Your variance,

ripples

But is it the symmetry in the rings I adore?

Crinkled smile

was always your most beautiful state

Oh should I pretend to know these heart droplets

In my opened vessels, cracked-

that ocean she shook me to the bone

Respect her roar, it’s love

it’s the first swallow of the sea

the brine and the brittle,

I  broke down and coughed up

Yet kept coming back for more

Will you preserve me?

How you sting. How you replace,

my love with salt.

I say I am tired, but really I am

dry

and packaged

Perhaps one might

so reasonably be dropped off at sea

My tethered bonds

eroded

My right angles, soggy

Return to the birthplace

I wonder, what is anchored

aimless without my love, and scouring

the horizon

floats (how can you judge it)

back. Acceptance in dissolution

I am a

repressed smile

sometimes it’s hard to remember

what heartache was like

Until you rip the band aid off.

I will not edit these words.

I will not bite my tongue.

I will not lose myself inside your soul.

I had bunkered down so long

and forgot the brightness outside

and how empty the space can feel

I close my mouth around the sun

she will not shine on this part of me

instead, inside will boil me to the surface

she will grasp on my bony wrists

and scorch them dry

What’s to (a)void

you fill my cup and drink my wine

and I relish in my dry eyes

It’s a strange kind of growing

Where at once I am not lost

amid your insistence

A struggle for breath

So that I forgot

That it didn’t have to be conscious

That it didn’t have to be labored

So breathe inside 

these parts of me

And scribble your relentless lines

Exhaust, stings in the morning

when I’ve run dry of distractions

acidic

reflexes

Smoke screen of childish laughs

and a heartbreaking simplicity

don’t coddle my

corrosive

love

Dreams and rides

and eyes and skin

and smelting and gooey

and rough and awkward

Be. Yourself.

and combusted, and stalled, and empty

check engine

Light, is on.

Wake up

Listen

To do: be happy 
To be: (in)action

Penned up inside these little lines 
I want to be swirled milk in your coffee 
Separate but encapsulated, oozing and embraced 

I know what it is to fall, but I can hardly believe the distance
If I could 
list 
it
all 
down 

Scratched, checked off, 
isn't that the opposite of complete? 

I heard once that fear and exhilaration were the same emotion 
My trodden heart will rarely accept it 
She won’t complete her sentences, and form the emotion around my mouth 

I pick her up like straw wrappers on the carpet
and tell her it’s not because it wasn’t important 

Unwrapped, chaotic, careless
List yourself, 
List, in to yourself
Listen. 

She beats with a reverberation that echos into space
Small or holy or wholly uninspired 
Good or wrong or grey, diagrammed or misunderstood 

She is. And it is true. And it is all in universe that matters. 

Perhaps all that we can say

is it’s more beautiful on the page

perhaps since the urge to scrawl

on the cavern walls,

we wait to write out what’s known

what we call beautiful

well I could define, the lines around your eyes

and wrinkles on your sheets

But, I shall not reminisce.

Instead I eat chinese food with you,

holding my chopsticks improperly

and your tutoring ways, I read as condescension

and you, so keenly aware

at my anger at my own injustice, at my own mistakes

I write words to say I’ve accepted my shortcomings

But it’s a rather large pill to swallow

or I guess that’s what they say

as If we could really be medicated by our own sinful ways

Churched out of forgiveness, but I will bear the weight

swimming in this universe, each day

knowing, that so little is known and it’s so beautiful and wonderful

and frightening, and heartbreaking

like you.

always, like you.

Insistent life

the description I can’t erase

Rhythmic, and too easily poetic

chances were never good

perhaps, neither were we

My pulsating heart and circulating blood, 

remnants of one unlikely cell

that began at one time or another, to replicate

So cleave, my heart,

in content with descendence 

Permissible summer

and static air

truth hangs low

waiting to precipitate

Confidence into my pores,

commend her dripping beauty

fluid, speak life

like we are still wriggling out of the ocean

Cotton clinging

and I attempt to snatch these metaphors,

I gaze half intently at the furiously moving dirt

to understand why

pervasive and complex, a wish, an expectation

it’s the simplicity of which I fear

an afterthought, a careless blunder

but life is insistent

and I too, answer her bidding

The Field of Vision

you must sow and you must toil

Each rising moon

Don’t presume her cyclical nature

I’m reeling from the reaping, head hung inside my hands

Who is well-versed on these sins

Guide me down the rows

Salted face and peppered smile

on the heat of the day

and holy water from the skies

Dry your eyes, little one

Open, your Field of Vision

crack that barren earth and call her forth

she vines and meanders

But you will be straight and narrow

row, and grind, and grow

What’s to know, but what lies quietly

inside the Field

Waiting to be taught

Belief inborn

When people whisper, what a story
As if lives weren't real
As if characters couldn't feel

There is no creation in belief
It is already inside you
Swaddled in your belly 

We justify and sacrifice
And I will break my water
because time is near
I'm shedding fear
--to face demented truths inside me

What faults of mine are not webbed
around this sphere of mass
clinging to the veins and nutrients

What proof besides my
breathe-stained glass
fogging your sight from my mind

and written out in black ink
or carved, and scratched
and bled

What you leave behind is not unsaid
It is written in the stone
It's not my own

You once asked me for
unabridged
And I refused to open yours
What good is to caress a book, unless you understand
the words

If I Were as Persistent as Shame

Seeds once encased, begin to unfold

And I watch again a heart burst, in its bold

assumption of deserving love

As if to erase and start anew

Preemptive to the season

In temporary pools of melting ice

A cancerous spring 

This canopy is closing and starving oxygen

around my red and worn mind

How to own the word, than be the forest,  than be the life

Climb the limbs and shout over the leaves

I am told not to speak down

I am told that time heals all

My orange, bulbous womb

At midnight I birth Shame, know her name

I shout her over the trees   

A game on a board

Glares across the checkered board

and the thud of the pawn

sliding off my greasy fingers

of love, of betrayal

Scratching the painted wood

white and black

We all choose our colors

and wait to be punished

Wait to see where Victory lies

She speaks of chance like life isn’t a choice

A list of possible movements

Taking turns, our courteous jabs

I won,

I think

that everyone was right. Winning isn’t everything

it’s nothing

a pill for your head, from the wine, for your heart

Or a dose of memory for your morning rise

Don’t play games,

I say

But I'm just a moving piece

I am alive

A large cushion chair between us

My eyelids low, holding in my water

my salt and lines,

mind impressions

You wiggle your way without trying

And I wonder who’d you call, if you needed something

If you would have ever, scrolled to mine

To whatever image is imprinted

You in a chair, so neatly

How I hold this in my hands, and hope someday it won’t sting so sweetly

I step out of bed, bursting roots from my toes

it burns and scorches, crawling out of my bones

Holds me in and down

Sucking in life, and feeling, what feels

like everything

under earth, dirt, rock, and molten fire

And I know I am alive

And I know

it is enough

Foreshadowing

The cups of coffee, and the dim lamp on my side
Up in the attic like a writer
In disguise
I am singing and dancing and loving in my mind
Glued to the chair, you’re so far behind

Oh the place’s we’ll go
If we only tried
Inertia, we say as if we were tied
Strings strings, were ever so light
-yarn wraps to iron blankets to hold me down at night

In dreams I swim and run and soar
Awake to remember the burdens I bore
Eyeballs  spinning under their covers
My mouth whispering her
Unrequited lovers

Tell me your stories 
Let me feast in your eyes
Unfold, unravel  masterful devise 
This pattern we’re weaving, so bold and bright
It dares not to follow, it dares only fight

Will you come when she calls you? When she is no longer asleep
When hearts made unbroken, when lands before leap
Ah but then you know , then you must see, indeed.

Of her ill-spoken words, such trickery in the velvet letters
That drip out and ball like mercury medals 

Write Yourself

'Write yourself'

I'm swerving,

Scribbling lines to feel real

unapologetically collapsing

I drank the cup I sang the rhymes

I held onto your dark water

covering, coveting

washing my sins

I want you condensed,

in my pores

your oil film down my sides  

bless me, make me whole

forgive my sinuous ways

Write yourself

You’re evaporating

Self Portrait

Holding up my charcoal hands
and bitter attempts of cleansing
Eyes, so I thought they could draw you
back, back into my heart

Singing rhymes of another mind’s choice
while pondering my reflection

Crude, my lines
smeared over yours
We pretend to rip these portraits
Baggage, you say
Stains, you see
a shadow on my canvas

Flowing water,
rise and fall
Take my heart, take it all

Ride out ripples, falls and quacks
Still I coalesce
Still I remain

hit refresh
taste my mountain spring, taste my freshly melted snow
You grow cold

You had me cupped in your palms, eager to fall down your esophagus
I didn’t need the river,
but you couldn’t swallow the impurities

You spin open-mouthed like a child
Catching raindrops of what could be

I’m rushing out to sea
over your rough stones, over your algae walls
Escaping circular currents and stagnant pools

I would have been anything for you
Would have changed my molecules

You think you’re free out in the changing air
Low pressure
But you caged your heart
Grounding your wings

leaving prints upstream
I’ll make a wish for you
on the reflection

in the dark, open water

Our paths, Uncrossed

Staring at my sins
and stains on your heart
beg my mind to pray-
another man’s burden

What a sweet, sweet joy
would be, to nail these sins
as if wood, blood and tears
could mend the pathways in your brain

my blood is the only price to pay
drain from my face
pore, into my eyes
see you for what you are

There was no darkness
or heat of flame
only partiality
in happiness, and emptiness in the rest

Clinging sadness grows to a full companion
But I let her take me
up the hill
carrying all my transgressions

Back Porch

I set you on the back porch
to chill down.

I was waiting for you to grow 
cold
to stop swelling in my heart at all

but in my mouth, salivating
turning up my anger

I wait for your recess

Touch, too close
suck on the inflating wound
On a thumb when you need it
constantly rubbing, breaking,  inflating

You refuse to freeze.
But I refuse to lose my collection of internal organs
So I beg love’s wings to rest
stop pounding on my chest

he’s on the porch, I tell her
You can still see the steam
bubbling out like a miniature geyser
screaming that he’s free