I'm washing my hands
beneath the normal-kitchen-
view,
and a bird is sitting on a
wire, I think watch-
ing me too

and I'm slowly scrubbing dishes,
china-chipped from
soft soirées
& eating with my
house coat on,
the winter chill ablaze

I'm thinking of an
empty pan,
to be used then begin again,
I'm lighting the stove and
filling my
*** with
Orange and Cinnamon

It was 112 today
and you were standing
on the clean, new floors-
a honey brown like from way back
home (I'm not sure if I'll
get used to this place. It's hot here and I miss
the woods)
you held an ice tray in your
hand,
and you told me you had
woke the night before,
for a moment,
from a dream where it were if you'd never
    met me
so in the desert night, the fan blowing on my face, you grabbed my shoulder
as I was dead in sleep-

to make sure that I was
there
   then you asked me,

your bare feet on the
new, cold floor
  if I wanted a Mai Tai
  
you opened the orange
***

The bows out stretched, rising
   , falling
and the clarinet is singing her song
so low-
where the violins
avoid in veiled
soprano
and the basses
in bulk
like to go-

When I close my eyes,
I'm on a path
   and I'm walking
    and Tchaikovsky's notes sound like
      words-
  the timpani sounds like the
beating wings,
the tilted flight,
  the colony of bats
    in aviation slur

when fate keeps on
      knocking
and it's finally
    autumn first-
I am in the
mezzanine,
   and my response to
your andante's
unrehearsed

And you are there,
under composer
charm,
your aura blazing
ochre
I've found that
   everywhere
that I'm
  with you,
             is an
Orchestra's October.

I don't know why I came here
again

the light is like a river
through the panels
on the ceiling
and the white bricks
on the wall

a wild call
of salmon swimming
through a stream
and
memories plastered
on the high beams

and it all feels like
a different life
one where I knew you
where I loved you
where you were not
a stranger
a lamp post
anyone or anything
I walk by on the street

the crooked bus seat

I don't know why I came here again
when I have a new life now
where my dreams are inches
from my hands

but still in a river, just the same

where my finger is a fish hook
and I can reel you in again
and lie on my back,
feet in Deer Creek

I don't know why I came here
when Oregon's all that's left of you and me.

When you told me
I was beautiful
I knew that you
believed it
and when you
wrote me that
acoustic song
I knew that you
could feel it
Tuesday,
when you sent me
flowers, well
I knew that I was
important
but when you held me in your
arms
and you told me the Greek tale
of Orpheus and Eurydice
and you told me to look
to the moon where
Jupiter was floating
with Venus
all on the sky-stage
of dusk and star-
fall
well,
then,
I knew you loved me
and I knew I
loved you too.

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

My hands are
often filled with
paint
from days spent
at the
easel

and they're spent
avoiding any
talk with you
that might
signify the
end

and when you take my hand
and when you try to make it
better
I try to scratch the paint marks off
to look away from
you
any excuse to
look away from
you

I paint so
little wooden
fences
and
fleeting cups of
coffee
between
lovers last
forever

It's 11:37
and that's
pancake
heaven
when I want
to rise
and follow my eyes
my de-
sire to eat
and eat
and eat
and eat
and eat some
*******
more

It's 11:38,
pancake masticate
where I feel like
I'm starving
carving fake
hunger
pangs
into my
mind and I
eat and I
eat and I
eat and I
eat
and I

It's 11:39
that's pancake time,
that's a near rhyme
I'm writing as to
stop myself
from wanting to
eat and
eat and
eat and
eat
and eat and
eat and

and I

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.

I am so
insanely in
love with you

your brown,
owl-eyes.
Your tousled,
feather hair

I am absolutely,
indescribably,
sickeningly
in love with
you,

(you
don't love me,
and that's not
news to
me.)

But I'll still love you
I'll still love you in
that place where
you're spent
hiding
in the trees

I'll love you and your parliament of owls
until the coffin's lid
shuts down
on me.

When we get to
  talking
and you ask me how
I think I died
in my past life:

I tell you,
  I've never died and I'm
going
  to live


                forever.

Palm leaves stretching
out their
arms
to reach a sea-blue
sky

I relate to reaching
up
and trying to  
get high

Head back like
a swan or
crane,
I'm done being
complacent

I am ready to
be bigger now

I'm running out of
patience.

Patio swinging, my legs
     up to push me
back and forth,
     a cover of sun-
  light dancing and
swooping in
  all of the arches
     the dips
        and the bows
the silent shapes
     of physical
       existence,

a jar of tea
in hand and a book
   of poems,
open like a corpse for
dissection, a body
to study, to poke,
   to pry to
              find
the way that
      insides make
       the outsides
       move along, shh
come along with me.

It's patio swinging in
   Oregon summer
where the mud wasps carry
   heavy,
    drooping legs like
     tired sunflowers who
     can't bear to see the sun
         overwhelm another Indian
                                                  sky

so hear, I lie,
where I'll always
lie
my bony legs pushing back the
patio swing
my doll hands performing
autopsies on
Ginsberg and Bukowksi
bathing in sunshine and
prosecting poetry

You are empty
cups of
bottom-stained
tea
and grounds
on the counter

***** bath water
and mildew
a
mint-stained sink

You are damp
linens
drying
dishes
cigarette butts
and resilience

How you are so quiet
when I know you are
so tired
I don't know

but let me hold your head
up while you
waste your day for me
while you draw
the complex
pattern
Arabic or Spanish
pattern
and you follow it
for me

I think I've
found your secret
that
nobody knows.

You're Pavlova.

you belong on a stage
ordained
in sequins,
wing-tipped eyes
and paper wings,
where the violin
becomes your muscle
and the bow becomes
your strings

and when you go,
when you die,
when you pass as
all swans do,
the spotlight
will caress
all of the stages
where you're not

and you'll come back as
you again
Pavlova again
a dancer who loves all the swans again
and I'll be back in this life
to love you too.

You drove me all the
way to town
(5 miles)
in your rusty pinto
because you saw
an ad for actors.
And I was only 10 back then,
but I knew
that it was meant for me.
And you drove me
there and I saw
her teeth in the
photo
(pearls)
and I saw my teeth in the rear view mirror
(a broken fence)
and I started to cry.

So I threw the
paper on the ground
at your feet

and you never looked
for me again.

Pêche is
the French word
for peach
it's the
French word for
love, and
loss,
for nostalgia
and your heart-
beat.

It's the word for
the color of
your tangerine
cheeks
and your
favorite thing
to eat.

Péche is the
French word
for peach and
peach is the
word for end-
less love
and longing.

I keep peppermint
syrup in the
cupboard-
the top shelf
because I know
that you don't
like your coffee
without it

And though I never see
your face these days
and I'm already
drugged out
on caffeine,
I'll reach for another
filter anyway-
to feed
my broken hunger-
my empty,
tired,
longing,
deep-seated
hunger
in my bones
and I'll see your peppermint
sitting
on the shelf
alone.

I hope the
smell of coffee
makes you think
of me

in ten years to
come

and that the scent
of my perfume
stays with you
too

and I hope that
when you fall in love
it's sweet
it's honeyed
it's silvery and
sincere
and that it's
everything you ever needed

and everything I ever
wanted
for you, too.

Perfume and bourbon
through the unknown
and we don't know
where we are

if bottles were
deeper, maybe
we could dig
(or drink)
to find out
what's the
bottom
where's the end
to the scent of a flower
to the harsh burn
of the bourbon furnace
raging on

Where's the end when
a beginning is so sweet?

Today is a really
important day
because today
I knew that I
loved you.

I'm not sure
the moment that
turned the page for me,
but it"s November and I'm
over the moon.

   You're at the coast
   and I'm in the valley
   and it's the start of
   the beautiful holidays

     You spent the morning
     at the cape and
     I spent it
painting
     away

           and somewhere-
           -somewhere
           where you were running with
            the tide
           and when I was mixing the
           perfect violet hue
          
I knew that you were it for me
I knew that I loved *you

coffee carafe
unspoken words
clawfoot bath
singing birds

cotton and brass
a pew in church
catholic mass
eternal search

Nothing exists,
that, I'm certain

I want to see
what's
behind the curtain.

Your hands play
my back like a
piano, knuckles
contorting, twisting
pressing symphonies
to life,
pushing music into
me like I've never
heard a
song

you're like a
bird
whose singing in
the wooded
canopy of dreams
who folds
his wings against
the sky becoming
cupid's arrow

you play me
pianoforte
and you love me
like a sparrow.

When no one was looking
I touched a Picasso.

I  let my hand run
like water
over the hills
and the caves
the smooth
metallic
surfaces
that
spoke to me
from
across the room

And I imagined at
night
when this sculpture sits
alone.
With no orange light
of a candle
or hum of a tv
a blue screen flickering,

laughter or cigarette smoke

It's locked up and I am free.

This is about me

These words.

How I've given
myself
  away time
   and time
       a
        g
            a
              i
               n


the secrets I've
kept
to
protect
  myself.

It is you - it's
not me.
It's not my
vulnerability.

It's not my passion.

It's not for my willingness not to fight
- or because my faith is
dwindling

This poem is about me.
And it's about everything you've

taken
from
me.

I've thought often
about
    the eye of the
storm -

the thunderous
  consumption that cold does
to
   warm

The way that the
   dust has a
    longing to fly

when the touching
of temperature
orchestrates
the
sky

I've thought often
about
how two things
come together

be it people
  or colors,

    uncontrollable
weather

The way that what's
   different will
    find its extreme

Pinnacle moments
are the day thoughts
I dream.

I want love;

I want the
gingered fire of
romance, and
all the ways it
pulls your hand
and whispers
"come with me."

With so many
   stars
    in the sky to
pluck,
I'd surely
leave
outer-space
blue

So
I'll pick a
blooming flower,
instead,
&
name it
after
   you

You have Pneumonia.

You're up at night
your chest is heaving
and the bed shakes from
your chills

and now I can't stop thinking
again
of her,
again,
and how she lived in that
bed while
my life went on
without her.

Some things keep me up at night
like standing at a crowded bar
ribcage kissing every inch of the
counter
a gin & tonic from falling apart,

My pink fingers pressing neon lights,
warming me from snowy weather,
Like your pockets used to do,
Wrist deep in smoke-stained leather

Why can't I keep you off of my mind?
I drink cities from where you are
I picture:
what if just you walked
in here
what if I hadn't gone so far?

Some things keep me up at night
Like what I said that September
and now leaving drunk, all by
myself
just to feel like we're together.

There is a woman
in Spain
whose mother
used to
read her poems
at night before
the moon
lulled her mind
to sleep

and now she
keeps them in
a journal
while her mother
cries at night
and her father
dies of cancer
and the moon
still owns the night.

I'm going back to the place where
Poems are born
where I first thought a thought to
write about, worthy of print and
text
worthy of my time I spread so
thinly

I return to the place where
poems are born, in
thought and in
Existence

in a moment's breath, a hope, a fear of
losing, love of
gaining

This is the place where
Poems are born
Between my hand and a piece of
Paper-
persuaded by the small
breaths of time spent
seeing more than I
have time to
Paint or care to
craft

In a moment's shudder of not-knowing, persevering, maybe not believing in praying-
I don't know anything

Except that I am the place where
poems are born

I saw you today
for the very
frst time.

la première

I cannot fall in love (again)
I cannot see your smile (encore)
feel no more.

I can only look on
to write
these words
in place
of you (a dream)

words to hold
empty spaces
that appear
when you walk away

à demain

...a dream of you
a false hope
of you.
a vision of what could be of you
(and me)

fantasise

I can only look on
to write
these words

to only
fall in love with poetry

vous êtes poésie

in place of
(l'idée de)
you and me.

I loved the
red dirt
road that
lead to your
tiny
faded
house
from months of
summer sun
and the curtains in
the window
that your sweet
son gave to
you.

And the pebbles that I
kicked as I held
baby's hand
in mine
because she'd
run off to
pick a flower
pick a dozen
flowers for you,

I loved you in all
of your weakness.
In all of your wasted
hours
your wasted
dreams
your wasted demons
and your fears

I loved you in all
of everything.
You were all of everything.
Poetry for eyes.

All the poets
in my life are
not writers
at all

Sometimes
in the
Devil's hour,

when your form
is next to
mine,

I can feel, can
hear your body pulsing,
twitching,
speaking
with the world

I'm never sure
if I should
let it talk,
release its
stories to the
night,

or if I
should brush
you with my fingers
and pull you back
into existence
next to me.

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

Portugal and carousels
and
moving on
after
you
    died.

The flower of once was
the leaves of all
the grown
the leaves and petals and stems and stuff
of all the things I own

And what is it,
I own on Earth?
if not the lakes and seas.

The flower of my time on Earth,
a time that own
not me.

When the night
is a witching
black
and my coffee
loses its steam
and the cat is batting
at the moths again
who waltz
with their demise
a candle with a
pool of wax,
I'm lost between
your sighs
I wish I knew a spell
to hum
a hymn
to sing
a song to
lose my mind
stars are falling
swans are swimming
here my soul is
unconfined.

Way back when
when the porch was
caving in
and the creek had never been
so empty,

I went back
to the rabbit
hutch
kicked the sick-sweet bags, the
sticky cans of
Pepsi

Way back when,
when our love was
growing thin
and your hand could no longer
be steady,

I went back
to the edge of
Deer Creek -
& threw hay
like poverty
confetti.

I pressed the flowers
from your funeral

I pressed them
to my cheeks
where I could smell
the hyacinth
the sweet honeyed
smell of hyacinth

I pressed them
to my fallen
eyelids
my dampened lashes,
my eyes that
hold the reel
of the last 24
years.

I pressed the flowers
from your funeral

I pressed them
to my chest
where my heart
wouldn't stop beating
and where yours
wouldn't begin

and finally,
into a book.
Into a book with
maps and
artists, with
paintings and
with
so many
words for reading
where you'll
always exist.

When I was
              considering eternity,
a brooding,
primrose ghost
of who
I was
before December

Before the nights were
long &
the days were
shorter -

I was like a
  swan who sat
still,
brass or porcelain,
until the chill of leaving
    pulled me out
the door
       into the
         hope
  of building a nest
somewhere new.

If everything
were purple
then
I'd probably
fall in love.

The Flowers bloom in Spring
and it is evident
That I'm not one of them.

For in the rain,
I drown
and drown
my voice gets muffled and
I can't hear myself speak
think

i know what it's like to be like he.
to be like he who
cannot hear my
desires
and fears

for i haven't strength to
share them
to push them past the
soiled ground.

if flowers come in May,
then I am leaving.

and if you cannot sense my sorrow
i am going.

if you cannot see me
stuck inside
a seed
or hard, raw earth
passion trapped like
an avalanche

then I know you
wouldn't notice
if I bloomed
[a flower]
in front of you.