I'm buying all I can to walk away from you. I'm letting safety pins, pillows, and silverware teach me how to live away from you. I'm learning how to uncork wine so I can grow up away from you. I'm collecting pictures so I don't seem so far away from you. I'm saving up my money so yours doesn't get away from you. I'm buying bedding but I don't know how I'll sleep away from you. I'll have a key to a door you won't have to open way away from you. I'm trying for sophistication in a new world... Continue reading

Having been hit by a splinter of a noise-cracked day, I became restless, and ate off the tips of my fingers. I led her through the holes into my marrow and felt her crawl and with my seizing screams of rapture, led her to the caves. There, unhealth drips down with wine and acid, and sculpts my body abysmal. I asked her to feel the walls and know the hollows and I marveled when her hands did not rot and her eyes did not drain and she spoke my name with shape like an empty river to catch the flowing... Continue reading

(a prompt from my workshop, finish the sentences "Well, what can be done but..", "What I meant to say was..", and "When I looked under my..") I hope YOU enjoy it. Well, what can be done but replace time with a journeyman's epic of heroic hands, made quicksilver not by an assurance of immortality but of age through the clock's resurrection. What I meant to say was what I said, only never as elegant, and I'd hope to wrap you in lightening-cut ribbon, exotic imports from the blood rivers I never touched. When I looked under my clothes I saw... Continue reading

If I needed paper clips and coffee and this was a Wal-Mart in South Dakota, that would have been you. If I were calm, transcendent, and this was a bath house in Tibet, it would have been you I saw in the steam. If I were screaming, birthing, and this was a hospital in Kentucky, you would be the nurse the room. If my skin was like cocoa, and this was a river in India, you would be washing your linens downstream. If I was tired to my core, and this was a bus stop in Ohio, it would be... Continue reading

Super late.. For MNC (haha I am so subtle with my initials.. ) Sit down, friend and teach me all you know of the world you've already met, bought a glass of wine, and touched her hand with savage grace and draw tell me the stories she told you that only you can know not that I care to know her but that your voice carries me home and that your joyful curiosity makes me good Rock back, friend, and let this whicker laugh with us as you teach me of your travels and the marvels you met if I... Continue reading

From titles of Joseph Waumbaugh's books.. Let's run through your lines and shadows or if, in this fugitive night, I've stained your skin giving you the fix you begged for, I'll back into the corner and listen to your medicated monologue as it echoes in the darkness, each word a further poison, cruel and unforgiving and loved like bourbon and the way it shines under streetlights in swaying, aching hands, the golden orange of it poetic against the black backdrop of footsteps walking way I hope your words, thick with more than theatrics, serve you as much as you serve... Continue reading

Old, needs editing. Don't ignore me I've swollen to such great pressure that I am bloodied deeper color I am the needing giving valentine folds of your lungs a quiet, honest bag that waits until the spastic climax of dry and empty flapping dying until the release from drowning saturates me as you breathe in and keep yourself alive and lets me fill as sails with wind and yellow rooms with light and crystal balls with belief I am the color you don't notice underneath your fingernails the passive blush that makes you sewn, not sketched I am the wine... Continue reading

THis might already be on here, but I am too lazy to look. My witness is the empty sky witness to a baptism like coming of age the brands of the burning world only thickening the channels of blue rivers running through my arms only stocking strength in my hands which used to be small, not mine, but momma's to hold and I'm scared of losing my gentility, grace that stays only with the desire to grow up scared of growing big so I hurt, big like I can't hold no elegance and I'm set up to work in coal... Continue reading

Late, again The conglomeration of every bridge and every sheet knit together by Woman's ancient art of inner-organ basket weaving, a place to keep the precious, nothing taught or written, only given, with no ruddy pieces picked up along the way, no passed-down bruises of history, no choices or changes, only perfect mathematics and the color of a woman's blood and secrets shape this home circular so no edges catch this new skin made of feathers that will never fly, but with hope always flutter, fingers welded together into one more soft-light bridge, and the nonsense bravery of family that... Continue reading

Late getting on here Allow me the faith of streetlights in the broad set of this pasted night and call me voiceless since I won't speak to hear your dying childhood speaking your voice elderly, like I could feed you elixir and again watch you grow, like a mother, I'll want to see your hands stretch into mine and your identity lay itself comfortably between your teeth just to know exactly who you are kaleidoscope piecework from the drawers of last-hour artists shuffling through junk or gold to make you, I'll want to know exactly what it is that made... Continue reading

(First line from page 29 of On The Road) He never saw it, and if he had he wouldn't have cared, he was so sad and gone. He lost himself a hundred years ago in the sirens of the city, too impersonal to get his name right. The system tried to "save" him but didn't really see him; it was no loss when that smudge of a boy just wasn't there anymore. On his own, he watched the masses slide by endlessly, and realized no one had a name or he was the only one without a name. No one... Continue reading

I will never be on the road, untethered, I am no spastic cluster of stars bouncing from one life to another, touching only so it burns, cigarette holes I'll leave but never see and ooze with poetry thick and on the turning edge of sweet, it gushes from sloppy mouths, recycled words, recycled and recycled, left with all the grime of the night I'll mention but only barely in a hangover stoop to pick up with yellowed nails and it will be caught under them, I will carry the grime, and I'll say the next day I am fresh, moving... Continue reading

Goddammit. You ran away with my inspiration. Continue reading

I wrote this for Mom for Christmas. It's a little late making it's way here. You are the fairy In the festival In the forest In the future Gathered ‘round By every lacquered lion Jumping free Of the merry-go-round Of every birthday You slipped away from So quietly in the night Through summerbalmed windows In a gown made of Dragonflies’ wings And mothlight It was left in A box Buried deep in The murmeringsoft grass Under the greatest tree Slicing the sky gorgeous With the lace Of its dark and gentle heroism Left there for her to keep And while... Continue reading

I normally don't give explanations, but my mom wanted one and I got really into it so here it is: this poem explores the beginning of words. I understand there is history and science to explain the origin of words, but all in all I feel it's sort of unexplained. Who made them? And how are they defined? They give definition but how are they anything, how do they exist if not through words? They become shapeless because no words can explain them (which is why their eyelashes are submarines.. the words get mixed together).. I hope any of this... Continue reading

(This is an edit of my earlier "fish poem") I see myself encapsulated unlikely fish in a tank of tangled water the main attraction of a maniac engineer hanging me suspended in the liquids of the brain and of the heart ...not sure whose... caught in the cords of coughing I was never meant to breathe water so I appear unlike myself to those who notice me within the wearying and the weakening of this open window womb and stop to see how my body's changing shape and consistency, softened by the wet world where I woke up and only... Continue reading

Say you've got a thing for smoke I'll become a smoker light myself on fire so you can paint the chaos. I'll always smell of cigarettes and want for sex and hope it turns you on. I'll eat the ends and nothing else only skin and bones for you, only the best for you, can't get more naked than that and I'll want to see your eyes glow want to see your eyes see my art- or yours- touch every ridge and curve to paint it. Please, touch everywhere and paint it. I am nothing more than hope that you... Continue reading

There's no place like inside your bones white solidity like wood where your heartbeat is sound and I am resting while you are itching to have me out but loving that you can feel me everywhere as I am tipping close to your climax and my home will splinter when you scream. There's no place like tangled in your hair moon-made spider silk clinging to me as I cling to you hard to touch as now you're spectral in the heat-lightening night, woven whiskey and porcelain shaping you sharp, a danger to yourself, blood-written poetry lying scattered, spatter pattern, a... Continue reading

I see myself encapsulated unlikely fish in a tank of tangled water the main attraction of a maniac engineer hanging me suspended in the liquids of the brain and of the heart ...not sure whose... misting each other cloudy so I appear unlike myself to those who notice me within the water and stop to see how my body's changing shape and consistency, softened by the wet world where I woke up and only knew your name and could only see you in the lines of my palms and I won't fight to leave for I've never felt so light... Continue reading

The land between the coils and the head unexplained thickness made by the folds of troubled steady hands and cave eats itself into cave to leave a cavern from one end of the planet to the other for heavy air to pour through with the supreme urgency of eternity; tornado emptiness in place of a core, all wrapped up in the hot clock hands and hair bows found and tied together like a gift from a crazy man that might malfunction, throwing one sharp shark's tooth into your sister's eye, enough to turn the mood of Tuesday and make anniversaries... Continue reading

This was a prompt of a word pool- just a bunch of words Jill wanted us to use.. but lucky for me some of the words included "spin cycle" and "rumble" which is lucky since I just had a mishap with the washing machine last night, so this is a true story. I think I broke our washing machine last night. I mean, I didn't break it, but it broke. All my clothes came out messy wet and I had to put them through a spin cycle. The machine was rumbling dangerously when I went to bed. I asked mom,... Continue reading

A little Tao wisdom: "The fool who knows he is a fool is that much wiser. The fool who thinks he is wise is a fool indeed." A fool never speaks the world juggles him and he has not the gumption to land clattering at its feet not once he chews and swallows words without allowing his face to tell of their bitterness or spice a fool never notices his hands or opposable thumbs but never notices either that he shits and hiccups, too he left his mother and his baby and never traced the lines of his lover's sides... Continue reading

This is the very first one I wrote for the writing workshop. It was just to include a bunch of words Jill chose. A few will probably stand out to you. When’s the last time you wore a hat of birds come in all shades of vermillion to pull you up by the solid effervescence of your moonlit hair (almost violent enough for your fancy… nevermind my dreams) and create a brand new vision of a writhing goddess of defiance hung by the crucifying promises of skyscrapers mustering all the strength of the untruths of history to make an example... Continue reading