Lapping

i can always feel baby in me. she says,
licking a stamp. i know it's there cause
it vibrates when it needs me and
i put my hand down onto my belly,
eyebrows locked, and feel it purring. it sends me
a text when it's hungry. then i know, let it take
from me what it needs. not sure why i prefer it,
no. it gets what it wants. it gets
silk, and nectar, and butter. her legs crossed
beneath her, foot in lap. it has a signature,
but no sure name yet. it has my
big feet, and it's strong, and so it is clear.
we wanted this. we are why. that man
wasn't even big enough to get inside. don't take it
the wrong way, don't take it out of
context. we laugh about that now.
it's our inside joke, me and baby. baby and me.
she glides her hand over. i got hairs on my tummy.
and it don't make me no prettier to be attacked.
i wish that baby would, baby, call mama
back. sometimes it feels like i'm
drowning out. she sits up suddenly.
don't forget to dial area code. don't forget to do
your practice. she looks for the
camera. i show baby terrorist flashcards.
i cry so it can identify who is our enemy.
and i know that we agree cause
when baby sweats it comes out of me. she
smiles into the black glass eye. do you
think that it sees me? she leans over to
take a long puff. she leans over to grab a pen.
signed,
burlap baby, bumble bee wet.
young sum of the times.

this was a song. god growing

sing this spanish lullaby,
a rock in a foreign home.
space the doubt between us,
broken roads we roam alone.
watch the past remain as we
roll through the lonely fight.
the air is a clean fortress
tonight. it almost loves you.
and when we all need a little touch,
we call out to our clearing
mothers, who kneel beside the bed
we used to make. sing for their sake.
cry for our peace and their knowing.
we can't be only god growing.
hold your wings now
when they have far to fall.
god growing inside you
and inside us all.

mind over

this world has a weird way of
drinking me up. i don't know if it's
universal or not. it's, well,
definitely not as powerful as a
trend. but, here's to- hoping you can't
hear me peeing. accepting your neck
rub offer. sharing home with
whoever, just across the floor, and, just
as honest as always, but...no more consistent.
it feels like a sense of humor. sand in your
hair. and i think i can taste something
i'm imagining. i don't know, it's

somebody else's scrapbook

a place where i was when we had
an argument once

a bottle of ketchup

tapeworm

money in my hair, the church
in your wallet. the sink full of
losses, tapeworm growing in the
toilet. coughed up a bouldering
lava in my sleep, saw it all
hiccuping away with the
better causes. oh, with so many
directions, loving becomes less
distinct. falling for the priest in his
handsome robe, he's trying to
think himself out of all those
privacies. he tells me- live for what's
limited, my friend. give out your
mornings, your little memories, and
your sanctions. God, things
are changing.

highest validity

whatever moniker is derived,
there is no equal or lesser value.
place the eraser upon the slight trigger
of your free in-theory free,
which travelled with standard proof, tested
against its own trademark, fallacised.
forever so be our befallen differences.
help bereave and shave the art
because there may be no defining it, and
what that means is your opinion can not be
the best, means there is no top to a circle,
and they all hold the highest validity
there. if one more person tells me that i
should not use the word should. if you were
really a believer that everyone's thoughts
and actions are acceptable, you wouldn't
be participating in this argument. and you
wouldn't be a believer. sit it out, kid.
leaning down to throw the stone. skip,
and see the ripples. they're like little curtsys
to the moon. don't look so. your face tells
your head to be stubborn. tells me to
smile more. clenching your chin in,
following your mouth out into a kissless cycle

>>fuck me typing

*one is watching the other as it goes.
one is me, and i am- be right back-
travelling here. i hear you ringing but i am
talking to my friend in rehab and i am
writing to your mom. so hold on this
guy i just added says he thinks i
am probably perfect because
everything i've written rhymes with what
he wants to hear. tell me what you are
doing again? the internet is going stupidly
out. do we need somebody else to be
be us? some things have gone too far. fuck
me typing. this battery is a hard part of
how i feel now. my independence
is a piece of paper, scanned and forwarded
to every one >>>> if i had three
wishes, i would want to see
all of the paper in the world stacked
on top of each other again.
>>>everything i wrote would be one forest.
>>>and everything i knew could be two leaves.
falling down virtually and reloading
>>>
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>
>>
>
*

my self clearer

the window is cold. i'm finally dark,
and feeling like i look
lined with your ideas about
girls who wear make-up
and their poetry.
girls who share drinks and
girls who don't show respect for
their bodies. thinking of losing
pillar after pillar
of your faith being not who i should
be, or need to be, because of right
and because of how much it hurts
otherwise. cradling that fear i wonder
who is giving it such a safe home?
i don't need to know
who thinks i'm smart if i feel pretty,
or what they think it means
that i don't understand.
i'm not after your hands, any of you.
and i want to be here as i am. against
a cold window, seeing my self
clearer than you can.

until morning

it came at night
surrounded by cold air. in too many words
it rolled across tongues like a train underground,
collecting speed. all that is unfamiliar
touching every secret spot, claiming every
motive and closing every question, unanswered.
a dream that moves you but you can't recall,
it had your name. it was slow and graceful
as the fog turned to water, the shadows all faded to
dark black weight and the air hovered around you,
accusing. you didn't see it coming but
it came, like a song in a foreign language.
it came, like looking a complete stranger
in the eye. and then it came closer.
it came at night, and the mess it left behind
couldn't be seen until morning

your coat

I wore your coat tonight. Out,
into the cold wind
that whipped the ugly city around.
Snug, I felt still inside.
I imagined you there,
tried to remember your voice,
Loud and sure. “Do not
Do nothing.” I raised the hood,
slid my pink hands into your pockets
and felt for anything.
The sky was empty and black to match.
Without one doubt, it has been
the longest two weeks of my life.
Pleading for what’s left of real,
warning magic to prove something to me.
The guilt is surely creeping up behind.
I follow anything that leans back when I fall,
still silent. I can’t keep on forgetting.
Your loyalty lead lines to me
but I don’t know where they stop.
And tonight, staring out, I started to see
that I couldn’t, still can’t,
take your advice.
Standing there, totally gone
with the spirit of loss, nothing left.
I did nothing.
I‘d done nothing.
What had I done?

worth my violence

i spoke in a spasm, moved out
of a room that had slowly started feeling
like leftovers, toward something
i was somehow sure knew me.
on the way, looked at my options,
and they all seemed the same - just,
one had me moving its way already.
i remembered i'd dreamt out
of it. it coming up, pretending to be
me, and suggesting: what
we can do, other than be thankful
that the world still has more to offer
up to the searching. i noticed its
little warmth at my side. not remarkable
enough to press on from,
just to walk with. i started seeing
my scenario and trusting it. so when it
got up, and didn't even wait to see
that i would follow, i did, and felt
like i was guiding. i even figured that
through all the spaces i'd filled
my speeches with, it was maybe
protecting me, by moving me
toward a fight that felt
finally worth my violence

Quixotica

america, you talk to me like i am
a child. you are so much defense and so
little offering- leave me to question even
the thought of you. a land, yes, a
home, but here is where you are losing me -
your gate falls inward and tells me to
lie face down, napping with the
lights on, all my notions about
the things you might be behind me.
your freedom coughs. ahem, over
the assignment. and when you asked it
of me, i did try to acknowledge what you've
been announcing, but i couldn't deny
the sources that kept tickling my
reflex and hiding under the seat.
america, it's not that you're not any
good. it's just that, maybe you've
forgotten- when i drink water
with whiskey, water with beer or
water with wine, i get drunk. and now
i'm drunk, america, but you're
the water.

someone i should be

i don't care about anger today.
it's doing nothing for me.
not empowering, propelling, or even
masking some more vulnerable state.
no, and it's not honesty, really,
that i need, because actually i'm
finding it hard to identify, within myself
and in others, or realizing that at
the very least, life is still showing me
that i have unforeseen bewilderment,
which i had at some point just
accepted into my world view,
to be rejected and laughed out.
and in a way i appreciate that. i
feel a bit like i'm getting
too tired, or old even, to believe
that i can resolve it here, tonight,
with these two shaking hands.
because i'm not someone i
should be, i just am, and i hear an
alarm when anyone now tries to
tell me that they know how to use
that word. should- very little to it,
really, yet so many failures that
could have been avoided by its
absence. should you be right, and how? well,
think about it forever if you'd like,
but i might just assume that we're
not and listen. hope that in giving
up we'll get something back,
even if it's just that more of those
stubborn youths will start to do
more of nothing for us, and lose weight.
i mean, can we sit here and really
watch through something we can't see
or keep up a fight by slamming two
mirrors against each other?
tonight i am just too tired not to
let be. so, someone else can climb into
the sky on ideals alone and clean
the stars we wish on. i mean,
do it. i'll watch. and i think i can
still even believe you if you
tell me you've seen one falling

the beliefs we were born with

Reach up across a coal, brass night.
Reach up into a cut glass sky
of paused green stars we keep while
we spin in an orbit of refusing to fade and forget.

You’re still recruiting your hand- but
it gets softer the more you know
and your eyes try to glow, and open to enter
when you look forever at where what
went away was. It’s okay.
I can forgive you.

I can reach out from the dust I wear,
into a silence we knew when we were
woven in our religious innocence together.

But now, slide along against a cold, blue wall.
Follow the dark, photo-less hall that leads
away from the dirty deliveries you
sleep on, sent out by the dreams you
wake from. Dreams of you, your little girl.
It will be long. But keep on, recording,
until you reach the room where my child still
lays awake- unchanging, keeps her curls.
She is waiting for you. I have always
been. Waiting

car by car, in that play house we built
on cards and the beliefs we were born with.
We didn’t lose our crowns in the night,
they were gone with what we saw in that
false, bright light. A child is born to her mother,
but not through evidence. They see each
other. The world is a secret between them,
Tip toeing, room to room, saving laughter.

I am waiting. That homeless sun will not
rise again without us, just little girls,
just the same, still, never a place for it
to grow. I know you know
the wish is not lost without time.
I cannot leave you all the way behind.

"aha" a letter to the guest

of course, many animals don't know
what an orphan is, but today
the light proves the child again.
this has got to be explained without
taking you into some position.
first, conceive that very little sense
is common. "what's behind the
trap door?" there is always an aha-
and, the dreams continue to appear real,
and, we see how heavy a "normal" burdens
hands are. it's in the approaching. it's a
nother invigoration once the door is fully closed.
"aren't you proud of your little saucer?
yes? yes? only trying to help." only trying, hovering.
visiting to inspect. each game with a task, each
dealt with a hand of what is not okay, around
your neck when you are trying to eat. mom
comes down stairs, half awake, says some
shit that retells about the whole ordeal.
what is- our blind sight, anesthetized, realigned.
"you should never be proud of me for being
who i am." i guess the sin's been
compromised. just pet the cat.

what I meant to say

Yes, I still love.
Nothing but desire
in the soil it grows of.
I know how to love.
And it burns so far, so deep
inside what I will always,
Always hold to be true.
I made a promise,
and whether or not you
let me show it by seeing, looking
at what I give, I won’t break it.
and I will keep
Loving you in the only way
I can now. Next to me.
Next to you, fighting me.
But I won’t hope to hurt you.
And if I do, you can’t
make me proud. I’ll keep
your peace in my interest
if it ever comes my way.
You can’t make me forget
what I meant to say. And if you
want to know how far I’ve given,
just look where I do.
Look, first, at you.
And see the light I tried for.
Don’t see me, you don’t need to.
Because now, I do.
and in the mirror, I still see,
believe that your best is true.
Yes, I still love.
I know how to.

Relia Caligrum

she reserves the death among us,
a wandering typecast.
no beginnings can reveal her,
she is hidden in the past.
and the fearful wish you carry
is the mark behind her trade-
when you feel your dark heart racing,
she, enrobed, prepares the shade...

plan b

don't get hard. not
for this, now, while cold blood is
crammed inside some pain, pressure
the small aftermath of you who are a stranger
not to see. we didn't meet anywhere
but my body. we met at me, and I am the weather.
tried, clean and ready to hold on to all
the future it can create. my blind, inner furniture
singing its desperate songs of forever and
not knowing who is there. i deserve
to be this place where we share. so, don't
be naive. i carry you with me, we all do, and not as a
gift you give. women are places, and after you
come into us we leave with more than you appear
to plan on. but this is just blood- thickening,
tired, for who knows what happened. this is me,
sick for your small pleasures. and, sad for
my standard, so don't tell me it's not serious when
only i pay and this is not my body for you. how far
do you have to get off to see me some
respect? we are all always for you and i don't see
why. you're lucky i'm still just me and
that soon i'll be dry

meeting you again

it might be too soon for the words,
though we feel we know yet.
being too willing loses its gait and
i want my truth to all be enough
to handle. i don't know how we do this,
without iron grip i think, so i just see
that i could really write a hundred
words about your eyes. or about looking
at them. in them. clean and untouched
purely slow gentle young old strong like
dark planets that stay still, floating.
shot up, shaped out of something in and
each a reflection of the other but
just as real. you are not my child.
but i understand. i think i understand
romance. friendship. i want something
unformed, without the i, to move in with
enough distance never to feel your focus
burning off again like that claimness. be
not the same, but plain and everywhere.
i might be dim in the making, drawn
in the creating, but the long breath
i breathed in this new kiss gave me
permission. let the low burning world
try to release it. leave it to suffer
on repeat, with its loopholes and omens.
i've never not known you, good, bad or
afraid. i'm small in it and you're
right, it's not really us.
you can't even see your own eyes.

corinthian

I feel dirty when I know i'm in your mind
behind the bars with all us little women
you've sold out to the biases, outdating you and

I'm sure I'm cleaning up after the mistakes
you think we made, milking your dead childhood
cows, doing chores as punishment for our pride,

it keeps you placated. even if only there, with
your vision glazed out, clogging some kind of streaming
slight, and i can be pretty sure now that you're undoing me
in your world of mixed mania and leaving well enough

alone and, please daddy, become an imagined play
to own me, look over my shoulder for your priorities.
spit in my mouth like a jealous neighbor

hellbent

open your mouth
and say something too
i don't want to know much but
need to
hear you, or
else i will just tell you what you want.
give me something to put in
and, keep your smell on,
like you're still dressed,
like,

i'm hellbent, wired on
this movement this
cream this ownership
stapled down -

back behind
you, asking something
invasive -
so pushed, just
be forward, let it cross,
i know you're not looking
at my eyes
but you sound
serious

why does anger, fear
feel like lust? my breath itches.
i feel all drawn out, fueled in just
the right amount of guilt.
it hurts
a little bit. it's
good. in everything vivid
and virile, i'm, so ready, right
here, with all this enthusiasm. give
me some force back.
i want to make
a little gravity

your daughter

some people see me. they say they see
me smart, pretty. they say i'm still
here. i look at me from outside me
in pictures, in my memory and
i am beginning to see the places
where you break the way i love.
you make me feel lost when i
look straight into my own eyes.
straight, and see an innocence keep giving.
mother, i'm not your daughter anymore.
the law changed us when you ran from the law.
you tried to escape your self and released me
along the way. i try not to wait
for what i know will give destructively.
the memory i dreamed of for so long
is gone, now empty because i don't even know
you. you don't look at me
until you're broke without a fix,
kneeling at my feet and begging
for validation. after two years of
hiding, stealing, lying, jealousy
because i am not ending my own life
backward in your honor.
i make you want to use? i have to tell you
i am not ashamed. i have to hear
when you tell me that i'm beautiful
in a way that makes me feel i shouldn't be.
why do you look at me at all?
others say they're grateful to see
what i share, but still i give it
through a faint pain that pulls me hard against it,
and i can't get over, around, across.
mother, i am still here.
you keep me to let me go. want me,
to go. you don't feel proud. you think
you look bad against me and that's all you know.
where are you when i'm lucky and
you have given me to the world?
should i be sorry, if i am your curse
by burning what bleeds you?
am i not big enough to change your mind?
at your hospital, we all look away.
we can't say why but we know better.
your mouth, your teeth are black
with what you drink to clean you.
you're laughing, hysterical,
in slow motion, then look out
and don't know me.
you look across with your eyes
out from your dark high and don't know
your daughter.
mother, i'm still here, but we're wrong
and we both lost our names.
i don't know me either.

309

hot wednesday, your afternoon
tells nothing. cars seem to
vanish from all their parking lots.
i pour the light back outside
and turn my thick blinds away.
like guards they line up,
dense to serve their purpose.
the cat sings out his purr-hymn,
pawing at all my loose hairs.
a friend has said to me,
'i feel as if i've been
walking this whole life,
and i just want to sit down.'
i lean back into black
knowing and die for that
moment. and in it, lucid,
a stain, i stretch for ever -

seed

I wonder if she ever thinks
of him when she looks at
me: The rampant weed of some
scattered seeds sprouting up in unexpected
places now. The gift of a fit of
assaulted caution - we don’t speak of it.
I wonder if she loved him, even for any moment,
or if they talked about who their
child together would be, holding tight
like orphans, testing that one more second
would be for squeezing the very last drop
out of the only thing that could not run dry.
They were looking in the right places
for the wrong things. But it’s
growing now behind the words that
straddled some stranger’s confession, beneath
the blanket of every fairy-taled child sleeping
with the enemy of their soil’s soiled stem.
There’s no room to be welcomed by those who keep
spitting into the sand that falls through
the fist of every half-born son and calling it their own,
those inadvertent pacifiers who need sex most
and are the least like parents.
It’s living between the fantasy that keeps them
together in the mind of the same old placebo and
the moment when they wake up,
still barely turning their wet backs away
from a vanishing nightmare and screaming:
we can’t own life, You can’t ever own life.

the boldest

crying for the cage, i cried
beside it, sinking with what lost lie.
you sat heavy to call it for
what it was. at least, in your narrow way -
and i looked, through further gray
and saw what you thought you threw.
our white sky skinned and the
sun blistered over your pale hand.
your claims praised you as most bold
of open land. but i didn't create cages,
and i'm not so tired, small
like you say. i'm not so weak
to call you your hate. the wind
blows even the boldest when their
passion fears itself. tell me:
where does it go? does it protect you
from what it knows? who does it follow?
the facts of math, with their hands
too small to hold? i want things
you don't want to see. i, too,
slipped into that heat, turned around,
and watched your thick eye
sliding.

born remembering

i followed silence to where words dissolve into color.
i followed my mind to the place where i gave birth to you;

you are there in my memory, an echo,
weightless as flowers blooming underwater.

you seem so much more real in the dark.

i have seen two places,
and of the two, reality has given me only proof---

those two silences never meet in words

warm moon

try to predict a meteor falling.
a dinosaur going extinct
after millions upon millions
of years on an earth.

there is only yellow prediction-
no attempt to call out
past clocks but fear; the loss
of the womb. you want
to know, with your eyes,
that you'll come back to it.
like two, mother and father cinched together.
forget mouths, half-ready
with curled lips that don't lead to any
nowhere. there is no nowhere.
we fear that there is no joy if
we cannot make it predictable.
forget that even the warm half-
moon is still whole.
give the pupils in our eyes
bigger, further back bodies,
the more of our children we see.
we look up at the sky and we fear it.
we cry. sweat. forget to breathe. forget even
the cinched smiles inside us. the clock
when it rests between tickings.

the spark alive

i want to watch
their blood beaded body work
make waste with what was idled dead.
in tore their flexibility,
underscored velocity, rediagraming for
the lost at home. we may need to decide for
each other. or instead pad the tissue, pre
occupied with what is too good to say.
you have to stop trying to remain
unattained. reaction is one thing - but
the spark, alive, is only fair. only matter
when it's present enough to point out.
you pull blood from where it should be
needed, like crytallized red thread.
sit down. or oscillate into
a rhythm even you can't relate to.
i want to appraise the work
ing inside something real that requires
no anterior allegations. split fire, and
at least it's personal. at least it knows
that it burns...

Much

Two hours late and the crying eyes have closed.
The morning is without a memory, it shakes
the leaves in its delivery and new birds are close
but unseen. There’s only a beginning now
and they seem to have never slept. Quicker than
my ear they keep repeating, “let’s hear it.” then
don’t wait for a response. They must know no one
could come out and say anything. I think
they know it all already anyway. Still, maybe the
chaos, the obvious must be stated; maybe it’s just --
the same, old story, inspired again by a new anger.
claimed as creation in some rebirth, selling symbiosis to
the idea of a stranger and wearing a holy hat
on the cover of the auto-biography. But why
is it too much not knowing if the girl's story is
familiar? Why can I still feel her burning beside
me? Identifying the family we have can be hard,
even if you know no one remembers to define it but
you. Why do we still try to forget something
that now has to have made us freer than ever