reflection is not what the mirror provides

in pictures you are a ghost
legs tangled together
a trail of bruises, scratches, unidentified
mishaps line your calves
your thighs disappear beneath the bulk
of your laptop
and a cat stretches his paws
over your kneecap
i can't see your face,
your hands,
not even a torso
to distinguish a beating heart
i deprive you of life
in these shiny rectangles of "memory"
because you can't teach the heart to remember
lies

It's Not About You

I said: It's getting better. Stronger, longer, I feel my edges sparking and the world goes blurry. I'm getting older.

You said: It's not about getting older; it's about who you're with.

I thought: It's not about you.

There was cold air around us, always. My heart was snowed in, plowed into a corner by your stick-shift jerks and shoves. It was always winter. We were winter.

It's still getting better. Stronger, longer, tricked with a short blast followed by a languid, shivering crescendo. My edges are thinned and my world is clear-skies. I've gotten older, again.

And it's still not about you.

Scenes from the foyer

Today you are pressed against my closed front door. I am on you like fire: our bodies pressed furtively against each other, mouths connecting in a spreading spark that floods our senses with long-harbored lust.

We are explosive, today.

You are kissing me, moving between sharpness and air, lacerating my thoughts with each flick of your tongue against my lower lip. And I am kissing you. I am drawing your upper lip into my hungry mouth, teasing the tip of your tongue with my own, moving the emptiness away from us and lulling us into the depths of one soul-haunting kiss.

I can feel your heartbeat pumping through the fabric of your t-shirt -- the one I ache to tug over your head. The one I have seen you in countless times before and always, the same thought: too much fabric.

You slow, I follow. Your breath is rapid. Mine is- is it?- cautious. I realize that my hands are rounding your hips and yours are wrapped around me and your head is tucked between my shoulder and my neck.

Your lips are still moving.

impromptu art

The thoughts that we most want to desert us

are the very thoughts that spin, twist,

warp and presuppose judicial thought:

they are the pieces that wreck loose and

unnecessarily. Sense thrusts

where objection smears, where the endangered foreplay

of awkward moments courses over every

pore, every sharpened breath.

I want you more than lines can conceal

and my mind fails to leave this alone. There are few

reroutes, less than six detours to take

and I am left awash in the swell of wonder:

can you hear me?

But love is an afterthought, I think, it seems.

Spatial attraction rips through these cranial torrents

and I think I cannot speak simply

because simplicity escapes me. Simple is not always

easy.

Of course if you were easy:

I wouldn't want you this way.

Where the brainstorm trails, you wander after

and there is always room for your hand in mine,

or: there would be

if I knew how to tell you.

obscure_object unsent #2

To you:

Have you the slightest imagination as to how much I desire you? How badly I want to simply feel your mouth breaking against my own, how I want the crush of our forms, together, endless?

...how when your name is so much as mentioned in passing, or directly to me: my eyes (so I've been told) alight into sparkles and a smile breaks unconsciously over my face?

How I imagine you, still, somehow, just don't know.

And how I falter in wanting to let this loose into the space between us, directly into your ears, into everything and nothing all at once.

I want you. Terribly.

I thought you should know.

these things

i want you here, to rest between my words
and to arch between my hands.
the weary path of secret signals
threads around the spaces between us.
and there is nothing within
save for passing thought
and the heady complexity
of trespassed desire.

so simple, so finite,
so thorough and thick.
i do not wish to coat this desire
with lies and presupposed suggestion.
i think you should know
this want? this yen?
this tireless repeat of your skin
flushed with mine, wrapped beneath
the lifting air of sunset, sunrise,
midday, evening: everywhere?

you and i:
maybe we should.

To The Ends

You may not understand this, the way my verbs

stick to nouns and decapitate adjectives

as they hurtle themselves up from my throat.

This glitch in communication-

the part where I couldn’t force

ripples of truth from my depths of discontent. Because

I never told you this, and it seems I never will, I can say it

now. Love doesn’t cover those years

but I don’t know what does. I wanted

your body. I wanted you to be

whole.

I wanted to grasp your demons and shatter them,

rip them limb from limb with the nakedness

of my fingers,

the same fingers that warmed the lengths

of your body, the ones that coursed you between

crashes of orgasms, the very fingers

that enclosed your hands

into my palms. And I never managed

to hold you tightly enough. Strapped to me like a bungee cord

and my heart suffered the lurch and drag

of your eclipsed mind from my waning strength, your charred

sense of truth from my hopes

for (our) balance. The stillness of destruction

would not let me breathe.

This picture

Sketch the walls first:

the slates of color washed about strips of blank

canvas, unburdened by what may lie in this past

and shielded from what may yet come.

My heart is not like that. It never

has been.

But the walls streamline the scatter of my life

within these boundaries- the flourish of self

locked down by expectations and qualifications.

It doesn't ever matter

because my mind flails like a squid thrown from home.

Space divided by time and conflict; sometimes

I'm glad you're not here.

this is the way I want it:

Today, the scene is a kitchen.

Obviously, there's a level of irony here (where I've come from / where I'm going, if you will-- but also you: you in the wintry kitchen). There's also, you should know, a certain level of unbridled passion hanging over and fueling through this scene.

We are there, alone. Whoever was with us has left. It's dark, late, the season has changed and the warmth around us is a combination of words unspoken and kitchen mechanics.

I don't know who shifts, I don't know which one of us turns.

All I see is the blurred composition of our heads bending into one. Mouths locked, lips intertwined. My hands running the length of your back over and over again; your arms encircling my body with a sear of tentative fire.

It is so vivid today, I can nearly taste it. You. I can nearly taste you.

catch & release

Flash interruption: here and (too quickly) gone. Her eyes were the most crystalline of blues-- and I think they always are, but I've somehow missed that. I don't miss it anymore; ever since she stopped being black and white and edged into this surreal world of piercing color, I can't miss any of it/her. I don't know how she's managed to keep me hooked for 3 years, but my god, the things I still want to do to her: over, and over, and over again.

hallucination.

It may have been a creak in the house, or maybe
it was the churning, squealing repetition of the Pathfinder's fan belt-
a noise I've heard countless times before, a teeth-clenching
screech that eased its deterioration into my ears
starting last spring. April 2008, to be exact,
the dismal aftermath of our first major dissemination,
the time you called me from 300+ miles away
blamed me for your tragic downfall (was this the third? sixth?)
told me you couldn't stand be away from me, but "told"
isn't anywhere near to the synthetic thud of your voice
which sometimes still ricochetes in the most tender spots of my body.
But this time, this night,

one week ago. It wasn't a creak, and it wasn't the squeal
of damaged car parts. It wasn't quite the thunder of your anger
vibrating from miles away. The dining room floor sprawled
beneath my bare feet and my body stilled, tensed, stilled,
drew up its breath and focus. Your voice still lives in this house.
Its plaintive pain-fueled echo

bruised me back to that particular October
the night I couldn't find you
the night you sat on the floor of my closet
legs bent and folded, torso hunched, eyes glazed
and full of calculated surprise as though
you knew I would rescue you, there,
two empty prescription bottles nestled against your thighs
your stare blank and uneven, turning to me
as I pushed open the door
and you didn't even try to hide
the blood, the flashing promises of black and blue,
your gripping hand aiming, puncturing, over and over
into your forearms and thighs, each penetration
depositing life-saving poison directly into your waiting blood stream.
All I knew to do was hold you against the shakes
and endless chattering of teeth, sleight and stutter of tongue,
dire lack of apology or explanation. And while you never

called out to me that night: two years later,
your absence finally clear, your voice let loose
in the skeletons of this house, finally
drawing the ruptured strength from my knees and heart.

prelude to disaster

if that was love, you can count me out. equations
don't mean shit to me anyway-- i nearly failed fifth grade math
and i'm incapable to adding up the number of times
you were good to me
and subtracting that quantity from the number of times
you so severely fucked me over that i couldn't find my legs
couldn't recognize strength to walk out
leave, or
disappear. & you told me: "this is who i am;
i will never change." which i must have thought was endearing
or cute or something that made my heart beat twice its limit
because i must have believed, then, that you were honest.
like the time you said: "i'll never do that to you, i'll never treat you
that way" and i fell for it- because that was thing to do, when you're falling
in love, you fall for everything- but the thing is- can you see this?-
what you did was incomparable to those tedious flits of fuck-ups.
you may not have fucked the other girl
but you let her in, and out, and in and out.
do you even remember how many times
you tried to kill yourself
in the midst of our love-struck wanderings?
do you remember august, in gramercy. the fight
with your mom- how you were "happy" but she pushed you
over the edge and it scared you how everything was good
and you still wanted to die.
or late january, in essex. your dad
wrestling a gun out of your hands. and how you'd begged me that very day
to come up early. and i couldn't. i should have known, or-
that big fight, april?, when you fell away
just to enjamb yourself back ever so slightly to let me know
that yes, you'd had to go to the hospital. because you wanted
to hurt yourself. but you didn't want to talk about it.
for days.
again. and then that summer.
it was always as if i was one step behind you,
never seeing what should have been so obvious.
when you tried to end us in june- because you didn't know how to be happy-
what a fucking cop-out (even though it's true). and the shitstorm of georgia:
the yelling, the mania, the constant fights, the ruin of two summer weeks.
enter october, 2007. someday i'll ship you a prize
awarding you the esteemed award for contributing heavily
to the worst month of my life.
i guess you can't understand (or care) that every time i open my closet
i see you there, cross-legged on the floor, your eyes wide and stark
blood and bruises caking your arms, epi-pen angled toward your veins,
scratches and pin-pricks spotlighting where you'd already stabbed,
empty pill bottles next to your feet. how i held you that night,
my arms a vice grip around your trembling form. we couldn't stop
the shaking: not then, not ever. and then-
no, it wasn't over-
how weeks later you tugged me into your grasp; we were standing
in a door frame, essex again, you said how sorry
you were, and how embarassed
you were. how that wouldn't happen again. and truly, it wasn't until months later-
april again, 2008, when you called me and ranted, bitched,
threw a fucking fit and ended us. then checked yourself into the psych ward
not two hours after that hang up.


that's just it.
those weeks.
that's where
we are now.
not us, but
time. and it
shakes me
to my core.
april-may.
i won't give
you my tears
my heart
my lifeline.
not anymore.
you had
your chances.

Fuck You

"Fuck you" doesn't cut it anymore. They're just words,

language strung beneath the gritty shit

that truncates my soliloquies and tequila-capped one-liners.

FUCK you doesn't tell you what I feel.

The vowels can't reach around their horse-shoed roundness

to slap the things-I've-never-told-you across your face,

and the consonants, hard and thick against my teeth, swing

open-hinged in the bluster of (what I intend to be a) frozen

downpour of tucked-away truths. But honesty never floods out that way;

it sneaks behind years of calm cool steady and fuck YOU

sounds too much like i hate you leave me alone you don't mean fucking

shit to me and these aren't lies, not anymore. And if I had the vocal energy

I might scream and whisper FUCK YOU fuck you FUCK YOU fuck you

over and over again, till my throat breaks raw and danger-red,

till my mouth and arms seize and spasm, and till my nails

snap off clean from clawing boundaries

and barriers, leaving new skin scathed and pale,

but there isn't any blood because blood is red

and red is love

and love was you

and you were blood but

fuckyou is boiling and endless, sworn like a furtive groan-

like a scalded wound peeled open again (and again, again).

Fuck.

You. 

This drops like dead weight, and "fuck you"

doesn't mean anything to me.

Not anymore. 

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 

Sometimes I take the fishing line that is twisted around my neck

and tug a little harder, testing the cut against my skin and I

pick up scissors, weigh them against gravity, slide my fingers

into gaping plastic holes. Open, close. Open, close.

Today I'm thinking about time. Twelve hours
every weekend, strapped into my car. 360-odd miles,
the ones I counted to the music breaking into my wandering mind,
and the ones that escaped me in a mad blur. I don't know what this means:
my drive, metaphorical and not, my pull to your push, the serenade
of touch and go, check your brakes, don't get too close and
why aren't you coming closer. 9:00 or after, picking up my feet
when all I wanted was to drag- the mess of your existence
scattered over every spare space. The dust was intoxicating
and I liked it best when you were awake, reposed
and smiling, your small hands outstretched to draw me in.
Sometimes you slept, your mismatched form twitching
and your mouth slack as I stood in the doorway, listening,
waiting, my inner battle of fear and hope pummeling against
my ribs. We were a tragedy, puppets strung out
in interrupted consciousness, jerking our own strings as the stream of life
passed neatly as though nothing outside existed.

pinot grigio

here's the story
of rivers and tendrils of anticipation
the walk of purpose trapped beneath
everything i haven't been able to say.
i can do this now, under the wicked spell
of wine and collapsed thoughts.
there are tremors that shake me awake
in the deepest of nights, the darkest
of dreams and wandering chance.
you know probability like i understand nothing
more than syntax and what rests,
shivers, between the finest of lines. these shakes
and missteps filter through the awkward harmony
and i know everything hovering beneath the trespass,
i see the trials and the fears, the daydreams
mottled with sensibility and over-thinking.
i feel, and reel from, the incessant clunk
of arbitrary routine, responsibility, matter-of-fact
quantifiers but that's not quality: that's misstep.
what i know is rhythm and drive, possibility
interlaced with theory and you can fill in the blank
because i've already said too much.

dissemination

charcoaled fine lines dissolve into the background;
dusk's drop cloth of an orange-rimmed sunset
glistens the tightrope that swings between headway
and steady every day nothing.
gently with the rolls of thunder fracturing in the distance
escaping light breaks over interrupted movements-
the armored trepidation of reality- a tender and tenacious crawl
between yes, no, what you think you know, and what you think
you've been able to say without exactly saying.
this double-edged weapon of verbal explosion
illuminates an obliquely wandering path
far past the horizon, beyond promise and doubt, and it blinks
like headlights or maybe it's blinking like one a.m. in union square-
which, while we're there:

i wish i was still in new york city
where these stomping ruminations get caught, dragged beneath
the break-speed whirl of taxis, the tumultuous ease
of rush hour footsteps. and the lurch of the train
disseminates patterned thoughts, driving conscience
from the unspoken script that multiplied and murmured
endlessly. but here, outside the city limits,

this weighted dance swings heavy and low. wrenched
from the ashen strokes of able distraction, these delicate lines
alight and break from their suffocation, heaving themselves
into the careening traffic of my mind. red lights failed me long ago.
and it rushes me back
to the place where notions
can't break into words thrust from my mouth
and i trip over instead of saunter between the lines,
it's just that, to say, to explain:
when i don't answer i'm always
trying to say yes.

inside

i could spin you indecent rhymes, the kind riddled
with haunts and maybes, the kind you don't leave behind
but take with you, carry like a second beat in your heart. i want to know
if i dissolve you. unscripted, uncoded-- tell where it is
that i moved effortlessly into you because every time i shut my eyes
all i see is the glistening movement of realizing
i don't know how to walk away.

tipping (edited.)

you have no idea,
but i fucking adore you.
this little competitive thing? only increases the desire.
i was told today that
i light up when i talk about you,
that my eyes get wide, my smile glows.
i'd be lying if i said i didn't know
what that means.
but-- i don't know how you've managed to get so far
under my skin. i thought i had boundaries, i thought
i still had walls. you're in (and i don't know how)
but you don't know (and i don't know how).

this bridge we've built / i don't need it anymore

I have wasted tears, drowned myself in self-pity and explicit confusion. A missed call, missed signal, no sign of entry. An armed robbery of my heart, you palming your words as weapons, such an archaic tactic but one that levels me to angry silence- and tears, those tears. Where you simmer brilliantly in carelessness and arching brick walls, I bend to sadness and melodramatic heartache. Our acid neutrals clashing, burning, fissuring into bloodied drops of mercury, splitting and running off into the desolate corners we avoid.

I know what it is like to be adored, to be obsessed over, to be desired and wanted, even just liked. The exhiliarating ego rush, even if the feelings are less than returned, and the overwhelming sense of want crushed into the words and gestures of someone that isn't the woman I'm with. It's too much, too little, not enough.

I abuse fragments. I don't draw clear boundaries. I overstep lines, reformulate while I'm playing the game and winning/losing; I never win/lose, I always finish. And I am no angel because I don't know how to say: "I have a girlfriend, and I love her." Instead, my grey area speaks for me and says: "I'm unattainable but you should like me anyway because I love to have my ego fed."

And if I never thought my life would catch up with me, trip me and toss me down a flight of splintered stairs, I was disillusioned from the start.

Stand up with a backbone you've whittled from bamboo and snowflakes. Dissolve your spine into salt and sand, brushburn your knees over the fire you started. I can't listen because I watch, and I can't watch because I don't know how to see.

My heart is a bruised icon, a landmine, a landfill, a dumping ground, and a harbor. And you're not getting your hopes up. I got rid of my hopes over a year ago. I just wanted you to know.

be still / anyone can see

I cannot see myself the way that
you see me. And I do not want to, because
I am unfamiliar with the taciturn reactions
and blood-whittled avoidances.
And sadness avoids me where frustration
causes over, tricking through wind eroded
shatters in my skin, shards of emptiness filtering
past photo album inconsistencies.
I can't give up on love
but love has run from me, its nightmare ribbons
trailing through abandoned hallways,
turning over blurred photocopies. If I relied on emotion,
I would cry over the phone, belabor my lingering
insecurities, and aim for sealing the cracks with dried
saliva. But I have lost my tears to something less palpable,
something less worth my time. Where you remain
is a vast horizon, one littered with trepidation
and senseless reprieve, one I cannot reach
nor see.