I am stubborn.

I would probably stub my toe on the same leg, of the same table, repeatedly, over some period of time, instead of making sure that said table, and said leg, never meet, my poor little toe.

Which is fairly easy, but instead, I must now walk awkwardly, because it hurts to put pressure on my bruised foot. I curse under my
breath. I am upset, yet,

I'm not sure if I can simply stop falling.

I am stubborn.

I would probably break my heart, by entrusting it to the wrong hands, of the same girl, repeatedly, over some period of time, instead of making sure that said hands, and said girl, never meet, my poor little heart.

Which sounds fairly impossible, so instead, I must now breathe awkwardly, because the bruise placed inside my chest is unbearable.
I curse at myself for breathing, I am in agony, yet,

I'm not sure if I can simply stop falling.

I'm looking for a runner
A top gun stunner
Someone who does not shove me behind
In battle
Instead prefers me side by side
A shield maiden in my own right

I know that sound.
It's the same all over the world.
Vast spaces filling up with
Noise, smoke and flashes.  

Closer. Closer until close.
Then there.

I know your face like
The palm of my hand held out
From under the roof of your
Porch.

Somebody's gotta say it.
It's raining.
Poets stating the obvious to
Each other, like it's all one poem
Or another,

As poets do.

Nothing like the darkness
Swallowing blue sky. Nothing
Like lightning swallowing that  
Darkness in high voltage gulps
Of fierce celestial appetite.

I sip at your soul as our hands meet;
Mouths on the tips of our
Fingers nibbling kisses.

If your heart was a crime scene,
They wouldn't find a single print
Of mine after dusting.

But I was there.

The rain washes nothing away
That hasn't promised to return.
And I do strike twice; even
Knowing the third one

Would put me away for good.

I'd be behind bars and bolts.
Your face flashing
Before my eyes.
In love like an electric storm.
Guilty as
Charged.

Andrea Gibson

Introduction:  A couple years ago, I was told a story about a soldier who was set on fire and burned to death because he was gay. After that, I started reading similar stories about people in the GLBTQ community who were tortured or killed by being set on fire and burned. I couldn’t stop thinking about the people who had died that way and couldn’t stop wondering what they might say from where they are now.

The night I was torn from the pages of their Bible
and burned alive
my ashes came down like snow
and a girl who had never seen my face
saw me falling from the sky
and laid down on her back
to make an angel in the powder of my bones.

From heaven, I watched her,
‘though my eyes were still aflame,
and my ribs were still blue.
They didn’t win, I whispered, as her arms built my wings.
They didn’t win.
Look at that moon.
It is a pebble in my hand
Tonight, I could skip it across that fog-drunk sea
to the lashes accordion in the night
and all they know of hate
is that it couldn’t beat the love out of me…

that when they dropped me to the grave,
I fell like a bucket in to a well
and came up full;
carving my lover’s name
into the skin of a weeping willow
that had spent its entire life laughing at the rain.

Hold me like a lantern;
staircase my spine
When they bring the children to my funeral
to scream “******!” at my dust
tell them I was born in to their casket
but I wouldn’t pull the splinters from my heart
any more than Christ would’ve pulled the thorns
from his crimson head.

They can come a thousand times
with their burning matches and their gasoline,
with their hungry laws
and their empty mouths full of prayers to that god
who greeted me at his gates with his throat full of trumpets
and his tears full of shame
as his trembling palms collected the cinders
of his children’s crime.

I know what holy is
I know that the soul is shaped like a bowl;
I know the lies we try to fill it with
and we spill too often
the orchards inside.

But my lover’s shoes were tied with guitar strings
and when I walked beside
there was a silo in my chest,
there was a field full of sun.
there was a river full of gold that we left
to pick our sweet hearts from the trees
that kept uprooting tombstones
so the names of the dead would crumble in to poems.

Write me down like this:
Say my ashes never made the news.
Say the jury was full of shotguns.
Then say the snow that fell on the tip of your tongue
refused to melt away.
Say this to the kids hiding their heartbeats
from their father’s fists.

I planted the garden of my kiss.
I opened the night with my teeth.
I loved so hard that when they pressed their ear to the track
the train they hear coming will still be my chest,
a rumbling harpoon,
a sky they can not bury.

Look at that moon.
I am a pebble in her hand;
a harmonica held to the mouth of the river
where nothing ever burns.

She's here gathering more of her things.
Keeps asking if I want this and that, and I'm sick
With the flu under a blanket on the sofa

Watching my muse quit, from
Deep inside my sweater hood.
Droplets of fever on my forehead,
And she can't keep from touching my face
Every time she walks by.
I turn my mouth against her palm and
Close my eyes. Knees buckle. She
Whimpers.

Something dying that
Tries to not
Want to
Live.