the hand points to one,
says you stay or you come.
the hand points to two,
says you win or you're through.
the hand points to three,
says stay young or follow me.
the hand points to four,
says you've got your foot in the door.

in the room the hand rotates slowly
ticking by the uneasy minutes,
you are watching and waiting for the door to open.
all night you waited restless
and ready for this day and this meeting.
what can be decided here?
what can be pretended, what might exist
if greater effort is extended?

the hand points to five,
says you could thrive.
the hand points to six,
says you should get in the mix.
the hand points to seven,
says it's time to make a plan.
the hand points to eight,
says you'd better get it straight.

for all the opportunities missed
there is just one more to be had,
one more to make sure you don't miss the moment
and wind up just watching
the world go by, the people walking
on the sidewalks who have places to go,
the cars driving so purposively on the streets.
you could be a part of this,
you could belong to a place and a time
but only if you make this moment count.

the hand points to nine,
says the day could be mine.
the hand points to ten,
says i must break and mend.
the hand points to eleven,
says the future could be heaven.
the hand points to twelve,
says the past has been hell.

one day soon you'll be old,
and what will you have to look back on?
many years, and perhaps not as many memories
as you might have liked.
so make this what it is, a chance,
and savor this chance to be nervous
about being young and free and wild.
seated in this room
there are still possibilities,
there are many paths but
you are waiting for just one door to open.

the need for common warmth can strike at will,
can force the body into others' arms:
ignoring your safety, even seeking harm,
affection gives a chance to get your fill.
you roam when empty, stealing bits and crumbs,
surviving on the need to walk and run
since on these days you always blame the sun
and glare with rays that keep the daylight glum.
you seek the girl who saves a place for you,
who pines and hopes and wilts without your light:
she cannot last another hour, the night
will steal the faithless face who can't stay true.
an orange moon rises, finds your lovely form
stretched out as cold as dead— and keeps you warm.

what exactly is needed, what am i missing,
what is it that i lack that all these other women
seem to have found in great quantity--
to find success, to find love, to find peace,
there must be some keystone that i don't have,
right? since the alternative
is that maybe it's just me, maybe i have not yet
swallowed enough, struggled enough,
can i not blame this on someone else for a change?
i have not been empowered enough, i was not given
the intelligence or the opportunities--
none of these things are true.
maybe all i lack is simple, is easy,
is just some innate quality that i haven't discovered
because i have been too busy building
to bridge the gaps of what i've lost.
i am too young to know real loss,
with the moderate success of the young and tired
that means i do not yet know real lack,
with the wide open aching heart
that means i tried to love and failed.
if all i want is to earn my own way,
find my own love, win my own wars,
is it my intent that is so wrong
or just the effort used to get there?

in secrecy you preen the sadness,
running empty claws through bright plumage:
colored scarlet red, smelling
of roses and salt and all the dreams
you've ever feared.
which scene keeps you running, now?
which circumstance would make you set,
finally, to roost?
in silence you groom the grief,
shedding new growth and burnishing the old
words and old hates,
with oiled talons you separate each strand
and make them gleam with your mourning.
whatever cannot be gained on this perch
was never worth having,
an affirmation with each self-loving stroke.

what you are looking for,
maybe it isn't real, maybe the joy
you sensed was off in the distance
will always be around one more corner:
where do you find another
(insert what you lost here)
that could even come close,
that could approximate what you felt?
what you are looking for,
maybe it's only real when you accept
that all things lost are never found
and what's new isn't always less.

we fight our battles in different ways,
you and i. you lapse, and i sizzle:
your silence indicates discontent,
and i am busy shrieking from an open window.

on a different night i am waging war
against my body, and your hands and your sweat
and your hips on mine are the only force
that keeps me from falling apart.

maybe it is because you brought armor
to this fight, and i come bare-skinned,
open-handed: where fists win,
words fail entirely to make you love me.

for all the listening i do there is always
some new whisper to hear, something creeping
down the hallways that says
your name your name, or maybe nothing at all
just the speaking of my hope:
the words of my faith vocalized
by someone who knows nothing of their mouth.
the volume is of no consequence
if the message speaks of your possibilities,
i am captivated by chance, by fate:
walk a little faster, love, look a little brighter
and help me find out, somewhere in the world
there is a body and a face and a heart
that pulse the same rhythm as mine.
for all the words there are in the world
only one matters, your name, your name.

what i hate most is the dichotomy—
i must love you or i hate you,
i must win you or i've lost.
all the beauty of love is in the uncertainty,
the power of words is in their connotation:
but i speak, you do not hear.
if i am one without the other,
if all that's left is one hand and the other gone
(meandering, wandering, a brook that
twirls down the hillside, a raindrop
clambering down from the clouds)—
if i must walk where i have been running,
the loss is so sure.
i must love you or i've learned nothing,
i must win because my words create the rules.
you are bound by nothing
but my voice and my mouth and my hands,
because with fingertips so light against your wrist,
can you really say no?
you must decline or you have accepted.

girl, so frail and limpid,
working so hard to look as fragile as you do,
how can you not expect the world to break you?
with pride in your porcelain you drop
off the cliff as is expected,
all surprise at the resulting crash and burn.
girl, you've left your gloves on too long,
let them dress you up
in lace and lipstick and pure, easy lack:
what do you have, when your hands are empty?
who do you love, when you're alone?
oh girl, you've let them leave you up so high
and built no ladder for your feet.
maybe you thought that woman would help free you—
woman with her pride, with her sensbility,
with the weight of stored-up sin.
woman cannot even hear you cry,
she is busy roaring her fury, didn't you know?
you've missed the train, lost the ferry,
foundered on the sidewalk.
no, girl. it's up to you to learn the rules
and walk the ropes, to make the hands that placed you
where you are today (high, shivering, cold)
reach for you again, and bring you down.
there are no eyes
that cannot be dazzled, no ears
that can't be charmed. if they built you, sweet one,
then surely they will tear you down as well.

where once i knew your words would shine,
now only silence speaks:
the voice that breaks won't be denied
though swallowed in my sleep.
and nothing you can say today
will suit my needs tomorrow,
though lies and praise are quick to say
that i leave to my sorrow.
in love the pauses aren't this long,
in love poems are easy;
with you the scene plays out all wrong,
the words are limpid, breezy.
my next i think will be a love
all gilded in the stars,
a love that holds the branch and dove
above the heart's base wars.
the script is more important now
than what you might have said,
and i care little for your vow
and more for what's ahead.

dreams come a little dearer, these days.
the cost a little higher to attain,
even the cost of the dreaming
strains the repetition of the daily.
do i dream still of the possibilities,
or merely of what is imminent?
the restriction of dreams to the present
means all the dreams become reality,
keeps the mind in the moment:
your betrayals are expected,
the way you're late or absent
becomes a statement in itself.
it isn't as though i love you, or even
dreamed of your body or words,
you are no lover's feast.
the price of dreaming means that
you are an acceptance or
the manifestation of my needs.

i built this wall.
i have named each brick,
let it symbolize a burden
in hopes the weight might lift.
i built this wall,
a sanctuary of security:
here, i am free again
to hope and dream and breathe.
i built this wall
to walk along, to touch the bricks
and feel the grain
of self-regrets for mortar.
i built this wall,
and intimately i know it:
where it is sound and
where it might wear a bit with age.
i built this wall,
and only i know the places
where a single moment of sensuality
might bring the whole thing down.

in a search for what is beautiful,
i am wandering down a path
lined by oaks, by songbirds, by sunshine.
with my hands i write a duet
of lovely words and loving warmth,
in a search for what is beautiful
i can smell the pansies
growing at the edge of the road:
i think of you, of what you've been through,
my wounded soldier, beat of my heart.
their little red bud heads nodding
up in the summer glow,
agreeing, you have been braver than brave.
in a search for what is beautiful
i hold the sheet music,
the tender pages seeking your voice
as my complement, a duet for the both of us
to sing in a summer forest
while watching birds circle lazy in the sky.
even my two feet beating out their rhythm
on this brown dirt path
make their way towards you musically,
thoughtfully, sweetly.
in a search for what is beautiful
there is the scenery, and increasingly, you.