Return to Truth (draft)

The Real One looked right at me, and dropped his words from lips
"You're so little, and so real too,"
I couldn't find an outlet for the shit I was feeling
So I hid it, and watered my pride, like a fool
What's my pride ever done but get me in trouble?

And poetry don't mean shit unless you know the poet,
Unless they've kicked down your walls and taken residence in your ear drums
Vacation homes in your heart, lungs, and head
Scenic drives through your breast and your feet
Think about visiting your spine but never say as much
Take inspiration from your fingertips
And make more from your own thoughts than you ever could

Yeah, you say you realized the truth
But the truth's not so simple, is it, babe?
What's right and wrong but our imagination tugging at our heartstrings, puppeteering our guilt, manipulating our love?
Don't believe anyone, not even yourself
The truth isn't words from a mouth like mine,
The truth IS a mouth like mine--
The truth is your spine and your head, and your in-and-out lungs, and your sweat and tears;
All that you are, that is the truth.
When you disconnect yourself from your body, that's the truth. We fuck ourselves up with our rights and our wrongs, but we can free ourselves with the truth.

Poets know it, that's why they live in your head.
Paper their walls with your guts,
Kick their feet up and stare out your eyes
Truth rebounding.

Cat

Love, you are so tiny-- how do you breathe?
Your lungs must fill up so quickly
Little one, I miss you
When I kiss you I cup all that you are in my hands,
and you glow with purpose and the heady bite of being desired,
and I glow because I want you so.

I remember it all so clearly, like a dream
A glittering haze of a month, or two--
How long were you mine, dear?
Time didn't matter then, and it's only just started to
Age, I mean; and numbers--

Curled like a cat, little diva
I cannot imagine you insecure or unsure.
Your eyes quick and shrewd, your claws sharp and capable
Your back arches, and you seem to grow bigger
(Though I know better; you're still so small)

Size doesn't matter, not with you.
You are delicate but I don't think I can break you.
I never have.
When you tell me that I've hurt you I laugh with a movement like waves
And so the knife goes deeper.

Looking back is strange:
I never stopped to recognize my size,
I'm the big one; I never realized.

Same

Everything I think I've said before.
A different face, a different name, yeah, sure--
But in the end (and it's the truth)

I like the things I don't know about you yet
I like the fact that we have an expiration date.
It makes it easier to love you,
because I know that I'll lose you.
No guesswork. You'll leave, and I'll be left.

I love you like a child loves her father before she's old enough to know better.
I love you like a child loves a superhero before he's capable of recognizing his faults.
I love you like I love the television shows of my past,
Not because they're all that great but because they're the last vestige of my childhood that remains intact.
I'm homesick for a place that doesn't exist and never did.

I love you like I love my friends, I love you for the things I could just as easily hate you for.
I love you like an illusion, because while I think I love you I know I don't.

Would that I could give my love away, and not make more of it--
Would that I could still the cogs of my heart.
Love is tiresome.

Saturday, September 14th (repost)

It is not so easy to write a thousand words a day, she thinks. But she dutifully pulls her computer out and types, because it was Ray Bradbury’s advice and no, it wasn’t directed towards her specifically but it was in a textbook she was given and it was intended for young, aspiring writers, and she was nothing if not a young, aspiring writer.

So here she is, writing these very words, with sweat dripping down her back and the pool so close, sparkling blue and empty on account of some rambunctious child defecating in the bobbing waters. Less than a hundred words in and she’s managed to talk about shit, literally.

She wonders what Bradbury had in mind with his advice. She wonders if he believes it. She is inclined to believe that he does, because of his diction, because of his playful exposure of his own troubles and hardships and trails as a young, aspiring writer. He seems genuine, she thinks, and she wonders as to the state of his ninety year old mind now. He lives close to her, a couple cities away. Maybe she should write to him. Maybe she would. But what would she say—what could she say that would impress upon this supremely creative mind, so furrowed and twisted with neurons sparking brilliance from tower to tower, eyes sharp behind his glasses; what did she have that was worth showing him?

Maybe it was less than that. Maybe it was that she was loathe to taint her image of this phenomenon that had crept into her heart and mind and made her want this life—this man who bewitched her with words so subtly that she didn’t know until she was changed, until her mouth watered idly with a desire she didn’t know how to explain, until one day she woke up and it hit her like a ton of bricks that all she wanted to do, all she will ever want to do—more than finding love, more than happiness, more than money and more than contentment—she wanted to write, and she wanted to be appreciated, and she wanted to be capable.

Three hundred and sixty words in, and she’s stuck. But it’s probably always like this in the beginning, she thinks. Everyone has trouble starting intentionally. It was one thing to be struck with inspiration like a stitch in her side, like an opportunity she’d be completely mental to pass up, like a spray of water to the face. She just jumped aboard that train, wrapped her sweaty fingers around the smooth metal pole and pulled herself aboard, heedlessly. It wasn’t so much that she needed to find what she was looking for, it was that she needed to experience the journey there. She needed to figure out what life was along the way, even if the end result had nothing to do with the meaning of life. The two are independent of one another, she thinks—the journey is different than the outcome.

It’s not true that the end justifies the means, she thinks, because it was never about the end, at least not for her. You don’t live life with the intent of dying, not at first, not as a rule.

Five hundred and fifty words in right now, at that moment, and now she thinks that there’s too much to write about that’s already been done, and the only reason why she’d write it is to experience writing it. But it’s not about writing it, that part—it’d be about the end result. She looks back at what she’s written and it doesn’t make sense. She contradicts herself, and she seeks to explain.

It is always about the journey, then. Writing is about the journey, but the end result is a journey too. For both the writer and the reader, the end result is a journey.

She thinks of her sister suddenly, and is glad that she only has one of them. The women in the cabana next to her postulate on weddings and brides and maids of honor, and it isn’t hard to figure out who will be her maid of honor. It is strange, to think of this want of hers. She does want to get married, no doubt—but there would be more, there would be more to herself than who she married and the style of her dress.

Seven hundred words in and she feels like there’s nothing left to say. Everything’s weighing down on her so heavily in this moment, though not the same moment that she left off—days and thoughts and life-spans later here she is, finishing her sentence, literally. She wonders if that’s considered cheating. She wonders what Ray does with his days. She wonders what she would be capable of if she ever started taking her own advice.

She feels too short-tempered these days, and she doesn’t like it. She’s so tired from school and her classes and her puppy, the one she never asked for, that when she gets home and tries to squeeze time in for the important people in her life she ends up snappish and crude. It’s sickening. And she remembers so much, and so often, about being in love. She is cruel to herself, with her entirely unapologetic remembrances. Every carefully packed away memory has come tumbling out and compiled like a film reel designed to cut away the callus on her heart, and here it comes again; the pain like bamboo whipping through the air.

She’s almost there, and she can feel it. She was once in love, but that was a long time ago. And it is also a story for another day. She wonders if some day she’ll get to explain to someone else exactly what her first love meant to her. She wonders if they will care. Would it be worth it, would it matter? Would they understand? Would they promise to be better, too good to be true?

I Dreamt

God watched me and I was terrified
He was angry with my Words but I could not take them back,
I would not take them back and I did not believe.

High above the circus lights where my father sat and watched
He etched His Son out of paint and brush
And when I saw I could do nothing; when I saw that, I was nothing.

I clutched her close to me, because she was important
More important than myself, and so I held her closer
He drove His fingers between and pried her from my arms, crueler than the Devil.

I railed against the elements, against His speckled Hands
and I wept and undressed and I stood alone in my sweat
I had no will to oppose Him but I could no longer afford not to.

His Eyes like beams of red tapered light to cut my limbs apart
and His Hair like braided ropes to bind this Game to my veins
It was not Good and it was not Evil, it was Power and Conflict and Blood.

With nothing but my Words to build a vehicle against Him
and with nothing but my eyes to send the message up above
I could not stand alone but that He took everyone from me,

And because of Him I no longer had a choice.

Not Enough

When she left for college she called me at night. In the dark I lay there, listening to her regale me with stories of peace festivals and psychedelics and free thinking and independence and music; absently touching my face to reassure myself I was still a living, breathing animal despite the lack of living I was currently doing. She spoke of trees and hills and fog, and the ruby words rolled across her tongue and fell off her lips and straight through my ears into my heart, burrowing deep inside; making me wish they ran deeper.

I felt something, but it was not enough. My heart was broken, but it was not enough.

A War

A war was waged
by one bitter man

We fed off his slaughter.

And in the end,
he swooned

his underbelly exposed

soft cream melting
cleared away his smoke and mirrors

and
we
gnawed

Dear Darkness

To Horror, Disease; to Filth and Decay:
I can imagine your daily struggle.

Abandoned by the Light, condemned for that
which you did not ask for, this heated glow
of purpose, the cold drive of desire
coil'd within you that you cannot deny.

No chance for redemption without Love, or
a twisted transformation, Black to White.
No Hope for the hopeless; yet without you
we would not understand what you are not.

To Poverty, to Tragedy and Death:
You are a bigger breed, a sep'rate creed.

Only temper'ments lacking Pride survive
having no leash, no strong-willed Governess
to look down her white nose and swell with rage;
ignoring, berating, side-stepping Fate--

And here you are, tall amongst tow'ring waves,
Slim-fingered and humble despite the ways
You are villanized; a handsome Devil.
We do not realize how we need you.

Wind, Blow Me Away

Softly, across the ground it moves through me
and, passing by, it draws my eye to you.
Whispers through the twisted leaves on your tree,
where your pale body sticks like shadows through.

Dear, I cannot remember what it is
to hold you, and to know that love is more--
Though you are here, more than life, more than this
Breath spent, sleep lost, tears shed; no more, no more.

But still I wonder where you sleep at night,
and with what great ease you lay your head down;
Though I'm saddened by your head and heart's plight,
I cannot disregard what is my own.

It's true I dream of you in shades of grey
Yet surely from my Self I should not stray.

Ignorance

She would not, could not, cannot
And yet the words fall from her lips so easily
Her "That's not what I meant," falls in vain upon deaf ears
And her unshed tears spark upon the fabric of her mind
Uselessly she struggles, and her horse is cast across the desert
Impaled, it clatters against the sheets of metal
Lost without a rider, and I weep--

This is nonsense.
As much as anything is ever anything, this is nonsense.
For one, you are ridiculous.
For another, I am preposterous.
Thirdly, one cannot hope to achieve different results without deviation from standard procedures. To do so is the definition of insanity, and though insanity is a broken badge I wear nailed to my back, a taboo tattoo seared into my flesh between my bewildered brows, I will not abide by it.

It will not be my Governess.

His slender fingers traversed the table, one by one
Tripping, slipping, sliding, creeping, crawling over to me
I cannot live with his budding putrefaction and depravity any longer.

What is the use of a letter if the addressee never receives it?

What is the use of a resolution if one never lives to see the new year?

Do I not deserve this anger, or am I bound by the laws of common decency to always attend my words with utmost precaution, only allowing them purchase if they have successfully bypassed several mental checkpoints of varying degrees of propriety and potential for hideous offence?

I am righteously upset. The shadows thicken and I grow weary of these games, though once the most eager participant for fear of retribution or boredom. Perhaps both.

His eyes burn like coals in a face twisted by emotion,
and more often than not I feel laughter bubbling up on my chest at the tortured grimace of his lazy mouth.

Grow older, little sapling. Find your roots and settle in, for there is little hope in the life of a wandering seed.

You fancy yourself a Daedalus, but your eyes shine like Icarus'.

Soap Opera

I remember the first time I saw two men kiss.

It was on television. I remember handling the remote control, waving its unsteady weight around with tiny hands, sitting cross-legged on the floor. The television hovered in front of me, the only real thing in the room, as I watched with innocence like an unfurling nocturnal flower, and then a growing sense of faintly uneasy curiosity, like a quiet dog nosing his master's cold, dead hand, soft paws padding in the sticky, vast ocean of scarlet surrounding his corpse, just feeling, never knowing.

Their shirts were too tight, hems pulled tight across bronzed muscles, hair too perfectly coiffed, features too pretty. I didn't understand. They had wine glasses, winking in the grainy light like secretive smiles, dark liquid shifting inside imperceptibly, their manicured nails tapping the crystal rim to emphasize their words heavy with a meaning that I knew enough to acknowledge, but could not name.

I remember what he said, his shining lips parting around white teeth and his pink tongue, enunciating demurely.

-I have rules, you know. People can't just walk in and out of my life as they please. He reclined easily, the challenge apparent in his voice and eyes that even I could see.

The other man replied, slipping the wine glasses out of their hands and smoothly setting them on a table out of sight, out of mind:

-Is this against your rules?

And then he was kissing him, palm flush against his face, fingers firm on his head, and they were serious and intent and wanting, and I began to understand but I did not. It was too much, like the way that holidays were too much, with too many people and too much food and too many smells and tastes and touches, too many shifting shadows and laughing, red-faced adults, too many flickering, dim lights and feet tapping on polished hardwood floors, and lurid decorations you weren't allowed to touch, and not enough children to take the edge off of being outsiders.

My unknowing eyes searched the screen, ravaged for every detail. I knew my mother would not approve, and because of that uncertain fact I looked all the harder. She was in the other room, and as I suddenly heard her footsteps sounding in the hallway I stood and ran, little bare feet pattering on unsteady legs out the doorway, a earth-shattering portal to salvation.

I stole a moment of solitude as a child in a house where I never knew shallow loneliness, and I saw two men kiss and it opened the world up to me.

I Have Stopped Believing, Neruda

I dream of poetry, Neruda;
Of your words woven in the fabric of my dreams.
They unfurl, barbed and armed, from the mouths of boys I have kissed,
and from the parting lips of the girl I once loved.

I could write the saddest lines, Neruda,
but I know that they will never be the saddest lines.
This is just the beginning, and there is no real end.

I have stopped believing, Neruda,
in everything that I have been promised
by those black-tongued rogues of my youth.
I have stopped believing, Neruda,
in things I was told that I deserved.

I have stopped believing, Neruda,
in a love that waits for me on the other side.
There is no silver lining with which to sew between my teeth,
I am not doe-eyed in my reflection from the flat scrying water.

There is only my imagination, Neruda,
that keeps my crystal gears turning and the curtains rising.
I imagine my dreams come to life,
and because I have no nightmares I can taste the pleasure piled thickly on my tongue.

It is late, O real one,
and yet I am awake.
Where have you been? I've missed you.
I have missed you, and I still do.

There is paint on my hands, but I have not been painting.
There is blood on my wrist, but I have not been bleeding.
There are stars in my eyes, but I have not been loving.

Él es el rey de mi corazón y mis sueños, pero no lo amo.
Como un perro, tu mientas postrado en mis pies,
y como un perro tu me moderá cuando cierro mis ojos.

In the Style of James Joyce, I Think

With every brush of her pen's ink on paper she felt empowerment creep over her, until she was suffocating on her Self. The power within her limbs thrummed unbridled, and she entertained, perhaps for the first time, the dim notion of what one unstoppable person could achieve; she became one of a race training to be heroes, and though she scarcely could give real definition to the word she felt wholeheartedly the burden and satisfactions of such a calling.

She was proud of her meagre words, the rush of perfectly formed English amidst fumbling Spanish. She sometimes felt that her unmotivated inability in Spanish gave her inspiration and determination a rocket's push, throwing her fearlessly forward into the realm of vaguely unexplored literary territory.

Between her hands and eyes a book lingered, hulked like a tiny subversive monster, quiet in its manners and always so much with itself in everything it did: A Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man. While wedged between its pages she knew acutely the weight of his twisting words, plainly and verbosely explaining things she guessed she had always sensed but never precisely had the thought to think before. The moments of hilarity were burnt with sparkling clarity above her eyebrows and while her jaw hung slack with laughter she wondered if her classmates understood what they read as well, or merely completed their assignments and released the smoky images from their overripe minds like seeds in the wind.

The foreign language grated on her ears. She wondered how this could be the same language that she read out loud alone at night in her room from a coveted book of poetry, stumbling over foreign sounds and half-forgetting accents. Her tongue felt uncharacteristically thick and useless in her mouth, her lips getting impatient and racing ahead of her unimpatient mind.

The shrill, impossibly fast syllables ejected from her teacher's whorish painted mouth seemed hardly equal but for mere letters and lines-- the formation was the only link. Neruda sat curled in her bag like a weightless phantom, silent save for when she released his vapor into the air, parting the Red Sea and breathing his meaning through clumsy lips.

मोस्सिक

Your net is far-reaching, it would seem;
Edges frayed and tattered, torn, hanging from the shards of starlight
Pulled taut, allowing me no surcease of sorrow
And the night falls with a Raven-black intent
Behind my woven iron-will bars I stand bewildered,
Addled by abruptness, lost without love
Though your face is turned away I wonder if your eyes are open still,
and though your ears are filled with sand I wonder if you understand.

We Are All Fruit

And we consume ourselves.
A pear in an apple's skin
The plum of your dimpled mouth
The rotund orange of your cheek
and the peel between your knees
A peal of laughter bounces back
from the mouth once kiss-bruised against mine
And her brown eyes twinkle with triumph
with her hot palm pressed to his

Salt strewn across the expanse of her mind
Tears withheld by her Jewess eyes
A stalemate, a cat's game, but still we dance
With flaming pens to bar entrance to Eden
while the sickly sweet overripe fruit of our bodies swell and burst to reveal shriveled seeds and blackened hearts within us all
We cannot escape her Sin.

This Sickness

I never understood it until now.

I wanted to stop time and capture it in the palm of my hand,
to revisit upon convenience,
Hours upon hours of personal reflection

a photograph

I wanted to capture every single infinitesimal, inexplicably insignificant detail
And catalogue it,
To bring to mind a perfect pleasing place at will.

a memory

I wanted to know-- to live in this moment forever.
Because with the sun shining like that,
And the trees rustling like this,
And the sky so bright and blue,
and absolutely no one to answer to--

It is hellish in perfection,
the moment before the dream turns to a nightmare,
Before the score starts up and
the villain emerges from the shadows--

It is the first breath when you break the surface of the water,
It is the first rainfall of summer, it's the first dragonfly of spring,
It's the first kiss of a strange, new love.

It is the first step of newly bared feet on soft dirt and grass,
and it is hellish in perfection
and it is all that I want.

Tuck, or Maybe Roll

Grey armor slated overlapping just so,
Tapered legs reaching for the next green stalk of grass.
Unafraid when I slip my pen under his feet
When all others of his kind would curl into inconsequence.

He is unafraid, and I marvel at that.
Like Clarisse McClellan, unafraid.

And when I set him down
Upon this very sheet of paper
Those tapered legs and furry feet
Scrambled, quick as could be,
never tripping over tricky lines,
until he reached the edge
and threw himself off
unafraid as always--

A Gentle Shiver

A ripple through the leaves
And the earth rolled too,
mimicking the wind and the waves
of the sea,
And the voices of the birds
falling through the air upon my sun-warmed ears
And the grass waving hello
And creatures flitting back and forth
Only glimpsed between the corners of my eyes

I blink, and suddenly
the latch is lifted
White picket hinges swing
and a Bird enters with clothed legs, and arms
outstretched,
feathers rippling--
Like the leaves.

Lying face down on thick grass,
the kind we don't get where I come from.
Pen lazily scurrying across, lines;
My heart beats harder for a moment, and
I feel the earth's beat sync, and
I almost predict the next ripple,
but I get distracted, and the moment is gone.

Turning (art inspired)

She, the darkness
The darkness
She rolled over
The darkness rolled with her
She cried out in her sleep
The darkness swallowed her tears
She clenched her fists and
The darkness bit her flesh
She opened her eyes and
The darkness didn't flee
She was terrified
And the darkness was absolute.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There was a beast behind her. Turning, she saw it standing there, red eyes staring, not seeing. She stared back. Its maw gaped and tendrils emerged, reaching for her. The darkness lived within, she saw. Her terror returned, blinding her. She tried to run, though she knew she could not escape. This beast was her own. She could not escape.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It crept into her bedroom that night
Sidled up underneath her bedclothes
Icy claws pricking her flesh as it
Crawled up to her ear, whispering
Teeth clacking
Told her what it wanted
It wanted death for the promise of light
It wanted selfishness for the fact of survival
It wanted betrayal in the face of love
It wanted death for the promise of tomorrow

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sobbing and shaking, she cut his throat. Blood poured forth in waves beneath his now-glassy eyes. His last breath like the wind, stirring the red sea into a tempest. The ocean stilled around her knees. She stood clutching his tiny body to her heaving breast, alone in the grey world. The beast stood beside her, teeth glinting as they stretched to the sky. The darkness bobbed and lurched within, wild, waiting for escape. She closed her eyes, face lined with his blood and her tears. Claws clutched at her wrists and she obeyed blindly, eyes still closed. He slid into its mouth, into the darkness. Teeth tore his flesh, and she felt it in hers. Jaws snapped his bones, and she felt it in hers.

Its black tongue lapped her brother's blood, and she could taste it.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

He sat at his chair. The fire flickered. Her shadow was thrown against the wall. His paper rustled. The rope was heavy in her hands, too thick. The monster crept in the corner, red eyes reminding. The rope came to life in her hands. Slid around his throat, and threaded through her fingers. She pulled. He cried out, gurgling; feet sliding, bunching up the rug. His fingers scrabbled, nails ripping at the rope. She shut her eyes and pulled harder. He went still. The beast crept forward, scooping his legs up. She released the rope and he fell down its gullet.

It swallowed her father like a gull would a fish, and she felt his scales stick going down her own throat.

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She could think of no other way. The outstretched hand clutching the shotgun, offering; whispering. How easy it would be now. She met the old woman's eyes, and her wrinkled mouth held firm. Her red streaked fingers snaked around the barrel. The old woman stepped away from her and into the shadows. The weight felt hot in her hands, though she knew it was cold. A life for a gun.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Her veins were filled with shards of ice. She hoped one would pierce her heart. She knew that it would not.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Her dress was on the floor. Stepping over it, she crept, followed the trail of discarded clothing. Opening the door, the steam brushed her face. Her beautiful head above the water, painted toes kept dry. The world turned grey around her glinting white pool, her black hair kept in place with a rose's stem. Her head turned, red lips parting. Beauty. She could not face it. Aiming for the center of the rose nestled among those black curls, she fired. The water filled with her. The beast pressed at her back. It urged her forward. Her hands curled under her wet body. Turning, she slid her into the beast's waiting mouth. The rose caught on its teeth. She turned back to the tub.

Looking into the endless depths of the water, she saw her mother's face floating on the surface, perfect lips still painted red.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

She stood in the rain. The beast stood beside her. The lights of the cars flickered as they passed. The screams she had fed to the beast echoed in her ears. The knife. The rope. The gun. The blade. The knife. The blood. The rope. The crack. The pull. The gun. The pain.

They were still there. Right before the darkness, they waited. They waited for the day when she found no one else. When she had nothing left to give. For when the monster turned to her and, red eyes glowing brighter, stopped her heart and consumed her too.

They waited for her, unimpatient.

XIV

I feel these fucking bugs on me,
Eating through me, chewing round holes in my skin,
Jagged access to all my fucking fears,
They're everywhere and I can't fucking escape.

Narcissistic

Sat here with my book in my hands,
elbows on my knees,
Felt my heart beat through every part of me,
and I had to get up and do something.

Found a sharpened pencil, glinting in the lamplight,
Found the smooth expanse of a new piece of paper,
and instead of words an image came to mind.

I drew without design but not without a pattern,
I drew without purpose but not a meaning,
I drew her face because the look in her eyes haunts me--

Funny how I missed it back then.
Back then, I only had eyes for myself.

The Dangers of Falling

The sun is bright, and I narrow my eyes against its glare.
Underneath my feet the sand shifts treacherously, and the glaring sun glints off the teeth of this giant gaping maw in the ground;
This enormous beast snapping its beak, reaching up with slime-covered, fleshy vines to salaciously wrap around my ankle and drag me in,
Crooning all the while like its alien cousin,
That enormous man-eating plant that somehow manages to lull us into a false sense of security with his smooth Levi Stubbs voice, like honey.

The forest is dark and cool, and I narrow my eyes to decipher its shadows.
Underneath my feet the twigs snap loudly, and the leafy darkness shifts innocently while I struggle to keep my eye on the snatch of white fur;
That ever-tardy lagomorph, darting down that wretched hole and turning about,
Swelling grotesquely and shredding his minute waistcoat,
Daring me with glistening teeth and red eyes to come in after him,
Enticing me with childhood stories and half-remembered lullabies into the darkness where he will wrap his golden chain around my neck and mark the time with my fading heartbeat.

The clearing is silent around me, and I narrow my eyes to focus on the sparkling pool.
Underneath my feet the grass bends unceasingly, and springs up again unscathed when I step away to examine the unmoving waters of the lake;
So identical is this lake to the multitude of others that lay evenly spaced as far as my eye can see that I become doubtful,
and as if it realizes this and seeks to reassure me the waters do not move.
Inside this pool there lies a golden city of shining people and opportunity,
or an unshaped world of pure darkness, waiting for the Light and the Lion's roar;
or a crumbling civilization that lay in ruins, red dust blowing across broken bricks and statues alone in an arched hall.

There is a reason we are all born with an inherent fear of the unknown.

XII

I am the looming shadow on your horizons,
the face in the moon made of winged bloodsucking creatures.
I am the alligator circling underneath,
curved teeth set in emerald jaws ready to snap shut when you fall.

Driving Days

He weaved in and out of traffic,
So fast, metal-footed.
Where ordinarily I'd be curling my toes around an imaginary brake,
and carving crescent moons into the leather seats,
and biting back back-seat driving, what little of it I had to offer;

Instead I just strapped myself in
and watched the clouds cross the sky above the edge of my glasses.
So I gathered these words
and threw them up in the air
to fall back down silently
when I had a quiet moment.

Those Other Teas

It is not sweet, no, not particularly
But it is not bitter in the least.
It is the perfect fluid foundation
for hot creative experimentation
The flavoured anticipation
makes my water boil.

Those other teas--
They leave a bitter palm pressed
Against the flat of your tongue,
A sharp upstroke of can't-forget
A lasting chord on your palette
What they see I just don't get;
Those other teas are not Earl Grey.

December 16th, 2009

He walked up, nonchalant, the excitement of his adventure etched on his face, pretendingly casual. We swarmed around him, throwing questions like sharp stones. He worshipped the sting.

Smiling, he explained how his friend took his own fall. The news that all he got was a slap on the wrists was received with raucous laughter; the perfect punchline. It really wasn't my fault, he said. He had his own stuff on him. I hid my lighter in my jeans. They never even knew.

We circled him like sharks in a brief but fatal frenzy, swimming, circling; all at once it was over. We dissipated into the air, doors banging behind us as the classroom swallowed us up.

We walked to class, his arm thrown around me lankily. I glared idly. He had worried me. No big deal, he laughed. It's no big deal.

He spent the next hour convincing me of such. I had long since believed him, but I was entranced by the way his eyes read my words and the way his spiky writing stalked across the page to tell me silently of his love.

XI

Words were held above my head,
Tilting it upside, I could read
Understanding lingered there
like a Golden orb above my ear.

I Saw the Sky

I saw the sky,
So unnaturally lit
Swallowed stars like coldly burning coals in bulging bellies,
Shrunken eyes in sunken sockets,
Dark bruises like the broad swipe of a painter's brush.
I cannot escape you, even in my head; and the perturbing part is I don't know you yet.

I saw the sky,
So unnaturally bright
That wicked shade of blue has no business being now.
Scratching the quicksilver itch with fingers of red liquid Mercury,
Sliding underneath my skin to make my body its sepulchre,
So snake-like in motion with eyes like the ocean.

Struck Me Like Snow

I focused on the lens,
stared past it.
Felt my gaze retract,
the hooks grasping at the future concealed within,
and swooning softly, I came back to my chair.

The inclination to write struck me like snow,
but his distracting declarations burst through the blizzard
and this was all I could manage before the whiteness overtook me.

Four Eighteen

Couldn't speak
Couldn't think
Trapped
Arrested in the arms of the music
Caught in the web of his words
Utterly trapped

Felt my soul slip away
the music took its place
I was torn
wanted to let go, fade away
wanted to hold on and capture this feeling with something bigger than words

with music, and love, and a look
wanted to capture this feeling with a thought

Felt my soul slip away
And my thoughts disappeared
Couldn't focus
Couldn't think
Couldn't breathe

Needed more than words
But they are all I have
So I write and I swing the net and I spring the trap,
But try as I may I cannot capture

I had never noticed how music affected me
Never knew it wasn't the same for everyone
Never knew they didn't feel it

I couldn't think
Couldn't find the words
Pulled across the universe by his voice
Lost myself to him

By the scratching of this pen
By the smell of this ink
By the color of this paper

Red on yellow
The music took the place of my missing self

Feverish,
Will it always end this way?

VIII

We thought we managed to outrun the fog,
but still it remained coiled 'round our brains,
clouding the back of our eyes
and feeding on what could have been.

VII

Poetry finds me here with frozen fingers
and wet sleeves from wiping foggy windows
and leaves me with a taste in my mouth
for running wildly in the untouched snow.

the Cove

Flashes of images:

The tanned length of a girl's leg,
knee bent, fabric cut short.

A dying sky stained pink and orange,
an eye blinks, a head turns, she laughs--
and the sun is down.

Traipsing through blocks, down streets of mismatched houses;
the sound of wheels on broken black roads.

Darkness has fallen but heavy heat still remains.
Hands brush, clothes are shed, they urge her jump in;

As they look up at her with hair plastered to their head
and grins plastered to their faces,

She takes a breath, and she jumps, and she sees the world shudder,
and then the water envelops her and she breathes pure summer.

V

A simple swipe,
A furious wipe,
"What's all the hype?"
You're so my type.