
easier still to hate the calm you present now.
it is easy to hate, such a kindred emotion to love
in strength and passion--
it is easy to hate you, and for weeks i will.

a canyon has words, too,
much more than echo, echo.
a canyon has steep walls
and an empty stomach,
a canyon has willpower.

i am a red red clay.
i am composed of historical elements.
i create fossils within my walls.
i allow time to wear me away.

piece by piece i am made into something different,
season by season i become another shape.

there is something priceless in
an inability to maintain the original image.
something magnanimous in my walls
corroding, eroding, grating down to bare essentials
and showing you a slideshow of your life.
you began here, in this darkest layer,
and you grew up during the sunshine of these particles.
you grew old here, in the greyer years;
you broke my heart here, in these red lines.
red like mississippi clay, red like oxygenated blood.

piece by piece i become another shape,
season by season i am made into something new.

too much time has been spent
acclimating, adjusting, averting self-interest--
there is nothing left internally now
but all the changes made to suit you.

too much time has been left to you,
too many dreams devoted to you
and too many futures written with your name
etched in calligraphy next to mine.

it isn't time now to wonder whether
those futures were viable, advisable--
it has always been about your name
and your skin and your eyes and your words.

somewhere in my alternate future
there is a tiny brown baby squalling in my arms,
a tiny piece of love created by two people
who were willing to work harder than us.

i am nothing now but granite, limestone,
a sandstone shell grown empty except one pearl.
i am a canyon, you were my river.
too much time has been spent on you.

too much of my voice speaks your words
and my narrative preaches you, you, you--
i am an empty shell rolling down a hillside
protecting a simple pearl within my walls.

you shouldn't be able to just decide
that you don't love me any more,
it should be something greater than a CHOICE--
love should be something more than
a week of silence could conquer.

you should be something planted less deep in my skin.
you should be something more easily removed from my heart.

the edges of our book curl up with age,
are yellowed from misuse
and hard summers.
our book is paper pages, thin like bibles
and the ink smeared, beloved paperback.
the cover of our book is
stained with coffee, sex, and cheap ballpoint
markings of an avid learner.
our book is new but ancient,
our book is so dry it falls apart in the sunshine.
the words of our book are too old to be read.

you are scripted,
a close-minded closed loop
of self-serving information.
you are a gospel,
a reinforcement of culture
and social values,
a quiet damnation of individuality
and singular peace.
you are a text of great importance
in the narrative of my life,
a character called and cast,
a course correction necessary
for my daily disobedience.
you are my gospel,
a track of words and motions and images
where i turn for inspiration
and for silence.

because gospels do not speak,
are only cold words on a thin page.

the lack of you has changed.
months ago it was pain, a deep ache
like a cancer in my stomach.
now all it means is discomfort,
feeling off course and unsure
which is its own kind of pain.

sarah, esther, rachel, where is my precedent?
naomi, where is my narrative to follow?
eve or mary, why not even a hint
of what is to come?

hagar, it is your path
that i am learning to see in my own.
the sale of loyalty and love,
the bondage of a body that might once have been
free, capable, careful.
in my heart you are a bronze pedestal,
a golden hand reaching down.
in my eye you are taller than even the mountains.

old bones, older eyes,
all things cracked and drying with time.
a single incendiary word
lights layers of dust, dirt, accumulated age
into one bright burst of red.

when i am reborn, i want to be one of those women
who does everything with three inch acrylics,
darkened skin that reflects the sunset orange.

epiphany, destiny,
black eyes and sharp gaze.
rake me over,
i will start again.

in health, she thought that she might die
when sick, she yearned to live
a lesson never learned that meant
her life had more to give
than empty pages, empty guilt,
or empty cans of food:
each life affects all others and
each heart beats common blood.
so when one night a stranger came
and battered down her door,
she thought it somewhat common since
the man had come before.
he stood atop her doorstep, brawn
and brazen to the touch
and said he'd like to take her home
and give her back her crutch.
she stood a moment, studied him,
then peeked around his frame
and saw, now that the walls were gone,
that everything would change
but only if she stayed alone
and rebuilt her own walls,
and ventured into worlds unknown
to walk, and run, and fall.
so she looked up into his eyes
and said, it isn't time
for peace or love or solitude
or writing down these rhymes.
the time has come, she said to him,
to talk of many things:
but nothing here remains for you
or wedding vows or rings.

you are my kansas,
a wide blank slate of fertile plains
but nothing else.
you whip me till i burn,
till the flesh singes off my bone
and i am more tornado
than blood.

i suppose if you've never treated me the way i've wanted, i have no right to be disappointed in you now...
ugh. penultimate? apocalyptic? you won't even bat an eye.

some things are not nameable,
the way you look at me and the constancy
with which you are inconstant.
other things are named:
walls, granite, steel, surrender.
i am the shrug in your shoulders,
the ache in the soles of your feet.

it used to be quite simple,
just hanging up the phone.
but in this dark, dingy place,
the etymology of abandonment
requires a different tone altogether.

the puritans learned to rejoice when they were challenged. they thought the harder life was, the more god was testing them; and therefore, the more he thought they could achieve as god's beloved children. it is a singularly sensible theory for humanity.

like energy, a million joules, a thousand electrons jostling for a position around the coveted nucleus of love, disaster, magic. holden caulfield, am i free of you yet?

you will always be lake erie to me,
the boy who provided the smells of summer.
you will always be that room,
burning with heat and exploration
and aching for cold, clean rest.

i have never chosen to believe in
unrequited love, never accepted
that love can be anything but mutual.

the whole world is heavy,
and perhaps i am too old to field its weight.
the whole world is young,
and perhaps i am too brazen to appreciate its strength.

noah built a boat, unquestioning,
in a deserted arid desert.
and god began the flood when noah's wife
and sons were not quite yet on board,
began the rains
just as the last child ran from his home.

the whole world is strange,
and perhaps i am too silent to survive.

when i was young,
all things were dolls:
imagined life, impressioned health.
when reality sets in,
and life is understood as
the dirty, squalling thing that it is,
i am inclined
to keep that younger viewpoint.
what cannot be solved,
when bestowed with greater vivacity
and viewed with greater affection?

the silence of giving in
is greater
than the work itself.

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.

because if i wasn't so strong-willed,
i'd need someone a little more spineless.
and if the beginning is this rough,
i anticipate a peaceful middle age--
an understanding of what it means
for water and oil to coexist.
we are not floating on the surface of the sea,
you and i, we are not superficial,
and the further we dig, the closer we get
to some soft flow of maturity.

your bipolarity drives me away.
how you can adore me, affect me one minute,
and shun me with silence the next:
do you only hear me when i'm begging?

i'd give anything to be calm,
and comfortable.

you're rounding out corners,
you're seeking something straight and narrow.
you're creeping around the floors of the house
seeking something rotten.
what is there in the silence that cannot be said?

the walls are made of cardboard,
in this house.
the skylights aren't there on purpose,
the view of the night sky isn't meant to be.
the walls melt down to the ground when it rains,
in this house.

you don't owe me a thing:
i will be lucky to escape with my heart in my chest
and my soul in my mouth.
you owe me the opportunity to take you for granted.
you owe me many, many quiet moments spent in love,
a thousand and one nights of sleeping alone,
twenty-two years of broken promises.

the walls of the heart are thin and easily punctured.
if you were a barb, a thorn, a spike,
how easily you could destroy such a pink thumping thing.

when i am losing my way,
when i am losing my head,
you are the path and the story.
you are my narrative, my development and my rugged track
worn down by my circling back around again and again.
when i am losing my way,
you are the prick of a needle in a wall made of cardboard,
the mark it makes,
a tiny irrevocable wound.

writing the same thoughts every day does nothing.
you actively do nothing,
make the choice to leave me with nothing.

your reason is your ego:
i am wandering, i am wavering,
i am young, sweet, and capable of deception.

late night tv does nothing.
other peoples' voices can't drown mine,
and i am shouting for attention.

your silence is not redemptive!
i am climbing walls to find a higher truth,
and you leave me lacking.


"your success as an underachiever, an unrealistic dreamer, was draining on society; doesn't it seem you're out of place? is it your dream that has you in doubt, does it hurt too much to even think about, how your ideals have been misplaced along the way? is it your dream that has you in doubt, does it hurt too much to even think about, how all that's right has been replaced along the way?" --the profits

old worries,
stiff and still at night with an open stomach,
belly up to the gnawing emotions of doubt.
is he won't we should i can we?
a spine straight
on a cold mattress,
wind winding around the wound:
bared flesh, pulsing, the navel to breast incision
that means i am lying awake here without you.

and so the midwestern ache sets in again,
the ceaseless desire for Else.
i have seen enough of the world now to know:
there is soft commonality,
Else discordant urban chaos.
there are mighty chasms of humanity, social barriers
too bold to be broken,
too old to dispel,
Else making peace and keeping pace.
there is atlanta, brash and american,
or chicago, which has never lost its iron ore.
there is boston, where the coffee is too dark,
and the busy sycophantic symphony of new york.
there is the quietude of raleigh
(where the word quietude might still be used),
or the silence of oklahoma city.
there is still sweet sunshine in ocala,
clouds that don't protect the skin.
Else flatlands, burnished with old thoughts,
clouds that bubble up on tuesday afternoons like parquet floors
and will not disperse until nine thunderclaps later.
Else cornfields and cowfields and
clawing a way through dozens of other applicants
to find true love.
Else solitude in an apartment full of noise:
Else learning to appreciate nearness.

restless leg syndrome

she says, i think i was born broken.
i think my hips are so wide that my pelvis curves inwards
to compensate,
i think my legs are so long that my knees curve inwards
to reduce height.
she says, i think i was born broken.

in listening to her recitativo i am struck
by the patterns, the pitch:
her voice moves up to the pain,
down to the physiological compensation.

she says, some nights i sleep on the couch
so i won't wake him with my movement.
my legs twitch i roll over sometimes i murmur and talk
and i keep my knees bent because they like to lock up

(as though knees, which have preferences,
prefer to be encased in metal,
opened with medicinal keys and kept curved
like all the parts of her body that are broken)

like disparate strings in a theory of discourse,
like silence or sex,
you and i clutch for company
while having nothing to compare it to.

what is it we own here?
no property, no intellectuality,
no time left to change the future unless
it's the entirety of time at our feet,
only waiting to be made useless.

i am a harsh drumbeat,
a crashing crunching desire to move forward,
to keep the feet in line.
your feet drag:
your spirit lags:
i am waiting, i am standing and waiting
and learning patience and becoming
steadily more wasted.

step one, build memories:
lake erie, a summer night grown cold with depth.
driving across the tidal basin at night, towards possibilities.
reunions in airports, tight hands, easy smiles.

step two, build future:
learning where to walk carefully and where to breathe easy.
finding new quirks, new frustrations.
having the same fight eight different months until we get it right.

step three, build habit:
i can only always come to you when sad, when lost.
i am growing in talent at interpreting few words, fewer thoughts.
i remember, i expect, i relearn your body every month.

and if i am becoming a shell,
if you remove the shrilling snare from my heartbeat,
if some days i feel that
we are too far apart to ever come together--
it is either a learning experience, or a great lack
of humanity and creation.

i need someone to write The Book.
The Book has a main character just like me,
who grew up just like me and thinks like me and works like me,
and her best friend is just like mine and she wonders
and worries about the same things i do.
if someone could just write The Book,
i'd know what to do about you,
i'd know what the write and how to say what i need to say,
i'd know how to satisfy my mother and pacify my father,
i'd know maybe i should never have headed down this path in the first place.

i need someone to write The Book,
and base everything off my life and write it till the end
and tell me what i need to know
to make the ending come out right.

i'm too scared
to accept that i might be wrong,
because who knows?
maybe i have been right all along
by seeing in you something
greater
than what anyone else will attribute.
i wish answers were available right now,
and that you and i
could just walk off into the future,
step by step and hand in hand.

in nine, ten months, we will have the same
brutal fight as last time;
and every five, six weeks, there will be the same
tiny mushroom cloud, and i will walk away hurt.

some mornings on the highway,
on my way to work on the wide anonymous roads,
i imagine what could be us:
i could trust you so fully my heart breaks,
i could love you so well the beat of my heart might explode.
we could have a beautiful home,
a beautiful well-ordered socialized existence,
with college degrees and plants on windowsills.
we could have children,
sweet little brown babies who tap on my belly
and giggle on your lap.

instead i wait for the next moment
when you will set my teeth on edge,
when my gums will rot out of my skull to escape
the nasty words that fill up my mind
and wait to gush out of my mouth.
in some ways,
i am lucky that you silence me
with how quick you are to stumble.

your anger is a bubble and i
am always waiting for it to burst.

because it doesn't matter who you are as long as you DREAM,
because if your life feels entirely built of styrofoam then you will be
inclined towards CHANGE,
you will be seeking something different from the trash in the streets,
plastic bags pressed against wire fences by angry winds.
because if you never got up and did anything then you would do NOTHING,
you would BE nothing, you would be wasted,
because if our children grow up to believe in sentence-long diatribes
against taxes, the government, big ideas they can't comprehend but pretend to hate,
we will have failed utterly.
because the fake things in the world glitter more brightly,
because in an airplane landing at night all of civilization is laid out pretty
in metric grids, just waiting to be touched,
but when you land burned-out bulbs break themselves on street corners
in the hands of angry gods.
because i believe in the sanctity of CHILDHOOD, the sanctity of
imaginative space where nothing can destroy you but yourself.
because i try to teach violent hands and tired minds
what literature is, what making art MEANS.
because the diamond in the rough
is rarely hewn by foreign hands, we are bound to find OURSELVES
in these dim, deep piles of ash.
because the greatest impetus you will ever have is your own ego,
because if you don't decide to do it then no one else will either,
because in a hundred years all there will be
is brown skin, dark eyes, hungry hearts and mouths,
the dirty urbanity that skins its knees daily on empty doorsteps.
you are my project, and my heart is too full up now
to stay here any longer,
but i am duty bound to come back to these streets
because what if no one else will say what i see?

In silence, erosion, a debt must be paid,
the salt of the earth must return
to the day my town fell, and my path was laid
between the remains that still burned.

A wife must obey without question or noise,
but a wife's cherished chore is the home:
evicted for sin, and God left just one choice
for me and my girls, not yet grown.

Lot hurries before us, not one glance behind,
as we run from the gates of the city;
he leaps like a goat, and we follow blind
towards deserts that grant us no pity.

The girls were caught up in the rush of the dawn,
and Lot was compelled by his prayers,
but I was aware of just what would be gone
as we fled into mountainous air.

So I turned around, just a look, just a glance,
a need to bid my home goodbye:
the home I had built more of choice than of chance,
the home Abraham did provide.

The sun shone down bright, and still does today,
though it shines on a much different scene;
my body is scattered from the place where it lay
and the winds have burnished me clean.

this day and all others i am
all rage against passivity,
all hatred for inactivity.
tonight and every other dragged-through day,
choked up with chalkboard dust and grime,
is an exercise in futility but i
maintain my hyperemotionality with faith
in the known, in the believed, in the living.

i am a footprint, a slow heavy
imprint in the sand,
an even marker of progress and weight.

you are an ocean tide,
a ruthless beautiful swelling up of water
and salt and sunshine and motion.

truthfully we are neither of these things,
merely human beings working to become
part of each other's narrations.

i am a footprint in the sand,
you are a seaside tide.

and we are much more complicated creatures than that.

i do not feel emasculated when you offer to buy me things.
i do not feel defeminized when you make me do the hard work.
i do not feel asexualized when you call me friend, not lover.

the lines of gender are too blurred to feel anything
about the daily interactions that make our love strong.

i cannot commit
words to page
any longer
without admitting
that words are
an escape from
a body that
no longer
suffices, no
further can
be pushed.
i have lost
much more than
i can say:
a body that
ran on love,
not caffeine,
that tripped up
stairs lightly,
instead of
tripping up them
clumsy and slow.
i have lost,
i am losing,
i miss my feet.

we are holding hands,
because i am counting down to the end of days.

we are states apart, words breaching the distance,
affection trying to bridge the gap--

i am counting. forty, thirty, twenty, ten.
zero: nothing left to fear, nothing left to yearn for.

at the end of a long path, there is only us
standing together, holding hands.

in a silo we pile up
grain and memories,
roads traveled and
wheat and bread.

armageddon is knocking,
a wind against the door
that we lean shoulders
against to keep closed.

in a silo we dig paths,
trenches to battle from
and broad walls to
keep us safe and still.

we struggle from fields
to our keep from the wind,
hurricanes and hatred
flying after our feet.

in a silo we hold vigil
and wait for the sound,
the pounding of ascension
or of being left behind.

we wrap our coats tight
around our creaking backs
to keep the blood close
and heartbeat closer.

in a silo we make love
and tell jokes and stories,
in a silo we keep life
firmly within its bounds.

because maybe it's me:

i am not making enough sense, i am all
emotions?
it makes me strong, it makes me sing,
it makes me all words and no play,
all pain and gigantic leaps of faith.

i am too silent, i am not questioning
or understanding,
i am not even trying.

and what are you used to?
something quiet, something convalescing.
something once upon a time.

but i am learning how to
stave off the desperation,
how to pull it all together
into one concluding thought:

i am granite,
with a sandstone heart.
and you wear, and you wear, and you wear on me,
an erosion of time and space,
and the thought begins to grow:

i am wasted
and wrecked, an expansive mess to be cleaned
by antibacterial disinfectant.
i am a sweet, sticky mess,
something left behind after sex.

and if it's me,
am i not becoming clearer each day?
i am transparent, blank.

if clarity is your value, you can meet me another day
on the ocean floor:
we can lie, backs on cold sand,
and watch the typhoons rage above us.

long days, long memories.
your face is blurry in front of my eyes,
why are you swimming?
a deep ocean, wild with emotion,
tosses you towards me;
you are struggling, you are silent.
yesterday today tomorrow,
the caffeine isn't strong enough
to cover the sting,
the sugar losing saccharine whiteness
to gain a sense of pleasure--
i will feast instead on you.
your body is an offering,
your mouth is a darkened meal.

in love, out of love, above love,
everywhere we go we are always
conscious of our relationship
to love.
young love, timeless love, there is
no age to escape love,
no time or space or place
without love,
no action that can be taken
without adding to or subtracting from
or stagnating love.
we are all subjects of love,
acceding to demands and experiencing desires
that have nothing to do with us--
only love.
you and i, we are no different,
we are two drops in a long stream
with the same drops
and twists and turns as every other particle.
and in the new world,
the one that we seek around the bends,
we will break off from the stream
and exist together in roots,
in veins and leaves and air.
we will exist in life,
cooperative and cohabitating with sunshine
and rain.

where to go when
the whole world is tired
and sad, and tired of being sad,
when everyplace is tinged grey
and waiting
for maybe sunshine or love?
where to go when mirrors
reflect silence and passivity,
and you must possess
strength and voice
for all the women who do not?
where to go when the premise is supplied,
the conclusion stares you in the face,
and there is nothing in between?
where is comfort found
when the world begins to taste metallic,
when restlessness is easier than stagnance?
the next town over is unknown,
and so is the other side of the world;
the arms of a lover is known,
but you are reluctant to rely on sex.
baby you are not so alone as once you were,
and should not hesitate to come home.

europa

i am stretched oddly between
a wild rootlessness
and a feeling of being trapped, feral,
strung out between everything and nothing.
the point is that what i feel like
becomes what i am,
and the diet commercials
and the long distance loving
and the friends who are far away
and the fairy tales that i can't live
and the novel of my life that i can't write
and the urban students whose lives i can't change
and the guilt and the lust and the fear and the loss
is not who i should be.
a right hand crushed in between obligations
and a left flailing in open air
might be where i'm at,
but it's time to find a different foundation.
maybe i could rest on the shoulders
of someone who is strong and broad-backed,
someone for whom the world is black and white and focused
on a single goal.
with gentle hands i will propel such a man
towards desire and fulfillment,
while he swims with me across the ocean.

if i am hard where i should be soft,
iron ore where i would be pious and pliable,
something fierce when i should be gentle—
if i am granite firm, if i am pulsing with
volcanic emotions these days then
i do not know where to place the blame.
years of being poor, of being accustomed
to saving nickels and rolling dimes,
or the nights of being woken up by
loud cracks of noise, the ricochets
off brick walls, convincing myself it was
firecrackers, backfiring engines.
what is there to be afraid of now,
but death on a larger scale?
or fear on a larger scale, fear that
crawls inside bones and harvests blood,
fear that infests my belly and heart,
fear that makes me infertile, denies me
dreams and passion and depth.
if my spirit grates where it used to run smooth,
if my words are coarse where once
i might have offered sweetness, softness,
i am not wrong in deciding that the only
corrective course is love, and home.