What if one day
you awake
in bed,
white linen
grazing
your tattoos,
and you see me
asleep in these
pillows and sheets
and think
that I'm not for you?

What will you say
when time conveys
that I am just a single
season
that I'm cold, that I'm stone
That I chill to the bone
and sometimes
it's easier
when I
am
alone

what if one day
I wake in white sheets
to find that
I'm on my own?

This is where I am right now.
Miles between who I was this morning
And who I’ll be tomorrow.
This is where I am with thoughts of you.
Holding the elbow of a memory,
Of a cup of coffee, of the way
Your bones move around me.
These memories won’t stop laughing.
Grinning, cackling, teasing me.
I feel a change in time.
All the clocks controlling us have broken.
Where did the bird go, the bird that
Chirps the hour?
The hours of who I have been with you…
Miles away from who I was
With you
And who you were
To me.
Everything has changed.

I have forgotten
what love
feels like
when the sun is red
and the day is tired
and the hammock
is swinging
to the beat of
the world

and I'm alone
but full of thoughts
my feet up high
in twine,
my arms behind
my head

where I can sink
into
dreams
of where
passion exists
where you exist,
though I don't know who
you are.

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.

My hand keeps moving
and out pours Dahlias
white laced
scratchy shadowed
full of drooping buds
about to burst with life
in inky eternity

out pours spiny stems
arching over sunken
leaves
veins swelling and
branching out
to sunlight

out pours secrets
my secrets and my
tragedies
my wishes and my pain
my father who never looked my way
and a bouquet of dahlias sent
in replace of a childhood

out pours dahlias and the pain
of now knowing
why you left me.

I used to be a shade of blue,
our open desert
sky -
not knowing that
I'd start to
sing
& still not grasping
    why

I don't know where
music lives
or why wind
can hurt and heal
a spark,
But this happens time
and time
again,
I fall into
    red dark

I'm not denying
you're the shade
of smoke I mixed
last summer,
a canyon
filled with streaming light,
one ravine to
another

I was born red-blooded, a
lionhearted fighter
I'm gonna watch the dirt on
both our hands
expand
    like
          wildfire

There's beauty
in containment-
which is only
liberation-
permission to
let go
and
defy
design

I'm a field of
wildflowers
in a
vase
and I couldn't be
more free.

There's so much light
pouring through
a window pane
when the rain
fell down
like it did
today

and like how I
climbed
the butte with
you
and how you made
the tea

settle in
with me
when we go
home
after our legs
have been worked
in

and you'll stir the
soup
and yell at the
whistling kettle
for singing its song
too loudly

it's when the sun
is filling the room
and my legs are
dangling on you
that the light
wins,
and wins again.

I was already
falling
  when the rain
came down

like checkered
streams of
   tinsel
that make
us into
ornaments - a hook,
an eye

I always fall
  come
wintertime.

I paint every person
whom with,
I fall in love

I close my eyes and memorize
the lacy veil of blue beneath
the skin, the
tone of
the edge of a rose,
a petal,
the knuckles of
a lover that
keep me in
their grasp

I paint every person,
with whom
I fall in love,
    but you.
All of them
    but you- and no,
I don't know why.
Know, I don't know why
I can't bring myself
to put you on
to paper
like the
others.

Put your coat on, love
it's raining hard again today.

A rain like the day my uncle died.
and I couldn't see the road as
I sped through the December night.
and I wouldn't talk to my sister
because I had nothing I could
say.

Put your coat on, darling
the streets are full of ice again.

ice like the fear as I drove through the hills
my tank almost on empty.
No street lights no city in sight.
And I couldn't talk to anyone
this forest has never seen a cell
tower.

Put your coat on, dear
it's cold again today.

It's freezing and a coat won't warm the cold in me.

Another love poem
Another sad poem
Another poem
an
ode to heartbreak

There's nothing I
can say
that another
writer
hasn't said

another way
to convey
my heart break
and my affection
my equal
yet
unparalleled
experience of
loss
of losing you

another poem of death
and of tragedy
or encore and of hopeless
ness
of all that
lies between

you are gone and I am gone
and every poem I've ever read
is gone
because words
can't exist where
you do not,
my love.

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.

Close the window,
it's cold out
and start the fire,
I'm freezing

It's December
& I'm wrapped in you
before I learned
you're leaving

It's before I learned
the tender truth
that's leaning towards
forgiveness

When I would watch
the snowflakes fall
& you were mine
at Christmas

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'm a swirl
of crimson
paint
a lipstick
smear
a curling,
twisting,
writhing
sedated print
in hues
of violet-red

I'm in love,
my darling
and I want to
write
X's,
O's,
on every
empty surface
who will give me
just a moment to tell
them of my
love...

weave a stamp
of my kiss,
my crooked
thumbprint
on every lonely
facade
where you have
felt alone
and scared
and like love was
not designed for you.

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.

I love you.
  Not because the valley floor is growing greener by the hour
  and not because flowers bloom after April showers,
  I live you.
  Not knowing that every breath I breathe could be my last
  and embracing the future like I have had no past. . .
  I long for every song that is sang in your heart
  and every melody from the highest mountain of your soul.
  The wind can't sweep you away from my mind
  and even the wisest can't compete with everything I know.

  I'm forgetting the sun can never touch the moon
  and that the sky keeps them apart.
  I forget Earth can't be friends with Neptune
  and India will never visit Madagascar.
  And every place I am I cannot be somewhere else.

  I forget that time keeps us apart.
  I can't be close to you
  For it's written in the stars for you to be distant from my heart.

  A bird will never be a tree
  and a tree never a cloud
  and silence will always be quiet, for quiet can never be loud.

  I forget that a Mormon will not love a Buddhist
  the tough must be tough, for the soft is called softer.
  and even fairy tales aren't always Happily Ever After.

  I love you.
  Not because I am trying to put one with one to equal two.
  Not because I am trying to trick fate into putting me closer to you.
  I live you.
  Not because I am trying to take a skip over time,
  but because you are forever in my body, soul, and mind.
  And I love you.
  Not because I want to point destiny as a fool,
  But because the one thing I won't forget, will always be you.

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.

I watched the lights
from out my window
glitter
from afar

floating in the
shadowed night
a swimming
pit of sharks

In my
endless dark
where light
exists
and touches where you are



I watched the lights
out in the distance
falling
down like snow

weightless in
abyssal black
yawning
in their glow

out of reach
from where
I stayed
and where I
watched you go

It breaks my
heart
you left me
and you
didn't even know

I think
that I'm in
love
and it's
tragic,
my pulse
won't stop
pounding
and I need to
hear you
say my
name and
feel your
loving
touch that's
growing
cold now,
oh,
you don't
love me
like I need
you
to
and want me
just the same.

Your dark hair
is a waterfall
where I seek the
end the
crashing mist
the spray,
your body is a river
and I'm the wind
you always turned
the radio down
said
"listen to the words,"
looked at the
guard-rail passing
by your eyes
skipping
skipping
skipping
skipping beats to
listen to the words.
You don't like music,
you like poetry, my rose.

like paint
underneath my fingernails
that charcoal
which looks like
dirt

[I've washed my hands a
THOUSAND
times].

and still you linger.

like oil
never dries on skin
it smears
and smears
and smears and is
eventually
blended in

you linger.

that oil that won't leave my brush
it dries
hardens
crust over night
[a weekend]
you linger and

I can't paint anymore.

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 found a
cassette tape
at a
vintage
store
while you
hovered over your piano

and later realized
inside
there was
an autograph-
Roy Orbison that read
"Hugs & Kisses - Roy"

I could get it checked
get it appraised
get the papers to
prove it's
true

or I could keep it
on my
dashboard
let the tape spin out
its days and
smile to think that
it's signed,
touched by the
artist who
made it.

In that same way
I could force out
how you feel for
me
make you rise from
your piano,
focus on me
tell me that I bother you
or maybe,
even that you love me

but instead,
I'll let you
spin out your days- be a
friend to
you as you rise
to the top
(I'll always be yours
in candor, I'll be more)
& I'll smile to think that
I've been touched
by an artist
who made it.

I sang a song
in the forefront of the storm
In the gush of warm
before
the rains
come from far away

before black silk nights
are biting cold
and stars are
nothing but
shattered glass
within a sky and times are hard
because they say "you'll never make it."

and rain
and rain
descends like bullets again
bullets again
in the shape of
a slow, deep breath
where I'm too quick to
exhale

I sang a battle song at the top of my lungs
in the pool of each breath
in the depth of a sky
so crystal
I could pirouette on
obsidian and feel the fire
of a star

I sang a song before the storm came
before I would not be stopped
and where every arm that goes to hold me
back
will only find infinity
and endless velvet skies

There's a green
line in the sky
and you're looking
in the
rear-view mirror,
gucci shades
and tales of
foreign days

you're silver.
You're gold,
hell,
you're a band
of shining diamonds

you're so
far out of
reach.

but I love you
you don't know
how much I love you
and I can guess
how much you
love me too.

You're so
afraid of what
they might think
even though
your cheeks are rosy
and your wrists
are perfect
Your eyelashes are
in a row
and your veins take
vermillion
crimson
cadmium blood
to your heart.

You're so afraid
of what they might
think
but you
can feel
the moon light
the sun light
the morning, dusky, midnight
light on
every inch of you.

and you believe in
miracles.
and you believe that
light will always win.
My God, that means
you're perfect and it
means that
I'm in love.

Someday, they tell
me,
the aching will
stop-
the roads I take
alone at night
will no
longer
drive the pain

someday, time will
give me a gentle
push
a gentle shove to put
me in motion
away from all
your hurt

I'm not sure
where the dark roads go,
but I know
it's nowhere
good
and I'm trying to restrain
from giving into the
pain
and thinking that
every place,
every you
is the same

I'm not sure
anyone's to blame

but I need time to
heal the
rain.

There’s something about me
you should know
and it’s kind of
hard to
share
There are years
I was a
liar
and there were years
I was not fair

There were years
where I went out to
school
with nothing I could
wear
and years where I
ran to the
woods
to find my own
“somewhere”

There’s something you ought
to know about
me
and it feels like the right
time to
share
I grew up in a
rat-filled house,
without money
or
health care

And there were years
I tried to skip
these thoughts,
and it felt like
repair
like if I lied
about myself
It would all
just
disappear

But there’s something you need to
know about
me,
I got silence
with each prayer
There are years
that made me
hard as stone
to
get me
out
of
there

You swore you'd never lie to me
again.
Remember the aching I
carried for you?
So high within my arms.
Safe and high within my arms?

You'd never tell a lie
again.
one that would make me cry.
You said I wouldn't cry.
But how could I not
when you lied to me
again.
and how do I trust
the tongue
that disrupted my reality?
disrupted the picture
I had of you with me.
And you swear you'll never lie.
again.

You're a
dark
cavern,
where I have
to
breathe a
little deeper
or risk not
breathing at all

as I am trying
to make my way
through the
black, an endless
cave of what-comes-next
(I have no idea
     of what comes next),
I know
that
If you gave me more
time,
you could (maybe)
love
me
too

it's here against
the grotto
that is
nudging me
and slowly
pushing into
me, my eyes
adjust to the
darkness that is
you

Oh honey,
you've fallen so hard
in the heather

and you've skinned
your peach-
**** knees

and you've closed
your eyes
to the sun that
shines

and the labyrinth
pattern of
the bees

You've fallen
into fits
of promise

fits of
frozen
winter snow

in the corner
of your
high-walled
maze

where the wind
can't even blow.

I wish I could say
I've found the
beauty in
suffering-
the zen
part of
accepting
what's
received.
I know that
deserving doesn't
dictate what we get or
need,
but I can't shake
that thought on
out of me