January 2012
10 posts
what is it about mist that makes me think of you
is it reminiscent of the o your mouth makes as it exhales clouds (like in the car the night we found each other again)?
or does it remind me of wilting green hills sodden with age that the fog winds its way through on damp mornings and how your eyes look like that when they look at me
either way
i think of you when it rains
i can’t write about god or art but i can piece together divine fragments of the words of others and hope that they spell out our new religion
images accumulate and abstracts swarm and puddle around my ankles… why my thoughts decided to rest there i don’t know; they are weak, but they help me stand and so i suppose they laid the foundation for my entire being
there are certain...
the smell of breakfast and the hum buzz of my sister’s television shows used to wake me and my eyes opened to the pink fabric of the creaking recliner and the faded print of poppies in a rusted frame
the duct tape on the back of the remote and the soft brown surface of the card table brought up to the sofa-sleeper were the most visceral of memories but the more subtle sensations like the...
i love the threads of skin that make up your handprint and i love when they weave in careful pressing patterns of (snow? milk?) white on white
l
o
v
e
y
o
unfolding
i don’t know how to write a love poem unless the feelings come from someone else
for them i am able to sing the ballads of flat recorded recollections: blue lights and the rainy afternoons or even the smell of the car that i only rode in once (invitation only; so exclusive)
saying it can’t be defined is a cop-out because surely there are pretty enough words to sweep in a haphazard pile to...
i wake up in the morning with remnants of dreams and the foreign feelings they deposit like a river leaving rock fragments worn away in my banks
the freshness of awakening recalls the warm and hopeful breath of spring, but i want to suffer through the cold, without which i cannot offer you a reprieve
the steady, calculated soul of indifference frightens me, and it frightens me more to know that...
when you’ve developed a habit of walking away at night you can’t help but notice yellow streets and yellow teeth and your own wheezing like a broken down car, thinking you see cats twitching their tails in the glowing smog but knowing your alley rat soul is safe in the sewer sighs that curl around your legs
you are filled with thoughts of masks and gas stations and other lonely things...
your murmured fangs against my neck rip open a void in which your words flow down my throat and with this proximity i untangle myself from myself
my love is a wolf howling splitting open and melting like the flame your hand shields to protect from the wind, a sanctuary for my bursting and echoing cry with my face thrown upwards
i think of you with the second coming of bruised toes and hope that...
smoke fills the empty spaces and leaves semblances of panic and rusting resistance like a vacant medicine chest, little bottles tumbling into
the sink
caged ghosts behind a mirror and a swinging door and a little wooden knob you want to gnaw at until your teeth fall
down the drain
where you can hear the mermaids singing
absence; restlessness; a weekend to flicker in the depths of blackness where the heat of the sun is lost in the winds and the canyons of insignificant fingertips will
never touch the delusions of salvation you transfer between fragile, senseless hands.
xerosis lingers, for there is no pool of life that glistens or w(h)ets the attention of a stone-faced lover, the word skimming along your dry...
December 2011
4 posts
the corner of my eye
stings with acknowledgement
of your shattered safety
you tell me you’re trapped in my familiar woods of two summers ago
i want to pull you from the trees and into these walls but the rotten wood lets in bitterness that we are both too frail to swallow
regret is a sharp burning night that scrapes layers off my skin and when your words aren’t murmuring white noise it’s impossible to feel safe in the darkness
sometimes i look at the yellow beacon of you and i feel real, no longer lost and wandering but safe in the footprints of those whose paths have crumbled off the edge of the earth
talk is cheap and doubts run rampant but you are...
months have passed since i bathed in tears, an impressionable body succumbing to collapse, genuine but vulnerable and aching for favorable hyperbole
the serpent wound its way up my body after you left, soiling whiteness with promises of infinity and drunken clamoring for human flesh
shrugging off the snakeskin we were raw and verdant but hissing toxic, striking lunging as your heart corrodes,...
November 2011
9 posts
i feel heavy and humid and i find myself again staring bewildered at the epilogue expecting more. lacking closure, i am stranded in last year’s lonely flood that’s dried into stagnant pools, reflecting soggy smoky eyes where doubts swim wild.
constancy is not always dull (i find moments of euphoria in each miniscule heartbeat that oscillates against my chest), but it’s hard not...
i locate saccharine freckles with
clumsy tricky hands
tracing a labyrinth of good intentions
i don’t want to remember that i’m naked, but with every thought of you i’m reminded about the vulnerability of my frantic empathy. i’m a fucking speck of dust, swirling, exposed. night after night i delve into the rasping simulation of connection, but your hands cannot reach my bare skin and i don’t know if one day i will find them resting there. i cannot see you but...
shoulder kisses are raindrop projections on the slightness of my body. your touch is human but tinged with grief, foreign and gentle. if our hands were to meet, where would i place my fingers? quickening. anxious. fickle, but it is not your bones i love quite yet. their immaculate hollowness is unknown to me. the conflict of collapse is imminent, the cavalry of desperate impulse burning bridges...
we slammed together, strong and heady. each syllable still swells but they’re empty, confined to the monuments of togetherness that tremble with threats and nests of hornets whose mossy silhouettes (fore)shadow the sun. insecure, soft. i keep the rabble to myself; my words are frequent trespassers on his delicate lips, making their acquaintance like whores, nestling in the furrows of...
courage, tourniquet trauma, shakes and sweat sickness distraction
from the flashing and i can’t feel the fucking nerves
wavering
shake shake pity earthquake
road tumor cut screaming fluctuating
intoxication fucking stop
it
precious time, saturated with desperation but lacking the drive to keep fingers clenched… trickle, trickle. wisps escaping. catch them for me if you can. sensory refutation; disillusionment. stimulation wave(ing)s dancing in my fists. i can’t go home if i’m with you. tear it off… crackle. slip. the walls of us crumbled in the gravel roads and yellow leaves, rumbling...
scrape my cheek, let the salt fall into your hands. i paint my eyes in the burnt palette of your contingency plan with which we stumble forth, flecks of ash to each lash that blind us to the suns of other galaxies. there was an ocean here, long ago, but it evaporated with the ghosts of january whose spectral lips kissed (sucked) up every last drop. there’s air still left to breathe, yes, but...
there is nothing that pains me more than a missed opportunity and unanswered questions. the virgin substance within which reverence swelled has crumbled and gathered the dust of repulsion, wet and cold and mo(u)rning. i feel as though my hands are made of clay, fingerpainting bruises on your wrinkled skin, but only time will tell when i’m not too tired to see you.
October 2011
2 posts
her name was arizona, the blossoming cactus goddess and the keeper of the red sands. the sun-bleached bones of the wanderers ached for her to press her heat against them, leaving a film of dust on their skin and burns on their feet. she sang with the howl of coyotes who catch turquoise dreams in rusty, copper fur. she was gritty and her teeth were sharp, but there was a gentleness to her savagery...
wide eyes and chainlink lies
looping through eardrums throbbing red
tear trickles clumping congealing
cyclical
vomit
September 2011
6 posts
suspended in sticky breaths
you’ll find me clinging to midnight
and unsteady legs
is it the pattering or scratching sounds that steer my gaze astray? it’s a question of fingertips and womanhood but imagery is strangely absent from those encountered on the streets. this music is familiar to you but it brings an intoxicating energy to me as the streetlamps are electrified with the breezy rush of intrigue. thus, my hands lie open in a gesture of white hot wide eyed thrill....
stone finds a way to chisel away at the scar that we share but it’s just grains of sand that find their way into the bloodstream, and purpling bruises are the only cohesion that we need
your bronze baby is always a crosswalk behind, but your plastic bags and sweaters contain the secret commitment concealed beneath a scowl and a knitted cap. your baggage is crinkling with confusion but reassuring in its transparency providing only a thin barrier for gravelling asphalt insults to penetrate. where is your home, princess? and what wrinkled knees lie underneath your skirts
it’s the twitch and curl of your lips that strike a chord with me, as if heartstrings get snagged on chapped flakes of skin and twang with a rhapsodic gasp. i remember you referencing lightning strikes in the bells on sunday and wonder when the grey of stormy skies will cast a chill to the air or whether it’s blue for monday and tuesday as well. but it’s the spark of light that...
i long for the feeling that comes with winter. bathing in dusty lukewarm remembrances, i lift my hands from the depths, scattering snowdrops onto dimpled iceberg knees. subtle and skittering are my inquiries, wishing for the fog of mist to ride out on my breath as i expel expectations from their nests in the caverns of my mind. i fear the firecrackers set off by soft gold deities whose hazy smiles...
August 2011
9 posts
in the shadowy water places where birds trill like notes from a golden piano your face is veiled and i feel mountains within your skin
see what you’re doing to me
i cannot recall you from before you saw the things you have seen and i feel my fingers brush against the dust of my own idealism which crumbles away on the fatal breeze that chills memories to the point where they become leaden...
i hear the tales of others as they tumble off these cliffs together and crumble to the ground and they reverberate with the soothing notes of humming strings of sympathy, but i reassure myself in knowing that the gentle swinging will send fragments of wind coursing through their entwined fingers
i sit on crisping fading grass idly blushing and batting eyelashes, grasping for seedlings of...
this graveyard is a garden, questions arising from the fervor that came here to die, a twisting quandary that i won’t know what to think of until you come home
this is searching through the spectrum of everything that must change, navigating infinity, a labyrinth of possibility but your fingernails dig into the ridges of my thumb and crumbs of uncertainty solidify to guide me right
take my...
i need the color red. i need dry heat and raw burning skin to soak up the unrest that pools within me: sandy mouth, desert lips, dust castles swirling and metallic and open armed. i know our bodies in motion and that they are actually lying still, but it is our souls that intertwine, growling, footsteps stomping above our head. i am not red. you must bring it to me.
i crave the foam of waves that crash against my ankles wiping off the blood that pools in skin hollows from restless clawing
bring me the ocean for i am stranded in a sea of green and every utterance is waterlogged and festering
time is a concept that weighs heavily on my mind as everything around me decays visibly soggy and weary bending sloshing i feel scabs forming but my skin isn’t...
my thoughts are wrapped in down comforter bunched up on a sheetless mattress
pull the fabric up to my mouth kissing white blemishes peppering your skin like flakes of snow but it’s summertime now and they freckle over slowly melting into your veins to give you a frosty (mis)demeanor
i crave the quivering that pools in my toes i am ophelia drowning in the waterfall of written out speeches...
the air is moist. our aura is liquid, mutable and splashing flicking droplets out with the force of a sigh. they scurry downwards slicking cheekbones, tumbling along itself to join hands to wet slipping glisten drip slip clutch. wet. exhale let the water reach your lungs sucking in swirling air wet condensation rushing. speak.
i will remember these days by the swarms of mosquitoes that clouded around our heads, a humming halo singing the ballads of past and precarious futures. we took refuge in the trees that bent down in reverence to the warmth we made together as we talked of red things quick things needing things hurting things. i don’t know whether or not to be worried that you didn’t suggest to carve...
mist thickens swirling in my mouth and nose and i wonder where to begin with this saga that has filled and expanded within me
fragments of whispers gather underneath my fingernails and i can’t scrape them out can’t bring them to the forefront of my memory but i feel them there collecting dust chipping away
scraping
how quickly days pass into weeks and months and how quickly the...
July 2011
6 posts
the ridges of your spine like seashells dripping out the roar of the ocean so far away
we are the coastless but i feel the pebbles in your back that will slowly grind away to sand as my fingers erode them
a row of white horses, stamping and snorting and glinting with golden bits that they chomp at knowing that they will lose their luster in death, head shaking tail swishing, white crests...
dragonflies alight on the outcroppings shoulders nose dying fast withering
i cling to you like butterfly fungus on rotting wood
small dot pinpricks in your vision staccato color too saturated to last for more than seconds flickering faster to form the image of paradise that dances just out of reach of your wheezing parched throat gasps, thirsty skies that lap from you, liquid falling up to form tomorrow’s rain with the lingering stench of a love forgotten in the forest within the pages of a thin young book draped in...
the stars seem far away but you can grasp them if your thirst is great enough leaning out the window s(t)ill pushing into stomach teetering on the brink slowly crumbling but entranced by the twinkling that brings to mind carnal glints in the eyes of those who reach for you
trip
wobble
fall
weight has no significance here and significance has no weight so you’re left to sift through...
the visions of july reveal themselves to me in sleep but their coherence eludes me except for the signaling of a desert isolation nourishment desire a warm bed rejection these dreams are too much for me but i can’t stay awake
my eyes are cups of oceans that leak out when your moon face nears and when you’re out of reach my eyelids wade in the tide pools of solitude
i feel the shimmering tremors of memory with the relaxing of tectonic plates, pulsing, purring and i quake with the knowledge of the things i was before you but our particles are intermingling in this constant state of flux that suspends us in its...
June 2011
5 posts
i need to write more
fuck
your voice is a swirl of purples and peppermint masking the bitter taste of coffee and uncertainty each sigh is hoarse and resonates with hidden dimensions dark matter giant blank spaces not yet thought of but my entire body aces with the thirst to explore the wholeness of you the inner ear and outer space all just holding onto equilibrium
i hear you as i hear the low murmurs of the twisted and...
i cradle your brain in the basin of my hands and your inquiries settle into the lines of my palm like sediments in a river of fleeting glances i nudge you so gently into the corner staggering softly between the nerve endings of my hip constructing each cell tat makes up the contours that draw your eyes
mine
sketching the letters on the back of your hand as the dust of insincerity rings itself...
a headrush and dirty skulls, feathers fleck the coastline
a wave-blanket ocean-sheet sand-bed the white glimmer of a tooth and the smooth grey of dolphins in a tuna net this is alien territory, yes, drenched in floodwater dead leaves and deep breaths