so steve says, “if you fuck her, do you think you’ll get her out of your system??” *

her breaths come quick
when she is kissing me, her
soft sigh
starting up high

and then descending in
pitch, “hhmnm,”
slightly

muffled by my lips
that
insist

upon knowing the very
best of her tonal ranges
and gasps

while my fingers
slip and hold, she swaying
against my taut arm
cheek crushed againstinto my shoulder

(those gasps come quicker
now, the
rise and
fall
of
winded lungs)

moans

delicious

her curves rest
their weight on my flesh
and i support her
trembling limbs,
and run
my fingers
down
her back and sides




[hardly]






*senior thesis poem

near the eye august 29, 2005 *

i.

i’m watching the back yard
dance in the winds, trees
moving their hips in a circular
motion to match the salsa
rhythms
of the wind.

it’s

seven or eight.
the light is
filtered

through dirty
dishwater clouds
and
lightning
flashes as the day darkens upon

the city.

and i with my open
window, blinds shoved upward,

am awake alone, my roommates long since sleeping,
as i watch the trees
shake
their hair and tango in
the gusts of the wind
to the music that
cannot be heard, only watched quietly

in awe
of power, and beauty.





ii.
the sky is misty, all
the water in the air
thrown by the winds

back and forth
splattering buckets against
my window
in a cycle of nature’s finest
powers of destruction

and i am watching the pines

bend down,
like supplicants
down

no vegetation untouched
by the dancing winds,
the four foot
weeds in our back yard
crushed
as
they start, and slow
bend
and blow
in the buffets
from
all sides, a
beautiful
synchronized

chaos as the trees find the
rhythm and ride,

body swaying, hips
beating a life well-
lived.




*senior thesis poem.
about, obviously enough, experiencing hurricane katrina as it bore through mobile

go obfuscate yourself *

we play with the meaning
of nudity,
only cover the
important
parts.

suspended
in a haze
of smoke, and liquor, and girls,
you can lose hours,
whiled away with searing
glances, the play
between the sexes,
false seductions, alcoholic
flirtations that
sway
and bend

when asked for veracity.
an atmosphere of lies,
few things as they seem,

and i flirt with these men,
i do
i lie with my body and say
things i’d never mean; buy
me a drink, buy time with me,
buy my hot body gyrated
over your lap so you can
run to
the
restroom
when your time is up

in grim imitation
of longing, of desire, of being
close to someone,
being held.



* B.A. senior thesis poem. i'm sure it's not everyday the students turn in poems about stripping in their thesis. i'm pretty sure i hold the title on that one.

confession

and yes, i worshipped you

i bent to kiss your scarred ankles
and held your broken body
in an attempt to make you feel
anything other than pain.

i lived for you, your breath
alone was my religion. (if i keep
you alive, then i will not die)
but my adoration you turned to
heresy.
i cannot forget
the utter despair of realizing
that the love of my life had looked me
square in my eyes
and turned her back on me.

barfly

lately, i have joined the single few
who go to bars
in an attempt to make the
ache fade.
time stretches and slows
opposite my longings, races past my groping
hands, rocketing into the no man's
land that means i must start over
again.
i am tired of new beginnings
that excite, and then let down.
time
marching forward
does not slow for
my broken psyche, my muttered pleas,
the unwillingness to be thrown back
into the race.
i am still wearing my
hobbles, desperate to hold onto
the familiar, yet dying to be free.

please pardon

i don't know where the hours go
i sit, unmoving and time flies around me,
for i am but small impedimentia in the way.
i blink and the sun is coming around my
curtains and i am wondering where
the hours go
forcing my insomniac eyes
to close before it is too bright to sleep.
and i know that it is on purpose that i
avoid the oblivion of sleep, but
my reasons are obscure
i'm wishing that the few minutes
i had with
her hands stroking my flesh tonight
could have lasted into the early
hours. i am more lonely than i
have the right to be.

gasping and shivering

you used to say wings were for you
and i don't know how much
you've forgotten, but i've had to remind
myself every so often of the
nearly three years of space
between us,
i have clung
tightly to the memories
of what we were and
remembered your words,
our whispered promises
in the dark, your
talk of wings swelling
my heart.

i don't
know if you still
desire that pattern of ink
on your skin, but
baby if you're still
yearning to fly then please
oh please
just let me know

hindsight

you spend your whole life attempting
to be like all the others
and you wonder why your heart
won't cave and
why the boys
they mean nothing.
you chide yourself for your cruelty
and expect next time to be different
yet it never changes,
and then
you meet her
and she inflames you
like nothing else
and you spend years chasing her memory
and crying because she is gone.

you do not realize the importance of this lesson.

passing through

it's the loneliness i can't handle, the
feeling that i am utterly alone,
disconnected from the world
devoid of any ties
i've developed to a
fine tune the skill of ignoring
those around me, yet now
i long
for physical contact. i have not
had so much as a hug from
anyone but a stranger's mother, who
greeted me cajun-style in a bar
in new orleans, where i began
perfecting the personae of the
girl who sings, and doesn't mind
if her skirt is see-through.
so forgive my habit of observing
you in the late night hours

you i worshipped

i don't know
what to feel anymore
a sense of finality, a peace
that covers the mess
of lies between us
an unfinished conversation, we are
a letter half-written, with
no reply in sight,
the unfinished novel
that moulders on the writer's desk
and i loathe this
i am not okay
with our unfinished state,
i needed an ending
i could understand, an encore
as the applause faded
into the night air
i don't know
it's a past of what-ifs and why-mes
and i cannot detangle the good times
from the times that felt
like dying
the picture blurred and spotted
even in my mind.
her limbs around me,
i cannot even remember this bliss
without also the times she would
not touch me she would not
and she will not
touch me.

roles we play

if i just let go
of all of it,
then what
will my identity be
shaped by?
who else will i become?
what else will open
for me,
as the years begin
to unfold?
i am buzzing
the pulse of the energy
i cannot manipulate, only
sense with a fierce longing
and an inquiry,
what are you,
what am i
a part of?

they realize what the scars are from

my sickness outed,
i can feel the eyes on me
as if i do not have the perfect right
to blow myself
spectacularly
to pieces...

heart drop down

it's the letting go, the realization that you're
not all right
but it's okay, and you
are ready to go on,
bare body in the
moonlight again, half shadow and half
blazing with shimmery light
as you
clutch your wounded heart with the
transparent, fragile beauty you do not see
in yourself and you wait to love again
while you swear off the whole mess entirely

but you can't escape love, it snatches
and tears at your heart, begging a night's
lodging, and you know better,
but you always let love in.
despite the struggle,
the constant reality of pain versus the fairy tales
the cutting of her abandonment, the sting
of his lies when you discover the truth.
love is a game, a battleground, a muddy
field slick with rain and gore
as you sink neck deep into the refuse
you weep and realize that yet, if not
for this feeling, the despair and
tumultuous passion, you would
never be able to feel truly alive.

thor*

it is beautiful outside.

thunder
rolls across the sky and the rain
quickens from a sprinkle on the
roof to rain
so thick it makes the air grey.
i am really ready for it


i've nothing to do all day but get wet
and watch the deluge form puddles
and rivers on my street.
days like this i miss being twelve,
when you're not old enough to
be embarrassed by wearing a
swim suit outside in the rain,

to
frolic in the flooding streets.
but i am old enough to have the
excuse of
run-
ning
to my car to get wet,

and i'll go

with that.






* in my B.A. thesis as well... almost completely unedited.

in days, i will break up with you.

it's that heartstop realization,
the dread
twisting you into nauseated knots,
the place where
"what if it doesn't work"
becomes "how can it?"
but it's not over
it's never
that simple that easy that clear - emotions
are see-through as mud
and you fumble through
knowing you're doomed
yet attempting to change the future
with the wrong tools and the wrong person
and the wrong heart

wasting time

i have often wondered
if love can ever be wasted
like always wanting
and never being able
to touch her, kiss
her body
does this waste love?

am i wasting -
have i wasted my blood
in aimless love
hoping she would understand/

we all hope we aren't failures
throwing away our love
and our lives
learning how to break our own hearts

i can see that

soft boots, scarves tying
back your hair, clothing
scavenged from thrift stores
or sewed by inexpert hands.
i've been there - i've stitched in my
uneven way, and rescued
soft and flowing things from
scrap bins and enjoyed every
uneven, raggedy hem from
my own hands. i
can relate to that. the need
to create your own life, instead
of buying it prepackaged off a shelf.
they were hippies, or poor college students
or dancers who liked to recycle or
children of the night who bought black by
the yard and draped their bodies until
they finally believed that they, too, were beautiful.
it's not an isolated theory - so many
live by the same principles, no matter
the era, or what precise thing you abused
to transcend a deadened life
you could not remove yourself from.
through the decades each generation tries
to separate itself from our diseased society
one religion, life-theory, commune,
drug, scar, eyeliner line, rip, and seam at a time.

holding on

he says, let everything go
and back away,
but he speaks as one
who is used to people
who come to him to talk
i am afraid
that if i
withdraw any more
i will become as invisible
as i feel
standing here
in a place we used to come to,
and touch
and watching you
walk by me
as if i was no more
to you (or less)
than the rain on your shoes

remains

your lies were
not even
delicate
you did not
try to stain my world
a better shade
you just bloodied the water
left scars
and walked away
with stained fingertips

predictions

his voice drawls across the lines of verse
smearing metaphors and symbols off of
their pages and into his neat, labeled
& organized boxes where they drop down dully,
stripped of life and beauty. venerated authors
have their words amputated from their poems
[i shudder to imagine Plath's consternation at
his butchery of "Mirror."]
seeing this ripping,
tearing, ignorance of the meaning and truths
behind mere words - do i really want the
cutthroat treachery of fame?
for the priviledge of watching teachers rip apart
my heart and soul, watch the fragments
of meaning twitch and jerk, dissected,
devoid of the emotion i have invested so carefully,
trembling upon the cold steel of a critic's surgery table.