Moving Parts.

If days turned
as pages do,
perhaps I could find
a lesson
in each fleeting,
flaming moment.

This life is flying
and whipping,
like an eager bird
staggering
in the tumult.

I want to beg
for a time to
lay flat,
a time to tempt
all of the deepest things
to curl quietly
over me,
a time to taste
our air
and smell this
skin
of mine.

This is just
what I am granted,
though:
time, time,
days and moments,
air and flesh.
And it shouldn't
be quite so
tricky
to use my
hands to try,
try and catch this
life-
just some
delighted child
chasing after
magical,
moving parts.

Wormwood.

The cups were clean and copper,
and Mars hung over our heads
as we,
a family in so many senses,
melted sugar and
spoke of dead men
who had once hiked
our mountains.

Then, our chests opened
and we fingered
the spines of
books prized and
dusty.
The green fairies
did their dances
in our smoke rings
and we laughed.

The house was one
of a thousand
tiny memories,
and our talk was
plumb and true.

He forced the pen back
into my hand,
and I kissed her goodnight,
and we stumbled
home
as the sun gently
scowled in
the East.

And so
the words,
strung like brilliant,
dead pearls between
us,
had arced from
one end of our
horizon
to the other.

If a girl sits in a darkened room long enough, strange things can happen. After straining and searching sightlessly, her eyes grow accustomed to the dim. Perhaps, in time, they begin to play their tricks on her; one day, the shadows will begin to dance. The blackness will envelop her like a small child, the pitch cooing in her ear. She is afraid and half-mad, but believes herself no longer alone. How long this tepid life snails on can't be guessed, but it is certain that a sort of cursed comfort will start to soothe such a creature.

And when the day comes when the light is born, such eyes will rear back in delirious fear. Unable as they are to accept the harsh and brilliant world around her, they panic, bulging and welling up in naive protest. For the first time in far too long, life is illuminated.

Of course, as with the darkness, a room filled with light can be adapted to, and our elegant bodies are built to adjust to the light far more quickly than to the darkness. Once the tidal shock wears off and she learns to accept it, the nuances of what surrounds her come into blissful clarity.

First blinded by the dark and befriended by the shadows, then blinded by the light and afraid for the shaded heart she has long kept, the girl has grown, finally, finally, accustomed to the tender and most incredible seed that is love.

The phantoms have been dashed away and, after a year of such novel, dizzying light, her eyes adjust with the heart and mind well enough to see the miracle now standing patiently at her side.

Early Ache.

I ache,
some mornings,
even after a tempest of ugly dreams
and secret fears
is wiped clean from
my green eyes.

I ache for the woman
that I am,
the spirit I am too,
too damn
fretful
to unshackle,
for the woman
that I long so
heavily
to bud into,
for the woman
I worry
you may never
meet.

Sometimes,
I ache so
deeply
that it's all that
I can do
to turn my tired face
towards the sun,
towards you.

With a strong breath,
and a touch of
luck,
I can turn,
and then I may lay,
sore and so capped
with sorrow and stupid,
selfish fear,
and I am
allowed a bit of that
legendary, unyielding
warmth.

My sun,
my center,
my warmth,
who soothes
such tired bones
into stirring,
hoping,
believing in stepping
through
one
more day
as the woman
I am.

Today,
I ache.
Perhaps tomorrow,
I may loosen
the gate.

In Time and Remembered.

Some time mid-day, we laid together, braided up like a piece of old rope,
and before you fell asleep,
your hair fell
there, across your forehead.
I swept it away,
as I always do,
but when I revealed
the skin beneath,
I saw somebody new.
Or old.
Ancient, yes.
The shadow of a man
you once were, some
thousand years ago.

His breathing was slow
and deep,
his beard the same fierce black,
that breath...
the breath I know
and that still stops me fast...
it came, in the same rhythm as yours.

And I looked at him
and some ghost within me stirred...
as if this beautifully familiar stranger
brought out the woman
I may have been some
thousand years ago.

We've been in love
so heavily in love,
over how many lifetimes,
I wonder?

Does it grow deeper?

Do I know you better now?
Is it so easy
and so,
so astronomically much
because we've gone through this
so many times before?

Did we have our lifetime of young love?
Quarreling and licking and throwing
things around like
mad little flames?
Did we shout in glee
into one another's faces,
kissing each scar,
draining the world
in-between, and
praying for a howling night that
wouldn't ever,
ever end?

Did we have our lifetime of comfortable love?
Easy and bored and
so well understood, secure,
warm?
Did we float along
around well-tended
tulips
and bustling tomatoes,
grandchildren underfoot
and white sheets
catching the winds
we were then so
familiar with?

Where are we now?
Where else can we go?

I can feel the sky
gaping open wide,
cracked and waiting,
inviting both you and I
to find what lies beyond,
not just for the world we know,
but for the love we know.

The great heavy
and blissful beyond...
My love.
My love.
My love.

A Lost Sword.

You were there, in an old friend's house, a sabre of a man among a room full of overstuffed chairs and gem-colored pillows. On all fours, you were crawling over the wood floorboards, picking up small pieces of dust and placing them tenderly in a pouch strung around your neck. Your hands were black, and you told me the story of every bit of dust: "This one has seen more moons than any man alive, Queen." "And this one hails all the way from the Edge, carried here on the back of a brave little sparrow." "This one has war wounds, you see, there? So many tales to tell and no voice loud enough to be heard..."

A wind came whispering down the hallway, disturbing nothing but your mop of jet black hair. You were coaled to the elbows by the time you finished, smiling and slick with sweat. I laughed and told you to shower, but you came to me, gliding across the floor, and snaked your arms around my waist. I could smell the salt of you, and dust, but when you kissed me, your tongue was like honey in my mouth. We melted. Your shirt was off, your body steaming in the air. Your teeth found my ears, neck, breasts. We made love against moss-colored paint, our bodies leaving sweet, sticky imprints on the wall. You knelt and laced your arms around my thighs, looking up at me as I touched you gently on each shoulder. After you traced some shape into my belly, you engulfed me.

When we finished, you stared at me, your hands still warm, roaming. I tried to say something, but only an empty breeze came out my open mouth. You watched my neck intently, dirty and smudged from the black of your hands. "Windthroat," you said softly, eyeing me with a grin. You walked to the bathroom and began filling the tub. When I came in, you were already laying in the water, which was emitting a brilliant, golden light. The small room filled with it, and was thick with syrupy clouds of heat. Your eyes were closed, black lashes beaded with water. Even through the gold, your skin glowed milky white.

I watched you for a long time, the tears lost in the dew on my face. I wept, realizing we were too young to know such magic forever.

Only Another Moon.

Women,
soft and kind,
are taught to return
blood and horseshit
with love,
love,
love.

As if there is little else
that such a creature can offer
besides love,
life,
love,
food,
nourishment,
acceptance,
and understanding.
The shortcomings
of such animals
as us
are so often
doused in sex,
or the mouth,
or the bleeding
in-between.

I am swollen
and nearly collapsing
in wrath,
as a woman:
an alluring,
gentle,
bleeding in-between
woman,
who understands,
well enough
but refuses

to ever

receive

the short-comings

of men

simply because

they believe

they are

more enraged,

or hungrier mammals

than

I am.

I can bear children,

exquisite and fragile
and bright with life.

I can feed empty bellies
and coax seeds
out of the Earth.

I can hear you,
accept you,
lick and embrace you.
 

And I can also

easily

breathe fire

more boiling

than any beast

your virility could ever

dream up.

Left Wondering.

I awoke this morning
not smelling like myself.
My hair was matted
like a wild mane,
too full with the pilgrimage
and secrets
from the night before.

I am sore
and I ache
for another pinch,
but I am already home
to so many wounds...

I can feel myself
giving too much away,
and one side of me
feels the luxury
of a burden
beginning to lighten,
while the other
grasps earnestly,
terrified,
to bring the pieces of me
back.

Our lust
is like a great catharsis,
a hollow vessel,
waiting,
a clutter of the strange
and livid.
All of these things,
I sort through,
while I'm still
trying to teach myself
your name.

Time and Grace.

I cannot stand

the thought of

losing another minute,

of allowing my tired,

well-fed hands

from letting one more

moment

seep through them,

like water

untasted

and lost.

I fill my days

with heavy steps,

just gaining on

age and inadequacy...

I paint pictures

of the lives

I long to lead,

and I stay so busy

with that brush in hand,

that I forget,

sometimes,

the brilliance

that already surrounds me.

I tend toward

writing stories

with a great deal of love,

but so often

do not look up

from the page,

do not breathe in

the perfume of time

or caress such weight

with curious fingers.

I waste away

in a dream,

falling in love

with strangers

and the most

blazing essence

of otherwise

weak and witless souls,

and I only grow

more crippled

by my mouth's

inability to form

the words

that could bring such

dreams

to life.

How do I

do it?

How do I live

in the grace

and light

that I so believe in?

There must be

some way

to weave these two

feet of mine

between the

hearty natural

and that terrifying

divine.

I am only growing

hungrier

for such satisfaction,

and can hardly sit here,

still and silent,

as such delectable time continues

to leak away.

My Great Alder.

Into my own
browning bark,
I have been
scratching away
days that pass,
as I wait
and I seek
for him.
So many rings,
I have grown,
while promising
my seedling
self
that there will,
indeed,
come a day
when I find
him-
not the man
I was made for,
but the man
I was made
to stand alongside,
a man who can grow
in his own light,
and who coaxes me
to grow,
as well,
and so very well.

I hunger for a spirit
who can dig deep into something
wholesome and nourishing,
though the mouths of bored souls
may call it dirty
or pointless
or peasantly;
somebody who I may root myself
next to,
share in the delights
of the groundwater
and the beating
of that mother sun
with...

and whose limbs may,
at times,
cast shade over me,
or grow tangled
with the thoughts of my own,
but who remains,
always, a solid
trunk, reaching up,
slowly,
in parallel
with my own self...

somebody who stands
and invites the rains
with me,
for he knows
how much it can
feed us...

and whose dappled branches
may cover so much
of this mess,
in their perfectly
uncontrolled,
beautiful way,
whose lace-like shadows we may divine,
as they map out
the way
towards a better
life
for those
living below.

I wait,
with a quiet
and patient heart,
for a child
of the soil,
who will watch
with keen eyes,
as I mature
from seed
to sprout
to sapling;

who will use
limbs, thick and trustworthy,
to summon me
through the pains
of growing
up and out,
and who will
never forget,
despite how high
his boughs may reach,
that his footing
is still buried
in the sweet, soft mud.

We may grow
there,
together
though apart,
for hundreds of years,
and our seeds
may litter this earth,
and our kin
may grow,
together
though apart,
all around us,
or as far as the winds may
carry them.

And though we stretch
so far for the
heavens above,
the time will come
when we will be
ready
to timber,
and shake the universe
with our holy falling,
and as one rots,
the other may
find nourishment
in the soulful decay.

I imagine
the flowering of
two minds
so hazed by
the concerns
of this world
and this bright,
impossible bloom
that brings our souls
full circle,
before wilting
back into the silence,
the dirt,
the endless and all.

Quietude.

Where are we

if not within ourselves?

Always with eyes,

hands, mouths wide open,

begging and pleading

and screaming

for bread

and answers.

We cry to the skies

and to the shadows of the seas

for secrets

we fear

we are too young to handle.

We search so frantically

for the understanding

to the questions that

burn our bellies so,

that we twist from the haste

into blinded little squonks.

Close the wide, weary eyes;

close the tired, distressed hands.

You need only to

shut your own self up

to hear what you seek.

Mastery through a

gossamer cocoon...

So many worlds

lie within,

rooted deep in our own souls.

We are like wells

without any wellhead

of stone

or brick

or mortar.

We carry, already,

this endless

measure

of wisdom

and nourishment:

the fluid, the clear,

the yielding giver of life.

But when we run around

through the trees

and over the rocks

that pock the road,

we have no time to see

this port, let alone

taste its yield...

for when we jump and shout

and clamor

about it,

trying so hard,

trying,

constantly grasping away,

we cannot see

this cavity,

this keyhole

laying quietly

in the ground.

No: although it touches

the depths of the Earth,

and reaches

into worlds

we currently know

so little of,

we overlook it.

We reach piteously

always up, beyond, outward;

we reach so far away

that we ignore

the well inside.

A palace

is folded beneath our

own angry, stomping feet

and it awaits

with more bread

and answers

than we could ever swallow.

A Chasm.

If I could serve up
my own dripping heart
to you,
the deserving,
the darling,
on some silver platter,
and if I could
watch
as you gobbled up
each beating bite,
would you
come to understand?

Can I coax you
with my own
messy honesty
into following
me?
Be it through
the halls of Hell,
those rank
from my own
devoted making,
or between pillars,
ageless and glowing,
would you
follow me?

If I lay myself,
wide open,
severed cleanly,
celebrated,
at your feet,
would you be able
to see?

I do, at times,
wish so frenziedly
that I could bring myself
to be that girl:
a sprite
revealed, so
wonderfully naked,
understood,
enchantingly
relatable.

Is it only this magical
for souls untarred?
I have cherished
my own scars
for so many years,
I almost forget that some
would have me
name them flaws.
Why are the only bared bodies
we seem to care
to devour
like blank, sleeping fields?
The arch of a hip,
divine and wide,
white, but still,
quiet and fruitless.

Barren holds
little beauty
or relevance,
it leaves
far too much
by the wayside,
as if we ourselves
sweep it all neatly
underneath the rug,
and stand firmly
atop.
Are these
unblemished beings
the few,
chosen,
willing,
unconstrained?
Are they the
only hearts
delectable enough
to be eaten raw?

But no,
no,
I cannot rightly lay
the blame
of my fear for
divulgence
on these old stains,
this bright humanity.
My own light
has been doused
too many times,
as has your own,
but I cannot
point this finger
there.

This is a frozen
hope
for me,
though,
an affliction
I was born plagued with,
a still impossibility.

I carry
far too dark
a chasm within
to share.

Those Met in Midair.

Is it foolish

to feel this?

A sweet crescendo

all over again,

traced up

in the same ways as before,

the same ways

that have so often

led me

by the nose

to aching,

to indifference,

and building cages

of my own.

But we survived

that silly calamity,

like two untamed hawks

meeting in midair,

making love wildly,

and then falling apart

the moment before

they hit the ground.

And will we catch each other again?

The animal within,

she spurns this hope,

yellow eyes narrowed,

disdain written across her chest.

We've done

what was needed,

haven't we?

But I am no simple

cell,

a beast thirsting

for little more

than a full gullet

and a dry place

to haunt.

And that bit of more,

she mollifies this confusion,

knowing

there is an inkling

we may uproot

much more

through one another,

perhaps so much more

than I have ever been able

to rightly handle.

My Siren, She Knows.

I catch an eerie selfishness
inviting me home
some nights.

After my eyes
wade through a day
with brows sagging low
and a sun overhead
burning sternly,
sadly;
you know of those times,
altogether inescapable,
ugly, honest.

When every shoulder

you swarm past

seems to smell like piss

and defeat,

like the aged stranger on the bus,

so far gone:

inescapable, ugly, honest.

I waver to bed,
snap tight my mind,
and notice a terrifyingly familiar
friend, traitor,
lay down beside me.
The mattress sags,
the sheets snare
slightly,
and that hot breath
binds my neck.
I can hear the rattle of death,
and catch the scent

of worlds
far below us.

Come along,
the succubus begs of me.
I remember
hours alone,
together with my own self,
braided with lightness,
quietude, privilege.
Join yourself again.
Images of snow white blankets,
my olive body draped
placidly across them,
and words I couldn't
ever understand
filling up the air,
books stacked twelve high
keeping me company.
Come home.

I imagine the smell
of the Tasman sea,
the sound of prayer flags
tattering in Bhutanese winds,
the thousands of places
I sometimes fear
I can never meet.

I imagine the tender feel
of my own breast
underhand,
unblemished, unworried.
And an ancient inability
to weep for myself;
I fade thoroughly
imagining.

Join us,

she only knows,

hungers for the worst of me,

but the sour breath

is laced with assurance

and allure,

and it is growing

sweeter.

I can almost taste
the honey she strives
to feed me.
But I recall,
with a quick sting,
the knife it is served over.

As a Woman.

Where I come from,

soft is a dirty word

that sits disagreeably in the mouth.

For years,

I was scolded into believing

I was born carrying something

ignoble and secret

between my own two legs.

I held my breath well,

though,

as the waves of animosity

licked at my young body

and tried to creep quietly

into my blushing ears.

I have kicked my path
through this life
telling myself that I am more.
I cannot be anything less.
I nod, understanding with ease,
I was simply grown this way.

It is a scrap that blares

like a writhing child within.

This is no light and tender life,
not even when the waters

seem to still.

There are days,
sometimes,
when it feels as if
everything my long fingers touch
explodes with a
savage fury,
this stubborn fucking mind
that cannot bring itself to accept
the way of things,
encircling all that it can
in the fight.
Days like these,
my world is ablaze.

Some women, those with good disposition

and beautiful teeth

that hide so well the snake's tongue behind,
have tried to teach me
the way.
This way, you know,
it is comfortable.
It is easy, they say.
Fortunate women,
they promise,
are well fed
and given a respectable nest
to do with what they wish.
Keep the kettle warm, darling,
your insides, too,
and button your lips tight.

It is comfortable,
it is easy.

How easy, I wonder,
can it be, with twin petals for lips,

gentle, yet resilient and blooming,
and so many words to brew within,
to live so somberly,
wanting nothing more
than to scream?
To feel that howl
of an animal so far past defeated
that it has transformed

into something more,

or less,

but altogether indistinct

and strange,
yes,
to feel that howl
echo with such strength
and knife-like rancor
through the skull
of the one
keeping you close,
mummified.

Sacred,
the lover may call you,
complicated,
other-worldly,
precious.
These are the reasons
he winds you up, tenderly,
of course,
with bits of twine and string,
words that bite,
hands immodest and harsh.

You are my beloved,
a whisper so believable
that you feel, maybe,
you just may do better
so protected,
held down, enthroned.
Alone.

We are both loved and feared
so deeply
for what we are
by nature
that there is simply no other way.

This is not our world,
and we acknowledge it wryly
with faces
painted, veiled, lost,
though, somehow, still laughing.

The feminine:
a sea of something more,
though sometimes all my eyes take in
is a sea of silent mouths,
holding fast, unmoving.

I suppose it is no small wonder
I feel so strange and detached from these sisters,
the lone lout with my teeth well bared.

Changing Roots.

There is an uncontrollable changing here, something so cutting and strange I can taste it on the tip of my tongue. In this place where I find myself, alone and glowing through, it is changing. This is no simple or poetic chrysalis such as I've fawned over before, but a remarkably tangible and vivid metamorphosis, a metamorphoses of something decidedly rooted within my own mind.

I am nearly flowing away with the swell it has left me with. I might find myself carried straight away if I didn't smell something much stronger brewing at the same time.

Where am I heading? What if...? I've closely ploughed my head clean off with questions and fanciful, fearful possibilities. I used to imagine that those with the time and devotion to reflect on their own hearts have the clearest understanding of the unattainable essence we are all bottled so tightly with. Cannot meditation lead to some sort of ferociously beautiful clarity? But I have felt, within myself, that the more I think of something, the more I wind up muddling it up so fiercely that I'm left with an entirely separate substance, so distorted and tangled that it isn't simply unrecognizable, it's desecrated, cruel, mocking.

These ravings mean little, I know, even for myself to rifle through, but I have done a fair job of fooling myself into trusting that I need some sort of mile marker, a starting point I can reflect back to after these roots have been re-routed and restored to an entirely new and venerable identity.

I'm almost jesting with myself, but, as I said, I'm quite literally billowing away...

Dayless, as we are.

I feel a great enchantment
bearing down upon me
lately, and though its
weight is nearly stifling
I couldn't imagine
a lovelier way
to have learned your name.

The First,
you call yourself,
some immortal balance
of age
and spirit,
blood
and teeth,
left
and right,
too exhaustively right.

I think to myself
where have you been,
these thousand years
I've lived
as I have lived,
breathing in synchronization
only with ghosts,
livid and sweet?

And I think to myself,
afraid of such incandescence,
it may have been
a millennia,
a vast stretch
of dry, barren waste,
since we've kindled
together,
but my bones,
they know
better.

Has it,
could it have been
and endless fable,
between us?
A pyre
so bright,
so alive with
mind,
fervor,
the cluttered veins
of all we have been,
that even the limbs
from this Earth
could never fully quench it?

My breath
holds tight in my chest,
waiting silently
to watch
as we crack,
desperate and deep,
into another
life.

Love.

I understand now the importance of having something to do. Whether it be a hallway that needs repainting, an instrument that needs deep attention, or a sudden interest in Japanese cooking, busy hands are always happier (or at least less consumed with sorrow). As a heart attempts to mend itself, the mind has to stay occupied with other, less important and less painful, things. If one's mind truly focused on the act of salvaging a tattered heart, it would surely force that heart to cease its relentless beating.

I always figured matters of the heart and mind to be worlds apart, almost impossibly different. Here, it seems, is where I get myself into trouble. Situations in life, I assume, have little bearing on matters of love. The silent, looming shadows of the past, likewise, should have no bearing on where the heart decides to travel. Long-dead romances, small fragments of dreams, and the places of quiet stars in the sky: so many excuses that I trusted never had the strength to crack the bond of love. How terribly wrong I've been proven to be...

Is it simply that my heart remains woefully wild and untamed? Unchecked by the pesky burden of logical oversight, I find myself throwing all that my arms can lift away for love. Love, ah! That one spark of real life magic that transcends everything; that unbearably beautiful choke-hold that brings all else to such new, pulsing life. Or is it just me, my foolish, thoughtless poem of love? It must be so- I've found myself alone in love. Alone in love. And still, I am here, trumpeting its deceivingly sweet song from every hill my tired legs will climb.

Over the years, I'd like to think I have come to understand the art of love. To love one's parents as I do is far beyond this realm here, I am certain, though it took many heart-wrenching years. To love one's child as I do is intensely unfair, for we've found in each other a near holy pair. To love one's self as I do, honestly and justly, has proven the most difficult feat, indeed. Not to sway overboard, one way or the other, but to see one's self fully and separately, and to love and cherish it, has been a lifelong, though startlingly precious, journey.

And to love one's mate, with all the compassion of a mother, all the thorough and tricky understanding of a friend, and all of the truly unyielding passion of a lover, well, I believed, for a short and vivid time, that I had mastered that form of love as well. Egad!

I find myself here, alone but for all the other loves I have divined, and I have trouble feeling anything but hollow. I forget, in my despair (as people always do) that three great bodies of love minus one does not amount to zero, of course not. I may feel hollow, but I remind myself that I'm a far cry from empty.

I do think I understand that shade of love, the love that has gone missing in my life, which is a small ember of warmth for me during these hollow days. So the struggle is over for me. It seems the time has come to hush that excitable heart of mine and sit quietly for a while. As a moth to a flame, love will find me.

With Myself.

There is such a delicious comfort
beginning to flow through my blood
Overnight,
I feel altogether brave,
gentle, strong,
fair.
I woke up with arms
so pure and willing
to wrap around their own
neighborly torso.
My thumbs kindly rub the rifts
running along
my elbows,

and my tongue
greets each
imperfect tooth with
joy.

There will always be
issues to overcome,
but I believe we're
getting closer
to finding some sort of
peace, deep in
the belly.
Through my trials with
anger,
desperation,
bitterness, and sorrow,
I have fallen
in love.

Moving.