Autumn is dead, just say it.
Even though the pattern
of the stars lie overhead,
pregnant for another season.
we have cut the wires
that connect to Autumns frail amber heart;
And maybe in time,
the leaves will disappear,
fall onto our plates
like grains of salt,
or perhaps be swept up
by some giant hungry machine.
Yet, who is it that knocks on time's door?
A bloody chill from the ocean's shore?
A sister, a cousin, a friend?
Autumn's white sheets are dampened in the snow
of tomorrow.
There, human foot-prints
pile upon each other,
and they pile
and pile
and pile.
Do come, winter, and drown
us all.

Nights are still settling
in this city covered
with the veins of tomorrow’s promise.
I do not recognize yesterday’s face,
or the fire of June’s breath.
Nights with you still are
underneath the yellow gaze
of these streets.
Love, we remain
a target for their crystallized
expressions of awe.
Cigarettes and candle-smoke
arise from the vapor of
the city’s lungs,
and so we inhale not only
the pulls of cancer, but
each other. These tears
only express that longing:
The distance frails me apart.

Contraction is a frightened fish, taking in the light from this pale beach,
a brush of the palm tree against my face from home;
from home, I smell the salt in your hair.
from home, I see the scales of your face glitter in the afternoon sun as you peel
away the velvet skin I adored.
Love gives brief relief, I have learned,
because now I do not know you.

This bench, this yellow beach.
A seagull says he is sorry through a crack on the pier,
the fish drift swiftly underneath my feet,
And I watch you touch her long brown hair,
and I watch you drowning under the stupidity of it all,
between the unjustified heat of July and the
calmness of the dead and forgotten harbor.

Speak of porcelain flowers; those understood by few.
They bleed nectar in the night
--the sleeping stems from the petal's torso--
like a kaleidoscope portrays images,
divine and bright; those understood by few.

Take this soil; its hazy grains,
breeding fragile life
(without the problem of this age)
resting upon itself; the martyr's bloom
They found pollen in the children's room.

Infinity is finite to the outside world.

Yesterday and tomorrow are incomprehensible. I gaze into my reflection; the present is like a scar stuck to the bottom of my jaw. It has been healed, but still it remains: distinct. I hear the perpetual bell’s of the future ringing, a song of uncertainty and change.

Nothing is ever quiet.
I lay my body across the stars and think the world’s voice has been shut off. Yet, there I am, alive. I inhibit a microcosm of joys, sorrows, feelings, and thoughts: I am a world within a world. Suddenly, my heartbeat is turned up. The pace of my breathing initiates my whole body to rumble. I see infinity now. Though I am constantly battling the passage of time, I see consistency. It is not in the stars or the area of some shape. It is in the slight drumbeat of my heart, and the faint music of my chest rising and falling like the moths above my head who quickly fly into the bulbs, drop, and continue to get closer to the light. The past, present, and future could be combined into a big messy pile of disorganized time stacked to the tip of the moon, and few things are permanent, not like God, but as we humans can understand. These things I know are ineffably true until the earth stops spinning within my microcosm. Then it does not matter. Then there are no more realms to explore.

Today

Today I stuck a flower in my throat,
swallowed whole the bulbous petals
innocuously, blackness spread its fingers
like canvas over autumn's frail heart
or like the way you
once held me and smiled.

Again I awake in this night
to observe my galaxy. It is absent of light.
The moon is just a fragment of a
cliche poem with white and empty words,
catering to the pupils, like bulbs of seeds in the wind.
It gives me no comfort.
I dreamt of you on the ocean's shores,
and now you are only a weary ghost
haunting the remnants of my rejected sinew.
So many years I will live apart from you.
So many days I thought your arms would hold me close,
but you, being pulled by the tides of human stillness,
evaporated before my eyes had time to shift.
Again I awake in this room
to pull down the shades and cradle the pieces '
of my brain that robbed our youth.
The letters are asleep.
I dreamt of the citrus colors
that used to adorn your name
and now they are faded against the backdrop of this silent life.
Faded like the visible heartbeat that pounds endlessly upon my shelf.

If I am Venus, born from bloodshed,
risen up to ideal beauty
sexualized under man's tongue,
and you are Mars,
threading fire between your palms;
idealized in man's image,
then we are one: in the deepest crevices
of my porcelain skin,
you find your way with heat and flame
though my fragility is constant.

Still

I missed you once in the lamp shade of the dusk,
in the rooms that held water like a camel
walking through the desert sun.
There in twilight I grasped the stubble of your face
and you carried me to secret tombs of gritty skeleton
bodies in a catacomb of mistrust--
you carried me home where glittering dragonflies
spun around open flames.
I missed you once in the sticky sweat of our southern youth,
in the dust and the cautionary rain.
Still I search beyond the rosebuds of your memory's eyes
to awaken faux stardust in the steamy suburban sidewalk.
And yet, we lie awake untrusted.
Still I search the capillaries of your chest
for a budding promise of love hidden
between pipe's exhaust and newborn brain-stem.

Stars

The stars speak ambiance--
they are hands covering our globe
and spider veins of nebulae
decorate the interior in a
vast glow--a horizon that drops its bloom
particle by particle into our lids,
the blinking eyes that see from the occipital,
a contracting spectrum of light,
quick as the bashful meteorite
or comets savoring their vast alignment.
I envy the moon and her proximity,
above there among the celestial anatomy.
If I could, I would be a crater
on her petrified layers,
to breathe in a little stardust
and sing infinite hymns to their
dazed explosive vapors.

Light

Outside the light touches me,
smooths over my skin and sails
upon the iris of my eye,
is this the light of God?
Or did he turn off his lamp?

Please remember. It does not matter whether the memory stays alive underground, attached to some molecule on your skull that once composed your tedious brain. Tonight, while viewing the vast ocean, I was alive once again. I saw my beginnings. I saw my endings. I saw my body among the undulating matronly patterns. Yet, the loquacious hands had to gather me and tuck me back under their gaze once again. And now, I am sinking deeper into this artificial world, this doomed population. They, like the alabaster waves against the backdrop of the sky that I observed tonight, seduce me. Please stop. Please stop.

Museum

The forgotten museum on central avenue stands
in the white shades of snow today.
Its boarded windows are visible.
The bronze statue of Venus has lost her gaze.
The finches are featherless.
Once my eyes observed the exhibits like slow ticking hands;
my hands reached to grab the urn
radiating in Grecian beauty,
falling away from the eyes of the crowd, I saw them then,
faceless learners.

My eyes shifted. Often I crave
to touch the still and timeless kingdom
of brushstrokes and human devotion. But on this morning,
as a mother to her son's grave,
I wept upon those icicle steps.
Humans moved quickly,
pulsating their bodies upon normal matters
like the quick flair of a hummingbird's wings.

Mother said her prayers
by the side of my bed
one evening
before the voice of
my sister's ghost
was heard throughout the halls.
Run, run, far away,
like fawns escaping
a hunter's prowl.
Indeed, if the prayer
had surfaced
and I found myself
in chains, once again,
I would have remained quiet.

Firefly

If I were to live my life as lampyridae
in the shell of my lightening shield
in my glowworm haze
at the bottom of the ground in winter,
and you were to come by
at dusk
when the moon was soft in the darkening sky
across the field
and with your jar
would you catch my neighbors
and think, “How beautiful
these lights will look upon my bed-stand”
Firefly
hatched in midnight air
my thin tinsel legs
like cat tails among the shore
reaching toward the smiling moon
star among a field of stars
in thin summer air
Firefly
the walls begin to close in
I see the world from the outside
of my glass castle
star captured by human hands
burned out before morning.

This planned rocket massacre
of ripped blanket skies,
torn handles from the rigid night air,
sultry and sweet-- the odor
of solitude,
gently weeps.

In My Grandmother's House

In my grandmother's house,
plastic soldiers
guarded the base
on linoleum tile.

They shot me dead.
I was five years old,
wearing my mother's apron
"kiss the chef!"

Kiss the specks of black on my reflection

Nothing could balance out that pain.
not the sparrow's beak,
from ghost-speckled forests,
or the sound of
polite rain.

And then there is this lonely dialogue,
and the pieces from their maps
did not fit, but covered my body
as I fell.

The youth I trailed like a comet
on the alabaster floor

Figure 8

They are banging pipes in cellar bathrooms
and by the begrimed curve of the road,
The wasted and unversed spirits awaken--
cradling glass at kitchen stoves.

I observe them from the window,
and see the clock's tiny hand stretch itself past 7.
and their perpetuation, like a figure 8,
is a menagerie of tongues unspoken.

Daffodil eyes ripen their lackluster grins,
And they fold their skin with dry, heated breath
I am aware of the innocuous, blind waking ghost
clutching plastic bottles to the curve of his chest.

The awry faces stare from the rusted window,
And smoke rips from the doorway with a fleeting leap
a stagnant expression is hung in the aura,
and it dissipates as I hear the static on TV

In the Cabin

In the cold, isolated cabin
with your hands underneath
my skeleton fingers,
we find bliss in the smooth, sinful snow.
And in the fire that reflects our passion,
we adorn our bodies with nothing
but the icy touch of our once
forlorn existence.
I observe a fawn,
gallop across and make the snow
fall from the leaves, gently,
like soft seeds blowing through
the air of spring.
And in this season, the amphibians
are buried in the litter of leaf
and mud, hidden beneath the earth.
As we are, the past, now
burried under the crisp, dead leaves,
that covered the ground in
shameless Autumn.

I'm a swirling ray of abstract colors filling in the gray matter I project. It suspends itself in forms of silence.

I do not have control of this absence.

In the stairway of my unfolding conscious,
I find you touching my tiny hands,
(I forgot to wave goodbye on the last day
we were formally together.)

Chimerical

One seed is opened;
the chimerical plainness of that art
is found within the wrinkles
of leaves that shed their skeletons.
Basked in Sunday air,
with wisps of sultry dirt,
the realization of how you belong
with that poetry
unveils itself among the leafless pages.
Alive with the gloomy bark,
and the adoration for the way
you would hate them like me,
is the fragile insect
looking for its lost skin.
And although yours is still intact,
I admire your indignation
and the way you make your place
among the ivory scene.

We cut flowers from our throats
and hold their limbs
in the palms of our hands--
We cradle such naive beauty
that wilts before the morning's end.

Midnight Rain

The sky is black, and I can't sleep;
chasing senseless dreams with despair,
the tick-tick-ticking in my room,
somewhere near,
perpetuates the silence so clear.
Outside is life's commotion
it drags on in molasses motion,
falling on the pavement;
midnight rain.

Little Fruit Fly

Little fruit fly,
you graze the pear
so smoothly
like skates upon ice;
Little fruit fly,
They told me I would get wings,
and now I stare,
this rotten fruit;
shoelaces untied;
I am going nowhere.
Little fruit fly,
will you fly through my window, please?
Mother says you can't be here.
But you're the only living thing I see.

The Pear Tree

Rain drips smoothly down,
and fills up the indentions of
dog paws on concrete.
Like one of those memories,
now lost among the pear trees.
Those my father cut down one April day;
I was getting lost in the leaves.
He said, "Come down, or you will become a branch on that tree!"
So, I did. And now, I pace the world,
this stigma hanging from my neck:
square-celled albatross.
Oh! And they all laugh,
As the bark pinches my skin
and sap spills into my veins,
and flowers begin to blossom
on the cheeks of my face.

Only in Parking Lots

Between the parallel lines,
and the thick concrete,
In the vehicle with a junk-yard purpose,
we find the subtle sentiments
once buried in the rubble of forgotten hope.
Among the lies of the world,
and the sun-ripened seats,
we hold our hands against the universe;
a poltergeist love
moving us with invisible fingers;
a fate unheard of;
two lost souls,
At last, in perfect harmony.

The Artist

By the old drawn farm houses,
by the straw-thatched river,
whose pale yellow arms reach into the day,
art succeeds beyond the canvas,
the splintered piece
hanging on a wooden frame.
From the edge of the water,
where colors bleed into one another,
trailing off the surface itself;
there rests underneath that canvas,
her hands wrinkled and stunned.
Although those fingernails
are gray from mixtures of paint,
she consumes the image.
So, one morning,
when the birds happen to sing
the song of childhood harmony,
she may paint the landscape
in which she dreams;
neglect and reticent
to the metal machines
and burgundy sheets.

It was one of those nights...

It was one of those nights:
My father took me by the hand
and we stared upon the absent Halloween lights,
with flickering glass bulbs and tinsel
contrasted against the starless horizon.
How I remember those nights,
when reality was a hovering mist
in a clear autumn morning.
And in the following afternoon,
there I was--buried among the auburn leaves,
with the crispy smell of winter
surfacing, breathing, gasping
in the veins of their aging skin.

Teenage Damsel

Teenage damsel, with your short dresses and
pixie-cut hair--you were stealing melodies
from the vernacular of the grave,
where evenings passed between the setting sun
and the glow of blushing twilight.
Classic tongue--Latin fledgling,
soaring through the misty folk
barely a feather touching
the vibrations from your peer's windows.
Oh, those shallow idols
with their popped collars
and worn, black, leather sandals--
They imbibe too much sun!
So, take your pen, Sleeping Beauty,
and write of the Holy City's streets,
the people, the parties, the empty feeling
that is regurgitated each time
you drift into a quibbling sleep.

My First Resolution

My first resolution--
hanging onto her childhood emblem,
Gwen! You spoke sweetly in her teenage ear,
like Ivan's dream,
You were the devil in black sheets,
whispering inklings of death.
In the house,
a sword was discovered
and it was wondered how long ago the rust
began to climb,
Or if it was used to murder union soldiers.
Here in the south,
we lie scortched under clear skies.
How easy it was to be someone else!
How the stage was home--escape from reality,
the two pillars where I'd wrap my arms around
to feel comfort on their ivory torso.
Mother! Mother! Why the tears?
Will she be sent off?
Mother! Where is the key?
We are famished again.
And Father snores loudly
from his poisoned liver.

My first resolution--
shrieking glass from the cupboard door.
There were plenty of times I could
have killed her.
Foil halo around her crown,
Shoving tissue between the spaces of our rooms;
Up, down, up down,
all those steps
keeping the ring black
until it was consumed by the drain.
Hearing the infant wail,
and the adults scream.
In just two years,
the cycle of life was expedited.
In just two years,
the flowers I left out were
sought for mourning.

I am Alone

I am alone;
and the post officer in his uniform,
the lady with her business skirt,
the man who obsessively checks his wrist,
are alone, too.
And so I watch across the water,
on top of a bridge
where traffic flows in simple patterns,
headlights beam the way.
He was an angel-headed hipster,
And I, a shell among the sand.

Crustaceans

Crusty crustaceans of the chilly sea,
in the shallow waters they rest;
stagnant like the coral reef,
do they observe the ocean's roar?
Or the waves over-laping jade green waters?
No, they simply breathe
in layers of dampened sand.

Lonely Beggar

Lonely beggar, your dejection is liquid on streets--
stained on sidewalk concrete like insidious lines
that lead into a crooked crevice:
schizophrenic smile--oh, just dream of dandelion fields,
Where warmth and joy are spread evenly among the sky.
and drink up your last bottle--
let the poison shine,
for underneath your naked image,
there you lie,
there you lie.

November, how I miss you

November, how I miss you.
Once filled to the brim with
beautiful conversations (digital words of suppressed solitude)--after months of
expected silence--you now rest between the bridges of my palms.

For in August
I met my heart in the dreary
prison of conformed education,
(of flag-pole worship, of "Breaking Dawn")
and months of words, of subtle gestures,
rang loudly like scheduled bells.

With passing themes: innocence and experience,
how compelling the poems--
that nuzzled themselves in my brain.
(beauty and truth, is what it sang)

But I had to bury you,
Cover you with secrecy,
(the inevitable tragic end)
like a thin blanket,
coiled around my delicate hand.

Pocket Watch

The gold kept in your pocket,
the engraving with my voice,
how it will remain unbroken,
how its ticking and elaborate structure
is like our existence--
each morning, over and over,
the eerie sound beneath my ear,
each night, the thoughts that perpetually carve me--
how they are like a labyrinth!
resulting in restless sleep.

I Shall Descend

I shall descend into the pit of humanity,
unbutton my coat, let down my hair,
and call upon you, oh, broken promise of the wasted earth,
you dragged my body through the garden where wilted flowers
stuck to the fabric of my stockings.
And now I step toward the grave,
moving closer to the cracked stony slate;
it rattles, and screams
like a banshee in some sordid night.
No, it does not speak softly,
like the airy voice of death.
Instead, it beckons both amphibian and
violet flower--we were born from this dirt,
and now we must die beneath its polluted soil.

To Live Upon the Shore

To live upon the shore and be conscious
Of the breathing creatures beneath the sand
And dark, solemn waves
crashing against the rocks
in some ordained fashion.
Like Freudian psychology--
something buried deep beneath those waters,
like the synapse between your eyes.
To be aware,
Of the seagull's habit,
his cigar hanging loosely from his beak--
a basket of feathers,
balancing on razor-sharp air.

They say...

They say love will transform you, will make you see the world in a different light. I think
about the love people say they have. It seems almost bitter, with one party controlling the other. And one day they will drift away...the continents will diverge. Yes, lovers are seashells on the shores of time, one day they will be washed into the sea to be among the glass and dead crustaceans. I'm usure where love will take me, whether it will be the bottom of the ocean, or if I will fly along the skyline like an adolescent hawk. Shall I just glide like paper planes in humid summer days, when the earth is on fire? Or will emotion push me off the edge? Will I be struggling in the dreary days that pass and fill the space between youth and age?Should I recall the poems of innocence and experience, and oh, how my childhood was swept away.I should have been the thread to sew the seams of the heart; I should have been among the other fawns; I should have murdered that feeling of indignation and rage.
My body is uprooted every morning. My reflection stares back at me, and I can remember the childish gaze I had when I was still a fledgling. But now I am swan; the epitome ofbeauty and grace. So dead is my face and the copper hair that falls upon my shoulders. If your mind only teemed with the thoughts mine did. If only you should think what I think; maybe you would think twice. All this sweetness I seem to display is just a scratch upon my character. My countenance is just that-- nothing more.

The Rabbit's Grave

The Rabbit's grave is
shallow and bitter
with bones exposing innocence twine
that pull and bloat the growing mind.

The house is content,
its tea-kettle laughters,
its dreary permanence
leaves the door
half-way open.

And the stench from the garden
pervades the house,
the nostalgic manacles of time
Embedded within
that skeleton.

Flowers from the morning
explode in; welcome spring!
the yellow shades of bliss.
But you, you
already buried it.
Let it rot in the abandoned pasture
to be devoured by hungry prey

It makes no difference.

the grass refused to grow this year;
Leaving the grave
Untouched and bare.

The Mid-West

America's needles and drunken
propositions always
awaken during fall fashion,
when the leaves change from
green to orange
and fall like spring rain.
During the high tide of traffic,
I used to run my hands
across the car window
and watch water droplets dance and parade
outside like tiny ballroom dancers.
Autumn's breath was thick like smoke
outside the hotel.
but I remained,
ostracized from those indifferent eyes.
On one vacation trip,
The mid-west stung me
like boiling water
with all it's pastures
and patchwork fields.
I collected light in those starry fields
where nights were unlike
those in the south;
family stood
around a wide, open table
to talk about progress,
to laugh out loud
and be unaware of future wanderings

I like days..

I like days when my heart beat is like the amplitude of the bass,
days where everything is readable, and I am in love with the quiet sentiments of
love and honesty-when everything is right, and nothing collapses under the weight of
indifference and insolence.
I like days that are smooth like a stream forming infinite progressions,
days that move in perfect harmony,
days where a falling feather
fills me with ecstasy and an overwhelming adoration
crawls up my spine.

Snow Man

As always, winter's hands grasp me
and pull me under,
beneath her white, calloused ice,
I fumble.
And try to make amends with the snowman,
whose death will come when spring descends,
for I'm fertile; bred for excellence.
My beauty breathes within my genes,
like an embryo within a freshly seeded womb.
perhaps the sun will melt the snow,
making the road more clear--
or perhaps the heat will rise up in flame,
and engulf me entirely.

Effigy, mourn for no one

Effigy, mourn for no one.
Not this hollow peace, this obsidian shade,
love's unfolding morose crusade;
a sapience lost, among this quadruple two,
Who arms themselves with the limbs of flowers?
Tragedy strikes at birth's first hour.
in tombs so shallow,
drenched in gold,
they find their fears
face down, untold.

Oranges and Apples

Oranges and apples
live like the Mona Lisa
in the homes of house-wives
and terrier dogs.
With napkins folded,
into squares of perfection;
happy little roof
shelters the unseen.
The monsters under their children's beds,
come out, speak clearly, drink tea,
smoke a cigar.
While business casual is just
adornment like the bowls of tangerines.

A Tulip was I

• A tulip was I, walking down Spring-farm,
  and in June I was removed.
  Dazed from summer's humid glow,
  and the sun-kindled flames
  that were released from my icy hands.
  For I flourished in the month of December,
  with frost hanging from my limbs,
  I looked up, to see children's faces,
  ready to pick my body, food-colored stem,
  a life within a vase--no life I desired,
  so I hid my petals from their glares;
  and they shouted the pattern of my name.
  And as I wilted, and my softness was no more,
  turning blue, I saw the window-cat
  sitting blankly on the edge,
  In his mouth, a tulip--my desired end.

Take Me Into the Night

• 
  
  Take me into the night
  And these fractures will be a blur among our lunacy;
  the moon does speak,
  does touch me with a softness like silk-brocade:
  France, 1779.
  Welcome me among the city streets,
  where familiar faces blur into one another:
  rain in morning light.
  I will trace your palm
  with my delicate fingers--
  will speak of poetry, these words,
  you will keep deep inside your troubled mind.
  Take me into the night
  Opulent voices await us at the shore line,
  harps, wings, and white waves,
  let them wash over us,
  Or drown us, if they may.
  We shall meet in graveyards;
  A funeral for love's cessation.
  Take me into the night
  For although I wish not to leave this
  self-imposed world of mine,
  my boots sink in the mud of this land,
  and we are a balancing act--
  trapeze artists standing on thin wire,
  but oh, how the day stretched itself
  into perfect harmony.
  and oh, how the bird's song was played like wedding bells
  in my mind.
  Take me into the night.
  Where love does sew itself onto my unfinished edge,
  where love does smell of smoke and
  antique paper.

For Jeff

Candle flames--lamplight nights,
air-tight sealed hands,
zest of summer--inhaling humid air:
alcohol, waves, and Sarah's smile.

Summer--dead with rotting light,
sun shines, but no rays,
Now, Pale face--porcelain body breaks.

Sapphire eyes--a moment's truth
too real like sunrise's intent
of keeping us together:
and we watched it set.

Heat--always too much,
unlike introspective dandelion winds of March,
clothes were minimum,
my body in your soft hands.

Mornings at the door--
pleasure in sapphire sheets,
our legs entangled--
puzzle pieces--stoic and wet.

Twenty miles to Venice--
picturesque ocean,
fluffing waves to the shore,
and their homeless ostentation.

Talks of joined souls--
the crabs of my mind
moved silently along the rocks--
waves began to over-lap

The moving star--
Clearly it shined,
between my systematic eyes,
and the roar of a thousand oceans.

Clock's Persistence

Seconds pass into oblivion--
the space between matter and metaphysical realm.
Once I stepped there,
into the slippery dimension,
to say, "Look! The fragments on the wall! They mean nothing,
nothing at all"
And Escher painted recursion--the twisted stairs of time.
But Kafka wrote the words--
prodigy of entangled minds.
Like electrical wires,
serpents, whose skin was smooth and black,
Minutes, pass me by,
and I am a ring upon time's floor,
perpetually moving to the rhythm of breath,
And when they were gone, I said, "Look! The wood began to splinter! But It means nothing,
nothing at all,
to clock's persistence; time's transient wall.