I don't want to be
hungry
anymore

always starving for some-
thing
to fill
the void

I'm floating like the
moon
in the great, vast
chalky black of
empty

I don't want to be
hungry,
    anymore or
floating in the
night.

I'm back
in front of my
canvas-
my hand beating
back and forth,
persuaded just
by
tone
there are so many
secrets the
light
hides,
so many
rich
unknowns.

I read once:

to paint is
to love
again

and it must be
true

the endless
incessant
driving
devotion
to make the universe's
plaything:
color

unconditional fondness
to my life partner,
color

I'm back in front of my
canvas
and I'm creating
love in hue.

The great escape
I long for
the adventure
I dream of.
I suddenly want to go
alone.
leave memories behind
like fallen trees,
a wind storm,
is what it'd be to
you.
The great escape
would break you.

I've only strength
to break
myself,
and let you through the cracks

and cover me.

A bee
floats over a
blossom
and his wings
are one
with vision

living seems
so easy
when the hardest
parts are
hidden.

I can't stop
thinking of
the things that
make me happy
like

Portugal and carousels
and
moving on
after
you
    died.

I keep feeling like
I'll find a book
with prompts
and pages that will
change my life
but every time it's blank
I see myself inside

This year I asked
the heavens or
whatever you believe
for a year to
answer questions
a year to give me
insight and make me
a "deeper" me

This year I was ill
and then she died
and then I had to leave
the countryside
I had planned to live in
for so long

And when I came back
to my little town
an old friend came to me:

"You have changed. You seem so wise."

The universe answered my hope
with demise.

How beautiful are you
that strings are
pressed by your
bony fingers
and a sound
becomes a
song-
your lanky arms, a
carriage
formed for pushing,
pulling a choir
out of  silent
moments, sitting in a
quiet room-
there's something tragic about
you.

If you're to
hold onto
anything  other than
me,
let it be
birdsong and
ringing.

I hope that when
you're with her
and when her eyes
shine like
brighter days

that the smell of my
shampoo
lingers in your
senses
and that my touch
comes to mind

I'll wait every day
and I'll pretend that
I don't care that
you're running back to her

and I'll tell myself
it doesn't
matter,
and I'll still answer
your call

and when the thick, burlap
hotel
curtains are
stagnant
and the AC's pumped
to full

I'll let your fire consume me
and then watch you go
back to her.

Some nights, I am fine
and the candles stay
put away
on their shelves

and I gulp my
instant coffee,
watch a
funny
tv show

and some nights,
the candles are
burning
and the wax is dripping
on the floor

where  I can't take a
gulp,
a drink,
a sip,
and the tv
remote
will change
nothing.

some nights
it's like
I never
lost you

and some nights
I feel
*I went
with you.

I haven't thought
about you in
awhile
how soft
you looked
within your
bed, your
hands a
fading shade
of
blue

I don't want
to abandon
you,
the thought
of you,
the ghost of
you that sleeps
in my bed
at night
with me

there's a reason
I'm so stoic now,
so somber now,
my chin up while I'm
quiet now

There's nothing I can
think to say
since you lie
in a bed of
white and
next thing
I know
you were
ashes being
sprinkled on
Reno

I haven't thought
about you in
awhile, it's
fading shades
of blue

I painted
the scene
of a street
where a
parrot
sleeps in a
window
of a street
over
Deer Creek
where you're
holding my
hand forever

I painted
a scene
of the pine
trees
sitting
downtown
and the bridge
where you held
me back from
the ledge
where we
dropped tadpoles in
and said to them
"be free!"

you live on Winchester
you live on Diamond Lake
You live everywhere
and I say to you,
Be free.

I'm thinking about next year.
I'm thinking about you leaving.
I'm thinking about
how much I
want to tell you
that
I want
to go
with
you

How much I
hope that
you'll ask
me to
come

& I
want to
tell you
that
I love
you

(I'm fairly certain that
I love you)

I've been thinking
be it Maine or Indiana,
I'd go anywhere
with you.

So I keep having this thought
where I'm standing
at the edge of a cliff
and it's not possible
to fall

It's not the wind,
pushing me up-
or the resistance of my
ankles
pressing my bony heels
into the dirt
to force me back
when my body starts
to go-
teeter off the verge
of change.

it's
the pull of hope.
the soft ribbons of
sunlight that
snake their
way into the dark
and push it out with
gentle fervor-
with aching persistence
and the knowledge of
better days

I keep imagining standing on
the edge of a cliff
and not remembering
what it's like to fear
or be swept away
by love.

Between the lonely moments
  And the "I'm so glad you're here's"
And the end of a scotch glass,
Or one too many beers

Between ugly and healthy and
   Birds who forced bees,
  I've finally learned
You were never against me.

It hurt so much
when you first
said that you don't
love me

and now the
pang of rejection,
the sound of dismissal,
the so-far-from-fleeting-feeling of
refusal's
like a
healing wound that's on
my skin.

You can't stop me.

You can't stop me from
loving you with the
insatiable craving for
all that you are,
the undefinable hope
when you've said that
there's none

but after time,
after an October of
not hearing your voice,
unanswered love sleeps
so quietly within
me,
gently in me,
where for a moment,
the burn is just a
silent cinder
who glows
without
completely
fading
  away

I'm letting it kindle,
kindle in me
and
when you realize you
love me, let
this steady ember guide
you home.

Tonight, as the sun has waltzed
full circle, her dainty toes
unnoticed through the
sky

and the oven is hot from baking
and my hands are dry from
bleach and Arizona grey

I'm lighting the candles
and setting lights on the
largest window pane

It's Christmas Eve and
I'm waiting for you in
  four days straight of rain.

It's been a year
and I could still
bathe in champagne

lie in the dark
cavern of your heart

and let the bubbles
run over me

the moon,
the sun,
they sit alone
and float
and how am I
so different
than a planet
or a star?

I tried telling myself
that love exists
but it's hard
when I've been lonely
so I felt that maybe
love was real
but not,
it's not,
for me

until I saw the way
your hands
can touch
and the way that they
can feel me
and I felt your
heart beat to my
name

All this while
I've been alone

and so far away,
you have too

Where is it that love grows? Goes?
when all sad songs lead to you?

So baby,
I am saying,
that out of all I
thought I knew

I was wrong,
I'm so in love,
and honey,
it's with you.

I baked a
cookie in
a cup
in the microwave
a cup with
big red hearts
my socks with
big red hearts
my chest of
big red hearts
Oh endlessly,
I love you.

It's 1778 miles

    from where I am, here
and you are somewhere
else

I don't know why
the further away
  you fly
  the more afraid
          I am:

there is no cage to hold you!
or tool big enough to clip your
   wandering wings

It's 1778 miles from
  where we've packed away mud
     and sticks and feathers that were going to protect us from
  
    the storms- you told me.

and still you've found your
self
a continent
away
and here,
  the temperature
    is drop
               p
                 i
                  n
                    g
                       fast

I saw a falling star.
tumbling from the sky.

nobody believed I saw it
falling as it died.

behind the
hazy mountains
above the tall
fir trees

I saw a poor star falling,
and nobody believed
me.

There are days
where I have
passion

where love I never
felt
or thought real
finally exists

and the sun can shine
or it can hide behind
a field of rolling
clouds

and the darkest of nights
can cover me,
even slowly,
if it must, and keep me longer
if it must
it can keep my eyes
closed against a cold
mask of stars,
if it must

I've learned that in a
globe, so small
my deepest soul
is free.

You haven't called since you were 21

since the world had
laid its
hand on you
and you had fallen
down to
love's abyss

you haven't shown your face since
you were 21

since he took you to
a fathomless deep
where you held your
breath to swim
against the
darkest current
the deepest cavern
of anguish
and of regret, too

I have a picture of you.

an old photograph that's
sort of hazy
where your arm
is wrapped around me
and the August sun is
high

I'm waiting, love

I'm waiting for you
to surface from the
dungeon that is
jealousy and from
the sorrow that is
fear
and emerge out
of lover's angst
until you're in the river
and the water becomes
clear.

At the end of
the day,
when the city,
dressed in black,
is quiet,

I'll sit underneath
my blanket
and I'll close my eyes
to you

and while my eyes
are silent
and yours speak a
thousand words
the smell of your
cologne will
linger
and I'll be lost for
words

When it's summer
and the night is
slowly fading
I'll wait for you to
ease my soul

and I'll put
on another hot,
black *** of
coffee
and I'll let you keep
my sorry heart
you stole

Every time I
fall in
love,
I think I've never
been in
love before
because
I
haven't

Love is not
one word,
one sense,
overall meaning
or
interpretation:

Love is this-

it's every
individual
and everything
you are.
It's a stirring of
hatchlings who have
discovered their
wings so to
romance every
yearning tree in the
woods
again and again
devotedly
flying into
love because wings are meant to
carry
bodies into the arms
of stars

It's like we're back to back
where I cannot see your
face
and I almost can't remember
what it
looks
like

and I reach behind to touch you but my arms don't
bend that way

It's like we're back to back but
you're also fading
into
grey.

You left your love in
  Papago Park
   leaning against
   red rocks that feel like
fevers now
give me a palm leaf to shade my
eyes.

I can't even sleep when the sky is so red
in September
  no leaves on
the ground,
either

It's all dirt here.

You've left your love in
Papago Park and it may as well be
any side of Mars
with how far we have to
go and
how impossible
this
seems.

I dreamed I was
covered in salt
  from the sweat that
it took to
pull you to the
finish line:

where I saw strangers
& wildflowers
and anger
and laughter
and street lights
bathing
happily ever-afters

where I saw sadness
& take-backs
and widows
and crime
and remembered
it's been
just 2 years since you
died.

I've given a
new name
to my hopes-

looking forward,
when Winter is
a stone throw's
away

I may be a
Goddess of
silver lining, always
trying to
wade through
the thickened blue

But I used to know
nothing of
Romance or even
believe that
love existed

but now I will not leave
behind what's handed
to me, and, Godammit,
I'll stir the *** until
the fumes take
over

And I'll look back
at every thought
of you and
thank fate for
the time

And smile
even though
I lost you-

you made me
believe in
love again

The record's playing
out Italian tunes
Mina singing
from her soul
and I can feel your's
feeling mine

it's moments in
this velvet
chair
my dress reveals
my legs
and you admit that
you hate reading,
and I'm
not the same
at all

Mina's singing
from the stereo
Il cielo in una stanza

The landscape that I see
is so revealing
And it tells the tale of
you and I.
The hills, the slopes,
the mountain tops,
Where passion meets the Sky.

I've never known the sun could set like yours.

Long before the sting
of routine
came
the poison
bite of reject
bled into my veins
and killed me in 1000
ways,
every fang
and I wasn't ready for
a snap like this
dropped like this
turned up like this
this was our house
before Medusa came
and your snake eyes
took the night.

There are only
26 letters
to rearrange in
ways that explain
what I'm feeling

There aren't enough
lines, dashes, dots on a
page to tell you
that I love you
and I'm
yours

I know that you don't
want me,
says your 26 letters,
and I know that you're
afraid
and I know the way I
put 26
together
can be completely
overwhelming,

but darling,
26 or 7,
3 or 100-
letters are
irrelevant to the
words I want to
say to you
and can't quite
put together

There are only 26 letters
who can't convey
what I'm feeling.

Once again I've been
paralyzed by
birdsong
a whisper of
a quiet
kingdom,
choir in place
of a cornet

We're back from
winter
  and we want
everyone to
  know it.

You're rocking
the boat
and the white,
foaming rapids
beat
against the
stones

you're creating waves in me

and I know
that all rivers
search for the
fullness of the
sea
the silence of the
sea
the deep, surplus of
mystery that, I tell you,
is the
sea
&
I know they run
with ceaseless
hurry

but in moments,
when they're
still
and they're just about to
fall
Know that I am falling with you and you're
rocking,
rocking me

until above the rocks
above the danger of
metallic tides,
above the harsh
chemical dreams
of reality
that
polluted our
beaten minds

you and I will see the sky
open up
dusk open up
the world
open up and
we will find the
quiet of the sea

After all of the hard
feelings
and after the summer of
fires.
After the forests had fallen
apart
and after I forgot
desire

After the winter in
whiskey
and after the stars
hid from dawn
after 3 years ago when you
died
I think I have finally
moved
    on.

Are these the days
I'll look back,
fondly on?

when I think,
how could this life
get any worse- you're not
here and I'm in love
with your ghost.

But baby, we had
it good.
When the nights weren't
so cold
and the hope of blossoming
love was still
budding with
the charm of
August nights
and endless
fits of song

Are these the days I'll look back fondly on?

When the words flow from you
it's the sound of a
downpour.
Amazed, I can't look
away.
and the inches of
water
in the street sides
are growing
my mother won't let me go oustide.

I think I'm
busting up this frozen
sea
because I
danced to the glow

Inside a wish
subsequent,
where the
sun melted
the snow

where snowflakes
fell
and angels cried
existing in a bird

and you put your
holy bible down
and threw away
the word

and you stepped into
a world of white
closed your eyes to
all you knew

then you took my hand
and waltzed with me
and found the Devil's Blues.

You're my
best kept secret-
a rippling stream of
hazy blue inside
my mind, my
heart,
a glow of light
above my head
absorbing into me,
the color of the color
of "to heal"

You're my best kept
secret:

rivers change with time,
with the deepening of
banks and the falling
trees of winter-but you.
oh,
but you
You're the sediment
on which I flow,
that I keep hidden
deep within the
tributaries

                I love you,
and that's my best kept secret.  

         And I'll carry you
              for all of the
                Tide-race.

I can't lose you.
I can already feel the aching in my bones,
in my skin, my deadened joints.
I couldn't take it if I lost you.
[Let me fall asleep] where I cannot see sunlight,
I could not bear to see the sunlight,
without your hand in mine.
I already feel the absence of your
                                            touch.
Your whisper
                            [in my ear]
and your breath on my neck,
deceased.

And I can feel what life would be like without you.

the endless night of anguish.
the days of too many hours.
the fog progressing in.

It'll never stop raining.

And the pain my eyes would bear,
having seen all that they have seen
[and seeing you in everything]

Oh,
the thought of if i lost you.
and a sea of blankets cover me,
with agony,
numbness
sweeping
over
me.
If I lose you,

I lose everything.

I could captivate the ocean
and confuse Midnight for Dawn
I could produce tiny seeds
use tulips as grass on my lawn
I can grow bark on my skin
and let leaves fall form my eyes

You could turn me into ashes
and you wouldn't have to try.

For you, I'd wrestle planets
I would battle with them all
I'd watch them sink into the sky,
I'd watch, to watch them fall.

I could memorize the river
and lure the night with sin,
I'd breathe you in so deeply,
and then I'd breathe you out again.
I breathe while I'm untouched
air falls, it falls from high
You could turn my soul to dust

and you wouldn't have to try.

Usually I'd be
brokenhearted, and,
believe me,
I was-
knowing that we
can't be together
and that maybe,
maybe you don't even
love me and maybe
never will-

but instead,
I'm happy.
I'm so ******* thrilled.
I am so in love with you that
even unreturned,
my heart's in bliss

Passion
is capable
in me-
and that in this
earth,
on this plane,
somewhere where I
was ****** into
at birth,
you exist.

God,
you exist and
I'm able to
love
you.

I wrote a love
as dark as
a December night
where stars
will always
shine.

I made a mess
of love as
cold as snow
as white and
pure as winter
[pearls]

I don't regret anything
tearing the bark
off of the trees
in the park
and pulling the petals
off of roses and roses
and roses in your cheeks
how they bloom
[when you smile]
and when you are
cold from winter
nights of snow.

There are nights of snow
but the stars will always shine.