Something Old & Something New

September of 2008(The Past) makes more sense now than it did then.

on tip-toes, i press open the screen door
gateway to my midnight balcony nap
a frigid tumble of feather pillows
and sweeping branches which are
forming a latticed canopy dripping with stars above
wooden boards, creaking and cold, beneath
to remind me not to float away.

i shiver in my thin and cloudy quilt
partly for rapture, partly for chill
i'm alive now in the loneliness
that in my bedroom i felt too much to bear

here i can pretend the crisp edges of night are your hands
running smooth over my angled shoulders
kissing my blue-toned face and
tracing the nape of my neck with cherished subtlety

my own bed feels foreign without you there
but when i slip into the night
you are everywhere



January, Thinking About You While Driving (The Present)

i'll write you a song, i promised
about lions brushing against trees
and the copper willowed fingers that snap
beneath their paws
and how still that moment is, despite all breath.

i won't sing it, but i will write it
with white bird hands across the savanna
of your back,
and ROARRrrr into your mouth,
collecting teeth.

i'll sip from your whisper like an oasis
then with energy like orchestras
take off in a run
barefoot through the lantern-lit grasses
build a nest in your neck, and breathe through your lungs,
to slumber in the jungle that hums with your song.

monsters

underbed shaking with heavy breathing
i sit, shaking snakes from my scalp
mirror-smiles, i practice my kissing
with the heavy air
reach beneath the cover to feel
claws of charity

monster, come play with me

comb my medusa hair and turn to sea-stone and gold
when our ragged scales touch, mythical proportions
doled out onto our plates
but we have too many plans to be content to sit and eat

giggle choked growls, and bare my teeth.

i empty my closet of fear
let it fill my souless space
bloodthirsty trouble laid asunder
i sleep still, with a nightmare's caress
the lilt of howls and emptiness
sink your teeth
in my apple-white skin, bloodshot eyes
hungry wolf smile,
be mean
and mean it.

beneath the cork tree
we lace our fingers in the cat's cradle
and hollow-eyed, fixate on scissors
to slice the strings that seperate our values
haunt me no longer.

classwork

my morality hinges on
memories of the
lilt of your plea and the
soft, popping smack of your lips parting
to piece together seductions,
mouths like puzzles.

was i just a poor little feminine void?
my shallowness to be pierced
and swallowed, quiet?

emptied, i felt the future
visions of aproned mothercomforts,
husband suppers to pull with scrub-brush hands
from enslaved oven,
i push my head in it.
you say, "less overdone next time, darling."
oh, spare me, suburbia.

we sipped lemonade in your bed
and cooled our anatomical euphoria
and i knew
one of us was going to have to put on our clothes
and just go.

junes.

the screaming heart torture-love/obsession
of firsts
raw and alive and too young to be taken seriously
love is purest when you're less pure than a child
but the world hasn't blurried you yet
i wish
i could have given you
the butterflied self-concious shyness
but i am now far too old.

i envy my sister
and her blushes over finger brushes
and how one word makes her spin
and feel
beautiful

i miss feeling beautiful

i miss the shivering praise of previously hidden skin
and june wind
and cats pouncing sheets, distracting the
loneliness i felt at all times
that you never once knew.

16, and to think i was so rude a roman
to try and knock caesar
from the throne he'd won on beginner's luck

i've never been marc antony; i was born to kneel.

and i kneel now, to the past
in reverance of it's glossy pain
and write more softly in the comfort
of having something more concrete to
believe in
than the ghost of a muse

but still, how the poetic chaos held me.

my then&now.

i'm all for returning

to those

halcyon rolled-up jeans mornings

mingled breath like dew and tea

flooding my feet while birds walk---why walk when you can fly, you're just teasing now----

with freckled eyes

i want to lick you and let the river lick me,

armchairs in icewater

we are languid and blossoming, can you see this in

a month?

2?

try 7.

the newness these old memories stir up,

butterflies! beneath trees sprouting spring branches

like liquid green puzzles distorted through my finger shading

toestoes, and breathy touching

then

to our lessons, in an hour, asleep at the wheel

penniless

with only sand and bedhead to show for our efforts

our mouths

they were jittered ghosts
and sometimes

i miss the prettiness of that

but the now....the now is love-drenched in sun-colors.
you're my big sur.

isn't it? it isn't.

this is barely a bed, just a temporary trap between whisper-thin walls
where we sleep and fuck and i cry and you snore lightly, unaware
fingers limply draped in lonely posession of what
and when i wake up there's always something missing
so i just bury deeper.

the conversation was too dark for my eyes
i'm just placeholding.

the walks were longer today, the air was static
and love was less than all of that
you carve the kindness out of me until i am hollow
and forget to rip the pages off the calendar
and so the rut is born

we kiss and you say you love me
and i shut my eyes and hold my breath
because to know me is to leave me
and then where would i live?

i nurse the baby and shake the piggy bank
there's only pennies for the future.

a-ha

held so tight
there is no distinction between where your breath becomes mine,
the melting of your body gives me a new human shape
i feel my skin take up space when your warmth hits
proof that i am matter
proof that i exist
even while your consciousness explores sleep,
your body knows i'm yours to keep.

and in your bed of arms, i realize
i don't have to write poems about being
nothing
anymore.