Eternal Resident

We avoid toll roads,
not just for blue collar pretension,
but for the extra time
between Newark and my house
10 minutes to 25 to I love you
and you are sober
but you kiss goodnight
with heat and hunger
with 5 years of pent up
you and I
never fulfilled
but for 10 minutes
the bathroom in neither of our houses---
as if we were 17.

but you're a homebody now,
and I will undomesticate you
in the sand of the Mediterranean
on the shores of the Nordsee,
I will breathe you life
where you have lost.
I will breathe air
where you have concrete lungs,
flow water where you have dammed,
sow seeds where you have tilled,
an empty field, sought for nothing--
I will flame--
far and away--
my signal fire infinite in a sea of vacuummous darkness
in a place where silence shatters souls and shoulders
in a home
we will build brick by brick

The Summerland Fairytale -- 060709, 10:35 p.m.

Liebe, tell me a story. I cannot sleep, though my body is wretched and little me can't wait to drift away.

Tell me a story of your wild Moroccan men, with sand in their hair and eyes like the evening sun.

Tell me a story -- you're so close I can almost hear you humming in the kitchen, making breakfast with Turkish yogurt and honey, Greek coffee and popeyes the way Steve makes them because we both miss him today. The white walls are shining in mid-morning sun, it's Tuesday... today I will work at the bar, serving drinks and blowing kisses to tourists, and you will lounge in the hammock next to the beach. Your favorite boy of the hour will bring you cool beers with lemon. You can read Proust. Or maybe today, you will not read, you say and laugh s the bread crisps and yum takes over the kitchen. "Maybe today, I will a get a little dog for company."

Maybe today.

Tell me a story. You're so close I can smell you. You're so close.

050709

I'll sleep in sunlight
go to bed with the moon humming
low in my ear sky
with blue scratches and wee babes waking
thier parents before the sun.
I am an in-between moment --
I am promises popping like
fireworks in fog,
holding color, dripping light
across a thousand scattered faces

Liebe, how do you fall asleep writing
with the pen in your hand

the cat's purring

I want Wednesday off. I want to go to the beach with a stack of books and sandwiches and beer.
I like all of these things.

I am cactus shade in the desert
to cool your feet;
chewed upon to quench thirst,
never mind the spines.

Death's a Friend

Delirious atrocities, delicous in its intricacies
emanating from focused candle meditation an
awning under which we fall to sleep, drawn swiftly
towards the spectre of adolescent love and
hidden jewels meant to remain so

in another world, he took a shell to his eat,
softly murmuring the lack of passion for his

art of war.

Fresh among newborn hags, frizzled and haggard
romping in arbors of wine grapes and
in amongst the angels, towards an
effect unknown to cause and weeping weeping to
never land and the broken promises Peter made, as
destined he was to only leave us angry with our siblings

while simultaneously holding out for true love's kiss.
Awakened by dreams of hands legs elbows
in between soft lips and tongues so
torn affronted with decision, we flee
initiated into unhappy cults of marriage
nary lying tiger soft at pit's bottom, seeming
gregarious in nature, eve, but hiding heart's true purpose

nearly eons later, we'll emerge, suckled by
enemies of what our truth stood for, reaching
amicably for friends, groping roughly in the dark,
realising no one is left but our own emptiness
by way of who we forced ourselves to love,
young and reckless and careless with each other.

Bedtime Memories

Indispensable, I wake along radio, craving

nabisco sweets and crumbs to treat my low
efforts and starry mornings, coffee cold
ever as I drive into heat and the misunderstood
deed that comes with being a woman, though

now is not a time falter in my
endless quest for a partner ready to take this
wheel when I am wet with dreams,

moreso when I am wracked with need,
emoting something softer than grace. You
map the choices, make the turns, find
overprice diners, greasy spoon chrome covered
red dives, a place for communists and
ingrates to gather and humour brilliant
effervescence among broken girl
soldiers and the pieces of our childhood

hearts forever entwined by Charming princes
eager to eat and leave a ragged
run of girl pieces where a princess used to
eat so daintily and sweet

without cause of care we run to each other
imitating the lives we thought our mothers
took bleeding from the heart of all thier
heated spats and fluorescent beyond

youth.
Own that fear, whatever it came from &
understand the puzzle wasn't meant to stay the same.

230609

Silent as you speak
mute, my words cut off
a failed conversation and yet
you call me a dream,
a silent film in color
a retro pin-up girl
1970s somewhere in the woods
with my flannel
and megawatt smile

I beg you to to tell me
what the desert smells of;
no answer.
You do not think of smells in terms
of place --
let me tell you a story:

Once upon a new Year's eve
when I was young, just seventeen
my plane stopped in Arizona.

In the causeway,
twixt machine & machine
came a smell of jasmine,
gardenia, oleander, prickly pear,
sweeter than grandmother pudding,
and mixed generously with

expanse.

ten feet I almost dropped
to run into the sand
and live a wild coyote life.
Ten years a desert queen
with no rain,
but these are the choices we make.

210609

The desert calls high
canyons and tree lilies
the Joshua---
King of sweet sight
and never ending star 'splay

The desert calls loud
but pines beat my heart
a drum too distinct to miss
a drum abandoned for a kiss

the men cried out and tore
flags of peace to shreds for rags
to wrap her war wounds in
and planced their hearts on plates
presented spinning
in a microcosm cosmonaut's blissful eyes
searching lurking and ever-perching
as if the wind
could take her away
as if the wind could weep
and make the decision

The desert calls high
the coyotes cry peace nevermore
tired of waiting
falling back to war
on suburban encroachment
towards their ancestral moon

and someone will pay
for all the scars on her heart
somebody will suture up
that nonsense tongue
someday
someday