Estranged

You spoke of sore spots
You told burnt up dreams
that fester like skin cancer
or look like you have been
injecting the carcinogens
of lit cigarettes
straight into your arms
unsuccessfully

The smell of singed flesh
makes your skin crawl
but it is the incense
of your life insisting
its strange beauty upon you
like your incestuous father

This was the point
where you looked in the mirror—
picking the black flowers blooming
across the lowland of your body—
and evaluated your worth
one shortcoming at a time

And you wondered
what dreams are really made of
—their beauty is lost on you—
but you do not feel alone
in this wanton despair

“For most people,”—you sell yourself—
“it’s dreaming you are Hercules
with a boulder lifted over your head
when you are just another bug—
another mite—living under a rock…

that’s crushing you.”

Courting

9-4-05

The air overhead is clouded
with questions that should be falling
from our mouths, wetting this dream
with reality.
I have not turned
but something tells me
I'm laying on a swarm
of cracks and crevices,
like a bad case of fragility
is about to envelop me,
and I would come out
as if strained
in tear drop pieces
on the other side.
...pulling the pulp
out of my beaten heart?
Folded into the middle
of your bed
I cannot tell if I am holding
the right side of you,
if I will be your angel
or your demon,
if you are a sleeping beauty
awaiting our first kiss
or a victim
I should spare.
.

...For Ice Cream

I should have found it odd,
I suppose, that driving past
a glowing Baskin-Robbins
would make me think of you.
 
But now I have to admit
I want nothing more
than to use the tip
of my tongue like a little pink
plastic spoon
as I sample
the multifarious flavors of you.
 
From Belly Button Swirl
to Neckline Divine
I will savor your
every ounce
melt you between my lips
as I explore the subtle
smoothness of your—
chocolate-caramel-coffee—
Neapolitan skin.

After much (intentional) indecisiveness,
tasting and re-tasting,
I will finally choose my favorite
and reach for your neck—
the sugar cone I cannot wait to nibble on,
which holds the sweet, round,
perfect scoop of your mouth.

I'll do everything I can
not to let one drop go
un-tasted, even lick you
from my finger tips.

And together you and I will indulge
in the childish fun of making a mess
and cleaning it up—as if our eyes
are full of hot-sticky summer days
and there isn't a rocky road
in sight.

__.

Beds are Lonely Places

Beds are lonely places
like untouched deserts
You can roll around in one
like a slow wind
but nothing really changes
You are a dune in a black and white landscape
You are a form, a shape under a thin sheet
of moonlight
Your solitude is solid and intact
You want to destroy it, but everything is so soft
You can't
It folds and unfolds around you like oil and sand
There is nothing you can do
but wait 
for a flood of phosphorescent love

_

Deciding to Be a Poet

"The violets in the mountains
have broken the rocks"
~Tennessee Williams

Deciding to be a poet
is like entering a mountain
carving contest with an old spoon.

Trusty as that old spoon may be,
it is not a spoon unlike any other,
it is the same—yet with it you must mine

through layers of catching cliches and matted
sameness until you have unearthed an ore
pure and untouched by man's redundant finger.

The judges want nothing more
than originality—no faux pyramids,
dense presidents, or gargantuan Grecian urns

they say. They want you to blaze a trail
up one side, and roll a snowball
down the other, or flip the mountain

on its top and spin it like a prism
in a whirlwind thriving
wind-chime.

Nothing short of that
may even catch their waxy eye.
Even so,

sometimes you will cut the crown off
and scoop out charred handfuls
of useless lava, which you'll strew

about like mustard seed, planting drops
of mountain everywhere you will never reap.
Sometimes you'll undermine the sound

integrity of the tectonic, technical structure
and cause it to capsize, meter by meter
into an ocean of bubbly fury—just a personal

natural disaster that will never see the light
of a printed page—and you'll wonder
what....or how a fledgling poet is to ever rest?

On other days you will incessantly bore
a tunnel—through the mountain's foot, only to realize
you were always there to dig a cave

as you discover the golden Buddha
patiently aglow at a perfect ending....
which took your life, sacrificially, to burrow.

If you are lucky, it will rain though.
And your mountain will be blessed
with a stream that will hew through

the heart of your poem like molten love,
carrying the universe's spirit
in its small, fertile breadth,

rousing life around it—
like an opened birth canal—
yet spanning that immense, barren plain

between blood and soul
in a single skip
of a regular heartbeat.

Oranges

I keep looking at the oranges
sitting on my counter
The ones bought with the apples that are long gone
The ones bought with such good intentions
They are bigger than my fists. They are soft balls
full of juice and brightness
But I cannot bring myself
to their appetizing destruction
Not because I think they will be destroyed
But because of the ample time it would take me
to slide my fingers under their skin
and peel back and pull off
That time seems more precious to me
in my endeavor to crawl under
the world's thick, raw hide
(as I expose the meat underneath)
than it does for their purposeful consumption

A Warning and a Promise

"Like we’re so picky!

We’re not picky at all.

We’re just scared, and you know it."

I am a special character.

A special case.

I am too loving.

I’m too sharing.

For all intents and purposes I am a freak.

I am a freak because unlike the only majority

On this planet, I don’t hold back.

When I care, I care. To put fear into that process

Would be like putting salty fish in a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

I cannot do something beautiful and simple such a disservice.

I cannot subscribe to the unnatural.

No matter how many people line up behind it before me.

Mine is simply full

Of peanut and jelly and butter and love.

I do not have many friends on facebook

Because I am acutely aware of this.

If I see something I like I’m going to “like” it.

If you do something I love I’m going to say it.

And if you tell a lie, about yourself or the world

I’m going to remind you of the truth

as nicely as I can. But it wont always be "nice."

You cannot live as long as I have and be

as unwaveringly me as I am and not know this.

Not know what other people see.

What other people think

Of all your unbound feelings and beliefs.

What other people blindly put in their PB and Js.

How they seem to eat and swallow it like that is the way it has to be.

Like they have to hold back their truth and emotions by the collar.

Like they can never unfurl their desire to be loved and understood.

Like they have to fight it and never let go of the leash

Until it is choking, until it is strangled, until it is dead.