dreaming of words that are alive

The start

 

I want you to vary my days

To lie like a soft pleat in my folded laundry

To take me to the river. 

I want to run under this sky

Into somewhere where you'll always have me:

Crinkled maps

Skin on skin

Pins and needles

 

The end

 

Now I am finally totally over you.

I hold this movie notion close to my chest

Like cards

Either by my chest or in my sleeve or flat on the table.

We never got around to playing those card games, did we…

Did you ever find my belongings in your room after I was gone?

Letters in the Summertime

And in the Spring I found a hallucination of you my first love;

We played by the books.

That chest sprayed out on your bed. The mirror.

Though I have moved away from us, life has a way of

Recycling and extending the lifespan of my affections, they

Belong to someone else now--

He is hard not to talk about.

He washes your slate and the water runs away in the drain

But I am everything in my world even sewage

And my body takes many notes

That will never forget you.

I Would Not Focus

 

I've never focused 

Really once in my entire life. 

 

The sound of voices talking next to me

Jumbled as a puzzle dumped on a fold-out table

As I try to read about National Parks

Through the eyes of a bird-like poet

Pecking at the sides of my brain, the

                                                      soothsayer

Falcon picking scraps of the desert blacktop. 

                                    And the heat of it all, when I flip the page

I want to go to a National Park and be thoughtless

 

Not sprawled on an old turquoise couch.

 

                                                                                                           What a colorful room.

I notice the differences in height.

 

                  Well it’s too late now, the font has etched my mind

                                    What's next in life except this comforting room 

                                                      Do I dare believe that anything else exists?

I want my soles to have nerves, so I can

feel down 

                                                      Down down endlessly down where everything 

                                    Everything breathes like a forest.

                  And the irony of it all, I’m trying to escape

The clutch of everything I’m holding inside.

 

 

The clutch of [     ] I’ve been keeping inside.

 

 

Really I cannot focus–

I cannot ditch anything about this body. 

Untitled

 

There is enough time now

To hear seagulls caw

To taste savory herbs and notes of pineapple

To think of the man who arouses you

Turning over in your sheets,

thinking for a moment that he has found home,

but on a simpler note, 

There is enough time to chew and swallow

To say a blessing

To wonder how many dishes you will wash and dry and put back into the cabinets this year

And have you ever been followed 

Why mop the footprints off the ground in a place where it rains every day

Who are you, and have you lost who you are?

You do not have to be great

You do not need to make the bus

You do not need to worry now.

Admire the mess of leaves

Taste sweet solace running down your throat,

Let graduate and anise escape your mouth without hesitation. 

These are tools of embrace:

My body, heart, and mind.

Untitled

 

One thing I got done was 

Vacuuming my invisible floor

Letting it see the light of day

Although I hate the smell of the purple vacuum. 

I dislike to smell of rain on the ground

Although I like the smell of it in the air and

That is enough for me to know if I care too much

I'll never be happy.

What I want is not what I need

What I need is to watch that Russian Guy on Youtube

What I want is to kick a soccer ball around

on your upside down head. 

 

I got those dead plants out of my room

All except one

And I fed a few squirrels 

Plus I put on some makeup, ate food, and drank coffee. 

How many more days of this are there? 

Today is at least beautiful and warm

I control nobody and nothing at all

Except for myself. 

It is time to get the notebooks back out

Sharpen my pencils

To listen to the speeches of others

In breathing and flickering focus, even when I'm quiet

Growing and going somewhere

This is an unperfect poem

I've got to get those words out of my heart

Unperfect invisible poem,

Carry on a few words for me.

Life on Mars

 

I slipped off my necktie on the hard grey couch

Where light never does hit quite right

 

Where I dream of soft glowing caverns, dimly lit behind breath

Your hand, cross your body, fluttering towards my right thigh.

 

Always looking for the right thing to say,

I scurry for my clothes after I’ve undressed

 

After I’ve gone nude, the cracked blinds lying just a foot away 

Sounds and sights and lights playing on my back

 

What are we doing? You might ask 

Do you want coffee, a bowl of yogurt? I always respond, in the dark morning. 

 

So fully and openly your warmth tells lies

I admit we do not always know what we want.

 

But I’m no point from which your arrow flies.

It could be me, an obsidian spearhead, soaring grâce à toi into the future

 

Every thought I weigh warping into cones into streaks of light as I go–

so dangerously fast there is not a second to look back.