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

I have been
waiting for
thunder so long

Checking the sky
endlessly
furiously
impatiently
searching

I have been waiting
for lightening to
strike
and for that sturdy
oak to come
crashing down

My stomach hurts in the morning
when I first open my eyes
and it's hard to breathe
imagine another day

in another burning room

This calm is so unsettling
when I can see the storm
raging in you.

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.

They say
the blood moon
is a bad omen-

hanging in
the sky
on the other
side
of a permanent
polluted
lens, a
filter
that we've made
and now is how
we must
enjoy the
stars

Red Moon,
Dear Red Moon behind
Earth's dusty
curtain,
I don't know what it means
or why the color
rouge
effects me, so

but I can feel the
black sky
crawling, moving, dancing,
a pendant against stars it cannot
touch and continuing
to blush in
rose.

"A poppy bud
is blooming
somewhere in a field"

and I am lighting a candle
my feet sore from the day
spent working, spent
painting the way light moves
across a field

"It's opening
and no one sees it."

and I am washing out
rings in my coffee cups
again, hands dry
rinsing the suds off
of shiny metal

"It's funny,
no one tells a flower to bloom."

and I am thinking about what
you said to me
about red poppies and lavender.
and I am pulling the blankets
up over my eyes,
and no one sees it.

No one tells a flower to bloom
or
to love you as hopelessly as I do.

You float
in the water like
it was made
for holding you,

where the sky
looks down
and only sees
itself,

There,
I only
see you.

I drank weak
coffee out of
your reno cup
the casino cup
with the clown face
plastered on

At your funeral
I filled your reno
cup with coffee
spoons for
people to stir away
their thoughts
and bite their tongues
and find excuses to
look at something swirling
where there is no
end and no beginning
because the hand just
keeps on stirring.

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.

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.

We always say
the sun
  goes down,

but we're the one
who turns away.

This chair's a
   rocking horse and
I'm an equestrian
dreamer
days in Spain
when you were
there
I know that you
were there and
I was too
I'm riding on a
rocking horse
a stomach wrenching
rocking horse
a back and forth
and up and down
and sideways
world
a rocking horse
and I can't
come down.

It's romance
like a cow in a field
kind of romance,
like when a mountain
is everything
cascading over
everything
and horses
and I can't
tell a person from a tree,
It's romance like
a silver storm
a violet blast
eating all of the stars
away (thank God
also your eyes)
It's romance like
I will never see the sun again yet
it'll consume me all the same
And you say you never knew
romance from a palisade.

There's a rose growing
on Lydick Way
behind an
old Mustang

against a
wooden fence
and a stump
where the
cherry tree fell
when the winter
hit us hard

it couldn't hold the weight, my love

there's a rose growing
without tending to
without a nurturing hand
without someone there to
dead head it

there's a shadow there
from the yellow
house across the street

and when the moon
is full
your silhouette is blue

Moon or sun and
rose or ****
I'd carry all of your burden,
all of your weight,
nurture you, Rose,
if I could.

My stomping grounds is
the Umpqua
where
we're
Daughters.
Sisters.
Friends.
and Lovers.

In the Umpqua Valley where we're
Men who
work in
lumber yards
and sweat
the day
away

Where we come home
at Autumn's dusk
and put dinner on
the stove and
send our kids
to school next
day

where we felt like they were
safe
the next day

My hometown is
Roseburg
where
we're now
known for
a violence that
doesn't exist in us
but now defines us

where you've spoken on your lips the place that
cultivated me
that is me.

Roseburg and the Umpqua
aren't synonymous with
tragedy,
but my God,
what a tragedy.

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 don't care
if you
remember
years from now

how the lacy
kitchen
curtains beat
against the
slivered
sills

or how the oven
spilled its
heavy air
into the house
each
August night

          It's only here
        
                only now

only in this moment
where I'm washing
my dry hands
of cooking
picnic and
rose park
things to
  chew
   with
    our
     w
      o
       r
        d
          s

I'm so effected by
the way the oven
heats me
the way this summer
heats me
the way I can't explain my love, you
heat me

and the thought of
a rose park
engulfs me
in flames.

Summers where the wood
Was rotting,
the humid stench of
 Root rot,
Paint, and pine

Where tv trays were popped
In place,
while
mom & dad
Got high

Winters where home
Was bitter
Muddy dog prints
stained
Linoleum

Someone I trusted
put
Their hands on me
And I
Never
Told
anyone.

Someday,
   someone
    somewhere
won't
f a l
       l

in love with me-

they'll look down as they step
sensing there's no
step
and still sink down
any
     w a
           y

Someday,
  someone
   s
o    m
   e     w  h
   e     r        e

won't

f
a
l
l

in
lo
ve

with m
            e

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 keep thinking about
  San Diego
   and sitting with you
- the oceanside

My blanket's on
my glass is full,
it's all hot wax
   and candlelight

I can read your lips
before I even hear
  goodbye

I'm not ready to
watch this go
& leave
this all
behind.

Tonight, your
hands
are singing the
piano,

and the fading
stars of
blue float
in the night

and my silly
heart
resists falling
like a feather-
gravity,
    gravity,
          g
          r
          a
         v
        i
     t
y

who are you in
the white light
of fluorescent bulbs and
reverie
that manages to
pull me into orbit?

You can see that
I'm a meteor who
cannot find
her ground-

So in my hectic
flight,
my chaotic dance
within the
black,
I'm going to
trace patterns
on your
music-hands
piano-hands
your planetary
solar hands
and try to be
your
satellite

On Saturday mornings
I sit in my robe
and I listen to the
crackle,
pop,
the steamy *** of
coffee brew
it brews, it brews, it brews
while something brews
in me

I turn the TV on
and I keep checking
my phone
and I sit inside
this stagnant room
and sort of feel
alone

On Saturday mornings,
I crave your love
and I know that it's not
within reach.

In watching light flood
through a window,
there's a sort of
haze
It's sleepier and cloudier
extending
length of
days

I somehow miss the
   orchestra
I want to sit next to a
stranger
Or hold my
sisters' worried hands
and believe that there's
no
danger

I want to step into a
crowded bar
and tip toe to the
counter
Then tipsy, laughing,
saunter back
when all of this
is
over.

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.

Arizona made me quiet.
Arizona made me see.
For every flower wilting
there's
the ghost path of a
creek.

Arizona made me cautious.
Arizona made me choose.
Do I prefer a coy, dry heat
or the temptation called monsoon?

Arizona made me hard.
Arizona made me fast.
The sun is not my friend,
  he lives to laugh behind my back.

The red clay dirt sticks to me
in the
luxury of white
sheets
and now I know if I
move
a rock
scorpions
breed underneath

I thought about him today again
as I was
driving,
the narrow, curving road end-
lessly winding

Four years ago this
Christmas
he died
too young for it to be
ok
if death's ever
ok,

Ok,

he doesn't come into my
mind much
anymore, I
admit

but when he does,
it's drilling

it's piercing.

it's a hammer to a nail
incessantly
pounding,
god

when the road is long
when my engine's overheating
when I have spent a morning under
a raging, August sun
painting,

He will always cross my mind because
the sun held him so tightly and then
it wouldn't let him go.

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

My life is an
ever
changing shadow
of blue,
a hazy smear of
  what looks like
a galaxy
carrying on
above you

I've been looking in the mirror
these days
and smudging my face with
my hand
so I can look
like
my shadow
looks when she sleeps in
the sand.

Ugly girls don’t get hurt,

Too strong
and rough
with hardened
edges likes
Shells &
Barnacles

They're
always stuck
between pages or
interests too strong for
people like flowers

Tonight, deep in
residential woods

at the foothill of the
butte who towers
the city-

the needle touched
the record
and Tenderly,
Tenderly played

you spoke to me
in quiet,
in silence,
and my stillness
was the counter
that you needed so

I made a deal with
fondness-
to open the most secret
vaults of my vulnerability
and sell my soul to hope
and design

at Fox Hollow's
smokey dusk,
with you

I shook the hand of love.

The man of two faces
the foggy dance

of twist of bend

of flipping over
under
above.

of changing.

There's an ugly side,
man of two faces.
a face I do not hate.
I do not loathe.
I do not fear.

I am only sad
and broken,

Gemini.

The night is pitch black
and all I see are stop lights
stop this silent war.

For every
  winter
and every joy
every summer's
  hideaway
beneath a canopy
of palm

I'll lean my head
back,
against a tree,
my swan neck branched out in
   poetry

for the every fire
the every love
and the every misery,
there's a canopy of
  hope to hold
and the rest to set you
free

I tried to
sleep you
out of my
system

but I only
rose to
find that
I'm more
tired
than before
and sickly
missing
you.

Sometimes I dream about you, but
it's not like you would
think

I'm standing in a public
place and
in,
I watch you
slink

And it just sort of happens,
like I've never
been aware

that you could step into a
space
and maybe
find me
there

and I keep running
from you, but
your face is all
I see

Every street and corner's like
you're coming
after
me

Sometimes, I dream about you,
and I always
meet your
stare

before we vanish
like a ghost - I
wish
I weren't so
scared

I've seen
five sunsets I can't
forget

and as I left
the smokey valley
and my eyes
stung
with ash and memory

the cascading blue
overcame me

I knew I couldn't leave you

and as the gravel
kicked under my tires
and my lungs
stung with regret

the aching thought
of the kettle
on the stove
and your weak cup
of coffee

overwhelming love
shone over me

But I knew I couldn't go back.

If inside my
soul
existed fields
of endless
snow

every crop
would hold
snow angels
that you
made

I don't know why I'm telling you
this,
but I've grown to
be fine.
And I've found a way to live in
fallen snow.

to let the white, bone cold
of winter light
a fire in me.

I'm painting myself in drops of
spearmint,
writhing &
gladly making
pictures fit for
nightfall and snow
angels made
of stars