the body is a factory, capable of producing
coal and diamonds and pearls alike,
all encased in flesh and guts.

the liver grinds out copper,
the stomach mercury, the kidneys emeralds:
jewels cavort in the bloodstream.

the body entertains itself,
but also defends and supports itself
and the tender skin it is veiled in.

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
skeleton crumbles at your slightest pressure,
there will still be resistance.

if older means wiser,
it means mostly that i have learned who i am
and what i can give, the promise
i can actually make to you:
the promise of myself, as i am, whole and wholly.
i can make you a promise of heat and desire,
the way my body aches for you,
the fierce beat of my heart
even on cold nights. i can make you a promise
of strength, and continuity, and fluidity:
where maybe i have lost some resilience,
i have replaced it with iron
and concrete, i am stronger even than stress.
i can promise future:
that the family we make will be beautiful,
and lyrically complicated,
that you will never have an empty house,
that when you are old i will be old with you.
so when i come with empty hands
and stretch for your mouth
and your dark eyes and your solid shoulders,
know that i do not come barren.
i come laden with promise, with proof, with love.

restless and reckless,
fettered and feckless,
desire, overcome, holds no more joy.
retire it, then, prematurely:
keep the flame alive by starving it,
keep the hunger fresh by taunting it.
you are a feast of dreaming,
a host for fantasy and creation.

like summer nights on porch swings,
like the clink of ice cubes in a glass,
like the fire of the sun as it sets,
i reminisce, i miss, i crave you.
like a cold wind that pushed us close,
like eddies of snowflakes in our wake,
like the mist of your breath rising,
i can still taste, feel, sense you.
like morning sun peeking over the sill,
like dim grey dawn and its chill,
like waking rested and close to your weight,
i will chase, and seek, and find you.
like the hours of one deep dark night,
like the plenty we find between dusk and dawn,
like the time to touch or kiss or play,
i will keep, love, adore you.

words are inadequate
for heartbreak, for loss; they offer
some measly approximation of hope or healing,
the verbal reaching-out of helpless hands.
words are inadequate for
the weight of blood as it shoves through veins,
for the heaviness of the heart as it beats
over and over, burdened with knowledge,
desperate for relief.
in heartbreak perhaps the heart itself
is our best reminder:
that life remains, that existence persists
and will not stop for something as paltry as
emotion, or sentiment.
boiled down to physicality, mammalian and insane,
our bodies will still force themselves to breathe
and digest and sleep and wake
no matter the morning we wake to.
the heart will beat,
whether full or empty, burdened or clear,
aching or brimming with peace.
the heart will beat when there are no words left,
when there is only silence
and the sound of the pulse.

already, without you, i am a long dark highway--
a journey, taken alone, at great risk--
a pair of bright lights, climbing and falling among the mountains.
already, without you, i am a sunset
and the path of the sun through the sky and color spectrum,
pale in the morning, full yellow at noon,
cast in rust and purple in dusk.
already, without you, my heart pushes poisoned blood:
poisoned with slowness, oxygen
where it shouldn't be, squeezing through capillaries.
i am one great purple bruise,
a mountaintop straining towards the sun
as it sets in the valley, a long quiet evening of racing
towards home, or peace.
already, i define myself as being without you:
already, i yearn.

to you i could say anything:
i ache, i hurt, i need.
the self-admission takes much more strength.
dear spine, dear stomach,
dear heart that pumps my iron blood:
i need, i need, i need.
i need security, and a chance to catch my breath;
comfort, allowance, plenitude, peace.
whether or not you can save me
or provide any of these things
is up to you:
but at least i have asked.
(self-admission: it is not necessary for me
to do everything on my own,
and my heart won't break for allowing help.)

my soul yearns to write something beautiful,
fingers itching for imagery and tongue
stretching for the honeyed taste of lovely words,
sweetened vocabulary, sugared intentions.
but i am only hopes and dreams right now,
lacking substance, whipped beyond
recognition and starved and flayed and burned:
in my skin the carbon laid footprints,
in my heart the fire still burns.
it is much easier to slather butter, cream, cocoa
over everything and imagine that
the wounds are not lurking behind that layer.

my words could force the very being of you
out of reality: the strength
and the animation of my dreaming could shove
the factuality of you into nothingness:
in wishing, in creating, in hoping,
the you that i imagine is stronger even
than the you that actually is.
i could corner you
into non-existence, replace each day
and each memory of you with aspiration:
since what i have created
can only be conquered by a better actuality,
i pray you are who you say you are,
that you love with the love you say you have.
when i write you,
you are flawless, and flawlessly intentioned.
who you are, and what you mean,
is a decision for me to make.

in the brave glow of a streetlamp in a deep
cold midwestern winter-- the stars shone, and so did i--
snow falling into the orbit of our circle of light,
your hand braided through mine.
i remember you, here, just like this:
warm and solid, admiring, unmoving,
an anchor of appreciation and affection.
our faces cold from the winter wind, my hair
whipped into untameable shapes, bright eyes,
and your lips were cold on mine.
i remember you, here, just like this.

because when we are young, we ought to be—
and when we are old, we have made ourselves that way—
but when we are stuck, barefoot, educated, miserly,
somewhere halfway in between the ages?
what ought we be now? and how shall we make ourselves?

in this city of white limestone and white marble

and white limousines and white crosswalks and white men,

there is an abundance of color:

a laughingstock of tastes, and riches, and glitter.

my babylon of sexuality, tower of languages,

opulent urbanity bedecked in lies and filth and poverty,

and a street for every ethnicity

and a block for every nationality.

my sodom, my zoar, my destination and my journey,

this city of monuments to old dead men

and young dead men and, occasionally, to women;

this city of remembering history,

of commemorating naturalism and politicism,

this city will not remember me, when i'm gone.

gregarious urbanity reaches grubby hands

to my idle hands, the playground of my mind,

offering encouragement, overdose,

an allowance is made for me:

a place to house my fears and foes and fate,

a place to love hard, a place to die young.

the ability to pay the bills is such a blessing. i groan and drag my feet doing it, but how much worse would it be if i couldn't? i forget, amid the ceaseless desire for more and better and deeper, to be thankful for how far i have already come.

hagiography

i write across a long distance.
i hope the words carry.
it's colder, here, than i thought it would be;
there are fewer stars, longer nights.
the journey was long.
i hope you're well,  i hope you don't worry.
i hope your bed is warm at night,
i hope your heart is full.
it's the immediacy, here,
that strikes me hardest;
the ability of danger or hate or lust
to take me by the throat
midafternoon on a thursday.
the tangibility of large thoughts, here;
it is possible to touch racism,
taste sexism, smell intolerance
even after a long, grey thunderstorm.
i hope your days are easy;
i hope your work is fulfilling, i hope
your body never ails.
it's colder, here, than i thought it would be;
but i no longer seek the heat.

in sadness, anger, guilt, shame, disgust, or disease, we reach for something bigger than ourselves in hopes of gaining reason or perspective. always, we have a choice. we can choose to let negativity fester, to let sarcasm seep in around the edges of a growing belief in helplessness or futility, to let the fear of sadness or anger or guilt overpower any other drive, and let that force us into the lapse of judgment and humanity that is selfish self-preservation. or we can choose unshakable faith, unquenchable passion, undrownable hope, impenetrable desire for everything that is good and beautiful and whole. when we feel ourselves being overcome, when we are drowning in circumstance and negation, remember: the future is always a choice, and we can choose love.

the hardest part of ending a relationship isn't letting go:
it's moving forward alone.
instinctively then, i seek companionship, but who i am now--
how i think, how i talk, how i act, how i believe--
is entirely incompatible with dependence, or reliance,
or faithlessness.
i am full of myself, a complete and capable person,
whole and wholly sure that the work i am doing is necessary.
self-work, community work, world work.
loving and being loved by someone is
at once the greatest and the least task imaginable.
it's as well i'm with you, now, who needs so little,
just acquiescence and quiet and beauty.
these i have to spare;
it is effort, it is critical thinking, it is engagement and
drive and passion that i am running short of.
for you i create the illusion of control,
the illusion of youth, the illusion of being
continually in need of rescue;
when you eat these visions, digest these lies,
i am able to maintain my own control of who i am in your eyes.
of course you fell in love.
i'm good at what i do.

the heart unsure, shaky in its rhythms,
keens softly for the reason it used to beat.
muscles alternate between hot, manic spasms
and extreme lethargy, the value of disuse.
the lips grow dry; the eyes grow dull;
on shivering tendons i pivot towards the past.
retrospection is a vise, a gleaming tomb
that seeks and captures and demands:
an explanation is wanted, here,
for the choices i have made.
in my broken body, in my cringing mind,
the words cannot be formed! the thoughts
will not be marshaled, but gallop
in wild herds through the desert of my mouth.
without guidance, without impetus,
the disease progresses past reason.

perched at the kitchen table,
a solid front of caring, gargoyle for
distemper and immediacy,
she is direct and condescension drips.
"tell me, are you just getting by?"
the smirk is well-hidden, covered
in concern and caresses.
"don't you think you could be doing better?
don't you think you should be, could be--"
all the things that i am not:
an avalanche of agrarian simplicity;
sentences which slam into the sky
and spread neurotic, nuclear disease;
a narrative, simplistic, vilified
and thorough in follow-through,
standing on streetcorners holding babies;
the silhouette of femininity
pressed for time, pressed for tension,
pressed against brick walls outside clubs
by men with sweat and oil and scent;
a tide of oceanic schism,
wrenching waves apart for salt and glory.
"don't you think you could be doing better?
don't you think you could be more?"
maybe i will consider being more,
creating canyons greater than myself.

exhaustion trickles like a fountain
up over the shoulders, down in rivulets
across the chest and stomach,
wrapping knees and feet in cold coils.
sleep would be a blessing, a gift,
the resolution of a hard-won path;
but it would also be a lowering of defenses,
an offering of blithe unconsciousness,
and that cannot be borne.

in my imagination you are;
in my heart, you are not.
questions are a shield,
insecurity the sword and i
am an efficient killer.

i grow an ever-longer list
of your suspense and connotation:
weather, rhythm, sex,
the moon and a dozen things
which whine, softly, your name.

desire for ballast
works well until fulfillment,
when the strings are cut,
and the journeyman must go:
wanderer, minstrel, raider.

kneeling in the water,
lapped at by a thousand fish
unseen by two thousand blind eyes,
i view you better in discomfort
and the clarity of predation.

the brain is a stupid sparrow,
hopping blindly from branch to sidewalk
in search of molded crumbs.
flighty, nervous, breakable,
the little yellow beak probes each crevice
for nuggets of filth,
pulls strands from fetid shores,
builds a house from brittle sticks.
the nests as light as the bones
(hollow and fragile),
bare protection from predatory weather
or the hawks who glide unnoticed
till all at once the synapse fires.
by the time the swooping, fearful shadow
has been realized, it's too late,
and the brain meanders into another metaphor.

no one has looked at me all day.
i feel pale, false,
transparency sinking in around the edges.
am i real? how should i know?
who can i ask?
maybe i am more like a star,
viewed from far, far afield,
who could say whether my light still exists
or was extinguished eons ago
and it is just now reaching your eyes?
maybe i am more like a mirror,
no substance to myself
but a silver backing,
the ability to reflect you back to yourself,
to show you as the world sees you
instead of showing you myself.
no one has looked at me all day.
the sky has been reflecting the oceans;
the oceans have been moved by tides.
i feel fake, calcified,
a fissure in the earth waiting to be widened.

i have been responsible for my own smiles
for years, how should i
pass off that burden to you now?
no matter the intention, no matter the ability,
self-ownership and self-love
are learned at a high cost, cannot be unlearned.
what you offer
is a boon to a struggling spirit,
a blessing to someone willing to give up or give in.
but me, i replaced my spine with iron years ago,
blood for magma, skin for shell,
and there is nothing i can give up now
that would not wreck the whole body of me.

unhappiness so virile it becomes explosive,
a tangible substance clinging to hands and lips
and wiping its greasy presence onto everything i touch.
sadness isn't a cloud above my head,
anger isn't a chemical in my bloodstream;
these things are more divisive, more intrinsic than that,
more internal than external, genetically determined:
sadness in the color of my skin,
a predilection for anger as a disease.
it is only this day's scenario that presses itself
vehemently against my tongue,
predetermining diction, timbre, and tone.

hope, soldered at last to fact,
dissolves indistinguishably.
a dribble down the side of
an ice-cold can in sunshine.
when finally, dissolute and disarmed,
possibility rescues hope--
the bindings to fact must be broken--
only then can hope seem
mature, explicable, reasoned.

coffee for the morning, a cigarette in the afternoon,
wine in the evening and you at night.
love is just another drug we take to feel full.
as with all the others, my need for you
is never quite sated, the desires and wants and lusts
never pause quite long enough for contentment.
my chemical need for you is real,
and maybe strident enough to be confused with love.

i know what you wanna hear.
i know the voice you want it said in--
quiet, needy, acquiescent,
dark with gravel and lust.
i know what words you want,
words that sound like secrets
or admission,
words that let you climb in
and curl up inside my skin.
i know what body language you want,
hips forward, eyes lowered,
bite your lip for conviction's sake.
i know what you wanna hear,
how can you trust me to say it?
you want your girl practiced,
trained, experienced,
but innocent, honest, truthful.
you want your girl tamed?
i tell that lie too.

this whole time my heart
could've been beating in time with the music,
what an idiot i am for not having known.
could have been breathing
with the bass line, could have let
my pulse fade into the drum beat,
could have let the music constrict and contract
all of these muscles for me.
if i had been simple enough, thoughtless enough,
blissfully unaware enough to have accomplished that--
if i had been empty enough--
what a blessing it might have been.
take me back, let me stand beside the speaker,
let me embrace the physicality of the noise
as a body in and of itself.

You are a pinprick, a dust trail,

A mote of heading off for home,

The singularity of brightness in a cold sky

When there is only a single watcher

Within many thousands of lightyears.

You are the decision, the choice,

The process by which all dreams are dreamt

To pick this moment on this night

And this quadrant of the sky

(to know that there is only one watcher)

To be assured that the message

Is not lost, is not stolen, is not overlooked.

You are a pinprick of feeding the hungry,

A rejoinder to the sliding eyes which

Fail entirely to see, or the scrutiny

When the others pause to look:

A single spot of spirituality, crux of charity,

And in your leavings a flash of gold

Marks the moment of demise.

thank you for letting me

leave something of myself in your arms,

for letting me kill something off,

the softest sort of infanticide.

for your granite strength,

for your obsidian reflection that allowed me

the opportunity to stare back at myself:

a quiet kind of suicide,

a superficial display of sadness.

the sadness that I am, that is real,

the authentic despairs which

travel inside my blood and bones

like little red zeppelins, fueled and fast,

that sort of sadness is too huge

to bear alone; so thank you.

for letting me shore up under your shadow,

for the chance to catch my shallow breath.

in amongst the reeds and things,
crouched like a feral cat,
with muddy calves and ankles:
this is how i learned you.
this is how i met you.
mosquito bites on knobby elbows,
big-eyed and foul-mouthed
and determined to fly rather than fight.
in a summer you are a dream,
a wildchild hypnosis,
something foreign and familiar
suckling on field flowers and daydreams.
grown now, dressed up,
hemmed into collars and wool,
you are startlingly beautiful.
in a summer you are a hope,
but these days you are closer to malaise.

when you and i stop communicating,

when words fail us and breath leaves us,

when you and i can touch

but cannot talk--

that's when the world will end.

it's not volcanic, or oceanic, or tectonic,

like all the movies would have us believe;

ascension won't wait

for a natural finale.

when you and i are pressed together,

ego to ego, lips to teeth,

and no breath is exchanged--

that's when the world will end.

Hope seems such a ridiculous thing,
flighty and immature and slavering for brainspace,
for attention when there is none to give;
I am for action, progression,
fire and brimstone, visionary vinegary ire,
but no place for the delicate delusion of hope.
Why hope when you can be a raisin on the sidewalk?
Why hope when you can get hung for Haymarket, why hope
when you can be burdened by firehoses in Selma?
I never was nor will be
one of Luther's lists, to be hung on a doorway,
to be debated and bestir a population.
My way is flanked by iron doors, "all hope abandon"!
Why hope when there is already
enough abandonment of logic, enough Lycean deception,
to destroy what little man hath already wrought?

soft touch to warm skin,
parted lips and curling toes.
where tomorrow takes us, then--
who could say? but tonight,
for tonight... let us make wishes.
fingers clutch and breaths will catch,
heat follows where partner goes.
light touch to quaking skin,
delicious tension, murky lust.
where tonight can take us, then--
we can choose, and tonight,
let us make a wish we can keep.

in a moment of insane honesty,
the public admission of hurt--
waiting for a reaction,
is it acceptable that i am not perfect?--
self-hate sets in soon,
misinterpretation abounds.

when the world ends,

we will all be strange and young.

love, stored up like last year's fireworks,

will then exist only

in a cool, dry, cement environment.

clinical, sterile, precise,

i will tell you words so that you will hear them;

i will touch you so that you will feel me.

when the world ends

there will be sound, there will be smell,

and we will all taste the fury

of fire that spreads on blistering winds.

i will let you believe that i need you back;

i will engage you in codependence.

when the world ends

you will clutch to me, scared simple,

and i will be climbing clifftops,

seeking the thunderhead on the heath:

i will be catapulting off lightning strikes,

without so much as a hem

to cling to.

near to speaking--
perched on the edge of (what is probably
destruction, what could be redemption, what is definitely
discomfort) cogent sentences--
words like a cliff to jump off of,
thoughts like a quarry to delve into--
near to speaking, my heart in its jumble of wants
stops dead, shivering, stalling.

my equilibrium is weighted,
swayed to the side of emotions and desires
that are multifaceted at best,
spiritual starvation at worst.
oh half of me begs the question, wants to be
your helpmeet, your servant, your drawer of wellwater,
your woman in a secret pool who dips
one long limb at a time,
whose skin is sacred and whose words are psalmic.
half of me roils, raging, pulsating,
lurking and seeking that opportunity to pillage;
your trusting heart, your concluded mind
will be barren once i am through.
how could you think i would be less?
why should you imagine i could be more?

it would be a mistake for you
to think that you know me, now.

when pleading won't work,
turn the dial up, let the fire burn.
acidic affections, roiling
like bile in an empty stomach,
are riptides inside my ego.
am i insufficient?
do i not find completeness in myself?
why does the decision to love
become so convoluted once witnessed?

Another sleepless night, just you and I, empty heart.
Another dark sky outside white walls,
another yearning, for someone, for scent, for sex.
This place, where sound and affection are absent,
is notable mostly for its efficient wearing-down
of body, soul, mind, heart.
Who can stay healthy while drunk on tepid water?
Who can stay clean in a polluted swamp?
You are a marshland, my dear,
abundant and sticky with evolutionary sweat.
If I am to cross these swampy streets,
I'll need your hand, your path, your light to follow.

oh i crave the mountains now,
their deep craggy valleys,
the steep inclines, the tree line, pines.
clinging fog, sticky and multiplying,
folding the mountaintops into the sky,
sucking in sightlines
and emitting that sweet, damp smell.
have you ever danced in a cloud?
have you ever breathed pure oxygen?
oh i crave height, distance,
echoing miles and geographic might.
flex for me now, sweet Appalachia,
open your dark coal heart,
and let me find my way home.

till there is evidence on my skin--
teeth marks on my neck,
bruises on my chest,
aches in my joints,
chapped lips--
till there is visual proof, i cannot accept
that you have been here,
that you have agreed to stay awhile.
till your body is imprinted on mine,
till i have tasted iron and chlorine and carbon,
till my skin has so tangible a memory
that there can be no danger of forgetting--
don't leave
don't leave
don't leave

marrow, sick and pink,
sneaks out from my fingertips,
wriggling like worms escaping from puddles.
how could i keep it in,
where it no longer belongs?
the heart, thumping oddly and browning quickly,
cannot exist outside the body for long:
but mine, poor slavish thing,
lies there, prone on the countertop,
for days and weeks and months
watching, waiting, bored.
how should i have kept it at bay?
i turn my whole body loose,
since each organ and each cell and each synapse
were too restless inside me;
there was no peace, there could be no rest
while the blood boiled and
the kidneys pulsed and
the stomach churned and lungs inhaled.
so emptied now i am finally stilled,
quiet and able to sleep.

thesis

in questioning whether or not
the body is a tool
(a service provided for short-term use,
a vehicle rented for the afternoon)
we are forced also
to question whether or not our usage is correct.
(can the hands do this?
can the mouth?)
in deciding, ultimately, that
what we should care about is physical damage
(disease, stagnation, atrophy)
we decide too that
the endeavors of the mind, of the heart,
of the soul, are less important, less integral to self.
let me be clear:
if it makes my skin tingle, i will do it.
if it makes my heart skip, i will do it.
if it makes my voice sing, i will do it.
because whatever it is
that makes me laugh, cry, ache, moan,
shiver, dance, vibrate, curse, emote, breathe,
it is worth losing the esteem
of some random external moralist
to have done it.

even in our secrets,
we lie: even in the statements we make
to ourselves, condemnations, promises, assurances,
in our innermost monologues
we must lie.
(if i said to you all of the millions of words
that die, now, in my heart or my mouth
unspoken:
they may also die unassured,
unpromised, uncondemned, unburdened
by the weight which hearing them
necessarily provides.)

i found a path, the last moonlit night, and wandered, and
thought maybe if i held that course--
if i held, stem and stern, onto the steering wheel--
i could chart that smooth, paved track. but you laughed at me and
said i could never be anything i am not.
it doesn't sting any more.
often the harshest words are the truest, and our trust is
enough to make me true to you.
it means less than it should; some nights, though, i
would move heaven, shift mountains, say anything,
be pretty or quiet or tame if only my dreams would come
true.

a bedroom table covered in
makeup and bits of jewelry, hoop earrings,
just the wrong shade of pink lipstick.
shoes that don't quite fit,
an awkward walk as a result;
hair she has actively had to stop twirling,
a voice that ends in question marks?
fingernails that alternate
between bright colors and bitten off,
ink-stained sheets from midnight poetry.
when will you realize, precious, precocious girl,
that men loving you
is a happy side effect of you loving yourself?

how many of our habits are our own? before we begin to bite our nails or reapply lipstick or clear our throats before we speak, have we watched someone else perform these things habitually? do we select our favorite things (foods, vacation spots, sex positions even) because someone we admire told us about how wonderful that thing was? how did you learn to like dark, heavy coffee? why have you chosen to wear neutrals instead of colors? where did you learn to smoke a cigarette after sex, why that brand, why do you inhale like that?

alone, perhaps, boiled down into selfness by expansive periods of loneliness, we are closer to becoming individuals; but even then, we will be so afflicted by memories (of faces, of habits, of favorite things) that we will still enact and embrace others' desires and actions.

liesl

do you think there are places in the world
that are still perfect?
where maybe the trees are very old,
or the species are very new,
and the weather is always what it should be?
i think sometimes that
every beach in the world has been polluted,
you know?
that every jungle is half-corroded
with our desires for coconuts and diamonds.
i just want one perfect place
left for us, where
we could take a vacation, you know?
go someplace quiet, out-of-the-way, isolated,
maybe there's a beach but
definitely a porch or a balcony or a widow's walk
where we can curl up and be lonely.
do places like that still exist?

the sincerity of natural violence:
honesty in danger, the visual rhetoric
of the stormclouds, the wind opaque with debris,
trees bent backwards and rain
gusting like ocean tides, atlantic crashers
pouring over the sides of our window frames.
all the different colors that can be incorporated!
green sky, black clouds, white rain,
and the red and yellow leaves ripped off trees
to whirl in the winds, frothy,
and cheer on the storm.
in witnessing, face and hands iced to glass,
i am reluctant to stay inside or away from windows;
i hesitate to avoid, to protect, to not see.
without the record of violence in action,
who will believe the damage?

living alone in a hurricane

my neighbor pacing upstairs--
rhythmic creaking-- probably, as i am,
walking between the bedroom
and the kitchen and the front door and the windows
checking for something else to check.
i should have taken a 'before' picture.
maybe in the inches and feet of rain we are predicted
to get-- or the miles and miles
of wind we expect to be buffeted with--
my car will wash away; my windows will burst
in the low pressure system
(i am high enough up, my whole building
swaying in the oceanic winds).
the cats are nervous. they cry at my feet,
begging for something, i'm not sure what to give them.
(who will find me if i--
no, of course i don't have those thoughts,
no one has those thoughts)

changeable and strange,
full and vibrant and evolving,
choked with action and reaction--
all things love, all things go!
if tomorrow i were gone,
would you miss me or the possibility
of future love and sex?
oh but tonight, tonight let's dance slow
and climb mountains, forge rivers:
changeable and strange,
wild and stoked with inertia,
let me wind myself up in you
and find the will to let go.

how much ice does it take
to make your bones freeze,
how much steam
till your blood will boil?
how many insults till you're worthless,
how many blows until you're numb?
how many stories
do you have to tell
of pain, of sorrow, of slight,
of hatred or ignorance or inequity
till you are transparent, withered, ineffectual?

how many until you are mad?

exactly how many quotations do you need
to accept that he believes what he says?
how much publicity till you understand
that he will practice what he preaches?
how many more moments
until you are done?

your words crawl like tiny fingertips
up the length of my skin:
whispers, promises, affectionate, disconsolate.
your heat, your need, your desire
pricks my skin, moves past my knees,
searching, seeking, finding.
in tabulating your verbal kisses and motions,
i find emotion, attachment, intensity.
you are a long list of actions and adjectives.

at night your breath fell peaceably
and you agreed to walk with me
in dew-dropped wheat, and far afield
i lost your name in the flaxen sea.
miles and miles from here i'll seek
to find the pulse your heart should beat.

at dawn your eyes were pricked with light
and you agreed to morning flight
across the lake, where in the sun
i couldn't see you in skies so bright.
miles and miles from here i'll look
to find the tide your wanderings took.

at noon your skin was dry and grey
and you agreed to run away
to seek shade where secrets are safe;
i forgot what burdens weigh.
miles and miles from here i'll quest
to find the place where you can rest.

at dusk your smile slowly grew
and you agreed to show me through
the darkened paths you wander where
i always guessed but never knew.
miles and miles from here i'll search
to find the whispers where they perch.

because maybe there is no weakness in saying—
"please, let me be weak—"
maybe there is a lessening of sorrow in the admittance,
"please, i am sad..."
we build communities for support, for mutuality,
for help in times of trouble but then—
cannot admit to trouble?
please, i am harried, i am worn, i am tired:
i come to you now lacking value
and proving worth.

lethargy, beautiful and pale,
descends on the body;
softer than moonlight, with the calm hurry of sex
between partners who know each other well.
each muscle relaxes as melatonin circulates:
happy, calm, chemical trust
floats through the bloodstream like honey.
awareness of what the body is,
each shape and line and each perfect flaw,
weights the limestone limbs.
what it is to be wanted, what it is to be sought:
peace of knowing, eventually,
release will come.

silas climbs the mountain,

finds his sickle at the top.

judas clings to lonely hills

and sings among the rocks.

ruth is stuck in tired fields

and groans for ample grain, while

mary preens her herds and fields

and cherishes the rain.

paul gets lost on foreign trails

and harasses passers-by.

jonas loses all he loves

and finds peace in the brine.

hagar must obey the law

although the law is wrong.

sarah cleaves her bleeding heart

to hagar's empty song.

jerusalem must have been full

of preachers preaching trust;

bethlehem would crack the glass

and shatter in the dust.

i was supposed to have been counting minutes,
all that time,
i suppose.
i should have been soaking in sunshine,
hurrying for the fullness of love.
and while, perhaps sentient, perhaps subconsciously,
i etched bits and pieces into my body
and my skin, the cells
do insist upon evolution:
i cannot force my body to be stagnant, to be still.
how lucky, how lovely, how lithe:
memories that burnish themselves
in the depths of time,
that rise from the brine of years
all the more golden for their age.

doubt, luscious in lascivious intentions,
slides along the roof of your mouth:
what is it to tease,
how is it that we find ourselves here?
unctuous uncertainty blended with quicksand,
bright silver fear and backlit intentions:
everywhere your gaze is,
there my secrets preen themselves:
where your tongue seeks, my terror
gathers like honeyed wax to the wick.
sexuality built in shadows
flowers in the twilight, shrinks from dawn;
the scaffolding erected, juliet's balcony
is not so removed as once it was.

flames candles warmth, outside wind night sky temperature:
windows, walls, doorway. shadows.

flickering lighting: seeking, finding, enjoying.
avoiding, enticing, pushing, pulling.

in the miasma of derogatory or predatory voices, the one that reaches out and makes you laugh is the one to cling to.

in the inconclusive puzzle of my future you are the only piece i am sure i have collected correctly.

i want a man like the skyline,

peaks and smooth edges and a city of glass,

a man dark like urban nighttime

whose skin smells like condensation and sex.

i want a man who breathes air,

who drinks water and wine and dark coffee,

a limestone, granite man:

a man eroded like a canyon

who echoes from his lips to fingertips

and etches himself into the striations of my skin.

for such a man i could be a river,

my whole self an unending stream,

affectionately curling up in valleys and ponds

and carving my lines at the bottom of his soul.

to allow you, at last,
to be my teacher and mentor
must be some kind of defeat, or else
why do i fight against it so hard?
to finally accept
your words as guidance,
your actions as chastisement,
your emotions as validation:
because if i maintain
that you are none of these things,
then i am still a void of avoidance
and keeping myself whole
and pure for the next round.

in all the magnanimous extrapolation
of street art and repurposing
there has never been a way
to make art out of cigarette butts

i can't tell any more if it is
the control of carcinogens or oxygen
that makes me feel so
undeniably
sad

fishing it out of the box, fingers less sure
than they might otherwise be,
the lighter takes several tries to flame.
the first drag, hard and long,
so you can feel your lungs burn,
so the distemperance can dissipate.
the cawing, crowing success
of brown crawling inside your veins:
smelling of age and seashores,
dark like timber and resin.
midway through the taste is less forest
and more smoke, old carbon,
burning and elemental and acrid;
as the fire creeps toward the filter,
cancer seems more a likelihood
than death by lack ever seemed.
even still, the need is basic and bloodlust,
associated with sidewalks and summer
or windowsills and snow or
driving, walking, drinking, fucking.
the illness floats, an oily residue,
on the surface of my tongue.

tears are such useless catharsis,
the body's physical rejection
of the salty sting of self-abuse.
the primal instinct of need takes over,
crass, hard-boiled, simple;
in these moments i am mammalian
in my desires and attempts,
terrified and waiting for redemption.
there is nothing you can give me
that i have not already refused.

rage is a desire,
scurrying through the marrow of my bones,
flirting with my heartbeat,
the way in earlier years a flush of pleasure
might have traveled through my blood.
oh but these days,
long and tiresome and heavy-hearted,
these days you are a different kind of love:
self-invested, self-seeming.
i give only what is needed,
i lay quietly screaming in the bed at night.
you want, you need. i rage.

I only miss you in the moments when I do not miss myself.

4am premonition

the purple sky is yawning when i wake up alone:
bared teeth, pearly muscles,
defrayed promises and a set jaw of sunrise.
the thought of you, like an egg yolk on the horizon,
unborn and unblemished and unfertilized.
maybe i am fuller without you! maybe
i am a scramble of color and gloss on my own.
the predawn light pollution, sickly and grey,
spreads itself across my sheets like a cancer.
i am sticky with fever, ill with salt.

what there is in the dark:
maybe memories, maybe unleavened love,
rising like yeast in the desert for the deserted.
maybe solitude, maybe peace,
maybe the ability to self-edit is gone:
maybe the penchant for self-hate is stilled.
maybe the body is a miracle!
and the heart, an unwarmed stone,
an unturned wheel, ungreased cog
in the machinist's list of things that are wrong with you.

so many rules, as we grew, hemmed us in:
don't shout, don't run, don't cuss, don't blush, don't flower.
now we must be encouraged,
like so many little birds,
to fly or soar or sing, or other foreign things.
now our mothers prod us angrily out of nests;
now our fathers sigh and take a drag of their cheap cigars,
blue smoke and the smell of tobacco
filling the living room and our memories of home.
now the world takes us in hand,
bends us, or breaks us if we are unlucky;
rends us, tears our hopes and hearts into jigsaw pieces
for the men of our generation
(who were raised loud and brassy, fast, secure)
to puzzle into shapes of their own liking.
now we must be encouraged,
and we are barely able to break open our own shells.

silence, in its wrathful, sedentary postures, envelops all the corners of my home.
curving through space and time, your anger finds me,
fuels me, joins with my guilt and sets the whole heart ablaze.
oh to be simple, oh to be free.
in the years where love was yearning, and affection, and sexual potency,
we were easier then: we are dying, now,
like filmstrips, each frame a treachery, each break an avalanche.
black and white and soundless, the mirrors reflecting hate,
silence here means that i miss you.
silence here means that i lack.

A room full of candlelight, but where are you, and who am I? 
A thousand words to beg you with, a thousand loves to shape you with. 
An error in judgment: this room can get so small.

yellow gold bright warm sunshine butter mustard sand goldenrod daffodil banana lemon

orange neon cheddar poppy sunset copper pumpkin melon fire

red berry love rust blood rose blush lipstick cherry ruby warning brick fever wine communism hot cardinal wrong

purple violet indigo twilight eggplant plum hyacinth amethyst grape lupine lavender royal gay

blue cool ocean aqua navy sad marine sky pool night water sapphire cerulean cyan breeze peace air

green lime forest leaf spring pea jungle teal chartreuse ivy growth grass money emerald

silence like a blanket, catching on the skin,
muffling, smuggling sounds away from ears:
oh your words, your scorn, your purity.
i am putrefaction, disease, disuse, desire!
the stinking retch of passion, night-before, night-after.
if i spoke, would you hear—would you listen—
the task of millenia,
for all the words i wrap myself in.
mummified with verbage, wrapped and rolled
into a cocoon of self-repetition.
an old army blanket, stale wet wool, the pressure
of preserving oxygen in that environment.
too late, i am permeable, i am pregnant,
i am dilated and losing self
and reaching that pale, peaceable purity.

what i am:
solvent, secure,
awash and afloat in self-love
and self-pity.
what can i need, but you?
what can you need, but truth?
a hard bargain to strike,
the chameleonism must be struck dead:
part of the soul,
part of the psyche,
can it be done?
no matter the priority,
there is only phantom love now.

rivers and lakes and oceans,
we have mounted stands against them all
and come up dry as deserts.
dehydrated, tideless, motionless:
i am drowning in dust and disuse.

sylvia

ankle-deep, the waves
just lapping at bare skin:
green translucence
swirling around the knees:
the cool bath leaching
bloodheat from the hips:
float, face-up, as an angel
when the sea is shoulder-high:
salt smell climbing into nose
embedding sinuses
tasting fresh
starting
to burn

grey instead of white, grey instead of black,
greyscale that spreads out over an entire day
and can't be turned back:
the plague of insensibility, tsunami of emotionlessness.
when, content to be empty, filler is forced upon you,
what means can you use to refuse?
you slide so easily into hatred, here;
lapse so easily into disgust.

the pressure slowly building behind the wall:
the dammed up reverence i am supposed to have for purity,
the damning neglect i give to faith.
and when, finally, it all spills over into sin:
relief, acceptance, surrender, sexuality.
the momentary lapse becomes a sedentary lull,
a calming of the synapses and skin,
and i am replete of devotion and lust altogether.

it was only after the abandonment
that i found the will to hate you,
only after your obscene, excessive absence
that i could figure out how to really loathe.
in all the mutations of my desires,
in all the fucked-up coercions and
the great white lie of combative reluctance:
at the end of the day there is only guilt.
silence, and guilt.
with your big stupid paws, soft pink fingerpads,
you managed to retch up some wild fantasy
that i swallowed, that i lapped up
off the floor, so much spilled milk,
sweet and frothy and feeling of fake freshness.
(my own clumsy ideas get lost
in that sway, get sidetracked and disproportionate.)
the story you sell is so golden! and at last,
burnished with years of stress and shame,
the ego breaks.
what am i now, lacking in love and spirit
and full-up of history and doubt, what am i?
some brazen trek through self-hatred,
a dry, pallid mask of last year's face creams:
some coppery pail full up
of chalk and powder and the grindings of teeth.
calcified, fossilized fissures:
a body old while i am young.
what future is there for used-up whiteness?

i watch you, the short curves of your fingers,
the smile that lurks in the corner
of your mouth and is never quite born--
the way you turn a page,
the way your face is lit in the light.
i hear you-- i am listening for you--
the inhalation, the exhalation,
the slowing swell, i swear i can hear
from here the sturdy, firm thump
as well as i could if my ear was against
your spine, if my lips could graze your neck.
and i am imagining the smell--
your smell-- your body, your soft temperature,
baked bread or summer nights or thunderstorms.
my eyes catch on your knuckles,
the pigmentation on your palms like a secret--
closer to the heartstream, brighter, softer--
the hands that i could die inside of,
skin i could swim laps inside of,
the texture of your fingertips and ribs
and your mouth. oh fixation.
the taste of physicality, since the body
cannot lie: iron, chlorine, calcium, steel.
your mouth is a playground where i
hesitate to invade but
am always sore to evacuate.
your body heat has a permanence, a way
of attaching itself to my hands and my lips,
till detachment is a bruising inferno.
observation is my only action
until my heart bursts out of my mouth
in a rage of heat and rhythm and pulsation
and seeking you, finds you:
finds each corner of your body
and the curves of all your words and
each bending offer of a future.
where we crawl in together,
the places we adventure and discover,
are nights like no others: endless,
and star-studded with the cyclical expansion
and collapse of blood vessels.
we are chemicals and reactive, your fingertips
on my neck, my lips on your shoulders,
journeying between constellations of lust.
tonight we make a cocoon of cool sheets
and a warm blanket, blinds drawn and streetlights
pinching them back for gold-patterned walls,
so that tomorrow when we emerge
our discoveries and expansions can be quiet gains
and vouchsafed memories.

soon realizes that her ego
its height and architecture
are borrowed, are the combined efforts
of everyone who has ever been a part
of this new kind of religion.
her will, it can't, it doesn't,
who are you to say it does?
what is light, what is future, what is fear
without a little sugar to rim the glass?
and she says,
i will i will i will,
all like that, one big rush.
elementary, my dear; the dreaming
of the fools as they rush!
the screaming of the tiny, broken bodies
and the slick seeping of their skin.
whose ego is it now, sirrah?
whose feet are creeping now,
a bannister on their own of path-breaking
and trend-making, whose red lips
are you seeking now:
her architecture doesn't bend down to you here, now,
her arches and her columns and her curves
are made of sterner stuff, sturdier stone,
wrapped in quotation,
mired in imitation, the strain
of development and voice.

i thought i caught you wishing--
thought i saw you dreaming there, a bit--
i suppose that somnolescence is almost the same thing.
who is worrying, here?
who is callous enough to imagine that kind of terror?
no no, we are all bright future
and open windows with a fresh summer breeze.
(in winter, when the shutters close, it may not be so easy.
but here, but now, but in this moment:)
i thought i caught you projecting
sex onto objects,
objects into sexualized action,
what is a gesture without a viewer, what could
a symbol mean without contextualization?
i thought i caught you interpreting
but it was a passing whim,
a fleeting thought.

what should the body be but a tool?
an ends to a means, a pausing and grating solution
for a great many problems,
causal relationship to jealousy and rage.
shall i be held back by a negative aspect,
shall i be propelled forward by good enough cleavage?
oh ridiculous. oh sublime.
when kant dreamed of the female form
he meant a mountain, for keirkegaard a perfect ellipse,
and marx a single floating feather.
(all are wrong.) oh ridiculous.
the mary tyler moore of ethics, the lucille
of seeking and finding: it is trial and error
and it is funny! it is the winding story and the german
bildungsroman come alive,
for the modern woman to see her toes
is miracle enough. where grape vines meet the earth
maybe in california, maybe in italy,
somewhere under the sunshine is a table
set with round, purple globes.
they stain when you break them,
they shriek when they bleed.
and the wine that drips between fingers,
coalesces and dries in the webbing,
sticky and sour and dark
(was your skin already brown or did it always glow like that)
oh ridiculous, this obsession with melatonin.
fine, lay it down, pick a bed,
pick someone else's, not your own!
pick an adventure, pick up a book, pick
serotonin and the preciousness of sexual desire.
what should the body be but a tool?
silly, to try to make a narrative out of it.

like
maybe
we used to just be together in a room and alone and that was enough?
like maybe the white of the sheets or the white of the walls or the white of the daylight in the morning could keep us stark enough and make us sane, could keep us clean enough from the outside world.

but there is always family to compete with, always neighbors and friends and coworkers and all with their two cents.
who am i to be ashamed of what my love is? who am i not to be?


oh you beg the question.
oh my slivered cliche.
i would that you were here now to split me open and make me bleed.

so clear, concise, and independent,
the road forward marked and well-lit,
i am a leader with a sharp heel,
striding with a tight step.
oh yes, doubtless, firm and secure
and deciding each day decisively! i
am a dodecahedron of clarity,
a polymer of absolute ease.
with enough time and the current tide
i will sway even myself to this path.

we have erased ourselves,
whittled down years and years and hours and nights and dreams
into what we think is a coherent narrative:
in love, out of love. in bed, out of bed, never love again.
we have taken black ink
and covered up entire weeks, months of history,
faces and words and thoughts and photos,
for the sake of never reliving what was felt so keenly then.
on the other side, now, of healing:
was it worth the loss, to prevent some emotions?
was it worth the deficit of self,
the ousting of soul, to prevent circumspection?
i am not so sure, now; but with our permanent methods
we have only blank pages to look back on.

what is race, in the race to the bottom?
what is gender, when the gentry hates us both?
what is class, if cash is the only currency?
in the search for new descriptors,
there are only old adjectives and definitions of power.
privilege like slime, an ooze on the skin,
visible and reeking and passionless.

i used to write about breaking barriers,
speed of sound, tensity in touch.

so much less, now, than there was before.

with the pulse racing and words pacing,
the mouth moving but the ears not keeping up--
we are a race! and i am winning,
swift like missiles, stamina like mustangs.
whose blood can pump this message loudest:
i am not, i am not, i am not! with
no time for an afterthought,
no hissing hangers-on or latching, leperous letters:
only speed here, see?
how fast can you get here, how fast
can i dissolve

the pregnant syllable,
dissension waiting to burst:
like ruth at the well,
like bethsheba at the pool,
the truth is hauled out of me
drip by drip.
i am no reluctant gossip,
nor blushing bride nor eager mute;
when words are anathema,
a pursed mouth is the only resolve.
like sylvia and the ocean
we will be friends first,
then lovers.

i shall write a poem
and call it "the single story"
and in it there will be only plot
(characters being too messy)
and it will move rapidly
from point a to point b and
employ lots of verbs
and at the end of it
readers will shake their heads
in wonderment, dazed,
and think how silly it has been
all these years
to read emotions,
when there is pure motion to be had.

i am a ladder, built one rung
at a time, and all layers forming
one useful climb.
my fingertips graze windowsills,
brush skyscrapers,
find purchase on steep cliffs.
there is no dream too tall--
no path too steep--
and what is an invitation, without an invitee?

i mustn't
be patient any more,
she said, convincingly unconvinced,
a spider crawling up her spine
and the heart
sneaking back up the sleeve.
mustn't mustn't, naughty!
the idea
that waiting could be clean.
puerile, neurotic, spoiled and splendid,
time and tide and the modern woman
need no transportation
or translucence.
i musn't
just let it meander,
she insists!
i must wrangle it by the horns,
else waive the red flag
of yesterday's dawn.
heavy, overburdened,
a trawler on the horizon:
seaborne, airworthy, earthbound.
mustn't define a sin
till the deed is committed.

reach troubled hands into slow water
sluice through a tumbling stream, ice cold,
fresh from up the valley
till the skin turns pink, turns red,
glows with the unadulterated lust for heat--

a trembling fingerlength closer to fire,
seeking warmth or
adventure or attention,
the great great roaring of the beast
and the coal-chewing appetite of the vision:
just a bit closer, just a bit closer

and think about it later

the attic spawns a clumsy ghost
who rumbles, tumbles, over spokes
and in between the shafts and gears—
he hasn't spoken for several years.
so like the light pouring through the shades,
like sunshine triumphs when they're raised,
he seeks a willing ear to hear:
his jaw cracks open when you're near
and rust pours from his open mouth,
his throat a squeaking, reeking spout.
still words evade his crumbled mind,
synapses shrink from the glowing rinds
that were the words he meant to share,
that form the burden he's meant to bear.
what can't be spoken lies heavier still
on an embodied, spiritual will:
back to the attic, where he'll stay
oiling his hinges for an articulate day.

snapshot of the corner of a kitchen table,
swathed in lace,
and grandmother's china and grandmother's silver
laid neatly and carefully,
and a pear.
(there is a reason why i don't like still life paintings.)
snapshot of the corner of the bed,
clothes and bedding pushed together elsewhere,
dim afternoon dawn
sneaking through blinded windows
and our skin overlaid
like mondrian, like cubism, like portraiture.
sometimes mona lisa shows up
in the corners of your mouth,
sometimes marilyn
as represented by dali
in the heat of the moment:
all red lips, all bright space, all heavy breathing.
we are a gallery all to ourselves,
you and i:
a cornucopia of bright and shining expressions
and the challenge of keeping those images
in the mind,
once the picture has faded.

invest
in the crick between your greedy little fingers
in your old, brittle paw;
invest your age, your wealth, your body,
shove your soul
into the eye of a tarnished brass needle.
where else to find fortune,
where else to cull serendipity?
the only treasures
belong to previous generations;
the only security
was gleaned from overtired fields
by your father's father's father.
what, you don't own a tractor any more?
force your future
to fit the shape of modern discomfort,
mild dialectics, sclerotic finance or
mothballed discipline.

what grace is:
morning sunshine on your face,
the ability to sleep in,
to turn over and find love there.
did i learn to be grateful in these moments?
at least, i have learned to hoard it up:
gather it up in handfuls,
and stuff it under the pillows
for a night that's not as warm,
or a silent midafternoon cry.
the loss of you
is much more peaceful this time;
a simple lack, a quiet burn.
time gathers into a cold, hard lump
at the base of my throat,
a weight to push through for air,
pain for oxygen,
a reminder with each breath
that respiration and rhythm come naturally
with you, in the morning, in the sun.
and tonight, i'll give myself
one glorious heat-soaked moment
to preen in the memory of love:
the gift of waiting, of solar grace.

self portrait

like the running of a major scale,
a voice that glides and gloats,
she sings a verse of david now
and makes the lyrics float.

she's never read the book itself
or understood its words,
but the ears will follow joyfully
once her spells are heard.

and in the book, the man and wife
profess their deep, dark bliss;
they gather years and sow success
though she is blind to this.

she prattles on throughout the song,
a clear and sugared line,
but when she reaches solomon
she's caught up in the brine.

the message must be understood
before the voice may sing;
the singer must be shepherd too
before he may be king.

scene, she says, scene, like motion,
like bright cars on dark nights
or rain on the roadway, scene:
a beautiful dream, an ocean
inside of a seashell inside of your ear,
pace, and great lust.

we are following the traffic
out of the city, stopped,
waiting and watching taillights blink.
her hands are long,
tapered fingers and a sharp, bright manicure,
big gestures and a loud voice.

scene, she says, like progress,
or the way we look back
and smile, scene like the studio
when there's a singer on a saturday night,
and the heels she walks in on,
slow, and so proud.

she draws the night around her neck,
a covering of deep and unbreakable sky,
to keep her skin from sloughing off
and help attain the stellar high.

against her skin the indigos swirl,
the blues and blacks against her hands,
and as a crystal refracts in the light
her cry is a long and aerial span.

where gods will guard with bow on string,
her lips will part and loose a light;
as taurus glides and lepus lurks,
she joins her envy in the bright.

in a new place,
in a new time with new opportunities,
with new doors opening and closing
is it possible to hold onto the past?
and if i do not, what is lost?
in a new place,
all things can be made over:
the body, the bedroom, attachments.
i clean out my social life like a closet:
this friendship is old,
does that make it precious, or worn thin?
in a new place,
it is easier to hold to the modern, urban mantras.
(out with the old, in with the foreign.)
and as the new place becomes
known, becomes old,
there is always the possibility
of another new place:
always the inevitable uncertainty
of having to start again.

on the outside of the glass the world condenses,
the possibilities of refraction coalescing
into browns and yellows and greyscale.
perched on a stack of TIME magazines from 1994,
on a kitchen table with two legs wobbly,
under a window where the blinds
are brittle with age and never opened.

 in the book the pages turn and turn
with page 31 marked with cigarette burns.

 kicked haphazard under the bed,
the tiny legs splayed and bent oddly,
her plastic eyes and plastic mouth
wear the same expression no matter the abuse.
with half her hair gone,
the holes where the thread was wound
show like gaps between stormclouds.

 in the book the words spin and spin
while on page 31 the door is kicked in.

in the corner, slick and silent,
a fat black spider watches the lazy flies.
well-fed, well-rested, and
ready to spin another loop,
the predator cocoons in carnivorous thoughts.
today, across the kitchen cabinets;
tomorrow, beneath the sink. 

in the book the story runs and runs
and on page 31 the speaker's spell is spun.

a hand draped across the edge of the tub,
gracing porcelain with skin
of equal tone and timbre.
the water laps, though the bather is still;
droplets drip, though the steam has spread.
her eyes half-closed, her pulse slows as the water cools.

 in the book the narrator leaps and leaps
while on page 31 the secret will keep.

on the table, a letter, a token,
a gesture with crisp lines and clean edges.
a rejection for a school or a job,
perhaps, or a thirty-day notice
or a summons or receipt.
read once and abandoned,
returning to its original shape.

 in the book the plot whips and winds
and on page 31 the reader divines.

so well established, how useless the chemicals of the brain-- i do not need pleasure or grief, i have no use for anger or lust. all i need is the scent of tobacco on fingertips, the rush of drunken breath behind the curve of my neck. the artificiality is what attracts me, the control and precision of a created high: decision-making, pure and uninhibited. no use even for oxygen in this crowded, close room; you press up on me as i reach for the glass.

self-preservation

what do we forget, and why?
what is captured, held, preserved
and what is dropped like so much useless refuse?
i remember only the strength of your arms,
your long spine and your bare skin—
i cannot recall the fight, though
i know i'll never forget the strength of my hatred.
but what is emotion without
the grounding of experience or memory?
perhaps this is why
it is so easy to forget.

you should know where you come from.
you should know
whose blood is in your veins,
you should know
whose sweat watered your family tree.
you should know your land,
the acreage and the money that paid for it,
and who fought in which wars
and on what side
to earn it.
you should know your mother.
your mother, like you,
experienced yearning as a teenager;
lust in her twenties;
possibilities in her thirties;
aging in her forties;
and the violence of change after maddening change
during all of those years.
your father, like you,
tried his first cigarette,
tried his first beer,
tried losing his virginity to some girl at prom
and failed,
tried being a son and a brother
and a friend and a lover,
tried on all of these roles before you did.
you should know your grandmother,
and her childhood,
and your grandfather and who he was raised by.
you should know where you come from
so you can appreciate
the opportunities provided to you
by those who came before,
so that you can know the actual cost
of your ability to go to school
or marry who you want
or have a job of your choosing
or stay at home or go abroad or live in
all fifty states before you die--
since someone died for your ability to do that,
someone mourned that death,
and someone picked up the pieces and then
moved the entire family forward.
you should know where you come from
so that you can know your own momentum,
so that you can know
the inertia of your body and what
the marrow of your bones is longing for--
which is different from everyone else,
which is yours and
only yours and belonging only to your family tree.
you should know where you come from
because even if you don't know the story,
you will live the narrative
of your family and your blood and your roots,
and your ancestors have left footnotes
to guide you through that reading.

i spoke with authority,
so you gave it to me;
i acted with conviction,
so you convicted me
to leading a charge i can't win.
i spoke in front of the crowd
and you followed;
i outlined a dream
and you dreamed it for me.
i showed you a path
and you walked with me,
even though i don't know where the path ends
or even if it is the right road to walk.
i wrote in a book
all the words that ought to be said:
i penned a tract, a treatise,
an essay on moving and leaving,
and you left with me.
there is all this momentum, now;
all motion and heat and combustion,
and not a single ounce
of substance to fuel it.

Birthday

So plant a tree for me,
When I am gone,
And cut it down while it is young:
Let urbanity crawl around it,
Let the pests and fights surround it.
Else leave it be, shriveled and weak,
To fend for itself.
And from a seed,
An amazing length is grown-
A wonderful height is shown.
The sprout in the soil
Is nothing, a magnet, a centrifuge
Of dirt and heat
Till at once it is something,
A being of age and shade.

Water noises:

I am watching a fish
Who flits from rock to rock
Like a chickadee,
In the crevices finding hiding places
And something to gape at.
The current against
The rounded, pounded rocks
Laughs as the sparrow hops from
Stone to stone,
As the swallow sings his song
Inside the shadows.

Sky noises:

There is, not far above,
A tiny warbler,
Yellow and daring and loud
Whose trek brings him
Down among the reeds and stones.
For a moment he is silent
And singular, a marshall or
Sentinel of the water,
Glaring at the silvery fishes
And silvery moss.
When he sings again,
It is raucous, vibrant,
An interruption of the creek song.

maybe what i'm finding that i hate isn't you, maybe what i'm finding isn't fair but it's real and it's true and it sears
like a desert, like a bone, like the dried out cone where marrow used to beat and bleed and pulse and grow, maybe i am just
seeking something which no longer exists, but that existence--
i will be desperate to prove--
that existence, which maybe was never between you and i, but an internal conversation in a soft voice, in a warm hand, in an early kiss
which you were never a part of. what i am finding is that years later i can be raw, years later i can be aching, and shriveled with rage
and not a single inch wiser for the steps i've taken, and still trying to sustain the internal conversation of what love can be, and that existence--
i have been desperate to prove--
the existence of love, which is not peaceful, but means peace,
which is war, but means hope, and which is old, and tired, and stagnated in the back of a rusted-out pickup truck
but grows fresh in the incandescent spring of our experiences. this was never a conversation that i had to have with you, but merely
had to have, had to learn to live inside of. and my whole body is responsive, is nubile, is peurile, and yet even the marrow i thought had dried up
and turned to dust hears your name
(your empty, worthless name) and cries wolf, cries for protection in the night, cries for the shadows stalking outside my window,
the shadows which are not you and never were you and yet, are yours. in the lamplight, in the twilight, in that dim existence--
i will be desperate to prove--
it's an existence that engorges itself on love, more love, and which can encompass more than one.
even after my ears are deaf they will still keen for the sound of your step at the door.

so much to work for, you and i:
and when the fable is written,
and projected against the sky,
perhaps it will be a new kingdom.
there is an endless source of hope
for when the night won't lift;
our bodies extend, we learn to cope
and weed out memories from the grit.
a night like this, so full of guilt,
steeped in story and pictures of dawn:
at gold, we swirl and race and tilt
towards morning with blunt swords drawn.

VIVE, NO MUERE.
in all the intricacies of life,
built into the interplay of words and bodies
and action and motion and noise,
in the details
of articulation and attention--
that's where i find home.
always a sense of belonging
in every conversation, in every exchange
of touch or thought or trust:
the rights of freedom and speech and
movement and assembly and adoration
are in my footsteps,
follow in the paths i create.
in your words, just pouring like a waterfall
out of your mouth and over your lips
where i could place a hydraulic wheel
to capture your strength--
in your words, i am empowered, i am
all but evangelical
in my effervescence and eager messaging.
so breathe with me, here, in this place,
make the air into energy
and come explore all the possibilities
that our mouths offer each other.
in words, in lightning,
like a tornado whipping through
a clumsy, crippled midwest town--
let us rip, let us writhe in the electricity
drawn from detail, molded from memory
and powered by the past.

what is given is a gift, is
a diagram of independence and
how to be the selfless, seamless
vision of man your mother
thought she had raised you to be.

what is given is a burden,
and weighs hard on sloped shoulders;
you must bear up beneath it,
disciplined like atlas, whose arms
shudder with sobs and sighs.

what is given is a template for risk
and action: you must grow inside
of the lines, or risk losing
something big and bloody, the task
of maturity and possibility.

when the stars come out this night,
they'll show something much greater
than what was there previously:
a man whose stride has evened,
whose pathway is strict and straight.

in her a kind of
feral sexuality blooms,
a predatory flush of cheeks and lips
that catches his eyes,
whenever he glances past her.
a potency so obvious
it becomes unattractive, it becomes
more definition than trait:
as he brushes past her,
he senses patience
and hunger, a prowling faith
in the waiting game.
he knows she will never move,
as long as he stands still;
he knows she will tear him to pieces
as soon as he flinches.

the impetus to start writing again
is slow at first, a creeping sensation
(words in the blood, words in the marrow)
of disarticulation, or silence.
and then a moment, cached in sunshine
and citrus daylight, the window
of words gently opening to the warmth.
(what your presence means:
what your body says to me here
in the twilight as we wind down,
twined together again in fingertips
and emotions and ideals.)

we should by now
have created a much stronger vessel
for the art, the love, the passions, the anxiety,
the emotions and the creativity of the body
and the mind--
the soul is such a weak mold,
the clay from the bottom of the pit,
a lump of molten sand that refuses to become glass.
we should by now
have invented a stronger bowl,
an urn of iron or bronze or quartz,
a valley for the body's belongings and
the mind's wanderings.
the cupped hands of the soul
cannot contain the ache of absolute exhaustion,
crack at the mere mention of rest.

more than the dreaming, i miss the dream:
the physicality of an idea,
once enabled by action, is impossible to deny.
as inevitable as stomach bile
the dream of you retched out of my mouth,
bypassing the heart entirely.
in tasting iron,
i realized that the tip of my tongue
had no words but also no dream,
that what was dredged up
by your anger and your atmosphere
was not the dream
but only the aborted act of dreaming.
so i seek still the dream,
which was lost somewhere along the way:
i am only tinder
for its bright flame,
a brittle branch for kindling.

intensive exploration
of the line between hope and desperation:
when does it become foolish
to want something this badly?
so what if it is an ideal, an impossibility,
implausible at best and
a broken extension of a broken-hearted system:
circulatory, nervous, chronic.
each night another opportunity
to prove myself beneath your hands,
that i am more than a clay
and more than the soil and sea and air are,
a granite foundation, bedrock basalt.
impossibility is too easy
when you range wide as you do;
implausible is necessary, when your feet
find themselves so infrequently at my door.

in a valley, near a lake,
she's sobbing like her heart will break
while in the lake, on a boat,
he's hoarse and feels his cold heart choke.
a sun might rise, arc in the sky,
to light the land that's warm and dry
and break the clouds, lithe and grey,
which threaten to keep peace away.
tears might dry, on the shore,
if she could burn with hope once more
while in the lake, moving tides,
his strength might lift her ember eyes.

the snow spreads out over the dirty ground,
a sparkling carpet of tread marks
waiting for the impression of your feet--
are they following mine, are you coming at all?
i have walked many miles for you
to get to this night, when your tracks are absent
and your voice is silent, and all your body
is gone, your influences lacking.
i suppose the future is lost, if you do not come;
if you do not come, the future will have to be built
again, brick by brick a building new
with different rooms and different intent.
looking back i can see my tracks in the snow:
a white sheet unbroken, except
for two little feet that shuffle forwards
into a future that might be terrifying,
will be terrifying, but glitters in the streetlights.

your love is gone, but there is heat
where once only the past would beat
between my ribs and in my eyes:
a future that both frees and ties.

the natives are all easily come
to a god whose fire breaks the numb:
a native fear is simply razed
to be replaced with nameless praise.

if job was old before his time,
if jonah met fate in the brine,
then i too take the stony walk
and learn to heed my harkening heart.

in the desert, in a barn,
i set up my own rocky cairn.
here lies the lost, the dead, the calm
not seeking or finding gilead's balm.

it's so inept to struggle with the
where-i-should-be, should i be
wanting the courtship and the sex and the bare feet
on cold kitchen floors in the morning,
when i am already yearning for the
sunday morning sunshine,
the depth of understanding that is years of love
and circles of families expanding--
should there be guilt for that,
or merely stress for lack of expansion?
the violence of post-adolescence
in this world, where there are so many passions
and cares and weights that wear:
an endless search for the median between
sugary cereals and varicose veins,
where do you and i
find each other, where do we begin
in the mornings and where do we end up
at night? there should be mourning,
there should be peace, there should be
an ability to let go, there should be.
there is only me, and
growing up turning into growing older,
and decisions that become weighted
but are valued as weightless.