Soham

The day you learned that everything must end
in love, your heart began to sprout its wings;
the pain tremendous, reciprocity
a demon slain, with hissing hair of snakes
glimpsed in the mirror of a sword and turned
to stone, a bleeding rhythm to your pulse,
veins oozing syrup on the bark, you gush
away your karma. So the solitude
has left you: dessicated, sweet, and whole.

drums of affliction

Human drums, we are
human drums more resonant on the upper back
than the thighs, the sacrum.

These moments we share are a serein on
the brightest day of summer, the red sun setting
like a sweet lollipop swallowed by the most devoted demigod
over a concrete jungle, reaching for each other's
lifelines--yours broken, mine too long

And we beat and thump and tap and clap
this rhythm distracts me from my dark night of the soul

And in hermitude I will wait for the dark knight of the soul
to hoist me onto his shoulder and away from this life

the way I am

some things take a long time
but we're here for less than the blink of God's eye
so I will listen to this song on repeat
when I should be sleeping
because sometimes it's better to grant yourself a wish
instead of obsessing, brooding, fantasizing about
humming along to this sultry sweet song and feeling
the vibrations in my vocal cords
reach my jaw, my chest, my sternum.
like a muse, a goddess, a siren
just hum it:
one and done.

we are all God
and I will laugh and cry at once
as I appreciate the way you Love me

and share how beautiful your imperfect devotion is
with the universe

and hope that tomorrow morning you have two minutes
to dance

oleander

there are reminders, coming in daily now,
that this canvas is covered in vomit
because you inhaled too many paint fumes and passed out
and your body tried to detoxify itself

"are you married?"
the standard question you ask a woman covering
her shoulders
her back, her clavicles,
her breasts
with a shawl

categorize me because you have no other way of understanding me
because you loved your own kids too much and they
were not selfish shits like me who lie
like corpses fantasizing about dying alone
in a warehouse of paint and infinite palettes
replete with a cruel twilight zone twist of blindness
and this is why I vomit on the fucking canvas
these sunglasses hide what I can't do with these pentacles
the universe placed around me

"I wouldn't give you a second look," he said to my veiled form

it was the right answer
but it was not the truth

open love letters

dirty laundry
you don't bother taking down because everyone's already seen it
making the private public came into vogue and now
our pasts float around in cyberspace

maybe it would have been easier if I left those stained
shirts and bleached jeans and lacy unmentionables
waving in the wind, anchored down by clothespins
starched dry by the summer heat
visible to anyone who wanted to see

it took some time but
I realized your every step was the love song I so
wanted to hear again
the small acts of kindness your melody
the warmth of your whistle your calloused fingers
your tilted head your strum

the love letter you'd never write was
etched into the end-of-the-day smiles
and the clinking forks competing for cantaloupe

it's up to me to write my own poem
feels like buying my own valentine
but we never believed too much in that holiday
and I don't like chocolate anymore anyway

I found a card I thought you'd like
and it didn't make you laugh the way I did
the way my parents can never hear without
scolding this unladylike lady

barely cracked a smile

and I take a deep breath and remind myself
that writing burns
and a song dies the last time anyone hums it

on sugar mountain

half-lotus pose on a velvety vintage armchair
without arms, without shoes
because barefoot is how we like to be
heels kicked off, deskless secretary
out of place provoking stares
where we don't belong out west

these are ordinary affects,
this is how kathleen stewart scribbled out
potentials onto napkins with ink pens
and her words ran like mascara under
melting ice cubes
or so we imagine

pale faces, hazel eyes, glancing our way
and wondering if we'll glance back
yawning, arms upstretched, back arched like a cat
the silver on our ring fingers glint towards him
but it doesn't stop him from stealing a moment for a dream
and the acoustic guitar reminds him
if you can't be with the one you love,
love the one you're with

God

Made some of us to love and to risk love
And to give until we croak like frogs
Stewing in gradients of green moss on soft bark
After the earth in her might has soaked in the rains

Some of us whistle and wait for the echo to boomerang back
Only our own voices resounding from the fog of cliffs
Keeps us from going over the edge

God made some of us to love everyone as we want to be loved
Made our purpose to seesaw between
The isolation of hermitude and the isolation of
plummeting precipitous vulnerability

To love is to surrender like a frog to her night song
To resist is to seek safety in silence
To forget
To unlearn

thunderstorm

there were apricots and broken plates and shy palms

E.B. White wrote his letters before I was born but the pages
of that collection dented my lifeline

the first time I ever felt beautiful was in those dilated eyes
drunk or something else lit that lambent flame that tickles
my lips and once that sea parted part of the world became my eternal oyster

with every U-turn, the screeching tires, the memory
of the buzz cuts and identical bricks and the sand
and swallowing every single stair for four flights and unraveling
every single thread of a white and blue hammock and every single thread
of my wavy locks

when your fingertips calloused over and i couldn't draw blood
we still laughed

when our hearts calloused over and we couldn't pump blood
did we keep laughing

much ado about darkness

what to do with darkness when we discover it
within ourselves, within the secret chambers
of our hearts we never knew, we never noticed?
dark, musky, beauty in the purity of evil that
licks you like a serpent's tongue and leaves a welt,
a burn, poison, seared into disembodied flesh you
don't recognize as your own.

your fights clarify your love, your attachment, but
the pigeon with the broken wing still carries disease
and envy and lust for the freedom of wings beating
against the city air on a sunny day

we see our darkness so that we can forgive, a wisewoman told you,
darkness breeds compassion breeds forgiveness and all of that is
love.

still you hurt, and you go on hurting.