rivers

ottawa was most of all
the sturdy curve of collarbone,
slope of loose embrace:
a place to rest a burning cheek.

I carry you with me

I carry you with me
the promise of your bones
the urgent froth of your dreams beating
against the shore roars
always in the scooped
curl of my ear. I carry your fears.

I carry you with me
your stories like
distant stars, reaching,
tickle in my throat, coughing
fire in the gaping gut, burning
me out.

I carry the contradictions
the hate on your tongue tied in
a mouth that smiled and kissed,
the warm crinkle at the edge
of your eyes that sometimes
filled with spite,
the gentle lick, sometimes the bite.

I carry you with me
the promise of your bones
I am the why, I carry this
question and your life
folded over and over itself
in mine.

11262015

Scratched out from a silent womb
I've grown into a tumult:
ever-buzzing roar and whine
of tortured stone, and groans
of men heaving rock. Even in 
the quiet hours before the
engines start, breaths not mine, 
dreams not mine animate my heart. 
What has this crescendo consumed?
I scratch into the womb of
me to find the silence to be.

Cactus

prickly like
a sudden poem
a heart that breaks
a life undone. My fingers
to know the pain of you
reach. And there - the many million stabs - 
I gasp and pull away to find a
tiny thorn trapped in the labyrinth of my fingertip, 
maze of my identity - and now, the pain, too, me.

reminder

i don't want to forget

the precise angle of your shoulders

or the tight curve of your smile

but it has been a while

and the skin forgets its goosebumps

the heart forgets its joys

there is a deepening void, and i cry

I remember! I remember!

pleasing aches and little plummeting delights!

of course! the pain of that jagged edge of satin petals fluttering out of sight!

on a sunny day --

I remember (because i'm terrified

to recall only that i've forgot, 

to know only 

that i loved you once and then i loved you not

as undeniably

as dreadfully

as a dead thing rots).

011313

is it the gray month

is it the winter rain in the cavern of her
breasts cracking
stone where it falls that makes her break and
say

i'm old
and i'm alone oh

if only if only

i could take the coldness from her
i'd lay it like a shroud over the sky and lick
her ragged forehead till it was smooth as milk.

beauty, and inaccessibility

What does the wind feel like, I wonder, that doesn't stick
to my licked finger-
print. The lines
of my palms politely curled
darken daily, settle down. It troubles me:
somewhere leaves blush under the sun's affections but
I can never know to just what bright confused complexion
of red and gold. Yes, it troubles me, the limits
of the skin I'm in,
the bones that bind, the beauty unseen.
But here is some consolation at least: the wind I taste is sweet.

04092012

into your throat as you slept i
mouthed let
me be deliriously weak let me

be the broken-winged bird
i am so tired of flying
i would sing for you until i die
if i could rest

like the feeling of love
here stopping your breath

let me be
precious and never break
me please
tell me its ok

an august morning

The air is cold -
isn't it delicious? This
morning with the
savage city groping my
eyeballs, I blink and in that blindness shiver
the trees just under my
skin. Is it fear or anticipation of
the end that sets them trembling?
Men drive their stone stakes deep
but the earth beneath my frozen feet keeps
the beat of a defiant tune like an uroboros tape reel that
repeats:
The cold is delicious - isn't it air?
These are the moments I am me.

the art of not giving a shit

You would be something to me, maybe,
(you would be the world)
if I gave a shit
i would weave you into me
like a priceless
thread of gold across the
tapestry of my history
you'd be
the happy twist,
the thin wisp of a subplot
winding through my narrative like
a thirsty stream
only to explode suddenly, gloriously, unexpectedly into the
ocean vast and deep
or maybe you'd just be
my heart's deepest wish
murmured in half-sleeps.
maybe i would love you
more than words could hope
to explain, from a place
limitless in me. maybe I would
love you 'til it hurt. if i could love.
if i could hurt.
you would be something
(you might be everything) 
if i cared at all.
Thankfully,
i don't.
you're nothing
but a pronoun
in a careless poem.

the calm

I will let you off me

like a tear, like water

drops down the drip tip, into the dirt

where things lie buried,

and into the air and into the dirt and

into the air; your words go as far as

oceans and you mean no more at all

than the breath of me.

[untitled]

Because you asked, I will try to make it
clear; my love for you was greatly
fear at the thought of
you not in my life. That faced,
I found I love you
because it helps me fall
asleep - nothing too deep
but comfort.