Thursday, November 22, 2007

go ahead

stare,
my skin
is thick enough to take it,
even thicker
in the places you're
viewing with that look
of indecision, trying to
figure out whether to
find meaning in my
skin's incoherence,
the bisection and incision,
the permanent things
we do that stay with us,
no matter how we try
to shake it off

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

so teach me

it would be, perhaps,
indelicate of me
to ask
if you want to fuck

but the curiosity's
eating in.

every time we meet,
a different reflection
glints from your corners.
i have seen the proper
classroom mask, the
wet&freezing ocean you,
sweating, breath in my ear hiking,
casually revealing you,
the
fireandnight side,
crashing beside me wildly through plants, and
brandishing an ear
of corn like a saber against
the darkness where our flashlights
do not penetrate.
it is
you, every time, whose
long fingers tap out
deliberately inconsequential invitations -
what next, where
to?
i
know what i find in you;
but
your kaleidoscope faces
do not give me the reasons
you show me
your patterns.

Monday, November 19, 2007

in which i realize

i find my priorities have changed.
i don't
want things to remain the same.
& i find you
in this time warp,
trying to squeeze into the mold
we both said we'd never fit in,
i watch you
& wonder where i would be,
had i not stuck
through the dull inanities of the south,
held my ground until my sense of self had
gelled
into what i want to be.
now i watch you and assume the area's
ironic smile, when i realize
that i assume about what you do, only
because i am right about you.
i miss
the easy rolling intimacy of
our earlier years, but know
the past can't be repeated.
i am trying to forge something new, the
push & pull of new scars stretching
into a place we may carve for ourselves,
that is,
if you are willing
to make me any room at all.

Saturday, November 17, 2007

spontaneously

i'm obsessed with dancing in the kitchen,
i mean
i realize
it's not your average discerning factor
as to whether the one we fuck
is the one we love,
but still i'm
telling you, take my arms
and
fold them around you and step on
my toes
and off we go around
the kitchen in circles, my head whirling
from too much on-the-house
vodka.
kiss my shoulders i
don't care what music is playing, just

make me laugh
and let me
get dizzy on you

Friday, November 16, 2007

interpret

yesterday i stepped out
of myself for a few minutes, peering
curiously into
the life i'm leading, looking
for signs, or an explanation

floating over the encircling
arms of the one who shares my bed,
i said
something is all wrong
with this picture, i don't
know what it was; maybe
i was too high

but it all gets mixed up
into hoping
that when this is over we'll love
each other as much
as when we were
fucking

Thursday, November 15, 2007

the pulling moon

i want to know
where it comes from:
our moisture that wicks into
our underwear, does it
spring forth
as a cave
bears its water on
its walls?
or
are we wet from
the womb's ceaseless sea,
the shifting tides?

today my thighs are still
damp from clenching you, last night,
into me

and i rub my own spunk between
my fingers, salty like the
ocean.
we are all
only
the legacy we leave behind,
if we
leave anything at all

like waves
who vomit shell, fish, and other
debris onto shores washed
by other waves,
who take
what has been given
and leave more in its stead.

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

"service with a smile"

how quickly
i remembered the dance
the pop-top, palm cash
into hand,
click-click ca-ching,
thank you, here's your change.
seven twenty-five.
whirling
a flimsy straw into the vortex
of someone's nightcap,
or their addiction,
the cigarettes and worn flannel
creep slowly
into my skin.
i cover my awkward,
cuckoo presence: drip
my accent out
in doses, the way it
springs through when i speak
to my family through the phone,
laugh louder at the jokes
from the chauvinists
as if
i, too, grew up in this
particular cultural poverty. here,
my teeth alone mark me as foreigner.
now, i'll practice again the art
of submerging all of me
that does not belong, and waiting
until i reach my car to gasp
for fresh air.

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

infection

i'm gasping
for breath and you moan alongside
me, push your sleeping head into
my neck like a cat
rubs the one
who feeds it. i don't know
how i caught your fickle feline fancy exactly
but i'd lay odds you're also
drawn by what you can't have.
miaow.
i'll pet you anyway, in my stilted
sort of manner.
if my pores
would just open and breathe
for me i'd join you
on that pillow and stop
rasping through my half-
closed throat but
every method tried
thus-far's a failure, and i have to admit
there's a certain satisfaction
to watching you sleep. there's magic,
somehow, in the still hours. the night
even sleeps, the dead leaves
catching catnaps on their branches
before tomorrow plummets them
to the pavement.
and over
and over i ask myself: what
keeps me? why
am i staying?

Monday, November 12, 2007

soaking

i'll watch as you slowly drift
closer to me
almost touching.
our arms wave in the current
of the water and hang limp,
and well-heated.
your voice
has taken on that confiding tone
i know so well in you,
and i'm warming a bit -

but my trust still oozes slowly
toward you, cringing away
as if expecting a blow.

Sunday, November 11, 2007

nudity

sometimes i read
what i have written
years ago,
and it's like a ghost
shouting
from long ago
screaming,
~ please
do not leave me behind ~

Saturday, November 10, 2007

it all gets mixed up

i want to say it, but
there's no ears to pick it up.
dear
anonymous: i wish
you were here.
i've been
thinking of writing letters to myself,
scribbles
of indecision
i etch into my memory.
mind-masturbation, a voice
answering my half-assed questions.

i'm too emotional about this,
i keep
thinking i should approach it rationally
but i'm not rational
i'm right out of my head, heart and convictions
while thinking i could just as soon
use the time alone
to talk myself out of what i'm feeling.
it's not real
it's not real
it can't be.
too much to be really happening.

my mind is tired of the racing and
it's no surprise to me,
really,
how much i've been drinking.

Friday, November 9, 2007

either way

i think i need to be left alone
in my private hole
to mull it all over.
i need
to let my private life back in.
i've lost a few parts
of myself on the trail from here
from the life i used to lead,
i missed a turn
somewhere, to end up where i am.
today
i wish i could be completely alone,
no human contact until i've figured out
how human i really am,
i want things
so impossible at this point i'm starting
to give up.
outside it's attempting
to rain, a few drops at a time.
i'm huddling above this book and my
bedcovers and i want to lock the door
i don't have,
to keep myself
inside long enough to figure this out.

Thursday, November 8, 2007

burn it onto your retina

remember her face.
remember
rain falling so hard you shoved the window up
and let the water puddle on the
windowsill and the floor, holding
her in your arms.
remember.
or don't.
forgetting comes easy with anguish
make it a blank, black wall that
will not collapse no matter
how hard you'll pound on it later,
wanting back those years of your life.
forget.
remember
she wasn't everything you made her
out to be, a small dark
chaotic whirlwind swirling
around the memories
of who she was. of who you were.

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

the coffee table hits right on the shins

my house is still unfamiliar enough
that i sometimes miss the last
step
going
down the
stairs,
landing
on the carpet all arms and knees,
just enough impact to get an
"oof"

but it reminds me
of how impermanent i have been
flicking around
waiting to take root somewhere.

i think i'm trying to root here, but
it's
off-putting, the newness of
it all, the jarring realization

that this is nowhere near home
nowhere near.
surroundings i know in the dark
are far from me now.

in this house i stumble
in every room, waiting
to learn it.
waiting
to be sure i won't be leaving
too soon for the knowledge
to matter.

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

it's novel

tonight my only friend
has 645 pages
a hefty hard cover,
and no way
to wipe off the tears i try
to will away.
i'm sure
my face is steely, but the
impassiveness doesn't matter
to my eyes, which follow,
stubbornly, their own course.

my own victory is to go outside
alone
and experience this silently,
staring at the stars and waiting
for the moon to be full enough
for my howl to seem merely
theatrical.

waiting for the world to
turn around again.

Monday, November 5, 2007

puzzle

yelling screaming
mulling
it over in my head
and now
your inability to name this
has become
my inability not to. this is not the person
i want to be.
leaning
into myself, hugging the bar until
i feel capable of walking away
without my head scrunched against
my shoulders.
i'm not dealing lately.

my hands twitch with aching desire.
instead, when i walk home
and crawl into your (my?) bed,
i'll try to dream,
and wonder
how i fit into this scene.
how i'll understand what i'm
supposed to do
with the pieces of you
you'll give me to fit together.

Sunday, November 4, 2007

poetry

i'm trying to
submerge myself
in words, hoping
to drown in this art
until my words
detach and float

to the surface.
the stack
of poetry beside my bed is at least
shin-high, filled
with the words i'll pull
out of their context and rearrange
into my own patterns

until i can stack them against
the chaos outside.
sometimes
when i am alone,
i start to believe
the only reason i write
is the fault of quantum
mechanics.
i see
the page blank, and must
replace all those possibilities
with anything definable
to keep away the swirling

could-bes of what-ifs and try-mes and
what-the-fuck-is-this and what-
does-it-all-really-mean