Category: Relationships

The lines in your face
are a dialect
I don’t understand
so I read your palm
search for you
in each line
each broken direction
and ask you to speak slowly

You would tell me, wouldn’t you
if your want stopped
if your heart stopped
searching for my rhythm

You would write a letter
archaic pen to paper
blaming yourself
your boy life, Peter Pan good life
bag of marbles and a shooter life

You could send a text,
all zeroes and ones
hashtags and abbreviations
JTLYK, I’m done, I’m going, I’m SEP
#itsNotYouItsMe

You might go extravagant
a banner from the overpass
in two foot letters
hand painted the magenta
you promised for the back studio

I set you free, I set you free

or a flashmob, passé, no longer trendy
you and the boys in the Sears parking lot
start slow, start low
Journey – Baby, I’m Leaving You
with a bouncy Ska routine

but, not at a wedding
with love all first kiss new
not at a funeral
I can’t bleed in parallel, mourn in two
and never in a poem
never when God is praying

I love
you love
we love
but not each other

My mother said
if you walk seven miles
on a railroad track without falling off
the first man you meet, you’ll marry

instead, I found you
curled in a sleeping bag
beneath a growth of sycamores
two hundred feet
from the Aberdeen line
heart worn clean through

I should have ran
broke my lungs in half
skipped those rails
should have tasted the damage
on your tongue
the strawberry chew
tucked in your sweet, sweet gums

but damn, if the sunlight didn’t
freckle your lashes
like diamond dust
like baby mantra
grabbing deep down
to my womb

your hands opened
palms routed and milled
arcs broken and branched
pulling me in,
wrapping me around each finger
until I slept through my dreams

I cried for you, did you know
even before
you stepped in front of the 2:30 to Charlotte,
even before
I had a chance to tell your fortune

The act of making something clear

the time you threw my clothes out on the lawn
cotton blend and rayon country couture
disembodied casualties of my selves

To state the meaning of a term

Cunt, you screamed to the streetlights, parked cars, neighbors,
one eyed Harry harvesting the garbage
as if I were a scrap of cellophane, an empty instant noodle bowl

The meaning of a word using other words

bitch, whore, snatch
I followed the shape of your mouth
as you bullied from the stoop

Intensional, which strives to give the essence of a term

debilitate, render weak and useless, blind, mindless,
leaving a shell within a shell

Extensional, listing an object that a term describes

back to cunt, to bitch, to whore, to snatch

In mathematics, a definition is used to give a precise meaning to a new term
instead of using a pre-existing term

Phoenix
a river rising
dawn reaching for the sun

My lips are your lips
to plunder to bruise
to swell with want

my throat is your throat
to nuzzle to tongue
to nip and to kiss

these shoulders are yours
to cushion your moans
to grip full tilt

these tits are your tits
to nibble to pinch
to suck red raw

these hips to frame
the small of my back
to capture your image

these thighs are your thighs
to open to ride
to reach
deep deep deep inside
and come to me, come to me, come

but baby
this magic, MY magic
is mine

When I cry
the ground heaves and moans,
as I crash through the underbrush
like
some ol’ extinct Tyrannosaurus Rex
arms too short to wipe my own nose
ranting through the minutia,
ignorant of the coming fallout

Old, old, old, same old story
a hypothesis for everything
the ending was intrinsic –
slowly seeping
sex in sweatpants
stabbing glances
whipping words
missing words
cheater, cheater, pumpkin eater
one way, my way, mine not yours

some endings extrinsic –
drunk driver
wet street
a 65 mile wide hole
drove through your womb
in one hundredth of a second
the last piece of bad fortune
the great dying

I still find fragments
an odd sock worn thin in the toe
a video, Land of the Lost
the CBGB handbill, the Ramones, 1976,
your thumbprint smeared across Joey

it could have been 65 million years ago
fossilized bones

Warm my skin
against the sun cured stone
wrap my arms around the earth
and breath
everything I forgot to remember

The true of your hands
as they gentled mine,
words curling your tongue
wrapping promises around promises
drawing gravel from our mouths
drink, drink, drink
the semblance
until the ocean emptied
and we licked the seafloor clean
grinding salt between our teeth

Time would never fail to rise
wake our bones,
skip like rocks across the breakwater,
catch air
tap waves,
slivers of light
mad with the lack of gravity
until the drag roared
and swallowed every last minute 

Beauty petaled at our feet
as if we walked on water
bursting hues of endless give
air damp with birth,
with death,
music singed our fingertips
grace so bright it burned us
from the inside out

Everything sounds different
in the dark
when the light’s collapsed

stillness accompanies
your melody
as you play
me in 4/4 time
words that cut
float unanchored
all Doris Day soft-focused
a camera lens
smeared with Vaseline
across my heart

Floorboards sigh as you step across the room

remember Sicily,
Motta Anastasia,
we played The Angel Wore Red
my Soledad to your priest
wounded, I protected the relic
dead, I saved you all 

Inhale, exhale
the walls resonate
the shutter speed quickens
the door catch mumbles your goodbye

everything sounds different
in the dark