eve eve eve, with no need to apologize

i don't have normal words.

i have acrostic poems and sketches and ribbons of choruses dancing the gray-sky winds.

i have 1,000 homes and healing hips.

i have my mind and the chance for existentialism or grins.

i have the gift of what's come from giving up on where i'm from. trying less to impress. trying true to breathe through the anxiety of not needing to be somebody.

i have coffee, black and bitter.

i have books, better and better.

i have chest-swollen-thanks under my sweater.

i have moon-bright-trust tucked under cover.

i have a chastity belt around my bruised bottom and a sense of safety even though i'm broken.

i have thank you's overdue and your welcome's i haven't felt through.

i have more spirals than i can count.

i have sacred memories i won't write about.

i have mirrors and mirrors and mirrors of love.

i have the wild above and the thick tangled below.

the center throws of now all dancing around my body like flames of infinity i don't need to control.

find me in awe, down on my knees, praying please please please:

shout yes across the ether, and yes into my weathered heart.

yes to the ache in me that pleads to break free from humanity.

find me whispering: this, this, this is it.

stay. it's all okay.

tenderness. cracks. new growth. laughs.

a strange freedom from longing.

a weird sense of belonging

to myself.

small child, still wild, ever-allowed to make messy mistakes and infinite retakes.

all for the sake of feeling at home in myself.

i hold the wealth.

there's nowhere to go.

stay. there's a way to be strong and simple here.

there's a way to clear the need to be anything but free.

fall.
fall.
fall.

love calls me to my natural height.

tall.
small.
tall.
small.
tall.

through the love lens

i am neither
one nor all
but the strange
falling motion of
acknowledgment
and now.

promises

weave a story
with your strong hands
in my wild hair

tell me something
untrue
and unbuttoning--
drenched with wanting,
elongated

i've mostly sworn myself off promising,
but i promise
i'll stay open to
considering your sweet nothings

not that you're a liar,
just that words
are as impossible
as love
and i speak more in the language of
labor and hands:
grabbing hold
clenching skin
punching in
time after time after time--

muscles so controlled
they learn
how to stitch
and stay--
or at least
make falling away
look graceful



***



i'm hungry, now
with no energy to spare deliberating

i will feed myself
until i become round and full of promise
big enough
to keep

if you wanted to know my spirit

if you wanted to know my spirit
i'd give you a jar and say:

mix all my paints with water
turn me mud-brown, mutt-like
let no one know where i'm from by sight

call me a gorgeous indistinguishable everything
call me singing hallelujah off tune
call me just like you: special matter, transmuting 
unable to untangle 

all these pigments
and roots

hallelu
hallelu
hallelu

how do i remember?

how do i remember candle light
or things that move best in the dark--
glowless with no one watching from a globe's-length away?

how do i remember ribs
quiet breathing
pressed into ribs
and my hand not reaching for confirmation that i exist
beyond this?

how do i remember being held--
mother's touch like a slow rush of love
across my brow?

how do i remember being happy being nothing?

nothing remembering nothing
and the smell of wick
come unlit
smoke staining the air
before it disappears
the moment clears
and temptation smears every corner of my mind

i can't hide from the glow even though
i've locked myself out of my digital house

i still press my finger to the
round-center-doorbell
of everything
waiting for something to answer
like a mother, or a prayer

forgetting what it's like to go home to myself
when no one's home

how do i remember to close?
so i can remember to open?

the long ache of longing
that snakes into belonging
only when i hold it like a mother
or a lover
holds heaven under covers
still and steady
through the night

A Haiku for the Heat. (In 4 parts).

I surrender, sun.

Burn me like a forest fire,

leave me half-way gone.

Watch my matter change,

disintegrate, fall, take flight.

It's all a rain dance.

When red is just red,

when clouds can be wet or dry,

you'll have found me, free.

Don't look for the old.

Familiarity's blind.

Taste me: I'm pulsing.

A Blessing for the Bottom

maybe tears are
your body's way of saying

there's still something left in you

when you think 

you've lost everything

you know

gingerly, gingerly, gingerly

you still have terrible wonder

change, 

why won't you be gentler?

i traveled this country once

faith / renaissance / faith / renaissance

i would make a toast
if i knew what to say
other than, how?

but this is not the time for questions of western minds

screaming, kicking, crying her way out
needs no how?

give her a god damn wow

before her fight
to come back to life
she killed herself
without any certainty
that she'd be better off
this time around

like an animal

it's possible that all this heartbreak is a 
mistake, a simple    misunderstanding

do you hear me?

nothing broke here

except an idea

this is just the natural slaughter of a 

zebra in the field--
feeling, fiercely
roaming, openly

all her wild stripes in sight

this is facing, earnestly
the death that comes at night

this is surrender--

the piercing flight of a 

birds' fresh feather
in the blood-red mouth 
of animal fate

have no complaints

nothing loves without pain

tell me about love

I'm writing a letter to a friend, 

answering her question: 

Tell me about love.

I'm telling her what 

Osho says about love. About its 

momentary quality--

that you can't put a 

contract on it. 

That it's more like a 

particular combination of 

paints 

that meld into a new color--
then eventually,

harden. 

At which point, it's time for a 

new moment. 

A new squeeze

from the tube. 

Sometimes you have lots of 

new moments 
with the same 

person for a really 

long time. 

Sometimes, 

you don't. 

But love doesn't care, 

either way. 

Love's not concerned with the 

who's or the 

how long's. 

It only cares that you melt.

And then the phone rings from 

South Dakota. 

And my heart sighs. And I 

smile deep--

A chance to become 

nothing, fading into each other, 

forgetting for a moment 

that we were ever made 

separate at all. 

Fifteen minutes of a 

rhythm so in-sync you'd 

think our hearts kept 

exactly the same pace. 

So I Google the question, 

"Do all human hearts keep 

exactly the same pace?" 

And I only get 

half-hearted answers 

that speak nothing of 

magic, nothing of 

togetherness, nothing of 
the implication 

that even as 

separate beings, 

distinguished matter, there's a 

song in us humans that 

is an us. 

It's how we were made. 
With metronomes of together 

in the center of our bodies--

An anthem that cries,

we are one. 

And I think, maybe, 

I could list a thousand ways 
that we're constantly 

trying to remember 

that song. 

change, change, change

do you ever get the feeling
that your face has changed?
not because you can notice,
(the same way you can't notice
when the kid grows
an inch),
but because sometimes
you feel yourself smiling,
your forehead releasing, like
shoulders, when someone reminds
you to relax,
and suddenly it seems
that all the worst kinds of wrinkles
you've been chiseling into your dreams
are being quietly erased--
making way
for the kind of grace
that grows age like
honor-marks
wisdom-words
laughter leaving your lips
tumbling into a room of
youth, needing more than even you
the reminder that this life
is not meant to kill you
while you're still awake.
no, in this life, after darkness
comes the day
and even all those changes--
even they, will change

your art

he told me

when i told him

that i can't bare

to make any more

dark art

when i told him

that my heart

couldn't handle it

he told me

to stay longer

nothing only gets darker and darker

stay through

to the light

it's right

underneath

that pile of grief

don't fight

where you are--

it's your art

the saddest thing of all

the saddest thing of all

isn't the heartbreak

isn't the death

isn't the loss

for those things, we rationalize--

we know

in our minds

we all must face them

it's the wall 

we begin to build

brick by brick

around our hearts

it's the moat

we begin to dig

in unrelenting motions

for the next 

impending flood

it's the ways 

we no longer stay new

to beauty

once we know

in our bones

that everything goes

like we've given up

on glory

like we have no time

for the simplest risk 

of being alive

and feeling it

Novice Knitter, Tangled Yarn

will someone please teach me how to knit?

weave one string through the next 

until eventually, everything makes enough sense to wear?

i'm naked with strings in knots,

hands holding bundles--of what?

what do you call a tangled thread 

bright and beautiful

but unusable?

do you put it in a drawer

for the day when someone patient 

and tending comes to do the untying?

do you snip it up into pieces,

short, partial

but at least there's something there

to salvage?

what about the knot?

the part that never comes unlocked?

like an artery near the heart

that broke, lost half its pieces

never makes the same shape again?

some things can't ever be glued back together

like string

everything a bit too tasseled at the edges

frayed at the rims

it doesn't matter 

that you long for the way it was

in the beginning

when things were neatly wound

in a wondrous order of

tidy and together

no, sometimes we must rely on 

small scraps tied with knots

stitching together a frumpy sweater

without even knowing how to knit

sometimes that's the closest

we can get 

to being clothed

in the winter

just be whatever

my sweet friend, andrew, one lovely afternoon in early fall

just be twenty five
or however old you are
or however young you are
or however wreckless or uptight or loose you are

just be a beginner
or an old fucking pro
or jaded or jarred or wishing everything was different

there's no wrong way to be
there are just stories and stories and stories

and the inside scaffolding of your soul
that's resting quietly, waiting
for you to notice
that no matter how you be
she's got room for it
reasonlessly

and a knowing
radically
that no being
lasts forever

woosh

ciao, darling.

half moon shining, 

mo-ped winding,

you dance in the streets like you're free.

and i, a dreamer,

top-down, ever-eager,

can't ever hide the truth in me.

i'll miss you.

more than

you or i

dare say.

~~~~~~

standing, shedding,
helpless as a tree.

i don't fear
getting close.

i don't pretend
letting go.

i let you touch me.

i feel every
slowly, slowly.

every biting
thrust.

every smack
and suck.

i trust
all the way past

goodbye. 

cosmic 25. i'm writing a book.

welcoming my 25th year on Earth like love-happy fools

i'm writing a book because i'm getting no younger.
i'm writing a book that howls like hunger,
and seeps like honey
into a steam of memories--
this past year's spicy chai.

i'm writing a book with frozen fingers.
i'm writing a book instead of eating dinner.
i'm writing a book from scratch--
hilltops, laptops, blacktops, no cash.

i'm writing a book like a tiger: rip, rip, roar.
i'm writing a book like a player: shhhh... not too much.
i'm writing a book like nina simone: moan, moan, moan.
i'm writing a book like a mother: suck 'em dry, baby.

i'm writing a book because i'm not having sex.
i'm writing a book about a fuck-ton of sex.
i'm writing a book with the hope that we have sex.
then at worst, i could write another book about it.

i'm writing a book like a puzzle--
pieces spread on sandy beach house tiles
and nothing else to do 
but fall back in love with quiet.

i'm writing a book with the top down in the winter.
i'm writing a book--tweezing it out like a splinter.
i'm writing a book and i'm dying my hair red.
strength, fire, destruction. enough said.

i'm writing a book because the stars are falling,
the words are hollering,
and i'm hungry for something
that terrifies me.
like you.

perhaps

perhaps we all want to feel
those big things like
freedom
and love
and ... ? the third big thing?
because we're already them

i mean, come on...
like attracts like
we're just projecting our
desires
for what
we already
are--
duh.

and expectations...
they're like war
you're bound to win,
you're bound to lose

but behind every great
king of discernment
there's a queen
of curiosity
hard at play

i wonder,
i wonder,
when i'll
undress
all the way

belly laugh in the
nudity
of all this
freedom
and love

bras and boots and other things that can't be put away

one day we'll tell stories
about half-clothed kitchen dancing
and spatulas that somehow
snuck into the mix--Slap!

you, wearing my bra
me, your boots
my bubby's velvet chairs
standing ancient on your crooked hardwood floors

I need to make you a set of keys
you say ten thousand times

but the doors are never locked
and when they are,
I lay in the yard
and wait
for you to hear my breathing
dance down the stairs
call me in like a street cat
or a crusty punk
whose only currency is kisses

we can never find the keys, anyway
or the shoes
or the other sock that's hiding behind
the famous white couch
that we could never bare to toss

not even when we moved next door
one box, bag, swaggering pile of crap
at a time

everything is tangled
like necklaces in a drawer
of junk]

my records, your player
your children, my lullabies
my dishes, your sink
your cooking, my hunger

the stories we'll only tell when
the children are grown
and messy
like us