remembering gaia

stop

breathe

eye vs. eye

"you know, don't you, how much i despise all this touchy-feely stuff?"

"yes"

"it's not that i have anything against feelings you know, I just don't...really know why they're there"

my eyes have become rather large. the soft strains of guitar music beginning to permeate my consciousness.

"have we met?"

photograph

his eye is intimate agony against her skin.

she is never part of that dull landscape

unspoken words fracture
the air between them.

through the lens she smiles
he screams.

beautiful girl

let it go.

mostly

she loved the way he played.

interlude

"it gets really dark in here, sometimes" said the girl with the butterfly wings

" i don't mind the dark and i'm not scared" said the boy with the beautiful blue eyes. "i'll sit with you a while. Your eyes will adjust to the light"

evening

the girl liked the way beads of sweat collected in the small of her back. and the way her breasts fell together when she lay on her side. she liked the way she smelled and how her panties fitted her just right.


she moved restlessly under the covers. she liked the way the breeze touched her bare shoulders and the way the sheet felt under her hip. she could feel a single tendril of hair lifting in the breeze tickling her ear and she liked the way she chose not to wipe it away.


a single candle flickers near the bed and the girl watches the shadows it throws against the wall. she watches the tree from her nest. it's majesty, the lights playing on the resin in its leaves. she likes the way she can hear owls in the distance and how she knows a peacock will sing at precisely 5h15 a.m. hopeful in the dawn.

vortex

the difference between you and i she said, planting her feet squarely on the ground, is i don't believe you've ever played with glitter.

I don't think you'd know how to open the bottle, toss it into the air and dive underneath it for no reason other than to feel it fall onto your skin.

i don't believe you'd know how it feels to want to lay down amongst flower petals and feel them against your naked skin, just because they're there and you can, and isn't that what life's really about?

it's friday and you've suddenly remembered.

"it's no matter", I say.

"i haven't really been here anyway"

urgency

"I've no time for idle anythings" she whispered. to nobody in particular.

she pushed her hair up onto the top of her head then slowly let it fall again. the sigh that escaped her lips woke nobody.

slowly she sank her head down to the desk and rubbed the aching space between her shoulder blades.

she stayed there for a very long time.

dreamchildren

they feared the ancient spaces, the tiny rivulets of wonder between breath and blood
so long hidden, now, in locked boxes underneath beds.

in pockets against strong thighs. inbetween the pages of dusty books.

the recognition hurts them, like white-hot fire lashing against their bare knees.

dying to warm the still-flickering embers of their fragile hearts.

to resurface in the slightest whispered breeze.

william's brittle eden

some days I live in reverse.

but you've already heard this story.

remember?

“once upon a time a princess lost her way in the woods, and try as she might she could not find her way home”

it happens. and not just in fairy tales.

these are days of kneeling horses and unframed mirrors. here, juicy, gypsy violins mock this Eden face and I follow your grassy imprints into the olive grove, once again. and again. and again.

and you’ll adore me and undress me, and I won’t say no because I never did and I always do, and it’s who we were:

juicy

and I’m soothed by the rhythm of “that” song, the corazon of that song. and all its bloody damnation. as though somehow you are forever trapped within it, a tiny chalcedony butterfly.…..

“and I’ll do anything you ever dreamed to be complete
little pieces of the nothing that fall
oh, put your arms around me
what you feel is what you are
and what you are is beautiful”

i might have listened harder, heard the inequalities in those words but I played for higher stakes, and I lost. and i don't go there anymore.

later, when the Braille days move forward, I’ll tell you that I didn’t lose the lesson, just you. I’ll tell you that your red leather dreams were just that. dreams. i’ll convince you that this misted season is over and that, you, philosopher king, have been relinquished to the engravings of the past. i can be quite convincing about the white cliffs of Dover. especially since you’ve tumbled over them.

next time will be different. next week, next year, next month, I won’t let you take me there.

and then I remember my twelfth year. i think about the boy, Sean, shy and lanky…a philosophical politician…smiling sadly and handing me a love poem scrawled on a piece of pink paper, a drawing of a dove flanking the title. and, just for a moment, I feel, no, I know that love in all its forms leaves little pieces of hope-etched pinkness curled up inside your heart. And that you’ll come back again for more.

even when it’s over.

but next year, I won't go with you. I'll stay home and eat watermelon instead

won’t i.

(lyrics from "Slide" by the Goo Goo Dolls)

cancer

you are a festering whore.

perfect?

not here, not love.

inner knowing

to touch you, even once, would be to never walk away.

mr rorschach

i know this might come as something of a surprise.

you and i both know how long i've held on to the dusty, rose-colored corners of my mind. and i love a titillating mystery the way i love old books and what did or didn't happen at roswell.

but quite honestly, these cards you've been showing me...

i'm beginning to see, well...

inkblots.

moving house

export quality arrgghh.

irritation

there's something about him that i just can't stand about myself.

you exist, i'm sure

but only in the spaces between breaths. a bond built on a lie means you have to keep pretending it's something it's not.

what is it, exactly, we're pretending it's not?

on any other night

this isn't a love-hate relationship.

it's just love.

tossed around on stormy seas, a sullen strand of seaweed fastened tightly around its wrist.