Everywhere I read
I see that
"this is
the right
direction."

But how is it
I feel so
unsure
of where I'm
going and
of who I am and what
I need within my
aching fire
of a soul

they say that
life's the journey
that every
turn has
purpose
that in every single
moment,
pulse,
I'm heading towards
the sun

My soul is
sitting in a tree
the highest branch
in ecstasy's confusion
where I don't know how to climb to
either end
to
fall like
fruit or
hug the weathered  
post and hold on
for my life

they say this is
the right direction
but I want to see it
with my eyes.

I want a
companion, too

someone to
consume me with
his fire
over
stories, flutes of
port

someone who can
read his
bible without
believing what he
sees
and likes the sound
the thunder
makes when
it drapes over
the trees

I want a
companion, too
to share this
sorrel time

to think my eyes
are portals
& to be my
paradigm.

This is not the first time
I've died

This is not the last

this is not about
reincarnation
or something from
"the past"

this is not the last time
I rise

This cannot be the last

I'm talking about moving on
and only glimpsing back.

It never stops raining
and it's never a shade that
isn't grey
the wrought-iron
gates are
always icy
and the pavement is always
the same

Tonight the church bell's ringing the hour. It's 7 and you're spewing
poetry.

And tonight's the night I find out
you might leave me
and I won't have a chance
to go

I'm so broken hearted and
only the Church Bell knows.

I've written poems
so many times I should
be sick of them

and the amount of coffee
I've drank,
I should hate it by now

and the number of times
I've laid on your
side,
under your
arm,
stuck to your
hip,
I should be restless in
that space
but

instead I can't subdue
my love of poetry
and coffee,
your side, your arms, your hip,
in love with you.

Here's the thing.
I love the
dusk,
I love that
moment
when
the porch lights
flicker on &
moths, out of
slumber, rise
to find the
way.

I write because you're out there
living your life of
newspaper print
and fleece
of wind breaking
navy,
blue
and black umbrella
rain

Where you walk from
steel grey
up
stairs and stairs
of
paisly velvet,

you

and you're behind
your desk again
glasses on the bridge of your
nose again
statues folding
against your wall
again
and me peering past
the crack in the
door again

a knock,
and you're mine

for five moments,
you're mine

for Greek
and for Roman
and for Latin,
you're mine.

If only your French
wasn't so good
and I didn't run
like a fox
in the night.

Your hands are
the sea,
mysterious,
relentless,
  and a silver
   shade of blue.

It's the funeral
and your old soul
has crept away
while mine still sleeps
in your hospital bed
in the darkest shades of
grey

of charcoal 3 a.m.'s where
the clock's green glow is
haunting
and the fading sound
of your failing voice
is teasing and it's
taunting

where the piano keys
are quiet
and I want it to be heard
that not a song is being sung
and silent,
are the birds

I'm so tired.
tired of all the broken glass,
we dance around.

And waltz to.

I've never been so scared to say goodbye,
to you.

I'm home again
past puddled streets
where sirens swim
and lights flicker red
to green,
it's small town
Southern Oregon,

Baby I've been lonely,
and I don't
want to be
away, cast
away,

I could love you desperately.

where I'm
roads away
Cascades away
rolling fields
and rivers
away-

Where I'm burning.

I don't know why I need you
like I do,
but I do
and it's die-or-die
-my last-ditch effort
to make you feel the way
I feel for you
across miles of Pacific forests

I wasn't sure I'd
be here now
where May meets me with a
heavy handed
clasp of the
hand

They say it's only
time
it will
go on, but
every day, it
starts so
slowly and
the night time
goes so
fast

I never thought I'd
be here now

waiting for July.

The smell of
baby
shampoo reminds
me of
the last three weeks
when
you were dying

where your hair was
matted and your
nose was
the deepest
winter blue

and the autumn
leaves were falling,
yellow as the sun
and out the window
you exclaimed
the trees
had held up
longer
than any
fall before

I've never fallen so hard before.

Are we just
silhouettes
against the
raven night

against obsidian

against a frozen
lake
we're trapped above
our feet out
cold in snow

where Oregon's
sun has made
a shadow
out of you
and a
*******
fool of me.

I haven't forgotten you,
when I am chopping meat on
the counter,
and my little hands house swelling
veins over
kitchen heat and stove top steam
and rosemary and
bay leaves

When my tiny arms are
reaching for a cup that I'd
forgotten in the
microwave, still hot to the
touch by the
handle
and I'm
pouring broth into the
pan that you cannot
eat from.

I have not forgotten.

What's the day?
When winter is finally spring?
When the foggy freeze of morning isn't
blowing us
      a kiss

where the flowers are
still sleeping
but the hands of sun
coax them from
December's slumber

What's the day?

What's the day I
fell in love with you
where your eyes went from
puzzles to
pictures
and the buds have started
blooming

Winter to Summer
Friendship to Love

What is the day?

I was wrong
in thinking love
does not exist
and falls apart
before it ever
lasts

I see you
everyday  
(my longing is in agony)
and your passion is
overflowing even when
we do not speak

I'm not sure if
drinking the poison
of other men is
helping me
dull the burn
of missing
you

if taking the glass of
red elixir to
my lips, holding my nose with a
pinch of my fingers,
closing my eyes, throwing my head back
and hoping the
blackened scorch of
you leaving me is
gone when I open
my eyes
with someone new
is working

I'm not sure
if waking up
with someone else's
pain-filled
core
who has
loves to forget,
hopes to nurse,
people who have
died and left them
behind is
adding to the
graveyard where
thoughts of you are
being pushed so deep
into who I am
and added to the
ground that
I call my body

My life is filled
with tombstones
of you and no other
man has been able
to dig you out
of me.

I don't know why
I have to be near you
for insight to
come to me

I have to be lying
in your arms
to feel the
quiet touch
of poetry
coaxing
thoughts
and words
out of me

...whispering in your ear
about
butterflies and
dreams
and days that
brought us ease- much
lighter than the window
shows
today

I don't want you to be the one who makes me write this way

I don't want to
see the ash
trees blow
with wind that
used to touch you

or watch the
swallows'
shadow show
dipping
over blue

say exactly
how you changed me
and how I
affected you

you don't know
when
you left this life
that night
that
I was fading too

Fall's around the
corner and
I know
October's are
hard

when trees are
pushing off
their leaves
and slowly
revealing their
bark

I wish the days
had been kinder
when
she laughed and
God was real

But Autumn's grey
is not to blame
for what
depression
steals.

There's raspberry
red paint
smeared on my hand
like I wiped
the cherry lipstick off
my lips

I heard the sparrow singing

She walked in wearing
alligator
backless, silhouette
hair like a flag
blowing in the wind
and bows on her heels

Singing where I cannot see her

This is a moment in time
where I'm not sure which way
the wind blows
which way the bird flies
or ***** its wings and
where she hides, but I can always hear her

In candlelight and
turpentine and a
flask half
empty

in a blanket and your
coat because the
late-spring nights
are chilly

reading a book about
Lobotomy

I'd wait through empty beds
and empty Mays
empty flasks and
empty minds;
I'd wait
   for you.

My favorite
time of day
lasts
about 6 minutes
where the moon's in
its
ascent
and the sun is
just a strip
of orange
across the rocky
blues
4 minutes
and trees be-
come just
silhouettes
and cars
switch on
their lights.
it's the
final hazy glow
before the valley's
turned to night.

My phone is always
in my hand
except for when
the microwave
runs

except for when the
lights clicks
on
and spins, and spins
away

only when I'm heating
up my cracked
white
coffee cup

I am alone inside my head

and for this minute,
where I'm alone
with myself
I ache with need
for you
and I remember your hands
the day that you died
how soft and blue
and beautiful they looked
and that is why

I never put my phone down.

I'm not going to stop loving you,
even though everything feels like it's
  glass

and I'm watching where my little
hands touch
and where I catch and lose
my breath

I'm not going to stop loving you-
even though I've never been angry
             like this

where you're transforming paths to
hope springs and pinnacles
and my bag's too weighted full of
envy to
carry to the top

I can't bear the weight.

I'm not going to stop loving you
  or staring into glass.

This is it.

With you.

Fitzgerald's end and beginning
end and beginning of everything
next to you

There's no more sorrow

no more fear

no more of longing for you,
it's clear.

This is it

I've fallen in that ivy
patch where fireflies
romance

and every single breath with you
is the universe in
dance

this is it
and I've melted
into a swirling,
violet-blue

a pool from the heat of your burning
heart
and my unending
love for you.

I hope you found
that forest filled with
hope and
rocks to climb.
And full leaved
trees, to
shade you from
the world.

There you are
like always

around every
corner,
in every
country

I've seen you walk up stairs in
Italy
and through
crowded parks in
France
where the lights
of the carousel
are dancing
and the shadows
of horses
are running
free

Oh,
my dear
you're not alone
and neither am I
as dusk is
opening

Oh,
my love,
you are loved,
and dusk,
she knows your
beauty

and here,
like always,
around every
corner,
in every
country,
I know it too

And here
is where I
fall into
the arms of dusk.

What if I told you
that I was in
love
and that all
the while I've
been lonely

that time has healed
(like they said it would)
but love remains
(like I knew it would)
so I'm in trouble
(of course, I would)

So I'm saying,
I'm in love.

I miss France. I miss the
buildings.
I miss the adventures
I wanted to have
I almost had
I miss you.
The reason I came back.
You were so glad that I came back
and I was
so scared to lose you

in the end
and then
I did
and then you left
to where my France
exists
inside my head.

Mid-February and
I know you
love me

I know the
sun is starting
her high-sky
days, where
she lingers and I
do with
you,
too

It's almost Spring
and I've been
told
that flowers are
blooming
(my heart is
blooming)

February, Spring Hope, Overcast and almost
sunny-
I hope you choose
me, I hope
that you choose
love.

Oh beautiful soul,

there are so
many things
in this world to
adore-

people running when
the rain begins to fall,
shaking off their umbrellas and
laughing at the
downpour -
waiting in line for
a handful of
coffee to keep the
biting
cold at bay
or watch the steam rise,
the cream satiate the
bitter black for a moment
with a cloud-
looking out from
within at
grey and drippy
streets where
cars are pushing through
the weather
to
get to where
they're going

Oh beautiful soul,

there are so many things
in this world to
love
and I'm beginning to
see
you're one of them.

Your hands are an
Egon Schiele and
I'm sinking
dropping
  descending in-
   to pits of
   sharks,
   fits of blue,
   an ocean
    of veins meeting
    fingers touching
    webbing through
    the hues

     It's not like it's
     the first time, no,
     and if I'm lucky,
      it sure won't be
      the last,

         but you and your
             Schiele hands are
                wading through the depths
                  of me
                    to where
                                     I can't
                                         go
                                            back.

The weather's been growing
hotter and
I know that it's hard to
stand
you don't do well in a
summer's heat
and all I have is a
window fan

but it's not the heat that
is wilting your joy- I see
you falling
behind

it's music and
fear that's prodding your
heart and
frustration that's
captured your
mind

I am trying to be tender as you're
breaking,
but your de-
spair breaks me
too

If someone can save me now:
let them save
you

If you went into
the forest
I would follow
you

I'd break the chain
and hop the fence
and walk not
far from you

I'd trip over rocks
be afraid of the
night
and wonder
what lingers in
the brush
the starry forest
floor

But I'd follow you
with empty hands
with open eyes
with every sense
of loving you
and then I'd follow
more.

A time has come
for
   love me,
tender

as I'm walking
down the
stairs
and the
edge of my heel
touches the
pavement
in a whisper.

I try not to
talk too
loud,
because I'm scared
I won't remember
all I've
said

a time has come for
love me,
  tender
and
  to
talk more.

They say
you chose to live
this way

that it's your own
**** fault

but where's the
fault in feeling
and not having
one to turn to
and needing someone
in the night
where your demons haunt you

where's the
fault in hoping
that white will take
the pain away
the pain that won't
stop scratching
pulling, tearing
where your demons want you

and where's the
fault in running
when you were
never told where to go
no hand to guide
no hand to follow
no hand to touch
or hold

They say you chose this path
that it's your own **** fault
that you don't deserve a human touch
of love
because you chose to live this way



I know where the fault is.

I'll be some
              where tomorrow

and the sky will change to
grey

and even if I close my eyes
the thoughts won't go
    away

and even when I
   fall asleep -
at the end of
every
    day

I'll keep waiting for
  tomorrow
and I'll be
  stuck in
         today.

I went back to
that weekend
when the hills were full of
roses
and you were only ten steps
    from the path

I was in my
sundress
and you were in
your knack:

a deep and dark depression where there's no
going
back.

I lost a mountain
worth of soul the
moment
I gave in
and wrapped
the ivy 'round my legs
and let the carnivore
**** me in.

I lost an ocean
of passion when
I sat in front of you
and closed my eyes
to lose the pain.

Empty pit
and empty hole
and where did all the
roses go
when I can't dance
and I can't sing
and no one even knows my name.

And now I know
how to
trade a soul
for empty space.

I bought a book of
empty sheets
to find
something to
do

and as I filled the creamy
leaves I only thought of
you

I set the kettle, warmed my
hands,
I chose my favorite tea

I turned onto the
last back page and scribbled
"you and me."