gratitude

i declare it preferable - this measured, impoverished communication - scattered like exploding globes - that light the room and then plunge it into darkness once more - than no more words.

honesty

we're too wise to woo peaceably.

irony

she has an unending capacity for cynical humor. at least, she laughs at her own thoughts. which is a wonderful form of entertainment. i imagine much like masturbation - but far less sticky. this is evidenced by starting this in the middle of a week long blackout. if you're used to a more sensitive side of me i suggest a crash helmet and knee pads.

an outstretched palm

he coiled his hand into a fist that day and yet, did not place it around her heart.

instead, as darkness settled into secret, raw places, his fingers lifted the ringlets off her cheeks. his neck arched forward, and the motion was slow and unsullied by configured grace or charm.

he kissed the coiled loops that lay over his knuckles and the light from the tiny window that fell on them. she did not look at him, and did not move, but her breath lingered on his cheek for just a moment. he felt the warm air lift and then vanish into the world, no longer part of her.

i do not think he knew what he did that night, as hours passed and the stars dissolved into skies the color of flamingoes. the city began to stir and with it the filth and waste of progress. she lay curled against him and slept, her bones touching his.

it is not always a beautiful thing, this world. but if beauty is to be found it exists in the moments when we find an honest place to be. i wish for you, such places.

95

unanswered e-mails.

hello darkness

a world without electricity. is really, really quiet. so many candles, so many cats calling outside my window. so much time to think. back soon.

welcome

to my emotional stonehenge. feel free to erect a triolith and make yourself comfortable.

happiness is

an unlimited lingerie budget.

internet romance

push-button pugilism.

free-fall

he is tightly curled and glistening with the sweat of madness, his rage at the world, his utter selfishness.  suddenly he strides confidently to the ledge; the tiny pigeon-shit-spattered brick that offers the choice between mastery and free-fall.  the 'thing' stands on its little brick of choice.  I stay where I am, squashed between a wall and a billboard.

love

it's the letting go that is the real thing.

visibility

our love looks real through this veil of ironies.

living in the wild

never, ever, run from an attacking lion.

...

supercalafragilisticexpialidocious

dear W

i miss 'i love you's' in spanish.

hide and seek

whose turn is it?

anatomy 101

the brain has no feeling.

poetry

writing poetry:

a little like performing open heart surgery on an anesthetized patient...to the sound of Beethoven, naturally.

the formats we come in

on my arm, from wrist to shoulder, 107 different versions of your name.

certain metaphorical memoirs

there are only five miles to the nearest alchemist. and in my valise the pinkest of pink ribbons and a jar of sweet, sticky honey. and i'm reaching for you along dusty tracks and in angel skies and in smudges and whisperings of exotic skin smoothings.

oh, yes, i have dreamed of this. and there have been so many rest stops along the way, my angel dove, and thinking of you at every dirty, greasy, desperation-filled diner.

and everywhere the caged birds sing their mournful songs in lonely night and smog-filled day. as though the more loudly, the longer, the more tumescent the song, the greater the freedom. and many a bird dying in mid-warble and trying so hard to make half-things whole.

and when you set the caged bird free, will its song sound as sweet, my love, as it did when it was singing to be free? and where will we be, my love, if we both run away? and who would we be if we stayed? and did you ever want to love something so badly that to do so would crush the life and breath and blood from its fine, yellow feathers?

and when you kneel and suck the nectar from between my sweet, sticky thighs, darling one, will you, then, be king? and when i grind my hips into yours will the world stop spinning? it's not, you know, an easy question.

still, the ribbon is for you, sweet boy, and i want you, and only you to tug the ends and take it out. and when my hair brushes your hand, you'll know it was me, and only me, that set the caged bird free.

but this is not a love story.

(look instead for a cheap melodrama with a two-ply tissue ending, where the destination keeps hoisting baggage over its shoulder and moving out of my reach).

but, come now, there's a chance that somehow, tonight, you'll find a good cigar, just the right single-malt and a whore willing to grant you your illusion. and who knows, just maybe, by morning the chill might have warmed enough to make you want to do it all again on a day just as vapid.

because we do so want to believe in something whole, don't we?

caricatures

as a girl with a flair for the dramatic and prone to speaking without pause and with passion (while beating my fist on a pillow and waving my hands intensely in the air) i vote for freedom of expression. and when I say what i want, please don't come and burn down my house. but where do I draw the line? i suppose when it would hurt somebody to express myself with such gay abandon. well i try.

they came, they saw

and made such small things a universe.

tears

on my pillow.

perspective: second edition

imagine no book, no poetic reference, no wisdom from gods or google, no mirror image from those who dance the same dance, comforting you in shared experience of this mortal coil. no masters to quote, no woman to soothe into the shared creaminess of submission, no keyboard to tap or sushi to guide you. no demons to slay, no others to imagine you are more than. sweet pilgrim, who are you, now?

such incredibly

beautiful venom. all dressed up in sophisticated sadness.

he

is lost somewhere between a tear and a scream. no woman's arms. no fat cat, no shiny trinket can soothe the little lost boy within.