Friday, June 29, 2012

i miss you most (possible)

i miss you most (possible)

I could die right now, Clem. I'm just...happy. I've never felt that before. I'm just exactly where I want to be. 

i miss you most in the mornings

when i have to face the day
and slip from between the sheets
where i have dreamed and you are still possible

i miss you most in the early sunshine

when i am alone in a parking lot
or sitting in the coffee shop
where the day is potential but you aren’t possible

i miss you most at the pauses of the day

when i hear a word and turn to find
and you rush over me and smile
through the layers of you in memory possible

i miss you most every single time

when i see others hand in hand
aching for that second when you held mine
and i should have stayed there because it was possible

i miss you most in the drift toward darkness

when night is inevitable and closing in
and i can steal away again to sleep
where dreams and you and possible are possible

i miss you most

Thursday, June 28, 2012

acrylic (heartless)


acrylic (heartless)


the acrylic heart they made
to bury in his hollowed chest

had small motors that sounded
like shaking tiny paint cans

and on the day they removed
his failed and shattered organ

while he lay briefly heartless and dead
attached to a machine pumping blood

if his mind could have reasoned
for those surreal moments between

he may have smiled at the irony
of his being heartless and dead

since this is what people had thought
him to be every single day of his life

but it was the other side of this operation
when the doctors circled around to ask

just days after the insertion and restart
as he rose to walk with a mechanical heart

“Do you still love them, deeply, deeply?”
he paused against the clicking in his chest

and knew he could have told them all along
“They were always in my bones, my bones”

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

cured (when)


cured (when)


(1)

when they gut me
and hang me
up to cure

they’ll wonder
how they can ever
eat all those words

(2)

when i stare
at the reasons
long enough

everything runs together
like the alphabet
of my blood trickled

on the sidewalk
where your footprints
track my incurable disease

(3)

when i lay birds at your feet
and leave mice at your door
i am your feral cat domesticated

delicious (just deserts)

delicious (just deserts)


humans are delicious

and quite likely
too much for each other

and never never enough

to taste and smell and feel
the one you love just to love

yes these fleeting desserts
consume humans everyone


he traces her name
and his feral love
on his headboard
each night with his finger

these prayers as mantras
before slipping into sleep
where his dreams conjure her
like cotton candy or ice cream

delight in the night
where darkness blankets
the solitude of sleep
that serves and reserves
memory like loaves and fishes


completely lost in her moment of bliss
she smelled something wonderful sweet

and her mind (she realized without thinking)
had turned to the pages of him warming

inside her like moments before an avalanche
or the sounds humans hear after the collapse


this is what humans deserve
baked in the oven heat
of their desire laced with love

welding these powdered confections
they line the ledges with all the moments

that leave their hearts in shards
and hands weighted with frosting

Thursday, June 14, 2012

the end of me

the end of me


after you toasted
the end of me

did his lips taste
as sweet as mine

and could he taste
my blood on yours

and can he see me
reflected in your eyes

lingering there since you
swallowed me whole

Thursday, June 7, 2012

our rare sober day (uncanny)


our rare sober day (uncanny)


it was a day of rare sobriety
when these things happened
when we flung ourselves in

so no one can blame the usual
inebriation we swim in freely
against the animosity of clarity

we woke embracing the next day
rising from intermingled dreams
smelling of sweaty sex&laughter

how could we have known such
innervating lucidity like a clock
measuring us through day&night

we lie still in bed unwilling to peel
ourselves apart as if to pause today
drifting through dreams to memory

in time we know our pictographs
covering our sacred bodies&walls
will fade slower than recollection

today&tomorrow we’ll have to watch
uncanny faces of those lost&unaware
of our rare sober day lacing us together

do you think the snake at our door came
for the chameleon living under the rug
you ask with your face against my ribs

let’s not do coffee or a shower for now
and i’d like to think it did like me for you
i say inhaling you before opening my eyes

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

confessions (this bay of love)



confessions (this bay of love)

I was carried to Ohio in a swarm of bees
I never married but Ohio don't remember me


they told him “Don’t move”
their voices hollow
echoing as if in a tunnel

he lay perfectly still on the table
arms crossed on his chest
waiting as if in a coffin

although he knew their commands
were arbitrary except to control
like the bright light in his face

“What do you want?” they asked
he lay thinking about which word
they had weighted in their question

then

“I want to be loved,” he heard himself say
“I want to be desired, I want to be craved—”
drifting to the piano haunting that song

“That’s not so much,” they interrupted
“That’s not so hard” voices not comforting
but swarming his head like bees or smoke

“—by her,” he heard himself shout
(he thought bark)
“By only her, only her,” his voice trailing
tucked between his legs because he knew

“Ah, so, that is entirely different, you know”
he wanted to say “I read Foucault in translation”
but his throat was frozen like a mossy rock wall

there he felt tears pooling in his eye sockets
and them surrounding him stiff on the table
just before he recognized the straps tightening

“I can barely breath he would have said
he couldn’t think clearly beneath his own tears
had he confessed yet another mistake?

“Well, since you mentioned her, let’s do that”

and this was the part he always expected
in his dreams of being strapped to a table
surrounded by disembodied voices buzzing

“You think this is funny,” they stated the words flatly
and this was where he knew something else
his happiness of only her stilled them

like a life-sized puzzle of the entire universe
every piece black and the clock ticking
“Belarus is flooding,” he heard himself laughing

he imagined a wolf howling in moonlight
high in the shadows of Pico de Orizaba
this bay of love they will never understand

Sunday, June 3, 2012

amper&and (& other stories)


amper&and (& other stories)


i. (ampersand)

i love you like an ampersand

however short
the coming to be
of you and me

as you&me&you&me

this curving over & into
becoming both of us
something new as one

and per se and
as well as how each of us
intertwines the other

like the beach against the shore
sand between your toes
or saltwater coursing our veins

i love you like an ampersand
et cetera

ii. (the snake of you)

if i could i would
draw all the invisible songs
you have sown into my sinew & soul

starting below your ear
down your neck
over your shoulder
across your back
around your side
to your stomach

so everyone would know forever
the dancing of my heart
coiled & intertwined
with the snake of you

iii. (swimming)

once we shared a pool
you & i

in a town & hotel where neither lived
a point between us

this water joining us impromptu
like the life we never allowed

now here i am earthbound
treading water alone

not the stroke i wanted to swim
or emptiness i sought

this pool these beds those hotel rooms
beaches warm & cool

we cannot undo & cannot forget
floating atop memory

no one is faithful & of course
everyone is

Saturday, June 2, 2012

powder, frosting, & slices of lime

powder, frosting, & slices of lime

Our hands are covered in cake
But I swear we didn't have any
"The Geese of Beverly Road," The National

for five days from May Day until Cinco de Mayo
we ate red velvet cake with dark chocolate frosting
drank grande Mexican cervezas with slices of lime

when we leaned close in the corner alone kissing
the cake & frosting & cerveza could not mask
the unmistakable dessert of your lips against mine

later

i ask you
to slip off your clothes
lie on the bed

i take powder
coat my palms
to draw on your skin

dusty figures
prints of my hands
tattooing your back

i press my lips
to your tan line where
my art disappears

before turning your face
to mine & touching dry lips
to yours tinted with lime & beer

and then

we will curl together
like nude powdered donuts
watch The American

because the actors are beautiful
& Italy is beautiful
the story is bittersweet

like powder, frosting, & slices of lime