we were and you are and I was
and standing there
where did it go
the brick side of it,
sitting there against the building
when we smoked,
you see our hands?
And hiding them,
The trails of smoke giving us away
In crisp night air, tale end of summertime
Sweet apple kisses
And sips of vodka we stole
Your mother, my brother
Someones car
Those boys
Names forgotten, written there against the wall
Our hands so tights
You and I and me and you
Smoking late into the darkness
Music like a memory
And I am here, so many years
And we are there, like touchstone
Fading
What we did when we did those things,
Against the side of old brick buildings
A million days ago

What we were thinking I’ll never know
It never seems that long ago
And yet sitting here, against the window
Children play, they grow, they learn
I barely know the two inside
This tiny little piece of past,
This yesterday of you, of me
Against a building built and brick,
A thousand years ago

(yuck!)

He is
Alone
Against a wall
And smoking
Rags
Sign that speaks
Childless
Penniless
He wants
My pennies
Body
Food
Life
Alone
Against
A
Wall
Any wall
To stop
Is to admit
That walls exist
Everywhere

I slept last night
A tossing of words and dreams
Played havoc,
My mind, my escape
And ran with me until I could run no more
End game
I heard the silence of the digital clock,
The turning of the minutes,
01 to 02 to 03
Beneath the thoughts my mind creates
Running still
Dreaming madmen race beneath
The silence
Of a mind
To worn to even
Dream
Slept last night
And when I woke,
My only dream
Was you

I speak to the confluence of your emotion
Time to wait
And speaking in this moment
Like silence
Slipping in ashes of phoenix
Risen
To fly again

. . . . I am only created
To fly with you

again

Spit lies
And dream tales
Sanctification of misery here in the solace,
Sinners unite
And find this place
Piece of the earth we call forth our own
Secret doors of a secret society
And code name it “tolerance”
Never wrong, nothing bad
Just don’t . . .
And even that – okay, it is and can be
Breathe
One, two
Earth and moon, real
The world within as the world without and we are the same
People
Cross lines
Stand tall
Salvation in one place,
Through one man
Dream tales,
Spit lies
And slowly watch your world fall apart . . .

You have always been
The lucky one
Careless eyes
And laughter free
She dances
Stages from sidewalks
And park benches become pedestals
Movement
The fluidity of time transfixed upon
Features
Could have carved from marble,
The flush of perfection
Humanity is not as kind
Brilliance unaided,
Long fingered elegance
As the concerto emits,
Your soul for a song
And the careful precision
Arithmancy . . . a chemist’s touch
You have always been
the blessed one,
child of the gods,
spilt wine upon the altar of your youth
and we are dancing,
the imperfection of my walk
beside you
startles
my black to your white,
night to day, daylight to midnight
you have always been
the perfect one
. . . . it seems you always will

you are beside me
inside me
with me
the darkness that invades
and the light that conquers
you are the one and the all
lord and master
you are all
and I stop, pause
reflect
and worship
there is nothing that I do not see
that is not reflected here
in you
your glory,
your light
the memory of the life

beside, inside, with . . .
master of creation
. . . god of all
And I worship you

Alone
And she is sitting
Hard beneath her
(never meant to be like this)
Baby close, she grips it tight
Feels the stares, someone watching
Always judging
(never meant to be like this)
Concrete wall encases buildings
Where women pass, their cloth of gold
And she is wearing walmart,
Eating aldi, feeling cheap
Beneath the stares
(never meant to be like this)
Alone
He was supposed to be here
She shifts the child,
9 months old
. . . .
Alone
9 months old
For 18 months
He was supposed to be here
(never meant to be like this)
She asks a stranger for the money
Asks a man for train fare home
And dies
As he watches her
Eagar for the money
Whore
She hears
Though as he walks aways
She knows
He never said
A word
. . . Alone . . .
(never meant to be like this)

I miss you
Between froth foamed sips
And mochas we might have tasted
In the delineation of the lines,
A journal we might have bought
Me for you, you for me
I miss you
In the streets
Peasant fairs, their art against the sidewalk,
Your hand pressed to mine
Miss you in the silence,
Between speech and breathing
Before the angry words
Child like and outbursts
Before the hate
I miss you

But I can’t afford to miss you anymore . . .

(requiem for a dream . . . that never was)

It is coming
Thick comfort in wool
And create the darkness,
My chocolate in a cup
Children for snowflakes
Child guerrillas protesting
Summer’s wane, rejoicing in the
Brilliant glare,
The soft kiss on cheekbones,
Piercing glare in daylight
A perfection of noon
It is coming
Red and green
The bells of the sleigh
And somehow I hear it,
Over gusts of wind that should
Obfuscate,
Over the silence that means night
Over starlight
And nothing
It is coming
Shhhhh . . . . Christmas is drawing near

(yes, dear reader, I know it's August . . . (shrug) oh well ;-)

We dance
These words mutating
Complicating
The space that fills
Between you
Standing in front of me
And pretending
Cell phone voices,
Pretty pink
Our lipstick colors
Falsifying and contriving
This minuet
This tango we pursue
We dance
Lines colliding
Worlds dividing
You are the one beside me
Chasing nightmares behind walls,
Into exile
Sleepless nights we pass
In stormy breech
Our silence costs so much
Behind rigid bodies,
Arched backs
And so
We dance . . .
Until I walk away

city gilded silver
and we run to trains
that glide through tunnels,
over highways
and we move
tandem, rhythms
running fast
as raindrops plop on lazy
humans, movement
clumsy
canopies collapsed and waiting
they to enter
skyscrapers slicing sky
and all the little people
looking up
facing toward a million
little
angel tears
forgetting their humanity
in a the quest for certain grace,
drench me,
in this perfect summer rain

We are the mad talented ones
Filling spaces with lines
Words conjured from nothing
Descriptions of things unseen,
Emotion un evoked
We betray your mind
With the memories of a life lived
But never transcribed
Silent scream
Protest
But mute
No words
No sound
Your eyes see the design my hands present
But nothing more
So simple
So sweet
We are the golden ones
Crazy quilted children drink nectar of the gods
And grace the morning with eyes anew
Sweeping hands and fates own kiss
Wish us well
As she passes us passing you by . . .

Careless there
I admonish
And spell check blogs
Precise, my pencil thin
Skirt, clicking heels
On hardwood sounds
Cyberspace
And ringing there
words like confetti cast in
windless places,
landing everywhere
and missing points
so gentle
but the reader understands
least common
this denominator
and I struggle
face first in it
losing sleep and sense
and pride,
mind rebels
stupidity cannot be
this rampant
and yet . . .
I click another page
I groan
It is

We spent the night counting leaves
As raindrops slicked the trees
And practiced taps along the rooftops
Of long dead houses
Prisoners lurked
Blue hued faces locked
Against commercials
Singing lyrical dittys
And pretending to care
About the lives of people they would never know
And who, if they did
Would never deign
To care of them
We spent the night watching crickets
Play badmitten
With a piece of Kleenex mother dropped
As she walked across the floor,
Creaking in the silence of one a.m.
Tears splish splashing in the solitude of
Minutes passing
Digital, click
Oh one, oh two
We spent the night counting after school specials
As the blood ran
Through the veins and into gutters
Vampires drooling
If they ever could, would, should
And spent the night in bed asleep
And dreaming of the things we might have done
If we had
Spent the night
In anything
But sleep

She is sitting against rocks counting time
And time counts back
As rocks break against the water
And the sky falls fast behind a burning sun
Rocks press back against her body,
Slender lines and time is counting her
Down to the edge
Where someone waits
Is always waiting, pontificating
On moments such as these
When she has nothing much to do
And nowhere much to do it
But time sits, counting her
And waiting for the next rock to fall
Against the wave of what
Was before the world washed away
Beneath the inky blackness of a void
That was
Just a moment before
It wasn’t

Kaleidoscope my vision
And create for me
The rainbow of my darkness
You are dreaming, hesitating
Moments wasting
Everyone stops, recreates
And dreaming is the timestamped effervescence
Who we were
When we became
Who we were meant to be
Kaleidoscope my vision
And recreate for me
The silence of that moment,
The crystalline perfection
When silence was not harbringer of death
Nothingness and everything
But pause between beginning and end
Just that
And nothing more
Kaleidoscope my vision
And wait for me no more

and with us it is to find that place
the silence of our own salvation
in the moments ,
heartbeats
drummers . . . taps
the sweet salutation, mother
but we find it – lose it – and find once again
that sweet salute
“my boys, my boys”
She is crying as they march away
Not even hers, not any longer
Clutching to her, breast and heart
The paper then
So wet, she’s crying
And I hold her, and I know her
But I too will stand and fight
And I too will hold this drum beat
Heart beat
Solemn invocation of a national vocation
In the silence of the space between oath and
Salutation . . .
With us it is to find that place
With us it is to find that peace
Between a mother’s love
And soldier’s place
I hold her once, a moment longer
Then standing
Move away
And off to
War

Rain slicked streets that pass for architecture
Waving final sallys past buildings
Where ants make homes,
Cast spells
And conquer other paper castles
Moving air against other carriers
Of disease that only mutates
Making less of men and more of
Air . . .
We are fighting strongholds
For the right to breathe
And nothing remains
Except the strange
Silent
Sound
Of death
Where those who came before us
Once walked

I give my truths to practiced liars
Moments such as these
And let them go
Wings of angels beating where the silence ends,
Somewhere between fragments of thought
And the beginning of a journey

I give my truths to men’s hands,
The swollen limbs of athletes
And the waiting pressure he guides me to
Gently I release my hold on something deep inside of me
As he drops me, falling further into the me that never was

Give my truths to women who
Will never be mothers
Who will never nurse as children watch
And baleful eyes, to sink into the giant turmoil
Who we were supposed to be
When we were supposed to be

I give my truths to you, my dear
As we are sitting in this darkness, as though we had never left
What we have never found
And you, the child so afraid, the thunder loud inside your mind
I give my truths so freely here
To summer nights and languid peace

But maybe I never gave the truths at all,
Carry them still, so soft within my belly
Deep and dark as Georgia nights
Rich with god, and lost as faith
Maybe I have never known the truths at all . . .
Maybe I never will

She decided to kill herself the same way she decided everything else. Compulsively. With that flick of a wrist and flash of a pen, and she wrote out the will she’d been planning for too many years, with too few thoughts and only a couple of tears. It didn’t seem real. Not the pills or the knife, or the tremble in her fingers as they started to drip, blood the color of newely cut sausage, and spilling her life onto the light colored wood might have seemed strange to some people but it seemed appropo to her. normal even, the logical conclusion finally, to an illogical and improbable life. She was still bleeding when the paramedics started pressing the buzzer and she had to think through think pretty clouds of pale amber to remember how they had known what girl to save in this anonymous city – because she hadn’t told anyone. There really was no one, finally, left for her to tell. And god knows her dog wasn’t good for telling anyone, lying there, a fuzzy pile of poodle, waiting for her to feed him, bathe him, clip the hair near the ears and balls she’d been too broke, and then too lazy, finally to get cut.

Too compassionate, that was the lie she always told, but really it always laziness.

And this time there really hadn’t been anyone left. Every bridge had been burned – lost to the whirwind hurricane created in the moments between life and something like it. So she shivered, and wrapped the still bleeding arm in a pile of old rags and covered that with her jacket, and waited for the buzzing to stop. But of course this was America. Every freedom except sex, abortion, and suicide. And so they busted through her door until it lay splintered and broken in pieces on the floor made of its ancenstors, and she found herself staring into the face of one who might have died, but didn’t, and so now saved those who would have been her, had she not been saved.

And in that moment kate could see her own fate. The ridiculousness of it all. To save or be saved. And she wished the knife had gone just a little deeper, the pills moved through her bloodstream a little faster, her courage to kill a little more intense, because now she would have to live, and not only live, but cease that life and be grateful for it when all she had ever wanted was the quiet anonymity of a grave. And the nonsensical reminder of an epitath. Here lies the girl who could not live. Life gave her all she desired in this sweet death.

But that was not to be.

And maybe selfish is the word of the god she was to honor now, in living. She did not know, did not pretend to know.

But allowed herself to be removed from the room of wood and splintered doors and did not speak as she was strapped to the gurney, all metal and crisp cotton sheets against the contour of her naked back. Knowing that she looked all the more insane for her nudity. That the shirt and sweatpants lying on her bed, had she grabbed them, would have offered her the safety of respite, and that in remaining as she was, she offered them distance. Kept them in the real world and herself apart. As though they could assure themselves of her difference, her horrible abomination simply by noting her lack of shame. As though that were enough – and the suicidal marks upon her arms superfluous. It was nudity that scared them, and all at once, that saved them.

“After we get out of here” she heard it whispered in her head as though there were others living within her, other beings secreted within her spine and sharing stories like secrets. “shhhh” she pressed them into service, siting in this hospital bed, unpleasant though it were, and cast about in her mind for the moment when time would shatter into a million pieces and gather her into its fold, until she would lose herself again. But it didn’t happen. It never happened in places like this where it could happen, only on the worst possible days, in the worst possible places – where it never should happen. And she shivered behind the thin layer of paper cotton they had given her to guard herself from prying eyes, pretending it was to keep away the chill, and knowing all along it was only to ever make her feel more like them, no matter how little like them she would ever be.

She decided to kill herself again during art theray, when she felt the first cool press of the sponge against her hand. It might have been warm, the paint thick and sticking to her flesh in clumps, blues and reds, the yellow of hope like an eyelash some child might wish upon in some future, far from now.

Again during music, when the soprano who could have been a girl – why should boys sing that high ? – made her cry with the purity of his touch, the sweet

cRy
whisper
seek
EXISTENTIAL

crEaTioN
Search
dream
horror
elusive