it's cute you think i matter,
that i am part of some cosmic neutrality
that still finds the will to exist--
or, part of some orbiting nebulus,
some glowing seahorse of pastels
that finds you as its nucleus.

it shouldn't be anger, it should be some
maladjusted beauty, some night terror
that found you when you were a baby.
you shook your tiny fist, and the terror
loosed dreams of love into your blood.

i matter, you matter, we are all matter
except the dreams. your narrative is
carbon-based, swamp-dwelling,
born of men and to a man it was told.
so take the organic terror with you now,
hold it dear along your path,
and find a way to force the phantasm
to bend its will for iron, for salt, for blood.

when the heart has closed,
it is always your own fingers
that must pry at cracks
to win a widening seam.

he is a dream,
a fantasy that walks now
daily steps towards me:
and i am a wall, a door,
a fortress of never loving
again, or ever.

when the heart has closed,
it is always your own fingers
that must pluck the right melody
so that the heart may sing.

and in the night a new love breathes
and learns to seek the heat
that means a second heart will strain
and build inside the beat.
the night is deep, his hands are firm
as i forget my fears
and, grateful, cede control to him
whom i have sought for years.
in pleasure do we two cocoon
and dread the rising dawn
which brings with it the cold, the light,
and sees that lines are drawn.
but here there are no worries yet
and i glow from his lust,
a borrowed shine that suits me well
and earns some of his trust.
so keep away from clocks, my dear,
and shy away from doors
that seek to drag you from my bed--
give me one moment more.

well i tried to tell you
that i can't be left alone,
but where are you now,
some leftover planet with sunshine
and women and winter?
i tried to tell you
that you can't leave me alone
and expect me to remain,
or remain the same, but--
where have you gone?
what dream are you living out
now, elsewhere, without me
and my stress and sex?
well i tried to be constant,
but it feels like stagnance to me
and i cannot endure without
your body or your words.

the memory of a place,
held in faces and scenery and
just walking on old paths:
and a clear recall, now,
of why i had to leave.

of all the emotions
capable of being argumentatively
and clearly communicated,
nothing shuts me down faster
than shame.

you lay it on my heart
like it's nothing,
like you can't even hear the words
or their meanings and
wouldn't hear my response anyways.

i can build walls again,
i suppose;
i would prefer not to, but
when my hand is forced,
granite is the best way to go.

astra, whose voice could save thousands,
whose table served literal life:
astra, you never warned me what work would do
to a man's shoulders, what wear might do
to the words a man would direct at me.
astra, whose faith moved mountains,
whose grace provided a path:
astra, you kept the knowledge to yourself
of a man's steps in the doorway
and the keening for his broad back.
astra, whose hands wrought peace,
whose beauty bought civilization:
astra, you left me on my own to sense
what a man could take from me,
and what a man could provide.
astra, whose face shone like heaven,
whose presence filled a room:
astra, i do not have your hands
or your peace, or your presence of mind
and i do not seek your charity;
only a place to view you from the earth,
to contemplate your groundings,
only a place to study history
or, astra, dare i whisper it--
a place to sink roots.

feels like home is a myth,
a fog i try to shape into something firm.
some uninterpretable desire,
something i can't tame or even seek
without destroying something of myself first.
is a home with you,
is a home locked up in my heart
or public and open?
do i search for it, or does it find me,
does home sneak up on you when you settle
for something less than perfect?
feels like home is a myth,
one i can't dispel or disprove,
one i read again and again
till my eyes and soul are tired.

i am a study in opposition:
terrified, but risking everything.
shaking, but completely calm.
loving, but prepared to hate.
and you, you are all guaged and composed,
a legend of limestone,
building skyscrapers out of age.
i cannot compete with your logic,
your emotional logic that walks in circles
and won't let me out of the loop.
i am a study in opposition:
silent, and sowing words widely.
seeking, but having already found.

you are a home, i am a vagrant.
i am a wanderer, you are a pillar
of solid, unwavering steel.
i am a contradiction, a confusion,
a puddle of license and discomfort,
a vagrant who sees an open door
and walks wide to avoid it.
you are a basalt tower, i am an angel,
and i can do little more
than circle you in the sky.

i wish i could be a vine, and have no thought for anything except sunshine and water.
to crawl along the wall, to creep against the fence, to bloom in the spring and die in the winter.
to respond only to light, not your scolding or your disgust or your relative importance against the backdrop you stand in front of.
i would have little dark flowers, i would bloom briefly in an effort to thwart my own reproduction.
i would bear little dark berries, poisonous to humans, a dessert for the deer that still get hit on my highway.
in the morning i would be covered in little dewdrops, a faint sheen on green leaves and green twines in the green morning light.
and in the winter i would cower inside myself, hibernate in brown and grey, and knot my shriveled fingers together to wait for the sunshine.

black and blue, baby,
i'd kill myself for a night with you.
a blade this sharp, baby,
could make all your wildest dreams come true.
i could slice myself on your logic:
your past,
your present,
i am nothing in comparison.
i could open a big wide wound on your words,
slit my skin at a single word.

it's four a.m., baby, where are you?
maybe i should begin,
maybe i should start the heavy handed process
that leads to the autumnal quiet.
but i don't have porcelain--
i don't have blood red enough
or ceramics white enough--
i cannot make this the dreamscape it ought to be.
i have only my own body,
i will wreck it if you'd like me to.

is this better,
is this worse than what you bring me now?
a lifetime of scars and seeking,
i cannot fight the battle you have chosen.
i could break myself
all over your heart's desires, baby,
i could wring the sweat and tears from my body
and still not find
the end of the road for you.

you could have been sweet,
could have been simple and shining but
tonight i will write you
all over my skin, a name for the pain,
a letter for every moment i have loved you.

a night is longer than it used to be.
too many hours free for
introspection, introverted inspection,
and coming up empty handed.
there are only the remains of the day to consider,
the dregs of life that others
have left behind, ill-used, unloved.

there is little love left in the world,
and i am too tired of the search.

when the heart is confused,
roiling with a thousand emotions and questions,
there is nowhere to go but home.

"and should you be lacking a home,
should you find yourself alone on a cold night,
you can come home with me."

but your home, it isn't going to be my home:
nothing can replace what i have lost,
there is no comfort for the abandoned.

when the heart is confused, it needs home
in the way a dying man needs life,
or death, an answer, any answer will do.

you are a plague in my heart, a love
that grows and keeps on growing,
consuming all of my energy and emotions.

and should you keep offering a home,
i will be forced to accept this solution
without a price, this gift that only costs soul.

"should you be lacking love, dear,
you can come home with me and find something
more precious than the stillness you seek."

how could you even know what i seek,
those words could never leave your lips because
i will never disclose the iron in my veins.

when the heart is confused,
it lets metal into the bloodstream,
iron ore to supplement the bones.

so that when my spine fails me, when my
bones crumble at your slightest pressure,
there will still be resistance.

the question of self-worth
hurts even more when it is public:
am i worth singularity,
or polarity,
or understanding and companionship?
am i worth,
am i worth,
am i worth it.

this stage in my life,
this place in my mind,
makes me need the darkest bar possible
and more alcohol than i should consume
and someone else's soul to worship

so that i don't have to wonder
if mine is worthless

a life spent recreating
the four or five moments i have loved--
the particulars dragged out
into something more meaningful than occurred,
probably.
whatever reminds me of them,
i will make
new, to bring them into my life again
during the times they are gone:
each a separate memory,
thus a separate need for a particular setting.
one is all youth and lighting
and comfort;
another is all age and travel and finding
what happens at the end of the highway,
and a kiss on the shoulder
in the moonlight.
all separate, all needed, but perhaps
now that there is you--
now that there is a chance for creating
instead of recreating,
a possibility of actual love instead of
remembering what i might have mistaken--
i am torn between the need
to have you recreate each single solitary scene,
or be a set of new remembrances, all on your own.

all i can hear is the dripping faucet:
lack, lack, lack, lack.

the walls seem thinner than before, tonight.
the stairs creak louder, the neighbors yell louder,
the night seems deeper than before, tonight.

the soul is a house,
you build a frame,
you are granted these gifts:
you build a soul from love,
from loss and pain and love.

you preach your own brand of selfhood,
i am content upon my own?
ignorance is a choice, an obvious one
and all i can hear is the faucet:
loss, loss, loss, loss.

what to feel, what to feel.
i cast around, emotionless, empty,
but waiting to be full.
there are many choices now:
an understanding of what each means,
an appreciation of the differences
between sadness and grief,
loneliness and solitude,
love and lust.
(it's always harder where you're involved,
for who you are and also what you represent.)
i am an empty casket,
else the body itself:
perhaps empty, perhaps full,
perhaps fluctuating and unsure.
i keen with a fever for you,
abandon it,
and don't know what i ought to be.

which metaphor are you,
which simile?
you can be worn-out shoes,
a beaten-down path,
else a bird in flight.
what comparison shall you be,
which category:
length, years, nature,
else modernity or urbanity.
which metaphor,
a spring rain, summer sunshine,
a tornado in autumn?
you are like a:
war that can't be won,
story not yet written,
a guitar unstrung.
be everything,
represent everything i want:
and sweep me off my feet
with your articulate affection.

there is something new at work here,
something ancient and surprising:
a sexuality i thought i was beyond,
a mood and a moment i thought was gone.
you are a new question, new provocation
and, seeking something unknown,
i am not sure what to give. so i give all,
the obsessions and the emotions,
and all the millions of daydreaming hours.
don't be silent, don't make me wait--
let's rush in headlong and find answers
before the entire glorious playground disappears.

she finds my weak spots,
she seeks out the places i'd like to hide;
she breaks the frames that hold
my emotions in even, brokered rows.
it isn't fear, she insists--
that isn't what she sees in me today.
it isn't base or sexual, either,
she announces, so stop worrying about that.
we are sitting in her kitchen
and her voice is in my ears,
in my heart and telling me
all the things i already know about you

seventeen

this house, so void of understanding, of emotionality, so pale and quiet and undisturbed.
i am small, and the world is big, and i like that.
if i could have tasted him, if i could have felt him, if he hurt me-- then maybe--

but i am older now.
i am tired of my knowledge of the human body.
and couldn't take the way he burrowed into her with bliss scrawled all over his face.

the stigma of age, of youth,
of actively trying not to feel it:
not too old to mourn,
not too young to cry.

i need be only what i am,
nothing more--
right?

or is it nothing less,
an aspiration of purity of spirit:
i imagine that i can be whole,
i see myself maintaining grace.
not too old to rebel,
not too young for faith.

full of promise--
this day, your eyes, your skin.
it's not that i seek some
intimate knowledge,
more that knowledge of you
seeks me,
pouring out from underneath words
and swamping simple sentences.
full of challenge,
but one meant to be won:
the secrets of closeness,
the knowledge of your body.
and what time means,
the opportunity
to find your heart, seek out
the recesses of your mind--
the promise of time
means you intend to keep me,
or at least, keep me close enough
to know when the promises
might be fulfilled.

the silence of your body, long and lean,
and the view of midnight across your skin:
everything you are indicates awareness,
brings me closer in than i was before.
questions i have not even thought to ask
spring from your fingertips, burrow into me
and drag the marrow from my bones in answer:
yes, yes, i will, please make me.

the incline of affections,
a slope of knowing what physicality can mean:
you slide along, gathering speed
and flying into the axis of my blood.
the heart is body-driven and soul-attached,
a messenger of needs beyond the mundane:
you creep along the curves of my body,
send chills up my spine.
i am at a loss to keep you from my skin,
pent up against the mental need
to be pure, or sane, or something.
your hands create an arc of need,
and my back arches in response.

a woman's rhetoric
is explanatory, descriptive,
reasonable:
why dinner is late,
why the budget is tight,
why she's too tired tonight for that.
a woman's rhetoric
allows her to fling retorts,
but not begin the argument:
to preach love,
but not initiate it.
a woman's rhetoric
is slow and smooth and deep,
and relies on the hearer
to grant it power.

come here tonight,
and open a new chapter with me:
how infatuation can be simple,
how the words need not be cheapened
by the opening of the hands.
come here tonight,
to hear my voice shake a little,
and my heart beat just once out of time
as i tell you what i must:
a woman's rhetoric
is capable of telling you everything,
is capable of bringing you home.

oh, is getting into this
an invitation of pain?
does this desire mean something else,
a deeper craving for
something i shouldn't ever have had--
or just love, lust, golden and gritty,
something snowing down on us
from higher plains?
is opening this door a shade of
masochism, a proof of
something more amoral than usual?
you are a whirlwind of yearning,
you sweep through me
and out again in no time at all.
you are a migration of my desires
from sensibility
to possibilities, a breaking
of the old rules for the offerings
of the new.
so, if pain is what it brings,
i'll invite it; or, if pleasure,
i shall take what i find and
turn it into beauty.

this morning you are an
honest enchantment,
a gilded question that hovers
inside my ribs
and hums a song there.
last night you were
defined by time, a series
of smiles and creating
a divine arrhythmia.
all day yesterday you were
the weather that defines a day,
the sunshine
and the clouds drifting,
and the wind winding around me.
for years you have been
a possibility,
something sought but not attained:
and your face now
strikes a desire in me
to live, to dance, to breathe.

the world is not one simple thing,
a set of rules
or an algorithm to follow:
there are no governing principles,
except maybe
that you will be forced to love someone
eventually.
the world is one big beautiful greyspace,
a greenscreen against which
you can act out
the best and the worst of your personality,
all the adventures you desire;
there is no black or white about it.
the world is not
simple or sweet or easy or delicate,
and neither can you be:
but a thrillseeker, journeyer, risk-taker,
these things you must learn
if the qualities do not come innate.

pull on me tonight,
babe, push me in four directions at once:
don't you wanna make me work for it?
don't you wanna make me want it?
take the compass,
give it a spin, make me follow
as the edges of the world turn.
your hands on my face,
on my neck, finding an expanse of skin
to touch and torture--
pull on me tonight, babe,
and leave no explanation in the morning.

the only thing i need now
is a piano,
is black and white keys
and a soft melody.
cigar smoke
that curls blue around the ceiling,
and feeling prettier than usual;
all i need now
is that creeping dream of
urbanity, sexuality, musicality.

i could find you there.
or, you could walk in the door
and see me with your searching eyes.
i could meet you there,
legs crossed and leaned forward,
ready for the next best thing.

all i need now is one song
to take me away,
one chord to keep me company
during these nights.

there should be love
in this place where light has fled--
there should be love,
for you, for your future.
there should be love so you can grow,
love for pleasure,
love as the path you walk on
and for the food you eat.
your life has earned
a wage of love, a pittance for
the services you have lent;
there should be love,
for the rest of your days.
your pure eyes
can't see how she abandons you,
and maybe that's for the best.
your pure heart
would never admit to her poor treatment,
all the ways in which she slights you.
your life has earned
the gifts of love a million times over,
a permanent fund of smiles
and hugs and hands held late at night.
there should be love,
where there is only distance now.
emotional, physical, mental,
she keeps you at arms' length;
my heart shakes,
my breath catches,
to see the way she treats you now.
come home, love, come home
and find the promise you were given:
your life has earned
these years of love and peace.

because it doesn't really matter who you are--
you have the same voice and hands as all the rest--
i am complete on my own,
whole and beautiful and not looking for
your words or gestures to fill my night or life.
it doesn't really matter who you are--
attraction can be random, or so predictable
i saw you walking in.
tell me what your name is, baby, where you from?
and all i can say is that i'm not from anywhere
and it matters much more
where i have been, where i have been.

mental drudgery, paying attention too much
to know what could be passing by--
your voice, what is it saying?
your hands, what games are they playing?
and if tonight is not the brightest light
for days that i have seen,
it is an underestimation, or misappropriation
of attention and affection.

lets go to california, find sunshine, find shade.
lets go and smell pacific winds,
feel salt and sand between our toes
lets go, lets go, lets find a beach
and stay all night, perhaps;
or just a day, then find a hotel
then find each other, late at night.
lets wander along expensive streets
and touch them, brick by brick--
lets go, lets go, all things familiar
grow dim, put next to this.
lets go to california so we can dream
and find some order along the stars
that shine like suns above our heads
and point our feet onto a path
of higher heights along the coast:
lets fly, lets fly, to california
and find a place thats near to water
and make an ocean home.

if maybe the reason we're getting along
is because we're all promises, no substance--
i suppose it's time for strength, or monogamy.
and if, as predicted, our keening for
someone similar, different, serious, playful,
has created something too bold to break
between us-- then, all to the better,
as i am not planning on giving you up.
this could go nowhere and i would still store up
all the words you've spent on me--
indications of time, effort, and attraction.
you have become a reminder that i
have more to offer than most, and more
to express than before. if every night
i am willing to wait on your words, it is born
of a desire to know your thoughts--
and a growing desire to know your body.

i can't remember, i can't remember what love is like,
it feels like a sudden panic to think--
what was it like to be cherished, or enjoyed?
what was it, to hold and be held,
to watch moonlight and sunshine climb walls?
i retain the visuals,
the skin and the fingertips and
white walls, low light, closed doors...
i can see it,
but the feel of it is gone.
i can't remember, what is love like, what
does passion feel like, i can't remember any more,
and the ice of that is crawling inside my bones.

peace. simplicity. an offering pure of heart.
no need for terror here, or staving off complexity--
with you there is quiet happiness blooming
in vineyards overgrown with thought and lust.
the concepts of the body turn lush where once
i might have dwelled on shape and history (misery),
where beauty was leached from shallow grounds.

you are the only one who offers something greater
than i can give myself-- more peace than solitude,
more progress than painful, yanking growth.
with you i can be, perhaps, all the things i value:
all the things i cannot accomplish singly,
without a partner, without a friend.

i try not to write your script for you, but ultimately
it is your own words that seal the pact:
good morning, good evening, good night,
sweet dreams if dreams there be. and for my part,
i dream of you! of what it could be like
to experience mutuality again, to try love
as an adult and find it lovely. it is your spirit
that brings me closer to myself, and your smile
that helps me make my own home here.

i can't be anything more or less,
or anything else-- just calm, and tired,
and open to love. waiting to find you on streetcorners,
to pass you in all the movements of my life,
to see you early and late
in the corners of my eyes.

explication

some people write beautiful trickling delicate poetry, a rain shower of words that trip down pages like butterscotch down the back of your throat, bending love into rhyme and inserting soul or spirituality but i

am somewhat more lost than that, something too lonely and tired to see that words can express delicacy even, my words stick to backs of throats and minds when they are angry and incensed and i am burning

to find a way to express my dissatisfaction, i am not satisfied, i am raging and trying to put it onto paper so that when i am alone with you i will not find another way to get out, to get it out of my chest

where it thumps like rap, crashes like thunder, trashes my mental space and leaves garbage strewn all over my tongue, i am trying to get it out so it doesn't eat me up but how many years can i coexist with

this much anger and still retain potential humanity, but if love is what makes us real then i am incredibly tangible, my heart is in pieces all over this world in other people who, mostly men, have found fit to

take a chunk and leave, and some of the beautiful places i have been where i left a little of my adolescence, the dimly lit rooms where i gave up my modesty and immaturity exist so forcefully in my mind but are

completely gone in reality, there is nothing left of childhood or innocence or sweet or pretty in my face and i am not even seeking for a way to curl my eyelashes with sugar again, just hoping to find the way to put

happiness back into hopeless hands, i am looking for a rhythm that will take my hate and make it useful, a body that i can love and not wreck, a person that i can trust and not break, i am looking for some type of

solution for this convoluted mess that i embody more and more each passing year, how can i escape this dual threat of unlimited promise and stunted self-love when it is confidence that makes men love

and beauty that keeps women at bay and i am blessed with both and neither at the same just an unbearable need to fight, to prove that i am more than open-mouthed and porous in spirit, i do not take on

your battles in the ways that i used to and maybe that's why you don't love me any more but it just isn't possible these days for me to take on one single additional ounce of emotion and still be real

instead of some free-floating gentle alcoholism that isn't discovered till years later, how do i find solutions for problems that are only now sprouting on their many-yeared roots deep in my heart and my mouth?

as an adult, the option to learn
is one you make on your own:
to continue in the ways you have been,
or take something from each situation
and apply it to the next.

how can i learn and move on
when you are nailing me to the cross
of our distant, messy past?

it could be enough
to be employed, have someplace to live.
it could be enough
to have loving parents
who keep and create a home,
who provide support
regardless of their own circumstances.
it could be enough
to have had a man,
to have known what it is like;
it could be enough
to find another man,
literate, attractive, encouraging.
it could be enough
to have more friends than time
can allot for,
more fun than a budget can handle.
it should be enough
but there is always one step more.

cycle

what maturation means:
less excitement, less desire,
less ability to stop my own heart.
fewer emotions that last for weeks,
almost none that pass in minutes.
but then, finding something perfect,
something that lays itself out delicately,
does stop my heart: i desire you,
i will desire you all week long.
you are something out of the usual,
and not what i expected or forecasted:
something bolder, and more willing,
something closer to maturation.

*

a nightly dose of sunshine,
the unexpected fondness of attraction.
say some more words, spend some more time
and wrap me around your finger.
i will be still, i will be sweet,
and i will allow you the access you need
to mine out my emotions and thoughts.
i am a dark tunnel, you are an oil lamp
that sputters and burns, and fills my lack
with fire and flicker and heady fumes.
you are winter's hurricane,
an oxymoron all fierce and bright.
you bring the dark, you shine like love.

*

we could make disasters together,
you and i.
we could make disorder and chaos
in all the splendid, wild natures of the world.
we could be an iceberg,
a floe moving steadily towards heat.
we could be an earthquake
and rattle the floorboards with lust.

this may change, this may all change:
you and i, our smiles, the world we walk in.
there is aging to consider,
and the maturation of our desires:
all things may change, when you and i
decide our chariot is better hitched in the sky
and climb the ladder to find the stars
and reach the troposphere, and take hands, and pause
and gaze at our new world of peace and air.

there are many things to be in a new world:
a personality, order or disorder, a shape
or a semblance of humanity.
arms wide open, you are an image familiar
to the old world, meaningless in the new.
and such a blessing, this place where open arms
(an embrace of the natural landscape, and me)
indicates beauty, acceptance, golden and shining
and not fear or lack or doctrinal falsity.

sneaking up on me,
your promises:
all the things you offer.

if i can be me,
i can play the girl you want:
i can play any part you desire.

you are all myth
and masculinity,
a potent combination.

you creep up behind me
in dark woods,
shine in spring-lit fields.

like there is anything to say.
like i could ever absolve myself to you.
your sincere decency,
the way your heart keens for love:
and i am nothing,
i am careening out of normality
in search of something much greater.
you are a whole different plane of thought,
something simple:
and i am convolutions,
curves in the road,
twists in your straightforward path.
there is never anything to say,
there is no way i could absolve myself to you.