sticks and stones

No more new year's resolution
gone awry you licked my lips
clean of anything obscene
I'm goldplated like a midas lesson
for dummies

Blackjack red
I'm not angry but the gamble is
farfetched and the walls
have eyes

Calibrate the watch
your grandfather gave you
to the beating
of my murmuring heart
wind it up
once a week
and watch it
tease the seconds
from an unhealed
wound

Roulette black
the numbers tell a story
as they spin the last waltz
in a clicking carbonated canned
simile
too drunk to lie

Sporadic
your love inside its turtle shell
the danger of the highway
the empty cars
and a big black sky curving
towards the end of the world
where all the dead end dreamers
and suicidal singers
learn to fly

Dice games for desperados
double sevens and a season
ending in a brush with death
as if a lily were more tiger
than flower
and roared

Quarter tank in a waterfall
of warcrimes
sorrowchimes sing silver
as the winds of March
sell their idle warnings
and I lay face down
reflected in rainwater
unrecognizable
by my broken
back

Drop the coin in
pull the handle
here we go again
looking for the luck of threes
and ending up
broke
in this trinity
of loneliness
and you
and me

some one said

and that’s how it went
the time slipped the way
time does

sometimes steadychunk
or rolling ocean

sometimes holding your breath
and its air sliding in
through your mouth
something you can hear

some one said

give up
look up

I was listening to my own
breath
my own time
I was lost
but no one was looking for me

apples tumbled in the
bottom drawer of my refrigerator
clothes left unfolded
at the foot of my bed

unmade

that’s how my skin looks
freshly tumbled out of
or into

some one said
don’t look down
and that made the dizzy drop
irresistible
we all love falling
secretly

between these window blinds
slices of sky
slip into my room

my hands are cold and my
hot water heater is too small
for a proper bath
the water turns cold
before its halfway full

the disappointment is palpable

someone said
I love you

and I wanted that
to be for me
so I reached into the space
between them
and snatched those words
a triple set promise
a trilogy trinity
balancing
on my fingertips

and I decided to wear
my heart on my three-quarter
sleeve
like jewelry
pumping out
premonitions of
sleepless nights
and paper plate poetry

I looked you in the eye
and someone said

goodbye

fire breathing
matchbox heathen
locked between my fingertips

scentless
steps

back
in time

balloon animal smile
in the clown round summer
the upside down angels
flapping
from the trees
swaying in the breeze

carve up the heartshapes
and initial me next to you
like oldfashioned lovers
might do

clap once
then twice

then disappear the way you do
must be the emperor
in you
and the clothes you think
everyone
sees through

I’ve got an elephant appetite
I’ve been dreaming of eating
feathers all night
and singing
with a voice
larger than life

and holding these pennies
just a little too tight

describe to my hands
the color of light
and crumple these kisses
into wastebasket wishes
and throw them
with all of your might

i'm gonna sing you a fairytale gilded in gold
and capture an ivy vine to have and to hold
i'll be dreaming of embers too fierce to grow cold
and loving you til we grow old

i'll be right here alone in the castle of stone
i'll be spinning my new yarn of green
an actor with no lines to say what i mean
the times when we choked on the laughing blue sky
and everything in between

careful now love
is a temple of glass
and the moments are stones hurtling past
careful now love
is not built to last
when you make it and break it so fast

i'm gonna build you a house that's a circle
and cover it with blankets
black background and stars
the winter is waiting for autumn still fading
and hiding all of its ambercut scars

careful now bones are known to have broken
when the fall is from too great a height
careful now healing is the addiction of feeling
the sunlight through these iron bars

(i'm sorry the anger crept under your pillow
like a snake under an unmade bed
you could see through me
or pretend you never knew me
or we could make peace with the demons
in each other's heads)

i'm gonna write you a worldwide riddle
more eloquent nonsense and paperfed sin
where the opposite forces meet in the middle
of an ocean that won't let them sink or swim

careful now love
the tide is high
and there's no reason left here to drown

careful now hope
is a treacherous game
on this carousel still spinning us around and around

the need...

the greed

the waves

recede

as we watch

that sun slip down

careful now heart
don't beat so loud
that everyone hears the sound

the night spills at the feet
of a sand washed street
and your hands are still
the only truth that i've found

careful now
careful now love
there's no one else around

to witness the crackedopen sunset view
or hear me say...

i still do

I cringe when I say the word I
and the doctor asks me
point blank
where these bruises came from
not in the shape of a hand

calisthenically I distill
my spirit in a jar less
like a bell than a cage
and the sign once read,
“in case of rapture
break the glass”

there was a point
where salt
and water stirred inside me
ruptured into tears
and my wrists remembered
bedtime stories
as you climbed through
the thorns
outside my bedroom window
built too high up
for anyone else
to dare

white bandage absent
hands wrapped around
the spine
of a book
that I read to you
through the telephone
you waited
while I slept
and sometimes sang

I knitted grandma blankets
in the winter
I scratched at the door
with my kitten claws
I woke up extra early
to make you breakfast
as if I knew how to cook
or wanted to learn

I became the thing I
was running on little girl legs from
necessary and disposable
at the same time

jesus had that barefoot smile
the time he took me out to ice cream
and told me
I don’t need the answers
just the questions

this morning on the bus
I saw the women dreaming
out the windows
saw them finger wedding rings
and felt the bareness of my own
small hands
knowing I would never get lost
in that circle
again

so much depends upon
a red wheelbarrow
full of rainsoaked chickens
gasping for whitewinged
air
reminding us all
that life is not fair

so much depends on your hands
tangled in my hair
the way your left foot hits the stair
the smell of you lingering in my room
even when you’re not there

so much depends on
winter’s wedding of
white with the
red of a young girl’s hair
the tiny temptations of
snowflakes
on tongues that
bleed in the air
cut into precision
of a language
broken and bare
branches
without leaves
without a trace of green
to spare

so much depends on
the wheel invented to
turn this world around
the indescribable gravity
of hanging upside down
the black and white enigma
of knees that hit the ground
and the sound…
the sound…
as you put
the telephone down

the echo gravel screech of tires outside the
window
the circular driveway
dreamed blacktop
under fields
so long ago
in a kansastype of dream
where we hide inside of cornrows
and the laughter has nowhere
else to go

the spiral of these unkept curls
reminding you
of a tornado
and the shelter
the shelter
down below

so much depends on things
we’ll never know

if you’d been the type to
hold a basket
while I filled it with blackberries
the summer might have lasted longer
still tasting purple
from fingertips pricked
with solace
sweet
and simplestained
but you had things to do
in the city
truck wheels spinning through
angry gravel
and I wasn’t the type
to protest
so the days stretched out like
drumskin
white and brittle
on a frame of folded
laundry fireworks
july juleps drunk down
without pausing
for breath
and if you’d been the type
to look closely
at my mouth
you would have seen
the subtle way
the liquor softened
these lips
sunk my heart’s last
battleships
in stormy seas of gratitude
and maybe I’m the type who never knows
when enough is enough because I listened
from my treacherously white pillow
for the metalsliced wind that follows
your red demon rocket down
our driveway
before fading into a
drydocklanding
boots on sleepygravel
hardened hand on the
door
the twist
the turn
the push
the light that blossoms against these
winterwhite walls
even in august
as if glow was a bad word
so many eggshells in a palm
I crack and crumble these pieces
defensively
I cradle the stinging sharpness
of the night that follows you in
if you were the type to wonder
you might be jealous
that I’d been bruising my fingers
on broken guitar strings
so I wouldn’t be tempted
to touch you
while you slept alongside me
in your whiskey warrior dreams

there is a man
waiting to be eaten
if there is a threat of rain
there are grumbling grey clouds overhead
if there is a drawer
there are things waiting to be
put away
if there is a hand
there is another just like it
waiting to be held...

if there's a door, there must be a key
and if there's a body of water
there must be a stone to throw
into it
and if there are birds
there must be dry land
if there are words
there must be a mouth
that made them
if there are trees
there is sunlight moving
inside...