I don't think this is going anywhere and we both know it.
I'm not really satisfied with this,
With being almost and maybe.
I don't want to keep spending time like down payments 
With the promise that one day we will cross that line and belong to each other.
That's not how this works.
That's not how any of this works. 

You know I'm not in love with you.
I know you don't love me,
And life is too short to waste on convenience.
I want a yes that is yes
A no that isn't maybe.

It's not fair
To either of us.

What does it matter that my love could not make him stay?
What does it matter that my love couldn't make him a better man?

I climbed into that sinking ship
And clung to it for dear life
Because being an anchor to a dying vessel was somehow better than the uncontrollable sea of uncertainty.
And I bailed out water with my little cup and for a space it was enough.
But the waters overwhelmed me.
I still carry the guilt of the shipwrecked.
I thought I could save them.

Too long I’ve played second best in other peoples bedrooms
Breaking my body like communal bread again and again
To be passed around
And not one lover ever looked to preserve the whole of me

While I wraped soft flesh and sweet words around them
Twisted and braided and bent myself to their comfort
I’ve stood mute in kitchen corners
Eyes cast down waiting for permission
To have my birth-right voice back.

I’ve paid with blood and sweat
And down to the bones of my hands
For free air
For a small corner of the heart
Vague promises that melted
Like soft butter over bread
At the smallest hint of imperfection

At any straying over the boundaries
The square lines drawn around me
Saying ” here I have given you space to live but no further-
Here is your spectrum.”
For once you had fallen in love with my vast and vibrant rainbows
I am now given a handful of shades.
And then complain at how well I
Color in the lines
While you chase more free and vivid lovers,
…Like I once was.

Past time

I'm never a viable ...." Option" ... To you,

Just a pastime. 

And maybe I do this to myself.

Always being out of reach,

Always being boring and predictable,

Always getting attached unconsciously and where I shouldn't. 

Always half believing under my breath that this time it will be different
 and I'll be loved, wanted, treated like I am valued and worth the kind of respect and long term affection that I want.

That I've always wanted.

That's All I want. 

It's never a graceful end with us.

Always cliff hangers and question marks.

Always the invisible wind down 

And never periods.

We love in incomplete sentences 

That we pick up the thread and start over and over but always stop at the tenses -

Were. are. is. was. will be.

Everything is hoped for 

And everything is hazy;

Nothing is complete

Or fully said.

Implication pairs its self with commitment.

Our tongues dance round and round the subject growing older each year. 

I want. I need. I love. I will. I am.  

I can almost imagine your room 

I can almost feel the weight of a wedding band.

Put Away

You only want to touch me after dark.
Night time holds affection captive
And I’m only familiar in half light.

Nobody knows you steal kisses
When stop lights and street lamps turn on.
My convex shapes blend and bend into your eclipse.

I return though,
Your front porch has become something silent I cross
In the few seconds it takes for you to open your front door.

I accept your hesitant touch,
The hurried way you make love to me,
Momentary sparks in the darkness.
Tracing and retracing the the nations of your skin,
The desert of your back,
The sharp stone cliffs of your hands..
The fields of grass stretching off into sighing plains
when the stubble of your cheek brushes the smoothness of mine
Almost by accident.

I kindle these fragments of quick light
So when I return
And climb into bed pulling the covers up over my loneliness,
I can retrace the feeling of sunrises on my skin.
The golden way it lit lovers interlocking in sleep,
The moments I knew what it was to be endless.
I remember a time
you wouldn’t be ashamed to hold my hand in the day light.
You wouldn’t be afraid to say my name
in more than a whisper.

It’s 2am, the streets are empty,
Your house is cold.
Tonight I will leave your neighborhood un-haunted,

Tired of being a ghost.

Shulamite

You will find me in the fields

With the empty of your fresh harvests,

Noosed shells swaying in the breeze.

These vibrant lives are now hollow vessels

Echoing the sound of your voice back to you.

Your love has sucked dry the fruit and left the rind.

And I am left to question how many other hands did you bring in to sow the seeds
Was I twelve or maybe thirteen?
Do I have a story or a history anymore
Was it all left in genocide and rewritten
Did I loose the lineage and the noble heritage on the alter
In my omission was assistance
In my passiveness, permission
My pale hands, stained, clutch a voiceless throat.

Oh my brothers, who have turned your faces in anger to me,
Has the sun not taken out enough vengeance?
I have tended your fields well,
my own I have not kept.

Waiting. - Alysia Harris and Jasmine Manns

I knew the kind of man I wanted to marry when I watched my father carry my grandfather's dead body down the steps.
My grandfather died in bed with my nana. She said she saw his soul soar right out of their attic window.
He left his body in that bed to remind her that even without breath she can still wake up to him.
She said he left silently, didn't want to wake her out of her sleep.
As he got ready to leave, kissed her on the cheek; gathered himself at the foot of the bed and didn't take anything with him - not even her smile.

The first time we met we stood on a winter beach.
Ankles deep in sand under a sky of unconstrained stars.
The second time it didn't work but I hope the third times the charm.
I've never had the audacity before now to wait for a heart
but you said "sleep on it."
so I curled up on your chest and learned patience.
Didn't want to let the weight of my tears wake your gorgeous and the mornings can be so mortal.
And you often have bad dreams, I've caught you mid-scream on a september night.
Swore then that I would kiss the fright from your voice, if only you would let me -
but that's your choice, my love.

I want to know there's a man in heaven waiting at the front gates.
Checking his breath, straightening his tie, waiting for me to arrive as beautiful as the day I was when he first died.
There is a chest waiting for my eyes to get heavy. There is someone out there finishing my sentences and the last of my laundry . . .
There is someone out there making room on his pillow for me, if not for my face at least for a poem or two.

You, are the first adult I ever dated.
The only man I've never had to lay before.
If anyone should ever ask, I would describe you as a wealth of sundays.
You gave me two feet of white cala lilies, made me feel like a bride that friday night.
You found treasure where thieves before you found trinkets. They used to gamble my bones for luck
but there is honesty in your touch from navel up.
I have sailed your spine as straight as a whistle and marveled at the industry of your mind.
The last time I saw you, you were just as beautiful as the first.
So don't blush.
Don't look away.
Just hold my gaze.

I sat on your window sill and I'm not sure if you were taking a picture of the new york city skyline
or me
But I'll take when I can get from you.

You are still the last person I kissed.


My grandfather left a dollar on the night stand.
He said "Gloria, go play these numbers for me.
Because this is my last dollar,
And you will always, always be my last dream."

life. life.

Today I counted my fingers.
for no other purpose
it was just a tick.
Something nervous to do to let out the anticipation.

I can weigh out what I ate today on a teacup saucer.
I'm not starving
but food seems like a great white elephant tug-a-waring across a line
and eating for comfort has gone out of style with me;
Grief has other forms.

I dreamt my sister died last night
choking to death on a dance club floor and no one heard her.
All day something has been off
And by dinner time I know that today is wrong.

"whats" and "why's" are only hanging
like noosed tree's in the wind
that sway and precariously begin to bump each other.
I think I'm beginning to lose my mind.

or only maybe it's that I hope to.
To bow out somewhat clumsy but with a little dignity
of to much to soon.
Life was never this hard.
And I care too much so not at all.

I just want a man who will write poetry about me,
who understands how words are a closer music.
that tells of heart beats and the color of your damp breath
long after the sunset
and it was warm
warm like arms that made me realize i had never known safty
but this,
this was something diffrent.

I just want,
I just want a man who will write me love poems
tuck them behind my ear in whispers
like love letters left on pillows in the morning
for the sunshine to kiss
"because i am not there and not able to".

inconsistencies

And all morning I have been crying
And shutting on off like a lamppost.
Sticky sandy eyes
And my wires falling out my front.
Haphazard sparks sporiticly twitch my insides
And mix me like an egg beater on the fritz.

Cold clean water is something to stare at when it falls out of taps
And the white of your bathroom tile matches my mood,
So I will lay here
Not soaking in the sun as I should.
Not being happy.
Wishing the day more grey
And my mood more compatible
Then a seesaw;
Then a no that is yes.

mistress mary

Or am I just like Mary,
Moving round and round your wall?
Oh mistress bless me
With your key.
Let me into your secret garden.

You're so safe behind your wall.
You gaurd your self so well.
Your wild roses prick my fingers
biting into me .
You are not forbidden fruit
And this is not a maze;
Im sick of playing games
In your eden .

You hold your honeyed flowers
So high above my head,
Your sweetest words have poison tougues
hiding in your mouth.
When winter winds have withered
all the other flowerbeds dry
Will I find havens in your twisted paths
or sanctuary in your eyes

(Forgive me. Let's marry, Have babies, …)
Or am I still like Mary,
Moving round and round your wall...

my daughter

I hope she never knows disapoinment. Because it stings like falling stars hitting your cheek.
I hope she loves like tomorrow that same moon that held her love songs wont turn a cold shoulder to her.
And I hope for all the beauty in life that it sometimes brings her pain.
So she can know in the worth of the stars
When she wakes up next to a lover, with the early sun painting them gold, what it is like to be endless.

the deli

The over ripe little tomatos
swell like juicy placentas before me.
They bruise out the substance of their life,
Like greedy fat little pregnant whores
Grinning sly smiles of devious satisfaction and entrapment.

The carrots demand the attention of my eyes
in a way that is neither a whisper or a shout.
Their hard stalk straight bodies an awkward eighth grader
With acne scares and braces.
Shuffling from foot to foot on stork tall
knobby kneed legs. Corkscrew ragmop
(carrot top, ... carrot top,....)

Bread after mundane bread; a sea of crackling mulato
Opens its yeasty center to me.
Drops in clap bored thump
( flip flop, flip flop,)
The tear of its keening wrappings the low humdrum zip
Of a durex in a seedy underbelly hole
To the tune of its 12:59 am my little preteen
Trailer trash princess,
Does your daddy know where you are?

The sauces sigh and drip
Like apathy on an old worn mothers face.
Snot colored mucus rain, against a window pane,
Falls relentlessly.
Endlessly the pool of anothers eyes
Boil over into the bubbling cupped hands
Of a thousand secret volcanos
Just under the surface of things.
You would not look at me;
And I could not look away.

I've spoken the names of the stars by mistake
And if I did things its not by design.
I wonder though this forest
My minds a simpleton.
Lalala my wagging tongue
I drone on and on
Not minding where I step
Or that my words fall like bullets to some,
On houses and lives.

One hand weaves the tapestry of my dreams
And the other hand tears into disrepair.

heartache

I woke up this morning and I missed you.
Im trying to be careful but I wonder if there will ever come a time
When I won't wake up to feel this dull pain where my heart is said to be.

I remember the warmth and feeling of light spreading across my chest
Just because I woke up and saw your sleeping face.
I always want to touch you in these moments
Just to prove to myself that you are real -
This isn't a fairytale or dream.

There's nothing like falling asleep in your arms
And waking up to the sun in my eyes and you, glowing and beautiful.
but now there is rain and Im alone upon a familiar bed
Reaching out for something I can't have. That is no longer there.
And I try to remember, painting incomplete portraits of you.
I dream frail dreams that don't capture your light.
I spin and imagine different outcomes
That don't ring true without your voice to lead them.

I remember so much and forget a little of you every time you go away.
So please, if you're listening to anything I say,
return to me
So the world will be right again.

Ah, the wastefulness of grace.
All the beauty for naught.
The fluidity of movement that will not be remembered.
The flutter of wings that passes unnoticed.
All the sweet words I whispered to you
Unmark the world and die.
They slip like sighs from our lips
And flee into the night
To fade like shadows under the moon.

Every golden perfect moment,
Every sunset and lazy afternoon,
Every cold and quiet morning or breathlessly clear sky of stars
I longed to give to you.
All those moments of immaculate wonder,
But they die, fade,
Because I do not know how.

And if I could,
If I bound them up in nets of fairytales and dream dust
And presented them to you
How could you accept?
How would you even know what they were?
Would you laugh at me for being so foolish,
And release them
With a flick of your artful wrist.
To rise and form clouds
Far from a place of touching.
slipping from my fingertips,
... I will never hold them again.

dreams of eden

Long long ago in an ancient garden between two trees
So far away, I can still taste the dust in my mouth,
you whispered " This is what forever feels like."

This is what makes me long for you.

let me be your first love

I just wanted to be that girl,
you know, the one you saw waving in the wind in that perfect sundress.
The one who caught your eyes and heart by surprise.

And years later to your friends, or on some field or war, or maybe just in the private moments of yourself
you'll retell the tale.
Of how you were young ( or old) how you were just a boy
And I was to old for you but you couldn't realize it at the time
Or how I went away one summer and came back a woman.

Tell of how my kiss on the cheek was meaningless and we were only children
tell how you secretly treasured it until we kissed again one purfume drenched starry night under the same juniper bush.
Tell how love surprised you and knocked you off your feet. Tell how you had always known I was the one and held out for me and waited.

Tell how I've changed you
For the better or for the good
How we married like highscool sweethearts
or how you never saw my face again and that always bothered you.
Tell me of your first felt love with all it's emotions and jittery wires jumping off so seemingly unexpected and new.
Of all the losses of innocence and the understanding of how you were different and better and worse now.
All at the same time.
How losing was sad and a right of passage that we all must take some time
down back dirt roads in some dying ally of summer that we only remembered the way to when we were young.

love jornal notes

I've never been kissed like that.
Cupped my jaw with the slightest breath of fingertips.
Delicate moments stolen from fragile seconds
Trading this passion through the force of the thought
That there might not be tomorrow.

In that moment you changed me -
I now believe in the stories about love my mother told me.
I would often lie awake at night wishing, wishing a fools hope
That those stories would be true.
Like the fairytales I'd hear but know there's no way it could be real.

And now I stand here,
Hurricane rains kissing my face
Like your lips
Which fell again and again like a hand of violence.
Wishing they would leave me silent.
I am breathless and though
quiet, not speechless.
Our tongues tattooing out a morse code
On eachother
Of all the things we thought but it was too early
And fragile to make into sound.

I think I found I think I found
Racing through my head
Like dreams or secrets and other such whispers
That we lay there sharing after
Hands twined, shoulder to shoulder.
And you would not stop kissing me

Like this rainfall
Like these winds that blow away
The skeletons of our past.
Leaving us two blank slates to write on eachother
The beautiful love story of a future
As young as we are, in this moment,
Could be endless.

We complete in eachother a ring of endless light
Ringing with praises that reach out to the one who made us.
Thanking that throughout whatever series of unfortunate stumblings
Still led us to one another.
That all our imperfect choices made with imperfect hands
Could still make a past of sorrow into a life beautiful.

Love like this makes us infinite.

sirens call the siren tonight

She loved how men thought with a little persistence
She would just fall right into bed with them.

Her hair, soft brown ringlets falling with airy grace down her back
Was now chopped and dyed and patched over into an ugly chaotic mop
That was more statement then beauty.

Knew how to force intimacy,
Knew how to make others love her;
With her sweet eyes and fragile strength.
Knew how to ask questions, the right questions,
And make quick bonds.
Like fixes. Like drugs.
Like a precarious experimental game.
So delicately she spun out emotional ties
That wove themselves around eachother
And years later men called her still, they could not let go.

But she was done. Done with all that.
Enclosed in houses with looking glass dolls and predictable affection.
She longed for something beyond her power. Something she couldn't predict.
She wanted love that was a surprise with all it's beautiful colors and rough edges.
Its imperfection not whittled down into bubbles.

...