every piece

good morning kisses
meant nothing

until you
formed the dance of your lips
across my shoulders -

blazing paths through
snowy whites to
territories left
closed due
to
hazardous risk.

and yet you clench
every piece of me.

every damaged piece that has
remained uncovered,
untouched
after the Fall -

putting me back
together,
fusing bad
with
incredulous feeling:

becoming redemption
in every step.

perfect redemption,
pixel after pixel
of granulated form,

grandiose form,
forming the every piece
of Darwin's finest creation.

Rich influence

December twenty-second
two thousand and ten:
i fell a little more
in to the irresistible
maze of

your fingers,
your thighs,
your beating vessels --

my cancer,
swallowing me
halfway alive -

always,
endlessly
divine.

life's chopping board

fingers frozen in failed determination.
these white slabs are my canvas.
my canvas, broken
over a stone chair -

sometimes it snows in november here.
little white flecks gracing blades,
melting in inferiority,
making us remember a time in which
the sun blasted cement
created heat waves and hail balls of sweat
making us wish for gentler weather -

but there is nothing gentle
about weather.
nor is there anything gentle
about art, about science,
about people, about us -
maybe sometimes we

hope wish pray
kill imprison cry for
cry about scream to petition for
something more gentle

without realizing that everything
is a harsh, dancing guillotine,
giving the impression of a pillow
until the head is place within -

and sometimes
all we've left to do
is lose our heads.

visual capacity of undefined language -
or maybe it was
indefined
illdefined
predefined

whatever it was,
you motioned to me, fingers swinging
like birch tree limbs
in that quiet time between autumn
and winter;

you were telling me
about the river and the winter
and how the more it snows,
the more the mighty Mississippi would flow
during cottonwood season -

"good habitat for rotten tires and bleach jugs,"
you'd say, because
sarcasm was always
your best
Sunday Suit:

all i could think of was the settling
of the ripples on my exposed feet,
the smell of magnolias dying in the wind,
and the sound of a thousand bees
crying to be set free.

nature's rule

I.
the sun rose to greet you
on mid-july morning.
the lasting sounds of
night owls moving off to sleep.
above, a brooding hawk
spots his mid-morning meal.

II.
as the heat waves create
ripples in the black sea,
the eagle is perched
on a low limb over 1,000
Acre Lake, hoping for
presence of rain.

III.
at dusk, the brooding hawk
returns hungry to his nest.
the eagle nestles in the
meadow five miles off;
the owl glides seamlessly
through the darkening sky.

IIII.
at midnight, the silent owl
watches you from the
branches five stories up,
waiting once more for
the sun to rise.


*written for "series with theme," poetry class, spring 2010.

the lorraine motel, april 4, 1991

if you want to know what my lousy childhood was like
and how my best friend was a young girl of minority status

in a highly (corrupt, ignorant, American) prejudice town,
i will mind, but i'm not shy, i'll tell you. first, let me write

about how her dimples lit up like the roadside diner sign
and her eyes like diamonds, killing her sisters.

but one day she snapped and i'm not talking umbilical cord.
i'm not saying money troubles and mama's grocery list.

i'm writing of a much more inherent evil -
talking the fist that broke her jaw

and rose through my heart and climbed through my eyes
to shape the fist to produce the boy's busted lip.

i'm talking the bus driver's hands on my burning shoulders,
the "poor" boy pushing towards the window, blood on his teeth.

i'm talking the violence and violation i give freely back
since they decided to shower it so freely on her -

the satisfying plea of please, please, please -
the lion's reduction to mouse.


*copied from adrian blevin's "the other cold war" - written for poetry class, spring 2010.

continuation of "everything" by srikanth reddy

on the 31st of may he found
the letter, wrapped in deteriorated

early century canvas paper.
he discovered that she was unwell

on the day he would marry
THE wench. when he arrived there,

she laid cold beneath a quilt
made of rags. they finally met,

and they were finally parted.
so he finished the bottle,

& he folded his map of the sea.

astronomy 101 - a dylan thomas couplet

have you ever seen the sun?
rising, falling, exploding star.

dissolving in to nothing

what do i believe?
is not always what i believe.
two shots down and you were hanging
over the water on a broken limb -
you looked like you were going to fall,
but the water would have caught
you gently in its bed;
you, friend of foxes,
did you keep yourself sane?

we rolled over and in to each other,
your arms caught me in motion,
brevity relaxed to meet infinity.
you know how to keep me quiet.
in the middle of chaos -
when everyone is screaming,
we are silent, breathing entities:
we are the poplar surrounded by honey bees -

honey, let them buzz all
they feel necessary.
they speak without proof towards
things they will never understand.
isn't that our big question,
anyway?
when did they learn everything?

more importantly -
when did we?
do you remember december?
we were so cold we felt isolated in our bodies.
you put your arm around my waist,
and we looked like iridescent statues;

cafe con leche, you'd say.
isn't that always what we are?
statues of humans, mixed
in colors, mixed only
enough to keep us from

engaging in bloody warfare?
outside, only still lives
of arranged pottery;
an empty

ashtray,
a crystal bowl
of nothing,

a placid, dead
sea -

who are we to know anything?

to chopin

you stepped in to the blue surface
and sank, sank, sank
to the tiny rocks
beneath -

some would call it your death.
we could hear you
calling out from
the waves;

you were a bird, you said,
a bird that could swim -
an anhinga,
free -

and free was something
you had never felt
before, save that
time

we rode in the back of
your brother's truck,
backs pressed
against

cold metal, and eyes pressed hard
against mighty hercules
and his twelve
labors:

you were always my labor,
of dual mind and
chambered
heart,

presenting me with a fight:
whether or not to
be the sand,
frail

and indistinguishable,
or to be the ocean,
moving with every
placid thought.

hirundo rustica (edit)

it was sad to see them go.

their orange breasts peaked in the early morning hours
when they'd dive bomb passers with their eager chit-chit chit-chit-chit;
signaling warning signs that were mostly signs of defeat,
but we'd recognize their bravery anyway:

(they remind me of you.
the one so eloquent in action that it'd be hard to see
from an outside perspective that the bravery inside you was the
reaction of earlier interactions gone astray.
you're so polite, baby, because they made you that way - )

by early june they'd be gone.
the nest, though empty, resonates with their call,
silence and distraction walking with me,
somewhere far off, remembering where they
would return.

a tribute to best friends, vrs. 1 (edit)

of accountability:
that time you sat, cross-eyed, limber,
with a dark ale and a premium roast in either hand,
singing the blues with your electric guitar
thumbing the melody with your ring finger
and forming the chords with your big toe

smiling at me, and back again to yourself,
and sometimes at your cup of coffee,
which narcissistically said:
"caution,
handle with care.
i'm hot"

i knew what was going through your head while
you spent hours upon hours bowed in meditation.
i could hear you, whispering
silently as the golden rays rose above your head,
with praise, praise, praise
to whatever at the time you deemed immortal --

sometimes you looked like the omniscient
gradient pattern on your ceiling,
sun touching the textured whites.
maybe sometimes like joplin, frizzed hair wet
with the shining of the sunset, or

maybe it was bessie, one arm hanging out of a window,
letting the heat engulf her with particles of sweat,
enjoying the smell of blooming may apples
for the very last time;

so close to death, and yet so close to
the beauty of life that it would
be impossible
to think
of
anything
else

denying jesuits

two realms of being:
being you
being me
being me and you
three organisms
meet organisms meets
ah! joyce's silent death -
you claimed that
we were brough together
by mercy

but mercy is merciless. it is a mortal dancer in worn shoes on an iced floor. when that ice floor is hit by the intensive gleaming winter rays, the foundation cracks/breaks/falls/melts/crumbles beneath their feet. dropping without anywhere to land --

mercy beheads us,
two different minds
and
two difficult hearts
two spectrums of colors
and sometimes we
stream red, but
most of the time
we drain blue.

per aspera ad astra,
you'd say.

but be careful,
darling --
these thorns are deadly.

it was you, blue hoodie
with the bumblebee stripes
smelling sweet
like peas who
taught me what i
need.

funny that we would learn this way. never that we'd teach ourselves -
instead, that we'd figure it out along the way -

some roads, best left deserted,
but you were/are/will be a road
that i am destined to travel
over and over again:

not destined like destiny
but destined like the way
roads fork and come back together,
or never again, or maybe
they connect at some odd stoplight
in the middle of nowhere.

never saying never and never saying ever.

but you, blue hoodie
with the bumblebee stripes
smelling sweet
like peas:
you taught me
what i need.

not a heart,
but a heart big enough to breathe.
not a brain,
but a brain big enough to feel.
not lungs,
but lungs big enough to beat.
not hands,
but hands big enough to think.

an arsenal of things,
clashing together, creating reactions
like black powder and matches:
explosive, but

never

destructive.



(like you,
blue hoodie
with the bumblebee stripes,
teaching me everything
i need.)

love.

because structure is for the weak of heart:

they told me one time that we speak in iambic pentameter. the kids from my city, they'd say, like shakespeare? but we knew better. quick enough to pass judgment on the mornings that kept us alive and quiet enough to sneak through the nights that kept our blood...

well, i guess it was moving.
and that's what we were. cliche at best.
but you kept me moving, with the stories that
didn't make sense. you kept me moving.

it wasn't even a month later when i realize the truth.
everything was changing. i felt like i belonged in a dr. seuss book;
but they (the books) kept saying, "no, every writer's an alcoholic,
or maybe a meth head, or maybe a stoner"

but i operated off of
ooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhmmmmmmmmmm
ooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhmmmmmmmmmmm
ooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhmmmmmmmmmmm

and the centering of my heart:
not like you, the center of my heart, because i have to be honest:
only i can hold that position.
someone conditioned me to be this way, or maybe it was the way it was meant.
as much as i love you i will always be the one to
break borrow steal hurt console heal my own heart.
i am the one in control -
and as such, i have the power to
succeed fail be mediocre love hurt feel be isolated -
because i am control of myself.

i need someone
as strong as i am
to stimulate my independent
heart.

hirundo rustica

it was sad to see them go.

their orange breasts peaked in the early morning hours
when they'd dive bomb passers with their eager chit-chit chit-chit-chit;
signaling warning signs that were mostly signs of defeat,
but we'd recognize their bravery anyway.

(it would remind me of you.
the one so eloquent in action that it'd be hard to see
from an outside perspective that the bravery inside you was the
reaction of earlier interactions gone astray.
you're so polite, baby, because they made you that way.
just like them you're brave.
you step forward and greet every day with that dimpled smile -
you floor me with it's ingenuity.)

by early june they'd be gone.
the nest, though empty, resonates with their call:
this time, not the warning of defeat, but of happiness.
the babies had safely left the nest in one way or another,
following along that path that makes every living thing every living thing.

and in the back of my mind, it might have been sad -
maybe for a moment or two, walking barefooted down that cement path.
only sad until i remembered, with all of a memory's glory:
they'll be back next year.

letter to a potential* lover

you see that bobby pin?
held in my mouth, dangling
like a fly on the end of my
seduced web - that is what i
want you to remember.
the pink hues, determined look.
not a strand out of place.
notice it, but never say it out loud;
smile, sweetheart, smile,
put your hands in your pockets.
ready to go.

i'll watch you: coy smile, quiet lips,
mind always running.
your footsteps are incalculable.
sometimes you'll sidestep
sometimes you'll leap.
but most of the time you are standing still:
guest star on your own talk show,
but the dialogue is mute.
piano keys without strings.

names written in cursive.
dot your t's.
cross your i's.
and remember: i am unreliable.



(*potential: fabricated)

second to the right

cracked mirror, incessant
vibrations from his drums
holding breath to realize
what it might feel like
to really, truly break

but she'd never die.
"it's theoretically impossible,"
he'd say, hands crossed in thoughtful união,
like a spanish dancing of the honeybees;
"you'd pass out before you'd die,"
but all she's thinking is
one
two
three
count to ten, and it will be over
not suicide - not a pathetic attempt
at attention,
but a scientific experiment,
a surgery gone awry,
the attachment phase of
connecting sewing thread
to the dissolved bacteria in your skin

and maybe for a second he got serious, you'd dream in your head: maybe he'd say this -

"honey, i understand. if you want to sacrifice yourself for the betterment of society, i'll be standing there right alongside you, like helen keller's hand to helen keller's mind," (but there he goes again, slipping into the pretentiousness of hipster-headed, pbr-infested, ginsberg- and keruac-reading minds) "i'd play that song at your funeral, too."

but when you slip out of an ethereal state of mind
all you see is his cigarette hanging half out of mouth
ass planted in big, lush kissing lips,
playing with the loose skin around the image
of vonnegut's puckering anus:

some would call it a star.

a tribute to best friends, vrs. 1

of accountability:
that time you sat, cross-eyed, limber,
with a dark ale and a premium roast in either hand,
singing the blues with your electric guitar
thumbing the melody with your ring finger
and forming the chords with your big toe

smiling at me, and back again to yourself,
and sometimes at your cup of coffee,
which narcissistically said:
"caution,
handle with care.
i'm hot"

i knew what was going through your head.
that one time, you spent hours upon hours with your head bowed in meditation.
i could hear you, whispering
silently as the golden rays rose above your head,
with praise, praise, praise
to whatever at the time you deemed immortal.

you were only tainted by
the little pieces of white
powder dancing around
your nose.

on your bookshelf, a guide to mycology;
in your stereo, the newest crystal castles
or maybe it was the newest michael franti
or maybe it was beethoven, mozart, debussy

maybe it was bessie, one arm hanging out of a window,
letting the heat engulf her with particles of sweat,
enjoying the smell of blooming may apples
for the very last time;

you looked like that.
close to death, and yet so close to
the beauty of life that it would
be impossible
to think
of
anything
else

he was drawing on the table top
with gems of sugar and lines of mustard
and a knife -
he was laughing, watching me move
not-so-gracefully around the floor,
re-arranging,
re-cleaning,
re-naming.
he was making something i couldn't see;

when he got up, he kissed my cheek -
told me that he'd marry me.
i laughed. told him to buy a ring.
turned two times around, never saw him
leave;

too late to tell the truth.
but maybe it wasn't too late, just too ignoble;
even if he were joking, it would be my ideal.
even if HE is something i have always fought against -

it was only when i looked back at the table
and saw a perfect recreation of dancing, imperfect me,
that i realized maybe he was serious.

feminism vs chauvinism

the carpet
was turning
to static electricity.

combining blood seas
and fly greys
creating a picture
of smiling apathy

making you seem like a shadow in the reflection of a doorway. impeccably invisible. some shouting -

he's shouting at you.
and she, she is moving behind,
quieting the crowd.

"daddy, maybe"

i'd say i could forgive you
if Newton's laws of fusion
were logically probable -

maybe i'd forgive the accident,
maybe i'd forgive your God-forsaken star,
maybe i'd forgive your de-part-ure;

but maybe i'd ask more of you
than you'd ever have to give.
maybe i would ask you to put down

THE BOTTLE
before it was too late.
maybe you'd listen between

walls made of legos
and doors made of logs.
maybe you'd smile back at my 6-year-old self.

but maybe to forgive you
i'd have to forgive myself first.

she wrote it on the back
of a crumpled recycled napkin:

morse code
sign language
braille

she read it in the print
of a leopard's skin
infested with hypothetical maggots

it wasn't legible.
but legibility, he said,
was a tire stuck in wet asphalt,
"cemented to communism";

he was lying to himself.
communism was his favorite past-time,
sucking the not-so-hypothetical utters
of a not-so-realistic cash cow.

but he wasn't important.
only you were, sitting in
that crystallized blue booth,
smiling at me, deviously,
removing strands from your eyes, while you

wrote your thoughts on the back
of that crumpled, recycled napkin.

product of tweaking

the truth: something i never believed in,
but your smile that night rang, rang, rang
the bell -

twisting the pieces of my veins together.
your hand, my waist, my hand, your cheek
too incidental to be noticed
and too powerful to be forgotten

but now, product of little blues
crossed for emphasis and inflicted
with the 111 of conformity

begs to differ, offering up solutions
for how i could possibly make you understand
and how i could

possibly make you...
(leave it be, leave it be, leave it be,
but the conscience is much quieter

than the instinct, which says run
to you, which screams movie
romance,

which screams one day,
one day, one day, because a smile
like that is too much to give away)

your reflection
shimmering, gleaming, loving
me behind a persona
glowing with yellow gold
in a time not set to be your own;

laughing, laugHING, LAUGHING
manically motivated motion madness
perpetuating petty preference
of obsolete obstacles
in itchy individual's intimacy

crying out for something less
than perfection, but still clothed
in the king of club's finest gold;
a beauty queen with a birth mark,
a palace with a strip club

inhaling the smell of your intoxication,
stars shimmering on an early sunday morning.
watch six am creep across your wooden floors.
sighing at your frailties
and shouting out for your morning tea.

sweet dreams are made of tainted love

to love you
behind glass windows
tainted with a whirlwind of perspiration
would be the greatest love.

namaste.

exit 259: infinity
and
beyond

so you took another hit
turned the wheel 90 degrees
towards an exit with no exit

i didn't try to stop you

maybe i should have, or at least that's what i thought when the car went skidding on its top across the four lane skyway. the view was nice, or what i could see of it through the shattered sun roof looked appealing --

and from my peripherals
i could see you with
your hands to your heart
clasped together
in meditation
and as we went crashing
into the pacific
you bowed forward and
whispered
"namaste"

sinking to the bottom and we had our most meaningful conversation
talking about fate and life and all its many crashes
and the one-hundred plus speeding trips we would take
that was like love, for the first time;
with a metal tip you etched into my hand
"never forget"

it took me until we reached the bottom to realize what you meant. your infinity was already over, denoted by a hard blow to the steering wheel, and i was looking through the windshield at schools of silver fish catching their scales by the sunlight on the surface. "never forget" - never referred to life or to the things one experiences, but instead - that life is not exclusively ours, bottled up in a pickle jar like lightening bugs you caught and kept on your nightstand. every life will drown one day. every life is replaceable - none are immortal. "never forget" - what you do is probably temporary. but if temporary touches a life, forgetting that each breathes and lives accordingly is a never kind of thing.

mi gato es irritante

you annoy me more than
any living creature -
your incapacity to sleep past
dusk, and the rolling of feet
against my hardwood floors -

having to obey your every
command, picking up after
your momentary lack in
judgment, holding you when
life is - literally - falling in on you.

but it is the sound of your soft
gratitude, the feeling of your
furry warmth on cold winter
mornings, the precious greeting
as soon as i open the door

that makes you more precious
and more loyal to me
than any other living being.

winter's love

two red
cardinals sit
on the white patch of grass,
marveling at the cold winter
beneath.

dear gang member:

you are my deconstructive era:
the deconstruction of
per-son-al-ity,
of the teardrop permanently
attached in black ink to
the space between tear duct
and cheek's apple.

i am your neoclassic era:
the result of hours not spent opening
nostrils to lines of snow
or to the delicate slice of knife
versus neck versus vein
no longer felt, too bad,
too bad --

ignored except in second glance
where the inscription on your arm
blazes into the memory of my eye,
causing curiosity until the
next moment of flavored smoke,
a laugh, and a smile.

the eloquence of dance

how i would love
to watch your shadow
dancing with the light on
the white of my burgundy walls;

tango with danger,
foxtrot with romance,
waltz with occupation,

but with me, your dancing
is a perfectly miscalculated
swing dance, the compliment/
complication of

hips
meeting
legs
meeting
hands
meeting
lips

and yet all we hear is the
reverberation of manic laughter,
circling the pulsation of
living attraction, and severing
it at every weak spot.

something about infinity

of obsession: the fool, unlimited possibilities
and limited in perception - the
christopher sly of romance, the drunken,
staggering of belief in a young man
mistaken for a beautiful maiden;
(but who is to say gender is anything?
he could hurt me as much as she
and maybe they, they they)
repetition of heartbreak in formidable
ways.

of future: the high priestess, hidden
emotion, practicality - the cesario/
olivia complex. hidden from beauty.

in the shaking of a
dark room, under the influence of
doxylamine, where
a hand is poison to the
insomniac mind -

a nightmare, fresh in the mind,
sweet as a ripened berry and
toxic, toxic, toxic to the mind;
your hand, my face, pull closer,
eyes shut... revelation is that,

with every second you spent
pulling at my hypothetical strings,
i spent two hundred fold
staring at the wall in front of me,
trying to forget.