october, my love, your comfort and
courage--your absolute devastation--
my soul lives forever in you--
all the years, the tears, the natural
ebb and flow of hope and heartache--
the bittersweet autumnal hymn of death
of warmth in the sun and cold everywhere else--
infinite dreams, romantic projections of the
necessities of a human heart--
incongruency of aesthetics so beautiful
they have to be true-- dancing through
recalcitrant golden sunbeams
of somewhere, somehow--

the better part of last-minute
and i spend it staring at your lips;
the poems spill out of your mouth
and stain my hand-me-down rug;
as if our brokenness is compatible,
my masochism needs company
and you are eager to disappoint.
the tongues and whispers of secrets
in a cyclical nature; i have been here before.
the familiarity the fear the focus:
the fallacy of finding love in an empty heart.

i think that most of motherhood is the aching for that feeling;
the feeling of putting every single thing you are too small to fear
into a being that is nearly too small to love;
everything that is terrifying, everything that is menacing,
brought to light, literal light,
in your actual arms.

i am young and fertile and stupid I know.
but there's an ache, a breaking
inside of me, that is terrified
repulsed and jealous, at the thought of gaining
the inexplicable peace of the splitting of my soul
into myself and hope.

a city that sleeps,
that coos, that cries,
that holds me with no rain;
the tiptoe treasures
and my trying-too-hard-to-smile-eyes-
there is always time, always
reflection, always melancholy,
but I'm reminded that nothing
is always. because always always
ends. and everything always
always begins.

and my fingers bled the moment you left--
I sliced them on a broken mirror
when throwing out the trash;
the cuts were
deep, the blood flowed heavy;
my first instinct was to **** the
wound and it helped briefly,
for a moment,
before the sting of glass surged

that fog horn blows,
worries my mind, lord knows, we don’t need,
more obstacles in this tired world, so the horn
trying, to be blowing fog away, without success

the sound’s remainder air-lingers like foam bubbles
ridden down to coffee cup bottom, resisting, protesting,
refusing to expire, useless/nonetheless, says no dying

sole boat outlined, bout mile out, must be anchored, it’s
unmoved by fog danger or noise, fishing is my informed
best guess, but fish ain’t stoopid, swimming another way

the fog horn wakes the woman who looks askance
cause there is neither coffee or a newly christened
poem upon her nightstand, an explanation is sought

“stand by me,” I sing, “be unafraid my darling, stand now,
stand by me,” poet said “been guarding our bed, this long
foggy night, agin interlopers, bad dreams and sea troubles”

shied ‘em away, knowing that when a man loves a woman,
she can lean on him, cause he’s load bearing, her safety is
always first, poem second, coffee coming, with sun rising

she bemused, funny you’re, kooky like the poems you’ve up-
written all night, up all life long, all stored up in my nightstand,
you’re sweet, like  Tennessee whiskey, ignore my scowling my own
poet-mr. coffeeman-sea guardian, you’re alright with me

you speak in lullabies made of
tamborines, crashing, harmoniously
into the rocky shore of
that one night;
my sand paper scenes and silhouettes,
you painstakingly disintegrate and love.

the layers of this are complex
to the point where we don’t know
where things end and begin.
but your lion heart and hands feel solid
when most things only burn.