sticks and stones

down the drain
the course feel of
sandpaper
on my skin
seems to be all that will remain
from the days when my life was a train and the tracks screamed with the sound
of september
rain
not that i ever want to be that
young again

up in smoke
the redrimmed eyes
the voice that always seemed ready to crack
or choke
on the ashes of a story that turned out
to be more of a joke
my fingers make music
that keeps me alive
trying to gather the
pieces of me that time broke
some days i get lost in the sounds
and forget all the words
that we spoke.

courage in the face and holy roses at the hip
a tired brand of heroworship tossed from a sinking ship

where were you when the ice began to crack under these feet
and how many times will your tongue pretend
that sour is really sweet?

camelflauge in deserts mold the mirrors to the men
boomerang your heart out into space then back again

the stars will whistle dixie in a hemisphere of haze
but the sound will float in vacuum
and the light won't come for days

born into a handful of hippie hopes and blue burning baby flame
raised on applesauce and anger by children too lost
to remember which way they came

its been seven years since the blood fell into a crescent stain
my skin still sings the songs of a city with too much rain

a green blend badge of bravery brushed with a jealous jungle tongue
too much time to bend the spine and wiretap the fountain of young

bless the need and assemble the greed in patterns of poker chips
red white and blue and the black barcode of the new
lines on a forehead from the sticking of so many lips...

somersault me into the careen
of a careless glass
in your
careless grasp
I am an envelope of fears
I writhe with the possibility
of a Bermuda love triangle
and all its missing years
as if I could crawl
back into that space beneath the stairs
breathing in dust
clinging to the hidden air
garage grown love
through secondhand speakers
and breakfasts of cold cereal
and handmade feathers
we’ve been demolitionderby
driving since dawn
a nickel for every time
our names weren’t drawn
call it fate
or a California cliché
a thickening veil of finger skin
grafted onto the piece of my heart
too thin to keep you away
and there’s one last roman candle
someone forgot to light
been saving that salvation
for a martyr’s muddy neon night
a cocktail of broken glass
and bootleg gin
and the silence of your stealing smile
I’ve been stomping in
like a beautiful sense of irony
mixed with a bad sense of direction
that’s my claim to dormant fame
and your tattletale reflection…

fortunecookie smile
sunday style
bibleverse bonanza
and rented crutches
creaking like a curse
nomad numb the feet
play dumb
the body plays possum
in the sharkinfested sheets
my clandestine hair
curls around
every finger it meets
superficial wounds
and markets
full of fixerupper dreams
bought with boredom's
benignest blood
and a manual to tell you
what it all means...

you are cordially invited
to the mad descent
of caterpillarqueens
falling through the cracks
in the crocuses
impatient for spring

tea will be served from cupid
cups and cookies cut
in shapes of cats with
diamond eyes and devilteeth
and garnished garagedoor
green

please reply promptly
by way of telegram my telephone
is full of candlewax
from burning my way
back home
at both ends.

it was like a dream
the way you crushed in my hand
like tortured tinsel
like a dandelion losing its roar...
the freeway of your flesh
and i was speeding out
of control
suffocated by sirens
solvent sniffed
in gasping broken breaths
it was like a wishbone
cracking in half
boneshard shifting
between fingers
full of famished
faces
it was like a dream
of pins piercing
dollparts
and the falling apart
of a fierce and fragile
fabric heart

so far from the mistletoe
and kissing the fists of
fates broken knuckles
no sign of the jinglebells
snowflakes that never melt
and pine needle scent
snug in my clothes
giftwrapped remnants of
empty surprises and a glow
in the cheeks as we rush in
from the cold
where the fire burns friendly
warming our fingers
our lips that crave
something sure
no sign of stockings hung
with confident carelessness
and visions of voluptuous nests
racked with rain
spring cracked open
uncreased its caterpillar
carpet
blinked its wet wings wildly
wished into a westerly wind
and disintegrated like dust
no sign of winter
save for this
little patch of ice
inside my heart

samurai slicing
your own soft soul
to canoe the constant pulse of
prettypain
evolving into emptiness
as the quickencut
calvary
rides the horses
of heirloomed irony
from caves of capillaries
and through those venus veins
you murmur like a converted
constellation
with a missing bulb
believing in the blackout
burn of boys
in cars
that never crash
slicedsinging
of metalmoons crescent killing
the pretense of perfection
with the laces of lines
left on limp wrists
like lies and lilies
white as smokefilled snow

queen avalanche i saw
your two-tone sky
we bleach blank the temptation
of this arctic alibi
i spent the winter in a coma
learning how to fly
listening to wildflowers
break open, bloom
and cry
watching someone else's clouds
slowly sliding by...

sacrificial salvation
who knows what it means
to be free?
there's a summer sort of sickness
in the water
washing out the built up
bitterness in me
can we feed from bowls
of milky myhrr and mistake majesty?
on your knees you almost
look like me...

suddenness
is a virtue
similar to surprise

can’t look back
at velveteen eyes
green then blue
then overflowing
with lies

accidents
are a circumstance
similar to avalanche

can’t outrun
the fear
that fled faster
than you
and your predictable
parables of disaster

carnivals
are the candy
similar to cotton

can’t taste the sugar
of lips lost in a moat
that twists the whispers
into poor
imitations
of the songs
we never wrote...

the natural boundary
of ribcage
keeps these lightlicked hearts

from resetting each other's rhythms
from tearing each other
apart.

california agrees to keep
us from the ocean
offering itself up
and trembles
in fog
crate red lines flung far into
the water

pacific palm fed winds
blow east to west
bringing a hint of honey
to this milky land

and the hoops hang hovering
just above the heads of
hellbent boys from broken homes
walking through the fire
like it was air

everyone needs a hero
smoothskin stained in patterns
everyone needs a scar
to remind them who they
used to be
before the damage sunk in
way below the skin

maybe morning isn't the best time to
hang your heart on the line
but no one seems to know a better time
and the mistaken metal chimes
ring inside this church of regrets
a little of yours
a little of mine

hungry voices hug the hips
of little girls grown up too fast
your mother holds the hands of
her little boys
knowing it can't last
things are always changing
in slow motion aching irony
your fingers feel the world
sliding past

this latitude of suspicious stars
laid out up in arms
connect the dots through a window
facing east again
if i kiss my wrists where you
tap
like a second hand
and call it a prayer

will you feel it?

each artificial angel
wants to marry a mortal midas
succumbing to a mere moment
a touch that spins you into gold
the most malleable of metals
the queen of all fools' greed

with no way to separate
what you want
from what you need

forcefed ambulances roll down
the 6 a.m. street
bleeding tire tracks and blaring horn sounds
just another day in the life
of an emergency
of the color red

and i was oversleeping my
broken alarm
can't stand the buzzing or the music
enough to wake up
not like the phone that always shook me
open
shook me upside down
shook out my pockets
wired awake, my jaw opened
so i could live inside the receiver
coiled and content

subterfuge accidents the violet
sunsets of a new orleans folktale
breeding like spring
fast and hidden
i'm the outsider inside glass
barking up a tree
the wrong one
careless in my fashioned
future
i pack a hope chest
full of fresh sheets

the egyptians had it
all figured out wrap and roll
duck and cover
leave nothing behind
nothing to chance
and these were the mistakes
i cringed from
eggs and a basket
with a hole
to hold them all

sometimes i've seen a chain
underwater
leading to an anchor
you can't make out
lately the heaviness
pins me in place
caught between your blameless
bruising fingers
and the humidity
all around my hesitating heart

these arctic flower eyes
crack into ocean salt
the earth moves in rhythm
to moonpulled caravans of chaos
where princes pierce the pretend
sanctimony
of vows made in chains
paper promises of unseen lands
locked in palms
and prophecies of sons
lost in underwater imaginings
fish drowning dreams
gasping for air that isn't there
teaching fins the formulas
of time's temple of creation
as if god rode these invisible clouds
and stirred inside souls
that search the depths of sandstretched sanctuaries
need the movement of a night
a nebula
of nothingness.

carve a tree
loneley and capture someone's dandelion
dreams
silverflush and walking
on the srface of the water
like something inescapable
and holy
hands that can't hold water
wrists that are never free
kissed with crosses
white and fading
where the hurt begged
to be set free
calicokate the coins are still
spinning
take some time to turn around
and see where you used to be
blood is a promise of pounding
a heart is a vessel for feeding
the bent
the body the halfsteps
the intake of breath
the whirlwind of unraveled
fantasy
what is true
what is enough to hold in a river
of rain
a photograph, a necklace
a ribbon, a shell
and a wooden box of
letters
to carry this caravan of pain
carve it into a tree
a liar's legacy
that bit the lips of little girls
and pushed them in broken boats
out in a raging sea
bailing water between borrowed
buckets and poetic blasphemy
careful now kate
the storm hits until we cannot see
blanketed with blessings of fish hooks
the stars tell a fairytale prophecy
grab the line and hold on now
until it reels you in
and pulls you

pulls you up and out and free...

(you mean everything to me)

in so much as i am the winter
and we dance snowflake
cheeks and mittens

avalanches hold their breath
for us, two children grown past
the point of remembereing

purpleblue evening skirts the
edges of a futile attempt by january
to hold the sun hostage another twenty minutes

chimney smoke and invisible ash
become ghost trails tiptoeing
across these houses shivering and steaming

bare trees and chainclanged tires on slickenedstreets
as the evening traffic snakes through dinnertime
in our icicle trickled temple of a town

i didn't believe in winter when i
blushed california from bus stop to bourbon glass
and back again without once seeing my own feathered breath

but february brought me a bible of glass puddles
patterns of frost on my morning windows, fireplacecrackling
candles and quilts and a blizzard of bliss made for two

salvation in the grace of mismatched socks
I’m dreaming again
melting lips and broken clocks

its been two minutes since my last
confession
I guess its because I like to keep God
and myself guessing

lie still in the windowbox and let your fingers bloom
until I feel your lavender light
come flooding through my room

I was looking for a missing piece
I was cradling the broom
don’t call it daydreaming
don’t pay the doctors to tell you
how to smile without looking towards
the hidden hills on someone else’s moon

I could be an astronaut I fly around
with wings of clay black feathers
and zero gravity is perfect for a girl
with curls and sealed up lips
and toes that curl under when they
don’t get their way

but kate she is the makingqueen of
paperdolls and plasticine and once she
fed me chocolate bars to keep me
sugar high
a little girl in the grown up world of
stained white flags waiting to be unfurled
handcuffed to the pretty birds
aching to fly away

and I wish upon a broken comet
dragging tales of trickledust
kindnesses unanswered and the empty place in both
of us the waterfall way
we shiver when no one else is watching
I dream of broken clocks again
its way past ten
the fabric of a nightmare gown
unravels without stopping

kill the Camelot carriages
their wheels dizzy sink inside me
and I can’t steer a ship or navigate
without her flames to guide me
kate the wish is still out floating
dandelion dared
and the truth is somewhere
in between
so darling don’t be scared…

far from a home of solitude i am
captured by a form of weather
more foreign than these dreams
rain never bothered me but the liquid i can't see makes a mockery of me
in this city where the angels look like ghosts turned imaginary i just want something
more concrete to believe
just want a piece of something that won't leave me
when the sun comes marching down the hallway
to shake me from my sleep
these days i'm consumed by a need
and my hands are stained green
with a variation of greed
these afternoons i'm castle cracked into
sand packed
in buckets and i can't seem to perfect
the shape of me
into that girl everyone else wants to see
its been five long years along
the gulf of mississippi
the water here is warm
almost too comforting
the bones of trees lie washed along
the oceanside bare and bleached
and i feel their brittleness in the bones
inside of me
if i listen to my inner tides
if i cut these ropes that set me free
i'd be running anywhere but here
as the fire of my blazing mistakes
chases after me

i celebrate this sadness with a halo of hallelujah
in the windowpanes
i have moved on from broken glass
to these new obsessions

park benches
tomato seeds
papercuts on wednesdays

and breezing through cups
of lukewarm coffee i am
struck by a notion

private jokes
that aren't all that private
anymore

people i thought i'd met
but it turns out
i was dreaming

i thank my hypothalamus
for reminding my body to breathe
and i kindle
my fingers
into matchstick messages
and my knees slide together
to make a cricket song

it doesn't take much to imagine
when the silentsyrup of a humid night
presses against your forehead
like a fever
like the hand of a mother
made ghost
tending to your sleepingsoul
and you
just a child now
under this quilt of cream

the fringe of forgetting is like words
on my tongue
a taste of something
almost familiar
breathe...
breathe...

tomorrow tossed from
the kid on the bicycle
onto my doorstep
with a sudden thud
i'm awake
but the nightmares
stick to my face like
the webs of spiders still
sleeping in spite
of the morning's
dishwater light

feet hit the floor
one
then the other
a pause
and then standing
at the top of this beanstalk
where the giants are hungrier
than the desperate mother
i was running from
before she ate me alive

get the antipasto
he said

and i was thinking italian
maybe in remembrance
of my grandmother

because i didn't call when it was her birthday
when i needed money
or she was in the hospital

so i ordered the coconut soup
so heady and rich
i've only consented to it once before

with iced tea on the side
two packets of sugar
that i spilled into my book

a thick wedge of lemon that stung
a place on my finger i didn't know was cut

i instinctively put it into my mouth
and it tasted like you

and the chicken hid in white cream
not tasting like chicken at all

green onions and spice foreign
to my domestic tongue

4 trumpet mushrooms lie at the bottom
i can't even look at them
i can't look at anything
that reminds me of you

the dumplings feel swollen
inside my mouth
and i wonder should these be cooked more?
or less?

the innocent sauce speckled green
with flashy herb
hides a well of chilies sunk deep

i can't soothe my tongue
from the unexpected burn
i can't soothe anything
still burning from you

calimari rings curl into comfortable o's
like little open mouths of wonder

or making the o for the orangemarmalade
nestled dangerously near in a dippingbowl

i can't eat the parts with the tentacles
i can't eat anything
that reminds me of you

i thought i could dish it out
i thought i could take it

but thailand is 4000 miles away from you
so where did i go wrong?

i was the outcast of something
like spring

in a big winter coat
i smiled at the wind

and traipsed on the leaves
swirling and pretended
to be cold

and the droves of last minute
revelers
leftover from parades
like shiny beads
broken and reassembled
into balloonpoodles
by a yankeegirl

we swish past
on the streets and
we sidestep the orange cones
of lazydanger

and the door is held open
to the corner bookstore
a man in black carries out with him
the air that will carry me in

we are a revolving door
invisibly turning and i'm sandwiched
between a silver haired smile
and bells that clang the door
closed

my fingers dance through the pages of
histories and i smile at people
you resemble in pictures
i listen for little languages hidden
on the shelves of dead people's books

i know what i'm after the
archaeology of this afternoon
like the dreamtime in a hammock
strung up like a web
as if twentyfive dollars could
buy myself closer
to you

the seashore is broken
into sevenmillion shells
a bald billionaire is
diving
is drawing butterfly fishes
in fantasy forests of creamfilled
coral

and i'm lost in the books and the smell
of the ink from 1925
in the printing of presses and typewriter
TING! of a new promise
pounded into poems that
find their way into my hands

i look amongst the letter openers
black lacquered and painted jungle
animal shapes
i always look for the one i know
is not there
because i have a crooked faith
that pulls petals from pretendflowers

he loves me
he loves me not

as if the one i broke
could be replaced

i suddenly dart for the counter before
my pockets are emptied
for a passionate glimpse
of the lives lived
between cover to cover
before i am a fiction
for the foolish at heart

but the laminated stamps
are lures all their own as bookmarks
bringing flowers from places
i've never heard of

and seashells from
tanzania leap into my hands
like lickingpuppies
begging
to be taken home

and how can i say no?

as the map of uncharted words
flies around the shop
silently stopping
to preen
no one dares
to put it back
in its cage

she throws in the afterthoughts
for free
knowing i'm a connoisseur
of chance
and chemistry
and that i'll be back
for her heady hills
of other people's
parting gifts
when the wind kicks up again.

you drew a line in the sinking sand
i didn't dare to cross
i held a white flag in my hand

this isn't the way i had things planned
my fingers calculate the cost
you drew a line in the sinking sand

a love of sea and a love of land
a triple sided coin to toss
i held a white flag in my hand

now i can't say more than "if" or "and"
the rolling stones leave me their moss
you drew a line in the sinking sand

i wear the circle of your burning brand
the tide recedes to mourn my loss
i held a white flag in my hand

the distance that these hearts once spanned
the bridges burnt when we tried to cross
you drew a line in the sinking sand
i held a white flag in my hand