Tuesday, November 2, 2010

empty jar

tonight these pillowcases are filled with lonely. when i open the front door, i find myself twisting inside the low groan of a city. i am the jealous lover. i am the self righteous prick. i am spurned. let us assume i am alive, and that i will live a life. i will find myself raking leaves some autumns. i will carry trash many times. i will swim in the ocean at least once. i will find myself thrilled breathless at my daughter's first laughter. moments will mold themselves around my form, turn my hands to wrinkles. i will lie awake in the nighttime, walk to the window, stare powerless at the infinite moon. i will drive many cars, sit on many toilets, cry many times. perhaps i will marry. perhaps i will love again. and then, will it still hurt when i think of you? let us assume i will make my way to the place when the people i love will begin dying in greater numbers than i can bear. i will spend more time than i want to in hospitals. i will never see my own casket. when they put me in the ground, i hope they will mean the nice things they say. i hope i will have placed my bookmark in a few hearts. i think death will be a great relief. it will be nice to let my bones come apart, to sit in the soil. so even then, when my dusty belongings fade from family attics, when my collar bones turn into oxygen, this is no scratch on forever. fetch me from these cold pillows. i did not call your name, will not call your name. please tell me tell me you despised my face, could not stand my eyes, could not bear my arms, tell me it made you sick to wake up next to me, tell me it was my fault, make sure it is my fault, because i cannot bear it if you have bricked over your heart because of the old terrors. i will build a desert in my chest for you. i will grow into an old man for you. i will walk toward my grave for you. but tell me what forever means. in a universe of collapsing stars, is dead love a powerful thing? i cannot bear your eyes because i remember your body. i hate imagining you. so remove your loneliness from my pillowcases. it is not welcome here. my stitches are healing now, and you will not look on the scars.

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

time's blur like a shawl around your shoulders

sometimes i am lost for months at a time, the fog around me like a lung, my heart pumping the life from me one instant at a time. the passing of the days is stitched together with memory loss and sleeping kisses. i stumble blind into the ether, daring to hope, with faith that the ground is being created beneath my feet each moment just as i step onto it. this will happen until it does not. there are a thousand ways to die, and only a handful not to. but how perfect are the hills in late October, yellow as a tow-truck, with the last warmth of the season trying to reach their bones, not a fuck but a cuddle, a yearly tryst, proof that love can exist between two points an infinity away from each other, that vast distances can be bridged with light, that bodies can nestle into each other for now and hope for later, even if later never comes, proof that we can reach each other, across the years and the miles, and that it matters.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

the shy tongues of quiet softness

give me the flash of color and light. give me the faces, the chaos and the dust. when i lost myself in the desert, i went through the cracks, found the piano in my own wilderness, let it grow like a flower and set it down, and with the leaving and the looking it became the truth. the pieces have crumbled and in crumbling have become whole. so come rub your newsprint against me, come set free my birds, come wash in my hurricanes, and lets go begging for music. because i have found it, that twisting current of abrupt beauty gone ablaze in the sky's skirts, and there is no need for crying my dear, there may yet be again, but for now, for now, we play.

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

becoming unbroken again

a soft music rose from our bruises,
notes we hadn't known existed until then,
making love to each other in the air around us,
a music like trampled snow,
and I held you there in the grass,
even though I was alone,
even though you were gone,
i held you,
every inch of your memorized body,
full in my arms
our wholeness speaking a language only trees know.
and I cried.
i cried so hard for the loss of you.
and it was then,
in the grass,
in that music,
that I finally forgave you.

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

how bodies turn into candles lighting up rooms of roses

these warm nights grow knife-like inside this soft body. somber city caving in with desire, drunk as sunday. this kind of night is made for lovers. the tar gone soft beneath stomping feet, running out the madness, staring down the stars like wishes were fighting words, and them up there just burning away, solemn halos of horse-hearted restless love. never beat so loud, these hearts. sweat-slick shirts stuck against the smalls of backs, hands drifting up and down bodies like shifting tides, lips and tongue rising to purpose. this is what mouths were made for. the lingering kisses, more true than a fuck. this is why they invented rooftops, for nights like this, for loves like this, because the city's rumble and the stars pushing their stems of light like brooms and the heavy summer air were meant to mingle and mix and be held and kissed and fucked inside of. light up, you bodies, you candles. light up the rooms of this night full of parking lots and strip malls and strangers. light up.

Saturday, July 3, 2010

feasible drudgery

my bed spent all night twisting me in knots. it's okay though. i'm not harboring any ill will. we've had a lot of good times together too. but my bed wouldn't write me a note to give to the morning to explain why my eyelids are at half mast. i'll tell you what i miss though. i miss when me and my bed and that girl who used to love me, we all used to get together and have a nice old time. it was like a soft fireplace. i sure do miss that.

Friday, July 2, 2010

name your price

the ramparts of your undiminished smile, burning down amidst all this decadent misery. i point my flames at you, but i can't bear to let you feel them. teach me how not to become hardened in the face of a city full of grief. no one is blameless. heart battered and hell bent, we sit, count the colors of the days, tearing rose petals like lottery tickets, peeling back expectations like scabs to discover all our drowning loves. this is the thin line between fucking and getting fucked. an ugly longing. most days i still love you. most days i can stand up and carry myself into the world. i do not expect to forget you, but i am grateful that distance and time will feed my memory a lesser truth than i know now, so that i may disremember how many parts of myself i sold to a buy a true love for you.

Monday, June 21, 2010

coming of age

there she was,
just echoing in the doorway.
the moon had given way to rain,
like an army of sunflowers,
but the glow from the window stayed.
foghorn in my chest.

a slow waltz on the record player.
quiet tears down her face.
the blood pooling bright red on the black and white kitchen tiles.
slow blooming velvet rose.
feathers falling heavy through the room.
knife clattering on the floor.
i moved like sleep,
touched the stumps on her shoulder blades.
she cringed.

this was never what i wanted.
not like this.

the back of her hand gentle on my cheek.
electrocution.
never such eyes.
death a trifle.
forever become meaningless.

moss-lined and crowded with grief,
my heart continued pounding.
she kissed me,
and i flooded with light.

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

the magic words have stopped working

Where the city shaves slivers of itself in its own eclipsing rotation, burning at its core the molten liquid of the forgotten dreams of dreamers--spinning the unmoving spin of the center of things, the kiss of a cherry blossom frozen in midair before our shipwrecked eyes-where it conjures electricity in the snap of metal fingers - tempts wire walkers with its unabashed opulence and mesmerizes even the sky in its catatonic embrace. I will see you again. Even if only a single old man survives the glaring beauty of your disremembered eyes, I will see you again.

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

the truest blue of water's real name

when i am a ship, big and hulking with time's weather, having known the timber of many a land inside the splinters of my bones, i will still think of your harbor and cry. and still, sticky with salt, i will burst through the seconds of the rendered days, as a dreadnought through the armor of night's thousand shrouds of shadow. i will not call out your name. i will bury you inside the love i held for you. my wooden heart will become a graveyard, and over my stitched up chest they will put earth. and through an ocean in which each drop of water reminds me of you, i will sail. i will sail. i will sail. i will sail and i will not stop, with time's murderous hammering bearing me always back to that bed where we slept, a night when i was awoken by the moon, and you, still sleeping, raised your head and kissed my bare shoulder blade and then set it back to your pillow. when i asked you later, you remembered nothing.

Saturday, April 10, 2010

put away your sleep fists when i'm dreaming

those blue clad body bruisers have stomped in to spoil lives again. and me all fog-headed, trying to breathe like a cloud and have one serious conversation with the whispering stars. tragedy it is then, for i put it to you to give me the mind of a violent man. my chest is an echo chamber that always screams the same words and they do not mix well with the rules that have been written for us. so i will go all cryptic, and i will still love people, and we all will continue to be fear blossoms growing inside the curdled heart of a thing that may never have been beautiful, but that we will continue to pay quivering homage to nonetheless, and for all the lies we are told, all the purposeless destruction, and the ruins of our own imaginations huddled in the decayed cathedrals of unchased dreams, we will be sick many a day, but we will go on living, hand in hand, heart in heart, we will go on living.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

blue jean sky, i love you, you mother fucker

pour it down. soak me silly. sea swallow these streets with your sweet nothings. the calm, quiet, clam that is my heart is sitting still, knowing you are there and loving you for it. what a miracle of moments it has all turned out to be. you play your harp and i'll sit in this aching body, pulse with life, stare out from these bones, think a flock of thoughts. i'll signal you when it's time. i'll line up my feet with walking. i'll plant some seeds for you to remember me by.

Sunday, February 21, 2010

make your tools forget their work in the homecoming of your hands

because the moon drips light across the invisible boundaries through, inside of, and between the lips and tongue of language. because your spine binds you like the most beautiful book. because families of thoughts brush up against the sighs of telephone wires. because seasons ramble through our years and graze upon us like the idle dreams of sleeping bullets. because the city is the constant erased etch-a-sketch of the ceaseless tides of people. because turtles dream of music we can't begin to imagine. because flowers are just the earth reaching. because mason jars like to be full of tea. because boots enjoy stomping. because books relish the concentration of our eyes. because dancing is the soul of restless winds. because the hunger is too great and too vast to ever be permanently fed. because the point of socks is to keep your feet warm. duh. because the smell of shaving cream, the smell of fresh cut grass, the smell of basil, is the knockout punch of instant nostalgia. because your eyes are the polaroid camera of your heart. because you get swallowed by grief's thorns, but get blossomed by love's water. because the strange ocean of your mind resembles the blur of hummingbird wings. because wine makes love to your blood and laughter massages loss. because you're good at breathing.

this is why.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

the sky opens its mouth like bursting hearted halo holder

these two hands, they shake because they are not big enough to unbreak all the brokenness, all the car accidents, scraped knees, and dead parents. dawn's temper tantrum finds me bleary eyed and seam shattered in the wake of all the unholy visions sleep gave birth to. these cities, they churn us through them and spit us out, leave us vibrating, humming, collapsing on curbsides, grasping for other hearts, tears tormenting the pavement. i will not let your light be eclipsed. i will not let your heart be swallowed. these hands, they are small, but strong. they can't do everything, but they can do much.

Friday, January 22, 2010

on the day it rained horses, i swallowed a birdhouse

when they looked inside your guts they found salt crystals the size of apples. they told you angels had been sleeping there. the beds were freshly made and still warm. they asked you if you had any enemies, people who might have a grudge against you, might want to hurt you. caught off guard, you started quoting tolstoy. their eyebrows shot up like bottlerockets, foreheads like week old newspapers. you cleared your throat, embarrassed, and said "no...not that i can think of." outside, a bird slammed into the window. you were thinking of old lovers. one of them was rummaging through an old toolbox, the other was pouring tea. this was an oddly companionable silence between strangers. for a moment, you wondered if maybe this was the afterlife. you sneezed. one of them grinned. he told you that you just needed to sign a simple contract, pulled a cat out of his coat pocket and handed it to you along with a pen. "it's not legally binding," he explained. the other was still rummaging through the toolbox. "aha! i found it!" he said and handed you a shabby blue scarf, stale smelling and full of holes. "if anything happens" he said solemnly, "use this."

Friday, January 15, 2010

brand new forever

pull the shutters closed on your own well-swept invincibility and lie behind the shade. you can find brilliant blues beneath the murmuring grey nothings. i don't claim to seduce worlds. i'm not the greatest, or the best, at what i do. i have a lot to learn, and it begins with whispers that get louder and grow into boulders. i just walk around sometimes, for hours, and the hammering pulse of the city is too much for me. i just walk, and the cars and the buildings turn absolutely horror show all around me.