when we live in refrigerators we will dance like magnets

we move.  we move instinctively, like faucets flooding kitchens because it is the right thing to do.  we wear these bodies like houses, we live inside them like masks, and we move.  the turtles are sleeping in the garden, while candles burn on top of their shells and old records play the blues and two people dance as though one of their bodies was the sky and the other the storm sweeping across it.  we are electric.  we always have been.  plug me in, amplify me, broadcast me over your airwaves, turn up the volume.  the sound of my veins is slow harmony bamboo.  my collar bone sounds like the moon whispering.  if you listen too close it sounds like static.  all this excitement has planted a refrigerator in my stomach.  conversation is a ballet.  i am on the edge of my seat.

a drunk valentine

we are made twins by disaster.  after a certain point we all become family.  and then we are in each other's back yards, eating pears the size of your head and sharing opinions on barbeque.  the cities are made of shops where nothing real ever happens.  we mill about, buying, talking on our cell phones, hoping, praying, something might just be different for once, hoping that this isn't it.  but every time i look in someone's eyes, i find it.  it is all right there, and there is no longer any pretending.  you are here.  and i am here.  and i know you feel pain the same way i do, even if it isn't the same pain.  and i know you laugh.  so let's remind ourselves not to forget.  let's set a timer, and if March doesn't become the orchard we thought it would, let's catch a boat to the islands, learn a new language, and promise, that no matter what, this time we are going to live.

politics is a graveyard for words

the oak barrels are turning into fire.  all the guns are piled in the forest.  cars are killing people.  stick figure trees are exploding themselves into houses.  my glasses can't see without me.  the television keeps trying to tell me i shouldn't try anything.  it wants me to think everything is dying and nothing is living.  there are people pretending to be politicians who are great at speaking in half truths, and saying things they don't mean.  but it's okay because i have figured it out.  i am still sitting in the afternoon sun.  i am still laughing at jokes.  i am still figuring out how to love.  and i am getting better at being nice.

a sweetness that aches

the buildings are all bursting outwards.  the trees are swollen with fruit.  the heat is maddening.  the humming birds have gone insane with it.  my body longs for your body with a slow rhythm, moving like the tides.  this is the way it must feel for a flower, pushing itself out from the green with a violence of color, in a swirling moment of pain and passion.  i am aching for you.  why don't you exist?

wine turns tongues into paintbrushes

the pinhole fist of winter screams in the street while night sends bouquets of flowers to stop signs.  if you can read this, please don't forget that your eyes are holy.

the moths that cry dust

i can feel the plants growing beneath my spine.  they need water.  but i am caught on the roof of this house, glued to the senseless beauty of the sky.  my favorite color is twilight.  the only ones who know i am here are the crows, and they aren't telling anybody.  i wonder when i will have the patience to curl myself about this love thing, like i am a vine, growing up a telephone pole, waiting for the snow.

we are all going to die from something

do you stare at the ocean and wonder what it looks like from the other side?

the well

there are orange colored wings pumping like fury against the darkness, and a tiny heart pumping like song against the stillness, and a set of lungs pumping like a bellows against the sun.  because there's an inch of sky above and water and dinosaur bones below and nothing but black air in between.  and its hard to breathe in the belly of the earth.  so take your comforts where you can get them.  this place is beauty wrapped in a skin of fog.  every moment is a battle won.  and freedom is only freedom if you've been caged.  so when the time comes and the music calls, you better fly, because flying might be the only way you have to know you're still breathing.

the trees haven't yet figured out why we get lonely

the trash man sleeps on a bed of burning candles.  he keeps moonlight in his pocket, and when he dreams it sings to him.  his teeth are peach pits.  his collar bone is an aluminum can.  his smile is his halo.  in the middle of the night he listens to the motorcycles whine from beneath the freeway.  and if it is late enough they sound to him like bed sheets, turning beneath a lover's back as she rolls toward him, an ocean of softness, wanting to touch him, even in her sleep.

these rocks can read this water the way i can read a book

don't fall asleep, he says, not yet, not now, wait for the time when the ocean's skeleton will grow soft enough to hold you, only then will the rhythm become something true enough for us to believe in.  pay attention, he says, for the beggars are not the ones who are poor, the green of money only an imitation, but it is hollow, do not be fed with those hands, for they will leave you wanting.  your heart is a canyon, he says, and his fingers are thin like lightning, and he points at the sky and my eyes see enormous blue mixed with the thimbles we used to read about but never saw and really all he is saying is that love is the biggest.  listen, he says, and then he says nothing, and i hear nothing, and i say what, and he says shhh, listen, and i do, and then i hear the insects buzzing in the heat and i hear my shin bones itching, and i hear the grass playing songs on the wind's guitar, and i hear my chest smiling, and i hear the way i used to hear when it was all a game we played on sunny days in boxes like laughing was what we wanted to be when we grew up and dancing was a way of talking and my hand on your shoulder meant yes, okay, yes.  feel your strength, he says, feel it now for the times when you won't because sometimes the buildings turn into trees throwing apples and and sometimes breathing might feel like drowning and sometimes people will want to see you fail.  let no one tell you you can't, he says, when your heart beats it is saying 'it is time' and when it stops it is saying 'time is up' and if it is time now it may never be time again which leaves you with nothing to say to someone else's doubt in you, the ribbons you trail behind you are cut from the mirrors our ghosts will look into to see if they did good and the answer upon looking back can only be "you were there, and you did what was needed, and thinking on it too much now won't make it less true."  always dream, he says, there is not enough glue to hold onto all this sadness and love and being alive is an earthquake trembling on the surface of a tear.  we are only people, he says and this is only a planet sliding through emptiness and hoping a little bit that there might be more, and there are quilts to be sewn, and there are people who have not been touched by gentle hands and there are only four seasons but there is plenty to do in them, there is only soil and growth and 

there are best friends, he says.

i know you hurt, he says, somebody dropped you too hard before you were ready,  and now your bruises have bloomed like strange flowers and you wear them like a shield, but

snow is a miracle he says,

and there is no such thing as can't, he says,

and dont forget about music, he says.

and then he says nothing 

and i say thank you, and he says nothing, but he looks at me and nods, and we stand there because both our bodies know that silence is a way of saying what cannot be said, and then we turn and we walk home slowly because our eyes have finished watching how miraculous the sun can make a moment just by leaving it behind.

the way the dizziness comes in

it starts with nothing, and in the end you have the wreckage of an orchestra, a houseplant, and 13 pitchers of honey twirling at the edge of your vision.  And you have vocal chords that can make sounds even when they're silent.  that's what it starts with: silence.  (you keep a handful of basketball courts on your shin.)  then there's this quiet hum that rises all around you.  (you keep a hornet behind your ear.)  then it all starts to sound like matchbooks making love with fire.  (you keep your scars inside your ribs.)  then all the pianos get angry.  (your throat is a bank vault.)  the sky decides to give up.  (you learned to cry from your backbone.)  the phone keeps telling you people are dying.  (your heart is a book.)  and just when you think you are going to fall down, you stand there, dripping water all over the bathroom tiles and you look at yourself in the mirror (the butterflies are being born inside your wrist) and of all things, you smile.

the wastrel beginnings of love's worshippers

there are vicious streetcars clawing up the hills in the city tonight.  the skyscrapers threaten to get up and walk away.  don't bother trying to get a taxi.  jackets will do nothing against this cold, for it is not a matter of the weather.  anger boils at low heat, disrespect is better chilled, and hatred at room temperature.  it is all visible in the eyes, furtive beneath brows knitted like a sweater.  the best i can do is stow myself away on a ship circling the bay until summer finally unpacks its suitcases inside my veins and i am immune to these frigid winds blowing between strangers.  the key is to use nothing but your soft skin as armor.  those who are utterly vulnerable cannot be hurt.