I remember her red dress, of how when night came it’s thin straps slipped over her thinner shoulders falling slowly into a wrinkled circle on my floor. I remember her seeing me seeing her put it on in front of our ice curtained window the next morning and even though that dress was too short for autumn she would wear it anyway. I think because she knew it drove me crazy. She would hide it underneath her long winter sweater like she was keeping safe a secret that was only just for me. When she put on that sweater the light from the dawn would sneak out through the tiny holes in the fabric kissing sun-ray freckles on her pale unmarked body. She pulled it over her head ever so slowly. The leisurely motion in some way made me image a 9 year old boy I who for the first time that winter hesitated to pull but his snow boots over thickly crocheted socks.  His feet look like her head in some way. Both are somewhat unwilling to slide into warmer weather clothes; hiding a secret warming joy.

I’ll rewrite my words
Hundreds,
Thousands of times.
Erasing periods
Commas and uncommon verbs
So my style will mimic yours.
I’ll speak my words
Hundreds,
Thousands of times
In a voice in my head that mimics yours
Hoping they will sound like yours
Hoping they, like yours, will
Will sit at the foot of my bed at night
And seep into my clothes the next morning
Like yours, eddy inside my ears
Hundreds,
Thousands of times.

I’ve always been better at writing than speaking. I find the silent confidence the written word is capable of more beautiful than anything. There is something ironically meek to me about speaking. Speaking is rarely done alone and its constant inflation from other people’s responses tend to distort the true meaning of the original words being spoken. Silence is pure- being untouched by other biases allows the validity of it to always be certain. Unlike the spoken word, the written one alone is found in this surety of truth.

I think if you would let me
I’d treat you like the night sky
I’d bundle up all of your wonderful traits and perfect flaws
And I’d create a constellation for them
I’d look at it with my telescope endlessly
And I know you don’t see yourself
The way I see you
And you still sometimes argue with me when I call you wonderful
But know that all of the things that you can’t stand about yourself
Are the very things I never want to go a day without
But if that didn’t work
Just know that if you let me I’d build you an observatory
Made of one hundreds mirrors
Each facing your direction
Just so you could see yourself up close in a million ways
I’d make you sit in front of them  for hours
Just so I could prove it to you-
That all of the other constellations
Every single one in the night sky
Will never have stars that shine
As bright as you do.

"If we were things", he said
"Then what things are we"
I thought on it for a minute
Maybe two
I said to him,
"Maybe cereal
Or perhaps the milk"
A thing that starts off days
"Maybe even coffee"
He smiled
And he said he knew then what he was
"A bowel, a cup"
Anything that holds me before the day starts
The first thing either of us has to touch

You pledge allegiance to a certain type of government.
A nation that is ruled by fat men
in ***** dens who fill the air so heavy with smoke
it tears up your eyes so you can water their poppy fields
and all the while with your right hand over your heart
that beats feverishly with the influx
of toxins that mix with your blood
and dilute the red poppy petal
with clear atoms that bubble on spoons
in the shape of bone crossed skulls.
They rule with iron fists clenched around
green paper that they take from you only
to sell you back  fresh needles as necessary happiness
to counteract the sadness they have created and placed you in.
They sit there with smoke rings coming from o-shaped lips
that ring around the perpetual cycle of
supply and demand-
supplying addiction and wrapping it in itches
and demanding your free left hand scratch
and you do, you scratch so hard that your skin opens up
and the pain requires more relief.
The nation you live in waves its flag with
173 stars representing Celsius and not celestial
because space is far away from this place
and it offers too much unknown for you to think
that there is a different world besides the one they own
and maybe there is true happiness there
somewhere where hands are free from swollen veins
that act as puppet strings.

I used to know someone
A someone with a funny neck tie
One that was white
And flipped the wrong way around his shirt
He told me he knew what hell was
He said to me, “hell is the end of the world
When the meteor, or the bomb,
Or the death of compassion
Hits our planet
And you alone survive, standing there
Naked and raw and scared
Senses impaired
Burnt and singed hair
You were the only one spared
But then, then you see someone else
And as they walk towards you
You see it’s you, the you you
Could have become if you didn’t give up
And in this other version of you all you see
Are the reflections of your mistakes and
Chances you didn’t take
And you sit there for eternity
Faced with who you should have been.

I cannot fully explain to you
How perplexing it is
To be a 22 year old adult
But to still have the fear
Usually reserved for a young child
The fear of the dark
And not in a way that one is afraid of death
Or lions or tigers or bears
Oh my, my fear is much more irrational
You see I find I have bravery in real things
I’ve rock climbed mountains
Ridden roller coaters
Held a poisonous snake by the tale
You get why that’s braver right?
But what makes the hair on the back of my neck stand
What makes my skin pucker into tiny little bumps
Are monsters born of my own imagination
You see my imagination is wicked
And I use that word both ways
In the slang sense that it is awesome and powerful
And in the literal sense that is it evil
That when I imagine a monster
I give it ten hands with 20 fingers each ending with teeth
And eyes so black they sink into the monsters head
Making them look like empty sockets
So deep, they touch his brain
I am forever afraid
I’ll be honest with you
I sleep with all the lights on
And my closet doors wide open
So I could see exactly what is going on in there
I years ago threw out my bed skirt
Convinced they cloaked crooked
Teeth crawling critters capable of decapitation
And were all considerable stronger than myself
As you can imagine I have a lot of nightlights
Mobile ones I use to walk to the bathroom with in the middle of the night
I have to buy so many batteries
The clerk at Walmart can only reasonably assume
I have deviant private life
Because grown *** adults shouldn’t be that scared of the dark
Because at some point during or after childhood
I won’t assume it happens at the same time for everybody
Your imagination takes a backseat to logic
And you understand that monsters aren’t real
But death is and maybe that’s a better fear to have
That didn’t happen with me though and I think most artists
If they were to be completely honest with you would tell you
It didn’t happen to them either they missed a step
In the development milestone department
Though I think they would tell you too like I’m about to tell you now
The fear is worth it there hasn’t been a single monster
I’ve imagined that hasn’t had an equal
Beautiful thought and I can see them better with all the lights on.

I wish to be my mother
But I am proud to be her daughter
To be a person
Who has had the privilege
Of hearing her heart beat
From both the out and inside.

The thing that I think you don’t realize
Is that all I create all the art I make
All of the words I tie into poetry
All of the ink I let seep onto paper-
All the inventions of creativity
I can conjure from nothingness
And from-bore a wonderful something-ness
All of the art in all of the bones
In all of my body
Is all you.

What of the nights?
What of the time God spent in-between days of creating?
What of the eighth day?
When did God sense that the ethereal rush of completing a project
was wearing off? Does God get bored?
Does he, like everyone else, grow tired of the mundane and of the usual?
God, forever only projecting his image onto his creations was no longer exciting enough.
Too lonely was God and too curious he was to be left unattended-
with the power to elude the impossible.
Too lonely he was, too much he wanted to be around others like himself
too much time had he spent with his own thoughts
reverberating off the walls of his own making,
shouting back feelings already known to him.

Too curious he was to not see what would happen
if he could experience the company and love of others like himself
and too insightful he was to know all of these things existed in his mind
but not as a firsthand account.
Too self-aware he was to not understand that a genuine account of such feelings
was what he wanted.
He felt all the feelings we feel
Curiosity
Loneliness
Boredom
Companionship
and love.
He understood them so completely and totally in the world he created
that he grew tired
and then the only feelings God could sense were those of loneliness and of guilt;
a strong undying feeling of regret for feeling things that only he has ever felt.
With these thoughts encircling his heavy mind he also realized
that if he were to create another like him, he could not control it.
His identity would have to be shared with another complete equal.

Could he have this?
Too wise he was to not account for the repercussions of his artistic actions;
God was still.
For God like all of us, wishes to be special,
to be unique, and to have control; control, the original ***** of God.
God realized this after the night of the billionth fifth day;
he realized that now after looking at the last of all his great creations
the problems with the ones before
because after all this was not God’s first week
and in no measurable time he had created many
planets, worlds, kingdoms, and beings
none holding his attention long enough to not create the next.
So these, he muttered in his kingdom of unshared silence
these had to be different.
Not God enough to oppose him but human enough to feel him.

Brother, in my dreams you have always just died.
I’ve never dreamt you are still talking to me
nor are you many years gone
your absence is always known, fresh and painful
It feels like a skinned knee
Stinging red and raw and with every movement
It reopens and spills out more and more pain.

Sometimes I am at your funeral
I’m talking through tears about the things you loved
Listing off:
Longboarding
Reading books
Long conversations
A good beer
And I stop at me.
How much you loved me, how much we were alike
And our one difference-the size of our hearts.
Mine, a tiny fragile thing with room enough
Only to house you and
You, who had a heart so big
God couldn’t let it live.

He couldn't keep it beating without making your blood thinner
So that it could more easily pass through your
Giant beating *****
Thin blood that kept you alive just long enough
For you to feel every bit of pain and every moment of sadness
That having such a big heart always brings
Every sad thing I feel in my dreams.

Brother, I'll say to your corpse
Remember the time you were drunk
So drunk that when I told you we were out of ice
You started sobbing
You sobbed on the ground and you screamed so loud,
And you said, “but where will the penguins live?”
I laughed at you, I picked you up off the floor
And told you I love you more than you love everything
Even penguins.
And told you no one will ever love you more
Than I do now.

And what of the eighth day? When did God sense the ethereal rush of completing a project was wearing off? Does God get bored? Does he, like everyone else, grow tired of the mundane and of the usual?  God projecting his own image onto his creations was not enough anymore. Too lonely was God and too curious he was to be left unattended with the power to elude the impossible. Too lonely he was, too much he wanted to be around others like himself, too much time he had spent with his own thoughts reverberating off the walls of his own making, shouting back ideas already known to him. Too curious he was to see what would happen if he could experience the company and love of others like himself, and too insightful he was to know all of these things existed in his mind but not as a firsthand account. Too self-aware he was to not understand that a genuine account of such feelings was what he wanted. He felt all the feelings we feel; curiosity, loneliness, boredom, company, and love. He understood them so completely and totally in the world he created that he grew tired. And then the only feelings God could now sense were those of loneliness and of guilt; strong undying feeling of regret of knowing things that only he has ever felt. With these thoughts encircling his heavy mind he also realized that if he were to create another like him, he could not control it. His identity would have to be shared with another complete equal. Could he have this? Too wise he was to not account for the repercussions of his artistic actions; God was still. For God like all of us God wishes to be special, to be unique, and to have control; control, the original ***** of God. God realized this at the dusk of the seventh day; he realized that now after looking at the last of all his great creations the problems with the ones before. In no measurable time he had created many planets, worlds, kingdoms, and creators, none holding his attention long enough to not create the next.  So these, he muttered in his kingdom of unshared silence, these had to be different. Not God enough to oppose him but human enough to feel him.

On a Wednesday I bit down hard
Into an apple.
The red ringed hues of crimson
I thought would taste better to my mouth
Than to my eyes
Until the sweet juice dripped down
Onto my chin
Leaving a sticky residue that ******
On my fingers when I wiped it away.
The one bite of flesh I held in my open mouth
Less open than my eyes
That first saw that thing.
That half of a worm that
Still wriggled for life
Hung half out a hole in my apple
Like a drowning man hanging out of a
Bouie waving his arms franticly for help
But underneath the water his
Legs still and deader than what
I can either assume to be the head or end
Of the worm still in my mouth.

Our love was a train wreck
A shot in the chest
A broken neck from
An automobile wreck
And I
I have never felt love so strong than
When I used to stand next to you
I have never felt anything close to it sense
Our love was a nuclear bomb
It destroyed every bit of me
Dismantling my atoms
Scattering them across endless fields
Protons electrons broken bones and cut off finger tips
All of my being missing
From just us kissing
Our love was a fountain in a box
Trapped and suffocated water brimming the edge of us
Spilling out onto everything around us
And there was no mop to be found to clean us up
So we, our parts would just lay there
In pools and puddles of love
Little drops of water and atoms so tiny
It’s a wonder how our love filled us whole.

The anvil sky—
The sky that presses its weight down
Heavy against the earth
Compacting the old snow of winter
Dense and thick and complete
So tight the snow warms against itself
It melts.
Only for the anvil’s cold metal to
Freeze the snow to ice.
Locking in the roots of spring
Behind dirt cast bars under
Ice clear windows.
Far up in the anvil sky
There are tiny lights like nails
Hotter than the icy metal
Burning through and warming up—
Small spots like holes in snow
Where daises will surely grow.

I am sitting here
Penniless and alone.
Waiting for you
And your bended ear
And your thousand questions
And your mouth full of pennies
Asking for my thoughts.

My sculpture artist.
My mad scientist.
The constant reader of anatomy books
Perched on paper scattered desks
Close dissection of the human
You want me to become
And I want it too.
I am tired of being a moist lump of clay
Slumping over from unmolded parts of my frame
The structure that holds promise of life
If all parts are carved in just right
Mirroring the blue vein lines
Between red masses of muscles
Printed on yellow and finger smudged paper
From your constant flipping between
The full human form and
That small pumping muscle you
Have carved into me time and time again
Only to smear with one finger tip
The dainty clay aorta
Inside my already perfect chest
I am tired of not burning hot with the
Fires of your kiln.
To be burnt so severely
That what was supposed to be skin would
Crack, break, and fall into a complete shell
Around my base.
Leaving a small pumping heart
That would finally define me as human
To an artist who plays with science.

I am a mountain.
Oh, the valley of person I used to be
You remember, I was so deep.
So deep that
You  blew off the dust
gently -
From your binoculars
Just to see what was at my bottom
The valley of myself that at one time
Was so rough and so steep  
That when you climbed down to touch the
Base of who I really was
Because  for you a look wasn’t enough
You came up I’ll admit victorious
But bloodied.
The last of you I saw
Were  your red footprints leading away
So since you’ve been gone
I am a mountain.
I have turned myself inside out
Rivaling Everest
Every sore and bump, you can see now!
I have made it so all you have to do is look up.
Now all I do is look down
Waiting for bandaged footprints
To walk beside the red ones
Only in a different direction.

My eyes don’t light up when I hear your name anymore,
That fire that would spark in my eyes has given way
To my natural icy blue.
My heart has stopped racing when I see you
And a slower heart keeps my blood running thin
The chills that use to coat my body when you smiled are gone
And I am now left unclothed in the wind
With cold eyes and thin blood and a naked body
But my mind is slowly starting to warm up by itself again
It has pushed you to the back of my skull
And labeled you under a bad memory
Where the heat of your body cant reach my eyes
And convince me to see myself for who you told me I was:
A cold beast who needs someone elses heat.
Without your warm touch I can feel myself
Being able to feel who I am again
Separate from your fire, I can remember how to build my own
And even if I have only just learned how to pick up two sticks
The promise of my own warmth heats me thaw.

My mother is getting ready for work. And I a child of about 9 years old sitting on her bedroom floor watching her get dressed the same as I would for the next 9 or so years in this house. This house, I remember, that shook violently from the train a block away and was so fragile and damp that its walls warped and swelled making the house look like someone had once blown up a large balloon inside and the walls still held its shape. My mother who never complained about the state of our house ans instead would tell me, “Isn’t it cozy living in a snow-globe house?” So on the damp floor I would sit and I would watch my mother go through the motions, the same motions she went through every night and every night in the same order, she did this so often and religiously she had it down to an art, a methodical art that at this age seemed to me more like dancing. She started her dance by thumbing over the light pale and pink lip paint she saved for weekday afternoons and Sunday mornings , reaching instead for the bright Chinese red stick she painted onto her perfectly pursed lips, next pressing down wrinkles smooth as the backs of thumb-tacks -on her black tight dress, pressing over her hips, her thighs. She next sashays over to her vanity and picks up a small black container to paint over her eyelids a bright but dusty blue shadow, then gently sweeps me up and sets me on her bed as she kneels down and tells me to sprinkle her face with a shimmery clear powder, giving her the look she always said made her stand out, made her look “unique”. Her next step was then slipping her dainty and fragile size 7 feet into heels that I knew would be both black and invisible in the dark night outside our front door. That I often thought would hurt her feet as she walked the long stretch of street outside our house.  Her then, grasping with both hands a purple and gold glass bottle of perfume on her dresser, which then to me looked like a curious crystal globe of sweet-smelling water, that sparkled like a snow-globe when she shook it. This is my mother’s last step, she presses down the sponge-like pump. The only magical part of my mother’s evening- the part I always thought would make her realize she should stay. As she presses down on the pump I see the shiny and clear purple hued liquid release and bubble out into tiny specks of oxygen atoms, I see watch them as they swirl up the golden bottle-the snow-globe holding them in, controlling them, allowing them to eddy and ebb around themselves, to tango around each other within the safety of its glass. They are dancing, writhing around in their own world, free from the terrors of the outside air, these atoms they embrace the chaos and they wallow in the pressure that perpetuates them in an endless looping of rhythmic motion. They enjoy it. They bask in the comfort of the fluid that holds them tight together safe in their glass house, keeping them untouched. I, sitting there eye level to this bottle watching ever so closely as the air bubbles swim closer and closer to the surface. Until they slowly start to realize that they are being expelled from their bottle. They then stop dancing and move franticly in a tornado-like motion, they scream and they fight their way back down towards the others like them, wishing to not be pushed up and out into the bigger pool of air they know will surely render them invisible. They wish so strongly to be kept inside their bottle, to always be safe and visible in the enwombing liquid that circles around them in their bottle, that reassures them of their existence as a single being and not as a part of a whole, to be separate from the mass of air that awaits them, the air that only yearns to add to its girth, by swallowing the tiny air-bubbles. I want them to stay. Stay in their snow-globe to live forever as air bubbles safe and few, to not swim to the world that will gulp them down whole. I know they are dainty and fragile and I want to keep them safe. I want to always see them dancing separate and unique and never leaving, yet they do. I want them to stay, yet they do not. All in an instant, faster than the blink of an eye, the once dancing bubbles are gone and are now sprinkled sweet across my mother’s neck. The only evidence of their existence- a lingering scent flowing out of my mother’s bedroom as she grabs her purse on the couch. I want her to stay. And as she grabs her purse and slams the front door it shakes our house like glass around me. Me, left here feeling liquid and weak in a snow-globe house now void of air.

The best things in life are free
The littlest things in life matter the most
This poem was free and it is little
It is for you the best thing that matters most.

If you were to read our story backwards
It would tell the story of how you held me as we slept
How happy we could be with nothing but empty time and a bed
How we kissed, but only a few times and only  real quick
How we ignored how we felt, how we brushed it off
Or how we would talk on the phone until one of us would nod off
How we first met, how silly you must have thought I was
Until one day once upon a time, a long time ago
You forgot about me forever, I wasn’t someone you’d ever know.

There is a sort of romance one can find at a bar
A mysterious sense of love
Removed from everyday life
From work or phone calls home
If you close your eyes you can hear it
The clacking of ice-cube
The clacking of glass
The slow pour of a beer
The faster swish of it being
Slid down to your hand
Bumping once or twice on the uneven wooden surface
The slightly cold drip running down the side of your glass
These sounds are romantic
Hemmingway wrote at a bar
Odds are your parents feel in love in one
First kisses and embraces with friends you’ve missed
They happen at a bar
If you close your ears you can see it
A dingy light from over head
A spotlight for a pretty girl’s smile
The colors that the last sip of whisky
After they’re watered down with ice
The swooshing hues of red and white
Inside wine glasses from a couple a few seats down
The hand of the bartender covering yours
As you hand them their tip
And in that same second lock eyes
Before quickly looking down
A love in a life before this one maybe.
One can find romance in a bar
In the littlest of things
When paid attention to
They hold a sense of mystery.

I love this part.
When your lips still are brightly colored
alphabet letters and my forehead is still a giant white
refrigerator
When even after just an hour passes
I miss our hands touching
and you might get mad-
and you might say, "already?"
and I laugh and look down at my boots and say,
"yes, already."
then you take my face in your hands
and you tell me, "I like the way you do certain thing, the way you say certain words."
I love this part, when I can still think to myself
isn't it strange that we used to be strangers
I feel like we meet way before that.

Perhaps the only people
Capable of true togetherness
Are the ones that are still alone.
Still sitting on park benches
Ease dropping on other peoples
Lives
Waiting to begin their own.
Knowing that they have to wait
For someone else
Who also ease drops by themselves

I love you in ways
That the word love cannot fully carry
In ways that that word could never hold
Without buckling over from the weight.
Sometimes I think it’s because there are not
Enough letters in the word love
And all that I feel for you cannot balance
On a number as small as four.
Sometimes I worry they will loose their footing
Way up there on love, too big for only four foot holes
And they will fall down to earth
But I love you in ways that don’t make me afraid
To blow away the crumbs,
Dirt,
Pieces of dust bunnies,
That cover the thing that is more than love
That I have for you
I will rub it on my heart
And keep it there clean
Until I find a bigger word than love
To fit between I and you.

There is no passion to be found
In small things
Thoughts, people, places
That cannot hold a word so big
A notion of human emotion
That can barely contain itself
It is not one for small things
Where the strongest of emotions
Are tethered by reins
To chariots hell bent on driving to reason
Passion is a horse that will never trot straight
Will never drink the water
Because it will never arrive to a lake
Passion drives itself- its master is itself and
Uses humans as little more
Than vessels to serve its own means
And I shout, “God, let them!”
Let passion use our bodies and our minds
Let this force stronger than us guide us
To places bigger than our small minds
Will ever take us to
Let us fall into the wild and live off
What passion has been thriving on for years
Trust an emotion that lives longer
Than we ever could and let it teach us something
About making a small life big.

Isn’t it strange how we as writers choose our muse based off of its ability to **** us? Mine, a woman, a girl really. Her face is not beautiful it is fragile, nor is her body it is frail. She looks almost dead to me, freshly buried; hair thin and untouched; skin just now starting to fall off her bones kind of dead. I would think she was but for her eyes. Perhaps too close together and perhaps a little too big for her face but either way they echo the most wonderful hue of vein-blue. They are beautiful. They ruin me. They make me want to start a militia. Run down the street naked. Proclaim my love for blood. Open up my veins that on the surface promise one color but spill a completely different one. She makes me hate my body. Makes me realize its trickery, that it would promise me her eyes in my bloodstream but when I cut myself open to see them, to touch them I am left with nothing but me. My body, blood red when my favorite color has always been her eyes.

As of late I have felt less like a person
And more like the aftermath of a shattered glass
My hearts contents that were once safely contained
Now spread out across the kitchen floor
And into tiny dust ridden cracks that brooms cant reach
My pieces that were once whole and one now longer recognize
The many parts of itself that use to be neighbors
But now have moved across continents
The circular bottom of my glass
Bounced and shattered making a jagged crystal crown
Perfectly shaped for house mice
The mouse king wears it like I use to wear
My heart.
As a symbol of power of knowing that
If all else fails I have this heart, this crown
So when people look at it they will know without a doubt
That I am good and I am deserving.
But now with that piece of my body separate
From my other organs I am not so sure
Now that it lays too far away from my soul
My brain my body
I am not sure that it means anything.
I am broken and the holy hope I have of reconstruction
Is that dust pan in the closet
And as it collects my dangerous shards of organs
I’ll pick up the bigger pieces with my hands
And hope that my blood is thick enough to act as glue
If only a temporary fix.

I see you walking, seriously, quickly,
You catch my eye or maybe I catch yours
And we know.
That somewhere in the smile we share there is a solution
To the problems we’ve made in our own heads
About what is right, what is proper
How we should conduct ourselves in our love
So that it does not offend the people around us.
We find our solution in ignorance.
The total forgoing of social acceptance
And the ignoring of mandated protocol
When we see each other it’s like we’re hold hands in public.
Like we’re kissing with open mouths our hearts visible
To other people it looks like we are too exposed in our glances.
Like we are heart transplant patients on etherized hospital beds
We are eerily fragile and beautiful at the same time
But only to us who have stronger stomachs
Than the general public who gag at the sight of blood.
We embrace it with a smile
And overlook pale faces who can’t see the
Public displays of affection we can flaunt
By simply looking at one another.

I fear a rebellion beginning within my body
The succession of my skin from my muscles
And armies of muscles that will then leave my bones
Who over the years have made such a strong ally in each other
That they would never fight for my heart alone
My heart, whose only comrades are my frail ribs
Bent, bruised, and broken from my lack of care
They stand as the last line of defense
A brave bunch no longer virgins to war
As I have after done battle with them many times before
When my dictator-like brain forces
My skin
My muscles
My bones
Down my throat to grab my heart
Commanding that they snap off my ribs
And use them as swoards
To claim that pumping ***** for its own
But my ribs they never move, they never break
My ribs alone know that a heart that belongs to a mind
Isn’t really a heart at all.

Hundreds of thousands of years from now
I hope they’ll find my bones
Cradled in the womb of this earth
And the archeologists- as careful as midwives
Would scoop me up, brush me off
And deliver me from the dust
Then when they softly blow off the rest of the soil from my skeleton
Ever so softly for a better look at what I used to be
They’ll see my sandy frame and they’ll **** their heads to the side
In wonder when they notice two sets of bones
Yours gingerly entangled with mine
And as they pick up the pieces of us
That used to be we
They can’t tell them apart, which parts were mine
And which parts you lent to me.

They say we have two halves of a whole brain.
Two sections that govern our actions
Like tyrants that ride horses with reigns made
Of nerves and weald weapons that shoot out sparks
Of neurons across our synapses
The lands of our minds that dips and rises like the Andes mountains
Amoung cerebellum fields
Where nervous horses hoofs trample
Nervous systems flowers and bend their stem
Into an L shaped pendulum that swings
Unevenly over corpus callosum oceans
That separate left and right.
Art and reason.
Two separate sets of war torn warriors fighting,
One with methodically measured maps
Marked with red flags between concurred lands of logic
And one with holistic metal armor that clinks and clanks
Around soldiers making music for them to march to
They fight over proper ways of reason
And creative formulations
Of treasons that ought not be crossed
Their trenches the rivens in our brains
That wet rot their feet with slimy blood and
Membrane juices
The left speaking in tongues
That right cannot hear when not
Set on staff lines
Or painted onto animal skin canvas
That once covered similar brain battles
Between right and left
Only to be cut and sectioned off
In improper fractions that yearn to be whole.
If only the sides would sign treaties of peace
With pens that pinch fibers together and bind
Halves into wholes.

Brother, in my dreams you have always just died.
I’ve never dreamt you are still talking to me
nor are you many years gone
your absence is always known, fresh, and painful
it feels like a skinned knee
stinging red and raw and with every movement
It reopens and spills out more and more pain.

Sometimes I am at your funeral
I’m talking through tears about the things you loved
listing off:
longboarding
reading books
long conversations
a good beer
and I stop at me.
How much you loved me, how much we were alike
and our one difference-the size of our hearts.
Mine, a tiny fragile thing with room enough
only to house you and
you, who had a heart so big
your body couldn’t let it live.

It couldn't keep breathing without making your blood thinner
so that it could more easily pass through that
giant beating ***** of yours
such thin blood that kept you alive just long enough
for you to feel every bit of pain and every moment of sadness
that having such a big heart always brings
every sad thing I feel in my dreams.

Brother, I'll say to your corpse
remember that time you were drunk
so drunk that when I told you we were out of ice
you started sobbing
you sobbed on the ground and you screamed so loud,
and you said, “but where will the penguins live?”
I laughed at you, I picked you up off the floor
and I told you, “They can live with us and I’ll pay their part of the rent.”
Then I whisper to you, softly enough
So that the congregation won’t hear
I love you more than you loved everything
Even penguins.

You pledge allegiance to a certain type of government.
A nation that is ruled by fat men
in ***** dens who fill the air so heavy with smoke
it tears up your eyes so you can water their poppy fields
and all the while with your right hand over your heart
that beats feverishly with the influx
of toxins that mix with your blood
and dilute the red poppy petal
with clear atoms that bubble on spoons
in the shape of bone crossed skulls.
They rule with iron fists clenched around
green paper that they take from you only
to sell you back  fresh needles as necessary happiness
to counteract the sadness they have created and placed you in.
They sit there with smoke rings coming from o-shaped lips
that ring around the perpetual cycle of
supply and demand-
supplying addiction and wrapping it in itches
and demanding your free left hand scratch
and you do, you scratch so hard that your skin opens up
and the pain requires more relief.
The nation you live in waves its flag with
173 stars representing the heating point at Celsius and not celestial
because space is far away from this place
and it offers too much unknown for you to think
that there is a different world besides the one they own
and maybe there is true happiness there
somewhere where hands are free from swollen veins
that act as puppet strings.
Where bail and bailiffs and bars and blame and
bang your head into brick barriers aren’t standing between you, brother.

I see you now like a wishing well
A fountain of forgotten promises
A graveyard of lost pennies
A ripple like a grapevine echoing the sounds of lost times
So much so that what I wish
What I wish
That when I chucked a quarter at your heart
The one you Guarded with windchimes made of rib bones that sung sweet rhymes
That maybe I’d hit a high note
And you’d think highly of me
And  breathe in all that was good of me
That brought about that musical loud sound that even you couldn’t deny
Sang sweet
But even after all this time I still feel like
I’m playing musical chairs with your exit signs
The red neon lights that echoed a rhythm that sounded like a lullaby
That tune that I could have sworn sounded like a love song
You sang to me
And that you meant it.

How smart we were to eat pieces of one another
To keep small portions of each other
Hidden cleverly inside us
The little bits of you secretly tickling
The inside of my stomach
They don’t feel like butterflies
More like birds of prey
Dancing with angels
Their wings brushing up against me
When the joy of their movements
Allow them to forget themselves
And spread their wings full.

Can I be cavalier with a heart
That doesn’t belong to me
Can I afford the same careless
Actions to be inflicted onto someone else
As I have inflected them onto my own heart
Will I not feel knots in my stomach
And pains in my chest if I allow
The dread in my heart
To stain another’s who
I promised to keep untainted
Promised to hold with gentle hands
And look at with kind eyes
To blow off the dust that settles
On it after too much time
Without enough use
I said I would love your heart for
As long as mine would pump
But is that promise broken
If the beating slows so severely
It severs the sound of the second hand
Tick of a tenuous time keeper
My heart as always been my keeper
And it’s working at a slower rate
Than is needed for oxygen
To run through my veins
And into to my muscles
Making my mouth lethargic
And unable to not be cavalier
With the words I love you
And to shy away from someone else’s heart
I promised to love till mine stopped beating.

I feel sorry for the broken
Teenage girls
The ones who, on the inside,
Could have used a bit more superglue
To hold their organs together
Who are instead of strong, are fragile
Fragile and noisy with each breath
The loud clanging their lungs make
Sounds like too little change
In too big of a pocket.

Because in my dreams we dance
Light as feathers
Across tight ropes
And balance beams
Catching one another as we fell
Into arms stronger than nets
And heavier than the elephants
I stood atop
and I,
With my red jeweled dress
Swaying short around my thighs,
I could see
You looking up at me
And you
Smiling, knowing,
Feeling-
The water
Wet
As you dived into that
Bucket down below.
Splashing out across my sheets
When I awoke.

Our adult selves are so cunning
Are they not?
They hide from the child inside us
And on occasion
Play hide and go seek
With them
In the most peculiar of ways
Taunting them almost with the
Promise that one day the baby
In their hearts will outgrow the
Adult on their surface
Placing hope in snow-globes
On high shelves with grown-up arms
So that the child, if it were to
To seek more than hide still
Could not reach it
And in its seeking would bang on the shelf
That the adult knew to not do
And the snow-globe would fall and crash
On the floor
Leaking out glittered blood
And broken crown-shaped pieces of glass
That only an adult is allowed to pick up.

When I was a child
We had an army in our backyard
They suited up in flower-print dresses
Their bodies billowed out in the wind
With new gush of air
And their shoulders were pinched by close pins
Holding them in a steady line formation.
My brother and I thought highly of our soldiers.
They guarded our house when they were outside
And inside they warmed our mother’s body
We returned the favor in different types of weather
When it was raining we could take them inside
And lay them flat and resting on out parent’s bed
And in sunshine we would let them bath in light
After a hard night’s watch.
We would sit on the porch and watch our troops
Hand in hand as children, whose world could
Afford to be guarded by clotheslines.
And we would know that the value of this memory
Would be vindicated by its longevity in our memories.

I am now a diamond
Who misses her mountainous mine
Back when she was coal
Back when she was coated in soot
Back when she loved a miner
Who only loved her potential
Who ushered into caves yellow birds to find her
Who used a light fashioned on a hat just to see her
Who pick axed away at her bed
Until he held her in his hands
As softly as would a flower
Who died to make her
Her ash underneath his fingertips
Her worth a blinding sparkle in his eye
She thought he would use her for heat
That she could power his body
And warm his soul
So she let him set fire to her
She let him press into her so tight
She mistook it for closeness
And the stress
The heat
The fire of it all
It make her crack her dark amber
Striped her of her soot coat
Leaving her naked and clear
A diamond
Now a spectacle of her mistrust
On display for the world to see
Placed on the finger of another woman
That the miner actually loved.

If we could escape this heat
I think we would.
With a choice of geography I could see us somewhere cold,
Somewhere where our hands couldn't touch
Anything but the inside of gloves
Where our hearts wouldn't break with our fevers
Because only our memories would know what it was
Like to always be so hot.
We would never sweat next to each other
We wouldn't dare to.
We would know that each bead that dripped down our brow
Would harden into a marble, and we would never
Throw those stones at one another.
Besides, we never be so close to one another anyway
Not with our layers of fabric hugging our bodies so tight
That we would eventually forget what was underneath
And only recognize the form of each other by the patterns on our jackets
We wouldn't see each other as anything other than
A pile of laundry.
The site of piled clothing would not remind of us nakedness
But of how it felt to lay as children
Underneath a freshly dried pile of garments.
How we would feel the warmth as good at first but were then
Deceived by a burning hot brass button
That puckered the skin on the back of our
Necks, of our legs.
We could remember heat as heartbreak in our
Memories and it would be too far erased to ever recreate.
We could live for the cold, the sharp air
That would still the boiling liquids in our veins
That  once made our hearts beat too vulnerable to not be hurt.
Our core would adapt to the cold
And it would harden our hot feeling and small morsels
Of memories together like a bag of peas in a freezer.
We can’t be so hot.
Not you and me, not together.
Not with mouths so dry from each others
Our bodies would have to make water for us.
Not with heads so full of steaming blood that feelings melted and
Swished together in a liquid until they were no longer distinguishable
As real things and were often  so misunderstood
We added more liquid dilutions
Until they filled our bodies too full
They spilled out of eyes and burnt our faces.
We should move somewhere cold
Where everything is too solid to connect anything
And too still to break our hearts.

I want to be your keeper
Offer you a safer place than this planet to live
Come stay with me, make me your home
So that if some days this planet
Rips you into shreds so tiny
That the pieces get caught in the wind
And turns you into confetti
Forever searching for its celebration
Know that I will always be home
Sitting, waiting, looking foolish in a birthday hat
So you know where to go.

I think the thing is we inspire danger
Within one another
We’ve realized the falsity of fear
And found instead it was always a choice
And now we’ve chosen to forgo it
To embrace danger as easily
As we embrace one another
This is a beautiful thing to find in another person
So that when the skies fall
And the armies invade our city
When the streets run so rampant with violence
That the government outlaws touching
We won’t be afraid to stand in the streets
To hold each other in chaos
To kiss each other where we need it.

Daughter’s of eve.
I have looked and I have seen
The breakfast you have brought to your men
The ugly millionaires you have married
the married business man you met on the ferry
The sad younger man at the bar
The customer whose eyes you couldn’t see though his cigar
I saw you trying to fit into his house
But the door was so small
So small
And you couldn’t fit.
Not with you and what he called, “big-*** hips”
So you go in the French doors in the back
That makes you feel like the eggs you brought him in the morning
Weak and runnier than their yolk sac
The men that first held you like the last orange on the
Last tree in the last garden of the world
Then slowly squeezed out all your juice
Right onto his lapping tongue
Because it turns out he wasn’t hungry just thirsty
And your skin was just a cup that held some juice
To quench his thirst
And wasn’t it worst when you first burst
Into tears over than man
Tears too heavy too many and too hot
To see anything else
To parallel park to leave your mark
On something new to write or speak
To dream or to think
To work out math problems on the board
To not question your man as your lord
I still I hope that your words will carry more weight than
Than number between your feet on the scale
That you will not let your grades drop lower
Than the ******* on your chest
Held high in cups you wish were
higher up in the alphabet than the letter
C.
So why can’t you see.
Why can’t you be
An A.
An a women student mother mentor
A daughter of eve
Who shouldn’t still have to pay
For the way the garden ended but in a pear-shape

Dear One, I am sorry to have to appear before you like this.
Dressed in my Sunday’s best, a modest green tie, black coat, black shoes
With silver bracelets clasped around my feet.
I would have liked for you to see me differently
Or perhaps just the same but in a time after this
In a place that is not this, where it is not needed
To have these strong bars and glass not keeping me in
But keeping you out. If only to impede you
From telling me of how much you want for me
Of how your pain parallels my time away
Of how you fear your arms will weaken without my chest
But One, if you have to express this, that which
I already know, when I appear before you I would ask you to
Cover your mouth and to strap your arms at your side
Such formalities necessary to hold in feelings that with-
Would fill my heart too heavy, you see.
Without you it is light and light is how I would like it kept
For when I appear before you like this
I cannot have that weight in my heart collapse me
In arms I won’t feel for years.

There is something horrifying about being up high
When you look down at things and people that
Are suppose to be bigger than yourself
But then suddenly having the roles reversed
And then it is you that is God to them
But a God that would die none the less
Just to meet his darker equal
I think-
I hope I get to meet death
To shake his hand
Look him in the eye
And say, “You aren’t so scary now”
To be free of terror finally
And know what it is like
To live without expectations of horror
To be able to go to the empire state building
It would be nicer then, once dead
I wouldn’t be afraid of heights then
And really death would tell me then,
“It was never the height you were afraid of.”
He would be right.
It’s the death that puts the fear in heights