A silky purple sky
so hot
like my head is under sheets
there's no way I can breathe

and see
the patterns in the air
of branches, twigs, veins
of bark twisting
clouds coiling
slithering in the rain

cold drops on the windshield again
in another taxi
another smoke stained
cigarette hole in my cardigan

and man

I miss you in this Cajun heat
the orange light bouncing off of cement streets
where you have gone
and I cannot defeat the
demons dancing
in my thoughts
and dreams
and everything you
mean to me

Where tornado alley never ends
or goes to sleep.

Ok, so I love you
and I hate this Texan heat.

To see the fall, the bend at the waist,

The length of your hair set around you.

The parting of your lips, and the fleeting of hot breath.

It touches me, no tomorrow.

I know there is no tomorrow.

I am defeated again, inches from you,

from the branches, the muscles, the veins,  the sinews.

Inches from all you used to say to me

From your mind that remembers the softness you gave to me.

I’m

Straining and reaching

receiving nothing from you.

To see the fall, the end of amour

The end of everything I was to you.

No tomorrow.

I would still try to be it for you.

Be zeal, be warmth, be tomorrow for you.

My bony hands, cold and reaching for you.

The porcelain wrist that used to feel

the leave-taking of your lips

Crooks to no tomorrow.

Crooks and croons, there’s no tomorrow.

There’s no tomorrow,

I pray you.

You'll never see the Eiffel Tower

or the elephants in
India
or
that painting place in
Portland
that you saw in
the paper
last week.

Last week.

a week when you were you
again
(and I was all of me again)
and you were breathing air
again and
everything
       was
   right
        again

[again
again]

You'll never see the the moon shine
and
I'll never see your smile

again

or hear your laugh
and hug
and 90's tshirt

(the camel on the front)

or see you walking up
the gravel

a hand over your eyes
to see the way.

To see the way again.

I need to see the way
again.

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.

I keep following
every path
with light at the
end
always reaching
out my limber
hands for
hope's desire.

Why is it,
in happiness,
I only want
another song
to move me
from the
embers, where
a fire
raged &
burned me
through
again,

following a light again,

seeing I exist
in human
form
in every
form that
is and
will be
sleeping in
a fire pit
to stop and
start again

It's moving towards
a light
that does
me in.

Stand by,
feel the warmth,
of the flame
burning like a
bulb in
me
My love,
stand by,
put your hands
out, in the
night to
warm your
frozen
fingers
against the
fire,
Oh god,
pull your gloves off.
Your hat off.
Your jacket and
your scarf.
Pull back your sweater and
all the blinds that keep your
love contained,
your love
hidden from
me-

I know you're in there.

Where there's a match,
there's potential,
an undeveloped inferno,
the conviction of
a heaven draped in
light that fills the
spaces in your
wreckage.

I'll strike you 1,000 times
to
pull you out
from the dark.

I can’t bear to look at
trees
not any kind of trees, but
evergreens

there’s a skeletal
finality
to the way their
bark is breaking
while
somehow
growth
prevails

and it’s such a simple
thing,
getting through
heartbreak
  miles from home
  why does it always feel like
I’m miles from home?

but I make do,
somehow

I just can’t bear to look at
trees,
evergreens,
an entire ecosystem,
temperate rainforest,
aisles and aisles of
patchwork
Pine

So often, I go out to the
desert now
and push my foot into
the red dirt,
and every rock is the
hate of what is lost
and every trail is
a cold-blooded vine

I can’t bear to look at
trees,
evergreens,
douglas, spruce or
pine
I can’t bear to look at
trees

these woods don’t feel
like
   mine

I had a dream in France
that you were dying.

and so I came home
after two restless
days of flying

And now you lie,
your health in slow decline

dressed in white sheets,
alabaster cheeks
your IVs all entwined

I can't say I love you
quite enough

And
in front of you
I know
I must be tough

but I never knew that
loss would come before

the angels come
to lead you through
their door

You always believed
that
dreams held something true

I wish that
when I dreamed of death
I hadn't dreamt of you.

Waves of troubled blue
wash over
me.
I sold my guitar
6 weeks ago.
I gave away my favorite pair of
heels.
I cut my hair
and closed my eyes
and felt comfort in the teal.

I bought a dress;
it's see-through.
I've only worn it once.
On the day I tried to see my father,
but became the victim of
resistance.

I haven't seen my dad in far too long.

And I haven't stepped outside the waves.
Even though they swallow me up
and choke me whole,
singing
sea foam to the grave.

I take pictures of myself a lot.
Of my hands,
my legs,
     my feet.
I'm on a rock
and there's
  a storm,
brutally
   rocking
  me.

How waves of blue've
washed over me.

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.

You're beautiful and
ever-growing
into someone I could
love and
love and learn
to love
    again.

I could fall onto
my back
and into
cigarette burns and
the grief-trenches

I could hold onto the feeling
of your hand
in mine
and the hunger I
feel for your
magic
  healing
    words

I don't know if you
knew it then -
but since all this time has
passed
and all the knocks on the door were not
yours (they
couldn't be yours)

and I knew you couldn't be back to
say
goodbye.

I'm so glad I stayed
with you,
held you,
and called our family to the
room
when you died.

The hospital
room's aglow
with sickly
yellow lights and
greenish hues

and your hands are folded
under your blanket
under your scratchy
hospital
blanket

and my forehead lives
on the metal bar
that keeps you
in your bed

and the yellow
trees are glowing
out the cement
window panes
where my sister
pinned a plastic
bow to hold back
my greasy bangs

I would live here
for eternity
if it meant
saving you
go to sleep
peacefully
and someday
I will too.

Sometimes I can hear
the woods at night,
the cascades where
   the shadows turn to      

gold

I'm in the valley in
                        September
before the fire
      and
the

fall

Maybe life can be
just as
simple
as a life
before
everything
has
changed.

How can I say it
in so few words?

I love you.

I've never been so in
love
or so angry
that I want to burn my
tongue
to remember
coffee with
you.

I wish you
hadn't been so
beautiful
and I hadn't
so
naive

This has to be it.

the place between
then and now
how obvious
it is
yet
I can't quite
see it,
make it,
reach my hand to feel
it

but this has to be it

the effervescent
present
the holy
present
the infamous present
they tell you about

where you exist
because I love you
only because
I love you

and where I exist
within myself
and nowhere inbetween

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

When I told you
that you could
have a painting
for five
bucks,
you dug your wrinkled
rugged,
years-worked hand
into your
tethered denim
to fish out 5
ones.
& I handed you a
hastily copied
Van Gogh and
you spurted out your
military ID like
a whistling kettle
unable to hold
its steam.

I hope that when you aren't sure
where you're at
again
Van Gogh's "Room"
leads you home.

Even though
I rarely see you
anymore,
and even though
it's clear
that you've
moved on,

I'm sitting every night
observing how you come
in and out of
my mind, trying to
meditate in the
hopes of moving
on

I don't think there's
a moving on,
just a further place
from pain-
the memory gets pushed
back deeper in
the vault,
but you're the key
you'll always be
the key

You're the key
that
opens up
the vault of
hope in
me.

After we hung up the phone
and after I heard
the ghost in your voice
singing
(its song of wasted abandon
of histories
of your medicinal haze)

I saw a pile of
lavender
I had yanked up from
the man-made soil
in my landscaped yard-
another man-made object

Vicodin or Lavender

I want to feed them to the sea
(it's a song of reckless abandon
of hope
and of better days ahead)

But you always find another
orange bottle to ease your pain
And I always find another
field of man-made flowers
to take my mind off of
letting you go this way.

I want to go to Austria
and taste the cake

visit every stone-
wedged cafe
and watch the
chocolatier

Oh this life is
wonderful
where I can fall
asleep and
meet you in
Vienna

So here I am,
  deep in violet
   fallen into the nucleus
of a flower,
what
have you done
to me
where
I am
possessed by
the subtle stirring of
leaves when a car
drives by,
the wind sways the blade like you
rouse
me

I can't even walk past
a garden of violets
without wishing you
were there to
see it.

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.

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.

Upward and wayward with
shaky plans,
I lifted my glass and drank to a
simple
song of leaving

I've been watching myself change
in the mirror
a restless heart, I can't stand it,

Look out! I'm coming
and one day, you will see
The way I move
makes you
want to confess to
me

I hear a lot about Christians. I hear a lot
about God

but holy light makes my eyes hurt,
Mother Mary makes me cry

And everyone always says that
Heaven
takes its time,

but I can't. I've got shaky plans and
a restless heart
Douse me in water, second time
fire, third time
I'm Holy

Because down in the valley,
down in the swamp filled with ash groves,
and the ditches of mud,
the dregs of society
who have always shone like
gold
to me

You are my holy gate,
my heaven,
my sacred entrance to
the promised land
where
we don't have time
for the privilege of
waiting
on
prayer

It's not often
a poem wakes me
in the night

stirs me out of
unconsciousness to
speak to me

it's never been about
you
or us-
it's never said a
word to me that's pulled
me from the very moment that
I'm living in

but here with you,
here where winter
is mid-stretch
and the Ash Groves seem
quieter than
ever

I'm waking over
and over
and over,
my love,
because
you're speaking
to me
and poems keep
waking me in the
night.

Reflection people,
Shadow people,
I've tendencies
to
watch
all people.

Sitting in bed with
you, back against
the wall,
we talk about
how smoking
cigarettes
is ****
and we laugh
and the 5:30 glow
of soon-to-be-sunrise
floods the wall

it's then you tell me
your stories
your deepest
tragedies
your longings
and your needs
and I can
taste the
whiskey on your
sorrowed tongue

and so I hold
you here,
in my arms,
our shadows changing
shapes in daylight's
advent
where I
want so much to
keep you and we
watch the
sun come up

Take my hand &
I'll show you the
sky.
I'll show you how to
coax the
sunset's green.
I'll open you to
every touch of
fire,
every gentle hand against
your heart,
against
your traveller's soul.

Take my hand &
follow me.

Follow me up to the charcoal sky where
I'll
show you every
star
that I'm
destined to follow-

I won't leave you behind.

Take my hand, you
witching musician
& follow my
dancer's
plight, my swallow's
flight,
up to the deepest, starstruck
heaven to where
we'll watermark
the sky
in ornamental
fashion.

The way the light is the star of the dark
is how obviously I love you.
Never faltering, steady, and sultry
simple is how I long to love you.
Like the moon lights up the sky,
is how your soul has changed my life.
And like the sun rolls off the land
is the warmth I feel inside your hands.

We are tucked inside a flower
we are ancestors of the rose
the petals hold us closely
...you and me enclosed...

There's a dam that's built around us
pushing you closer to me
the walls are pushing in my feelings
You and I become the sea.

We are enclosed spaces
under the flowers, we're concealed.
I am everything you've opened
and you're the reality of surreal.

We are drops within a faucet
we are love I can't portray
We are flowing towards our destiny
We are sealed.
We are fate.

Well my love,
we had it all

hot nights
where the screens
held back the mosquitos
and the tv glowed
where the curtains were held
to the wall with
thumbtacks
and your puzzle sat on the table
and you sat on the couch

we had it all
stepping around the tubes
from your oxygen tanks
and refilling your
weak cup of coffee

we had it all
when it was hot
and I was sweating
and your body was aching
and the roses continued to bloom.

Like a shadow,
you were
never quite
within my reach

hesitant and
hidden
the sun pushing
you away

I've always seen
the Bayou in
the dimples on
your cheeks

All of
Louisiana in
the blink of
an eye.

I'm so afraid
that you feel nothing.
That your ribs hold
nothing.
That your shadowed
eyes see
nothing.

No love, no fault
no guilt or regret.

I am so afraid
and your
soul looks so fearless.

But they tell me
We're all afraid of losing
something

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?

Faded trees
and foggy hills
of misty blue
and morning pills

and pastel soap
in a broken bowl
my splattered mirror
who eats my soul

an empty fridge
a broken lamp
moldy, mildew,
Northwestern damp

wrists against
my seam-ripped sleeve
this is what it's
like to grieve.

Well
who would have
thought it would
end like this?

with one sunset
fading out of sight
(I'm close behind)
the glitter
of a city
in the distant night,

and in a second it is over
and the rains begin again
and winter is your lover
and summer's just a friend

and flower shops are closing
and the candles burnt
to wax
a step into your long,
lost home
and you just want to turn back

and no one is waiting
how you thought they'd
wait
and you left someone behind
decisions are the demons
pedaling my mind

Well,
who would have
thought it would
end like this?

with just what I wanted
in hand
and the painful sense
of regret
when you give away
what you had.

Here I lie
in a browning
blanket stained
with mascara from
wiping my eyes

in the blue light
of the pool side
gleaming
and the silence
of a summer night

it's here
I lie and do
not know where
pain comes from
or exists within
my soul

or why it
burrows in
so deep and
buries itself
in its hole

and how
agony can
be so big
yet it
makes one feel
so small

Here I choose
to feel my pain
to lie and
sleep through it
all

When the day is over
I can still see you
being ****** into
a whirlpool
of turbulence
swirling at
your ankles
refusing to let go

what kind of hell is this
where your demons
won’t let you be
and the swirling
seaweed stops
for nothing
when you’re fighting
to get out

Mom,
I’m really sorry and
I know my demons
haunt you too
but when today is over
when everyday is over
I hope you still know
that I love you.

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.

Where is regret
when flowers bloom
and they're on the brink
of bursting
with lacy desire

Where is regret
when yesterday
I was not who I am
today and
today, tomorrow.

Why is regret
here now when
yesterday it could not
create a shadow
but only a subtle
flicker,
tap in my gut
a wick of a candle
that will not light,

but burns to oblivion,
all the same.

Why can't I just be
and not let the bees keep
swarming in my head
words being written
on the wall of who I am
and who I thought I'd be?

Where is regret within my soul?

I have to stomp it out.

It's always a whistle to
catch my
attention.

A man, a gym coach, a steaming hot
tea kettle.

It's always a sharp note of bird
song- though,
au contraire,
when a bird actually whistles.
When she actually sings,
I seem to be
the only one who
stops to listen
though I know she's not looking
for
attention.

I am not the harnesser of energy,
  I'm more like a train station where
good things and
bad things
come and go with
time, that carry me,
fleeting,
and are gone with a
whistle blow

I keep thinking about a white
house in a garden
with drooping dahlias
lining the crooked
stone path

a stone path that leads to
an awning- spilling shadows from its
canopy
down to cover
a degrading wooden
step

I keep thinking about the door
single panel window and
unwashed, dusty curtains,
lace, sunlight bursting through
the
window fogged with
grime and age

I keep thinking of places
that do not exist
and are puzzles of
things I have
seen
before

where even the bees are lazily buzzing symphonies and
the tallest trees I've ever seen sway in their drunken lull,
it's August in southern Oregon and
I keep thinking about a
white house in
a garden