eleventh hour tanka

late night
early spring
we roast marshmallows
over zippos
and pray through the burns

Vintage, baby.

No Trace Left

Ever since I was young, I have shared beds on sleepovers. The feeling of companionship, the errant limb occasionally finding itself wrapped around your waist, and the warm body next to you. That's love.

Now that I'm older, my mother thinks I am doing illicit things with everybody who shares my bed. I don't know why she seems to think that. I only did illicit things with one girl. And now, there's no trace left.

One thing about sleepovers, the morning is sad. The end of the companion for a night, it's back to a cold, lonely bed. Especially after your sleepover friend leaves.

You go about your room, picking up the clothes thrown around the room, carefully placing them in a hamper by the door. Remember how she said, in a low voice, "Fair is fair." and she made you take off your shirt, too. Now, you move to the bed, removing pillows from the pillowcases, thinking of her hair. Brown hair, falling in the way until she asks you for a hair tie, which you give gladly. The pillow cases, too, go in the hamper.

Before touching the bedsheets, you remember her body, smooth as velvet, soft as silk. You remove them, balling the sheets up, tossing them over your shoulder. All that is left is the fold-up futon, disguised so carefully as a couch against the far left wall. She pushed you against it and kissed you in the red light of your lava lamps.

You fold the futon, and put it against said wall. The floor is bare. There is no trace left of the beautiful girl who shared your bed She has gone home, back to her boyfriend.

You both must pretend it never happened. The only ones you will ever tell are each other. Every time it happens... if it ever happens again. The secret smiles, the too-long, but too-short-to-bed-suspicious hugs of congratulations, and the way you look at each other and laugh whenever somebody mentions sex. Finally, the note she wrote on your wall in a secret place that no one will ever see.

There are no traces of her, except in the darkest of your secret places.

-October 2003

the littlest wrecking ball

you're a disaster unfounded
by love and light
a wrecking ball
of felonic misdemeanors
overthrown by manners
and the cruel secret smiles of children
lying in the sun

you're a disaster unknown
a devastation of
proportions and quantities
and lovers left behind

a disaster of physical mind-melds and
science fiction easily unraveled
a technobabble princess
unfounded
lost in galactic override
a beautiful disaster -
you.

Tar, tar a rún

Tar, tar a rún
come and sit in the smoky bar of my childhood
let me spell love in the dust
of melody and microphone
of harmony and heat
sweetly o'er-reached by soft drums
in a distant, dark melting night

Tar, tar a rún
come and speak through your eyes
over skin and into blood
spell love for my feet
in a beat I will always dance to
knowing the shaking behind my nightmares
is sweetly o'er-perched by steady breath
in a distant, dawn condemning night

Tar, tar a rún
come and let lips close
come and let hair entangle
come and banish sundays 'yond early afternoon
Tar, tar a rún
come, come, my darling
come, come, my love
Tar, tar

To-do list

1. Grocery list
1. Pudding
2. Tuna fish

2. Work
1. Find some
2. Rewrite resume
3. Figure out humorous, non-pretentious, beautiful cover letter

3. Reading/Fun
1. Memory Keeper's Daughter
2. War Is A Force, again and again until I can haiku it
3. Buy a gun. Learn to shoot it.
4. Avoid murderous rampage

4. IMPORTANT
1. Breathe
2. Let Go.
3,. Pet bunny
4. Play guitar
5. Kiss everyone

5. Clean room/house
1. Reorganize
2. Unpack
3. Wash walls
4. Fall the frack asleep
5. Wake up
6. Make dinner

6. Poetry
1. write it
2. share it
3. over-analyze
4. under-analyze over-analysation
5. Hyperventilate
6. Post
7. Wait.

7. Living
1. Return heart/exchange it??
2. Send Matt his shirt
3. Send Matt my undies???
4. Find new curtains
5. Don't panic
6. Panic
7. Quit smoking again
8. Steal mom's cigarettes

8. Other
1. Write to Jessie
2. Write to Eli
3. Call Brittany
4. Do not get seduced!
5. Seriously, I mean it
6. No, really.
7. Call Dan
8. Rinse, repeat
9. Call Matt
10. Say I love you
Say I love you
Say I love you