the only funeral i've ever been to was my great-grandmother's. it was alabama in june. i was young, maybe 8 or 9, wearing a church dress and watching strangers offer me comfort and candy.
when the viewing was happening, my oldest sister took us outside and told us stories of mama. how she fled from the phillipines during WWII with a five-year old kid and a dead husband. it felt like a made up story then. still does sometimes.
my father gave a eulogy at the grave sight. he compared my great-grandmother to a magnolia tree. how southern. we prayed. then we ate.
i remember my grandfather crying. sobbing. openly expressing his grief. i remember the look on his face. like it was all over. like existing hurt now that his mother was gone.

that funeral has never ended for me.
i still feel the humidity in my head.
the mourners, unaffected, continuing
staring down into the ditch where she lays
empty condolences from faceless relatives
overlap each other until they are only mumbles
an ongoing buzz of misery.
and when the bells toll, it isn't space
it is the ground in which the box lies
a perpetual reminder that i will join her soon.
grey matter the soil, nerves the worms, and i
the ditch digger. searching for my great-grandmother's
pearls, her soul, my soul.

that funeral has never ended for me.
and when the plank in reason breaks
the worlds i hit will be those of knives
and monsters and crucifixes nailed to
the walls of my childhood bedroom.
shadows envelop me further,
anonymous lovers will invite me to believe
that i have finished knowing yet
i am no where ******* close.
my great-grandmother's shaky hands
will try to catch me as i'm dropping down
but no luck. i will keep falling
until every single person who has
broken my heart and whispered truths into
my skull has ripped every inch of skin
off my body while the mourners watch from
above. i will keep falling as long as this
funeral continues. as long as my life continues.

we named the magnolia tree in our front yard after her. Mama's magnolia. when it blooms, my grandfather comes over and stares at it for a long time. like i, he and silence have wrecked.
solitary. here.

the cracks in the shades
make stripes along my sheets
eternity and death
laying beside me

it's time for them to leave
but their promises
will never vacate
the indentation on my mattress

their breathing, their whispers of truth
that progression is happening
that the world is spinning
that I am dying

spending hours assuming
that their touch will render me
into anything but a funeral
pacing in a skull

when they leave, I
am sure they will never
return. for this figment of my
imagination, has ended me

he used to stroke my hair. we would be lying there veiled from the world and he would stroke my hair. softly and intimately.
looking back, what he was really doing was slowly scratching away something from me. my heart? my dignity? my hope?
innocence was leaking from my pores. naivety gushing from my eyes. releasing a pheromone that only predators can smell.  
he was so soft. so warm. a short one sided love affair with a man with poison on his lips. they tasted like home.

we lounge there enveloped in the tangible silence. the void within my soul is pulsating with the rage created by your hands between my thighs. if heaven had arms and legs it would be laying down beside me now.
words hang in the air above us, not daring to close the distance between our lips. my feet are cold in the sheets that our love story is printed upon, just small enough for us to barely read. our breaths become one until neither of us can tell who is inhaling and who is exhaling. as i bestow my fingertips on your eyelids, softly memorizing the details of your skin, the chasm closes.
my home i've been searching for is now a part of me. not one of us moving, not even when the room went dark.

Two o'clock sober
might still be hungover
you're begging for my tongue while I beg for your love.
I never thought I'd love like this,
one-sided and founded on ever unstable lust. I shouldn't even call this love,
I think it's love and I think you're just in it for a ****. Writing
poems about you is "hard" because I can't admit
what I can't bring myself to say out loud. You told me your secrets
and I swallowed the seeds, letting your admissions
bloom inside of me.
How could I have been so stupid? I should have known
you would plant a garden just to leave.
Girls made of gardens wither without affection
I must not be your favorite flower. I don't think I ever was
but you keep coming around just to see my petals unfold
every spring and I let you leave dew drops all over me

We've done this before. Lines and rows of blooming pinks and red,
scratches, finger prints, bruises, hickeys, marks that fade
after a few days. No matter how many days it's been, weeks, months
we find our way back to the patch of wildflowers
where we first decided to make love.
There will always be changes to the scenery and
I can't think of anyone else that I would plant myself anywhere with.
One of us is always leaving but somehow the wind blows us back home.

I'm not religious anymore but the Ten Commandments
seared inside of my psyche flash
before my eyes and I hear myself repeating
"Thou shalt have no other gods before me"
while I make myself ****** to the pictures you sent me. One night,
I wrote everything about you that I idolized in big letters on lined paper
and ripped it into squares. I twisted the paper bits
into your godly shape and whispered
your name as I dropped you into a floral candle and let the flame
eat your tiny body. Have you ever felt crazy?
Have you ever been so in love that it makes you crazy?
Until you've made a lover into an effigy
and tried to force your passion for them to rest
by cremating their paper remains
I don't know if you understand how close love and crazy really are.

I swear. I swear, I'm done.

But I'm not done. I pretend to forget
the way your name feels for a while, I pretend to idolize
other things but when you appear
uninvited to my dreams I can't forget the things I've seen. You kiss
my forehead as midday sun
settles on my skin and a garden of roses
start to bud where you've planted love. You pick the most precious one
and when you cut the stem I **** awake, facing the candle
where I tried to destroy what I thought of you. I don't know
why I see you everywhere and I don't know why
I keep asking questions that I'll never have the answers to.

Once you're actually here my laugh bubbles
from my throat and chrysanthemums and lilacs and daisies
fly out. When you kiss me I swear I feel ivy
entwining itself into my hair and my eyelashes grow tuberose.
I bloom with you and when you leave I become winter, waiting for you
to tend me. Every day with you is spring
and I know exactly how fast the seasons change. "Thou shalt not covet"
but god, I want you
I want you to trust me with everything and I want you to sow more seeds.
I can't tell you the last time I read my bible,
I thought it didn't have a hold over me anymore but I want you
to choose me and I don't want
to feel like I'm setting myself up for heartbreak anymore.

I've been thinking
about touching you
for so long
And now that I am
it feels euphoric

Your skin,
as soft as
I remember it

I melt into your words. I catch the flame
flickering on my bookshelf
where I burned your likeness and look into your eyes
flashing my most devilish smile.
You're back in my room and you've covered my body with sticky honeysuckles
and forget-me-nots. You, imperfect as anyone else but I see you
like you're some walking god. You, human as me. Your hands
left prints of hibiscus on my skin and when you leave
I open my diary to the page where I pressed cherry blossoms and maple
leaves and they fall as I write about how happy I am to see you.

"I just don't think that men like you like women like me who have moonstone eyes and crazy day dreams, women who dot their poems with inky pearl tears, pressed poplar leaves and, well, I wanted to write you a poem but I can’t think of any creative words. I want you to read how beautiful you make me, how your eyes drink me in, how I overflow for you. I want you to feel the conflict in my heart... so rarely that I see you but every time we reunite we are even better than the last. I don't know if you want to read it but I want to write you a poem. I want to write you a poem that makes you cringe because I write with honesty. I want you to feel the rhythm of my words the way we feel the rhythm of our bodies. You should be happy to inspire someone’s poetry. You, you don’t love me. And that’s fine, because I’ll always look back at you and see sunshine streams on your skin."

My room is all white and pink, floral print and my African violet.
You look perfect in the rosy glow
of my feminine sanctuary and I feel so appealing,
I trust you enough to show you everything, I say, luxuriating the words in the sunlight.
I want to absorb this moment to keep me warm. When I lay alone
thinking of drifting to sleep in your arms, it is this moment
with you around me,
the way you kiss my face like I mean something to you
and this is the place I go, when I swear
all of this means nothing to you. Doesn't everyone want to feel home?
Maybe I think being with you feels like the kind of home
with a nice garden I want to live in. Maybe you feel it too.

Maybe I'm reading too far into everything
and not saying enough of anything
maybe both of us say nothing hoping the other will
be the one to admit the feeling
but you, as soon as you leave and I tell myself I’m done. Swearing
I've burned up the last of you, I’ll never do it again.

I can't stop thinking about you

And I'm back thinking about you, too.

heavy breathing and anxious touches and extreme tenderness is what brought me close to you.
the way you smile like you've seen my soul gives me a desire to curl up inside your chest. i bet its warm in there.
because your words are comforting and your hands are soft. but they aren't for me. you aren't for me.
i think our hearts were made out of the same stars. do you feel that? do you understand?

men write books filled
with pseudo-intellectual proclamations
about the meaning of
this ****** up world we live in,
complete with citations from the bible
and shakespeare and the devil himself.
words drag down pockets until
they are shuffling along the streets
almost unable to move and their pants
are picking up dirt which god created
for the exact purpose of being
swept up by the pant legs of
rapists and murderers and housewives.
bitterness spreads like rabies
foaming from the mouth of pretty girls
who spread their legs for whomever comes along
to whisper words they barely understand
with bad breath and sweaty palms into
their ear.
the pigs sit in line waiting to be slaughtered or
to create the next degrading law that will give them more money.
at least barbecue can bring happiness to people instead of
institutionalized bigotry this great nation is built upon.
meanwhile, the slaves they like to name the "lower class"
work their *** off in this capitilist society
to feed their family and get an education
that these pigs were spoon fed since birth.
a birth given by a mother who was more than likely
sexually assaulted at some point in her life
and cried when she heard it was a boy.
rain still falls on forests that are molested by
energy tycoons who release toxins into
our drinking water and the air we breathe
and the food we eat after it's loaded with more
toxins from the processes that make sure
it doesn't expire until we are all dead and gone.
as long as the white people enjoy their food
everything will be okay, however half of
the world doesn't have access to clean drinking water
and when they fight back we bomb them or
massacre them or use them.
we are taught to ignore these things
that plague the human race and
but how can you ignore when the pictures of
white men who **** and **** and steal
hang up on the walls that
are supposed to protect you?