Comparison

His eyes are grey 
like a day without sun, 
sinking into mine. 

I'm invaded

with lips dewy 
as the morning grass, 
planted in my mouth.

His tree hands branch out
heavy upon my shoulders,
rooting inside my chest.

I'm collected with rakes
in heaps of autumn leaves
and other strays.

Are you a conductor of wind
beneath her skin,
making breeze melodies
that set her free?

Time climbs
like moss upon my soul,
digesting me.

I'm squandered

in the pregnant belly of Sky,
suspended in the ether
above a barren earth mother
who cheats on me.

Have your morning eyes
drawn the curtain of dawn
across the haze,
presenting the day to her?

I'm forgotten

like the stars
who are flung into the night
and absorbed by eternity
in the darkness.

Perception.

Sitting with my father on our back patio-

the neglected one usurped by rusty gears,

and beer cans, of course,

because he is an "alcoholic"
so says my mother-

he tells me of his degenerate knees,
because it was different at thirty,
and because their immobility
greatly reflects his despondency.

And somehow, unsurprisingly,
he straggles his way back to my mother,
because, he says,
they had such a good thing going,
and she threw it all away.

And because he knew
to pack her two pair of jeans-
one too small and one that would fit-
the day I was born.
He asks me why she would want
her hair that orange,
but doesn't really wait for an answer.

No, he says, he could never
love her again,
his voice comprised oddly
of adoration and mockery.

Laughing about the time
she made him fold a thousand barbed-wire hearts
for her to paint and sell and be crafty with.
Or the cattle they hauled
together,
driving, can't stop for a fight.
"She had to pee every hour almost, you know."

He goes on like this,
one recount collapsing into another.
And, of course, he always knew
she was too young for him,
but he really thought
that when they hit the ten-year mark...

Well, she better be happy now,
because he'll never love her again,
so says my father.

Revolt of Sensuality

I wear a ravished redcoat
of inveiglement,
trampling across the eager front lines of your bed.
You welcome me
like envelope hands that long for completion in a letter.
My grass-like fingers sway
along the rises of your chest,
while my infiltrous legs
crawl across your thighs, hunting,
setting fire to your grounding
with my own.
I lead my toes, sweltering,
toward the frosty arches and heels of your feet,
soothing you.
My lips curl slowly,
pealing open upon your jaw line,
wavering on your skin
like an index finger on a metal trigger.
Bullet kisses fire through you,
fighting from my barrel tongue.
I’ll decorate your body
with gunshot wounds
before long.
The edges of my nails skate down
your bouldering abdomen,
naval, inner hips, upper thighs.
Your skin pricks up like a thousand soldier tents
across a desert plane.
I overwhelm your rations of reasonability,
disarming you.
The handcuffs cut
off the blood to your hands,
incarceration.
I captivate your attention,
your physicality,
forever mine as a prisoner of war.

Conversation

Seriously, why won't you let me love you!!
Why won't you let me love you?!
WHY WON'T YOU JUST LET ME


... Love you?


I know that you are afraid
that letting me love you,
letting me take care of you, 
is somehow going to take away from your...
Independence.


You think that I'm asking you to give up
being... you.


You think that being independent
and having someone take care of you
are two ends of a spectrum...


and that you can only claim one spot
on that spectrum,
either closer to the independence side
or the letting-me-take-care-of-you side.


But what you don't realize, Tanya,
is that you are the spectrum.


And you should really 
just let me 
love you.

Daybreak

Scattered, like the sun

when it spills onto the night,

wrinkling up the darkness

like a blanket

and inventing the morning.

I am not original.

I am a composition

of reflections that have only

leaked out into a residue

that I have claimed

as my existence,

beckoning on the moments

that spin and bend, rise and twist into

a single point,

having no origination

and no destination.

I am a wave,

an alternating sway,

predictably inconsistent,

working my way

through the maze

of my appetite

trying to satisfy

the contradictions of my

pretentious,

of my disastrous,

of my ambitious and crazy

soul.

coincidental

i happened upon happiness...
a tornado of love and color
and on my lonesome quest, ive found 
myself 
a stranger to emptiness
where structured regimes could never
break me
and spears and bullets and knives
cannot stand, even for just a moment,
against my faith in myself
in a world so often seen
as a cache of death and disaster,
i am the only soldier
fighting for me
to find such reason and beauty
as i have found
now.

One for You

Hurt by the rocks you throw at me,
but nothing's worse than when you're done
because that's when you don't care anymore;
that's when the you in us is gone.

I've been sailing down the coast
hoping to see a sky of savory blue,
something that can hold hands with me,
something different to help me through.

My little white ship hugs the horizon
while I scoop up the shells distraught on the shore.
Aloof like the leaves that dance off the trees;

I'm a part of something that means so much more.

The sand tells my feet to skip on its back,
and I'm happy to jump and fly like a bird.

The sun's a soft smile in the open air,
and the wind's a language of forgotten words.

I'm a painter of the world with twelve thousand wands,
and my heart is hopeful like everything here. 

The sky's full of fruit for my famished eyes,
and the palms of my hands are peacefully bare.

And a gentle breath brings out the moon
which puts the life of day to rest
while the light from the sun melts the air,

and singes the shoreline to a crispy, white crest.

And I'm an old dreamer with a romance come true
as I lay on the rocks and tickle the sea.
I'm calm like the water when it sings to the stars
as I drift toward a slumber meant just for me.

unruly

In a way, I'm confiscated
...by the world around me.
INHALED.
Like the vapor of an ocean
as it evaporates into nothingness,
I'm depleted.
Rising from the high tides,
where I've floundered before.
where I've triumphed as well.
rising toward the light,
toward the warmth,
and I find that I am wise,
but not as wise as I had thought.
I drift,
WEIGHTLESS.
toward the clouds,
where I gather,
where I'm whole and heavy and strong.
And I fall back down toward the earth
fore I am clean.

So, my dad is not Alec Baldwin.

If my mom can ever learn to be happy, then he would allow himself to be. But she probably won't, so neither will he. 


I thought that in real life people didn't 'give it a shot.' (Please allow it to reference anything that pertains to you.) Unlike they do in the movies, people out here, on Earth, they're somewhat less adventurous, less courageous. Or at least that's what I thought. But you know, people do try, and in these paramount acts sprung from our indigenous need to be fulfilled, to be loved, to feel alive and like we have control over the matter, we say what we mean to those that need to hear it. And in that brevity, the spare moments before we are met with the encumbering response, we are fulfilled and we are loved by the one that matters most, ourselves. In that pure and all-inclusive acceptance of ourselves, we are alive, we are in control of the circumstances and responsible for them. The response is moot, for we cannot rely on others for approval. It is in the act, that loyalty to ourselves and to our hearts that we have the ultimate approval and thus, the ultimate happiness.

What Stage of Pathetic is This?

It's coercive, and time plots against me.
I'm independent on so many levels,
yet, the complexity of my soul
drives the anchor deeper
into the soiled lands of confusion.
And the birds that I keep chasing
fly so far away.
It's amusing, to me,
that my fleeting compliance
makes up the rocks I keep running into.
I'm a sailor, stuck inland,
remote from the seas:
as if I don't have the legs to get back to shore!
Pointing the dagger at everyone around me;
the anger, the lies
and my thoughtless despair,
embedded so deep within me,
portrays the derivation of my outlook,
and the Fear my heart still has
to overcome.