I kiss roses
Lips bloom
salty and liquid
Flesh necklace
squeezing
I tongue the blossoms
and claw the jewelry
precious
i am holy sacriliege
throbbingly defiled
red and raw and gasping
scribbles on the altar
black blood spat on temple walls
achingly adored
savage and rhapsodic
stars white hot singe my wings
i thrash and thrash and
giggle and die
I am a masterpiece
Red and blue and the darkest shade
of bliss

there are no more poems here
no more lights
scenes
curtains

no more arabesque poses
spines slick with sweat

there is no more mournful sax
oozing through candlelight haze
bass lines plucked
stepping gingerly across floor boards

there are no more poems
etched on waiting pages
thought up on airplanes
scribbled frantically on yellow legal pads

this womb will nourish no more whimsical prose

there can be no more couplets yearning

no blushing recitations

i wanted nothing more than to write your smile
but every line is a brazen wish
hope for what will not be given

no more arias for my heart to send arpeggio
over the fortress walls

there are no more poems here
for each one is an untamed question
demanding heavy-handedly an answer
you will not give
no more ink spilled
when will I learn?
faith is a fistful of glitter
in a hand that clawed for diamonds
some people can write love poems
i must learn to love the silence

hands always outstretched giving giving giving wanting only to give and yes yes yes maybe receive some too but the joy really is in the giving the loving wanting to redeem wanting to be the thing i lack the one who will love you when you are despicable and don’t deserve it but never wanted the gift is never wanted makes me wonder if i outstretched hands hold something not of delicate and necessary beauty but something mangled and repugnant whose stink only i can not see to me it is so crystal and blown glass and blue water to me it is so sunrise and maybe i just don’t see maybe the love i outstretched hands hold giving is something rabid and bloodtoothed

it will have to change i say change not end because it doesnt end ever i am starting to see now and i guess that makes sense because nothing is created or destroyed right nothing is created or destroyed only changes form i think and it will have to change maybe maybe maybe with you taking finally taking from my hands this sunrise thing im giving but but but probably not
probably not because i don’t win here this isnt the place for me i’ve known that a long time and i loved him like a car wreck body flown and jerked i would have whiplashed eternal if he would take the sunrise thing from my outstretched hands pleading to give it and i am mourning
i am mourning i admit it i admit it here finally because i walk head high daily never thinking just erasing blowing away like powder sand ever licked eyebrow and tree from his bedroom window and the light of a cold sunday in bed i am mourning i said it i am mourning because what i lost was not some boy thing some black tear torn letter sobbing thing i lost something big something rock something foundation something that was not mine to lose some sacred i borrowed from the universe for you and now i must go back to her empty handed saying i gambled it away so sure you would take the sunrise in my hand and kiss my forehead and burn with me in the sacred but you wouldnt

and so i know it must change and i say change and not end because it doesnt really end because now that i lost that sacred thing the universe loaned me for that last car wreck love i know i won’t let the heavy perfume of another woman lay boulder on my sternum for very long because even when i don’t know you are with her i know even when i dont want to know the air tells me the silence tells me the hum of my computer all the objects in the world know you’re with her and they tell me and i stuff my ears with fingers but they only tell me louder and i shout back i don’t care but they call me liar the street lights and mail boxes and fire hydrants the faucet and my shampoo bottles they know and they won’t let me not know and i shout back i don’t care and the street lights call me liar

and since i did that car wreck love and lost the universe’s sacred that she gave me like a diamond necklace i know she won’t let me love like that again i mean for one her diamond necklace is gone shattered in a million stars on my sternum bloody collar where your finger prints once bruised so i know that it must change either you will take this sunrise from my cupped and outstretched palms either you will take it graciously and not make me ashamed for giving or i will leave i know i will and i don’t want to but i’ll fight you and fight you loving clawing and clawing with tears demanding silent that you take it hoping you will understand until we are so stranger that we float apart quizzical looking back amazed we ever were either you will take it graciously or i will fly away violent and thrashing a broken winged blackbird angry to be falling

02-20-06, 4:14pm
it is nowhere
does not exist
immaterial as a moment of morning mist
light dancing
mockingly
through fog

like everything else
it is dying
everywhere
from the moment it begins

stale and brackish
there are no blue baptisms here
every water
from womb to primordial river
steams with death
bitter and black

we are dust
love, an ephemeral sandstorm on the wind
silence, a blade
slipping
across my dry and begging throat