Racing Home

Heart pounding
Wrenching
Crying
Tears of blood
That pump through the veins
In thrombotic succession
Firing each aortic cylinder
In musical rhapsody
Whose lyrics are the story
Of vulnerability denied
Then rising
As if lifted from a coma
Pure honesty dictates the wanting
A real connection; real love
Giving everything to the finish line
Driving it home
Tank full of desire
Revving the pedal
Feeling the surge
High performance engine
Shift into my lane.

Jazz Hands

Carve the words
Into the chest of that tree
Immutably growing
Thrusting forward
Into the blue stratosphere
Recyclable bark shed
Tossed askew
Wind wayward swept
To the buds of good taste
Sniffing out decay
Rooting out winter’s casting call
The roles you and I
Would both be well-suited to play
Garb us in richly lined costumes
As the soil washes aside to reveal the roots
Suckling on a mineral idea
Reflected in your eyes
Glint scheming with purposeful honesty
Despite itself
In your self-deluded reflection
Poised above a few bottles
Listening to what may fall from my lips
Mopped from the slippery floor beneath you
Where you may have felt the slide
Or you may have mistaken it
Just as easily.

Blossoms

Stranded cyclamen
Alone in an empty break room
Withering without the sun’s attention
Desperately longs for the rain
As it wills its dead branches into the air
Like Atlas with only memories to uphold

Then one day a young woman finds it there
And identifies with its brave attempt to live
Bereft of the things that would make it flourish
She stares at it long and hard
Selecting which stems to prune
Understanding where the blooms should spring

Water succulently penetrates its way down
Into the comforting solace of the soil
Now damp and nurturing
A safe haven of growth and new life
Leeches its way into the foundation
Of the dreary plant now quenched

The young woman draws the cyclamen to her
Caressing its leaves with hushed murmurs of affection
As she gently places it in the sun
Whose benevolent shining rays
Succor the plant into a bountiful display
As lush fullness enraptures the simple plastic pot

She is happy for her cyclamen
Grateful for the sun that shines on them both
She in her chair; the plant on the sill
With nothing but a simple reliance on each other
The cyclamen depending on her for life
As she relies on tending it.

Guess.

Stop. Start.
Stop. Start.
Fits, fucks, frenzies
Feelings with no purpose
Meanings
Dueling
The vague obviousness
Of the way it all stops
Starts.

Caught in a hiccup
Perpetually
Sipping on a bowl
Brimming with not enough

Stop. Start.

Drag that one deep
Lung-ridden measure of black tar paradise
Make me unworthy
For a finger to point
Reverently
And ask why do you
Stop. Start?

Desperately clinging
Tongue mold
Tied down fast
Keeping the prayer silent
Lighter in hand
Choking the words
Bellowing from the gullet
Warm wind wishes
To stop.

But how do we start?

Chomp Your Bit

Give me grit
Tooth impounded
Grainy, chewy, un-ending
Hard stares
To here
Center
Elicit the serpentine belt of time
Make me wear away
The taste
Un-listen the resonance
Pounding
Relentlessly
Refill my cup
Serve me as I serve you
Without logic
Or hidden treasures
Sequestered
Tucked away in recessed
Fortresses mortared by heart’s blood
Tears
Vague desire
Waning
By the moonlight
Driving the vicious tides
Harder and harder
Into the deep, ceaseless cacophony
Whispering
Shouting
Embodying the gray space in between
The teeth plagued
By the grit
Insisted.

Snakeskin

Sunburst shower
Heating rock, water, soil
Tepid air, gentle zephyr
Calling the serpent forth
Slithering from conclave
Encased in last year's skin
Sloughing off the past
Dead cells discarded
Side to side
Emerging forward

Existential Alphabet Soup

Fragile bones disintegrate
After taking years to form
Shape and grow
With a mother's love
Thousands of hugs
Years floating by
On a river without reverse flow
Days pass easy
Going down the gullet
As a limp noodle would
Spelling the words
That should traverse the lips
In the opposite direction
Where we all struggle to paddle
Failing with shrugs
Kisses
Moments
Buried alive
In the memories
Of those who survive
To suck down today's hot soup
And let it digest as it will.

Tequila & Poetry Breakfast

Stale cigarette pencil
Lead scratching
Complementary but divided
Blank paper wedge
Adjacent to the cracked salt shaker
Staring down the pepper grinder
Wanting a firm twist
Grains pouring, falling
Tantalizing that space on the tongue
Reserved for salt
Freshly whetted
Shivering for consumption
Tasting the nourishing
Burn in the throat
Tempered

Skeletal

Peeling flesh
Strip by strip
Shedding muscle
Strand by strand
Casting out organs
Veins
Arterial matter
In tandem
Down to the bone
Hosing the skeleton clean
To name each piece individually
Pointing a knotty finger at that rib
Calling it what it is
Two Hundred and Five to Go
Visceral
Real
The infrastructure
The center
Support system naked
Truth.

Subject Matter

Standing amidst an oblivious gaggle of people
Staring off into distance where I see
Glimpses of ideas weaving in watery flux
I hear the hurried clicks of a man’s camera
Desperately capturing the dreamy courage in my stare
Turning to the lens with one furtive, muted glance
Silently approving his artful fascination
Stepping out of my skin momentarily
I give him the brief gift
Pure unfettered beauty streaming
From beneath these earthly bonds
Released into a stranger’s portfolio
Snapped at each angle
Portrait of sorrowful strength
He approaches, touching my arm
Relaying his gratitude
My answer a simple smile
That says I am used to it
It is my best use.

Starry Night

Bright twinkling stars
Complement the cool summer air
Replete with gentle breeze, sweaty dew point
Reflecting the desire to be near you
Feeling wholeness
Pointing to the formation's story
Told from longing lips
Inching towards your mystery
Once solved, imagining my service to your emminent kindness
Enraptured by the sparkle in your eye
Motivated by pure intentions
The haze that sweeps over me
When I hold you in my arms
Pressed against my chest, my long strong body
Experiencing the closeness
To you
To myself
To the beauty swirling in a starry night.

A Memory

In 1989 I was ten years old. At the time I had an allowance of $5 per week for the chores I performed. Unlike my brother, I never failed to complete them, and so I always received my allowance. But what does a child do with her money?

I saved mine for something special, my mother's birthday. My brother and I would always go on bike rides and I wanted her to be able to come with us, but she didn't have a bike. So I estimated a bike would cost about $100, and I saved my allowance for five months. Every week we would all go to the hardware store and my brother would buy himself a little something. I just stood in the aisle and dreamed about how wonderful it would be for us all to go on a bike ride together.

Finally, right before her birthday, I had my $100. I gave it to my dad and he went and bought the bike for $86. He brought it home and I remember thinking it was the most beautiful thing ever. I was so excited to give it to her!

I think she really appreciated the gesture, but we only went on one ride. But for me it was a ride of victory. And I am still surprised at the will power I had at ten years old. But I am more surprised that I continue to harbor this very child-like, very pure kind of love deep in my heart.

Window Pane

Be easy, girl
Anger does no favors
For perceived slights
Things just happen
House of cards falls where it will
Orchestrated by a perfect maestro
So let it
Go
Ask the questions
Find your truths
Transcend
Pull it from within
And accept this gift
Gracefully

Piqued

Serpentine hips sliding into you
In the heady smoke-filled room mingling incense,
The faint sickly sweet scent of your sex,
My cherry brandy breath--
As it deftly sweeps your landscape
Gentle nips and licks escape my lips
Brushing your inner thighs
Sending you to the center of animal pleasure
A servant to your desires
Body throbbing to guide my way
Into the deepest parts of you
With eyes squeezed shut
You tighten around me
Needing to feel the release
Begging for faster
I slow down to torture your ecstasy
Savoring each thrust
As you convulse
Like a fine filly bucking
Dragging your fingernails down my skin
Obscenities caught in your throat
Red and flushed and satisfied
I wrap you up in me
And wish you the sweetest of dreams

Fence Sitter

Wet paint invitation
Beckoning to be touched
Perfect black paint marred
Insistent bitten fingertips
Bountiful beauty
Masquerading as imperfection
When happiness
Draws her sword on art
Striking a deep chord
On an iron scar
Ubiquity flows
Peppermint Oil
Stings

Bullfight (2002)

Tired Bull
Thin and worn
Dancing with those who mean to destroy it
Running it into a bitter fatigue
As they flag its fancy around a ring
Where the people cheer
Ignorant of the tragedy they perceive
When men on horses protrude from the gates
Shallowly cutting the bull to make it bleed
And its life pours slowly down its back
Down its dying legs
Until it turns the sands of the arena
Red
But still the bull runs
With no place for it to go
No retreat in sight
It must turn and stand and fight
So with its choice made the matadors
Make theirs
Drawing their swords high
Red cape waving a farewell
They plunge the sword into the bloody back
Of the creature they claim to honor
By displaying its death
To a roaring crowd
And each time the bull falls
Into the pool at its feet
The crimson salute of its last day
With one dying snort it collapses
Into the muffled cheers of the stadium
Where its purpose has been served
A subpoena for certain death

And some feel pity for those who wept
When they feel pity for those who did not.

Hero Complex

Wrapping my emotions around the niceties
Where they can stay cozy and lovely and picturesque
Beneath each rhapsody lying dormant is the flavor of truth
A taste so bitter I will not choose to savor it
Because should you scrape away my lacquer veneer
The thin layer of hurt would thicken before your gaze
And you’d see that I feel utterly used by you
As I gave without expectation, cared without requital
Assuaged your fears and laid myself out bare
The best of me, in a sweet little package
That quickly became all about you
What you need, what’s best for you, what you can handle
So don’t pretend to be hurt by what transpired
When it was all about your ego
Which I fed for you, even when I knew it wouldn’t work
Hanging myself out to dry in the center
Of your scorched earth tactics
Where if you have to hurt, then so must us all
So I’ve fallen on the sword more than once
Bled the burning soil a salty red
For you to feel whole, for you to be okay
For this whole mess, that you made complicated
And shoved back onto me
To bear some semblance of worth
Which is beyond conceptually futile right now
As I take it all out on myself
In a simple stoic silence and the art that cuckolds me
Holding back the fool that would otherwise rush ahead
Into a burning building, chasing after a phantom sound.

Stained

Shards of colored glass
Coalescing in an unset pattern
Whose only consistency is change…
And you can handle them if you like
Take care as not to cut yourself
Because when the light hits them
They are so beautiful
So tempting to touch
That you can get lost in the artwork
Shifting hues in your hands
As it begs for strong, deft fingertips
To solder it into a masterpiece

Decompression

It seems to occur in between those defining moments
There's a pause, a stillness, a brief fleeting solace
Where everything feels as though now it's in the right place
A sigh of relief escapes like a refugee in an open field
Free yet vulnerable, exhilirating yet daunting
Although torn, a heart in paralysis is safe from harm
And perhaps the root of all indecision is fear
That something else might be better
That a more important moment could be missed
That there's a rightness and it's somehow elusive
While certainty and clarity are rare baubles to possess
And it's impossible to hold fast because the truth changes
Sometimes there's a second of solidification
Sometimes you know for sure.

Injury

Running along carelessly
Eyes focused on the goal
Propelled by an unseen force
Lurching my entire being forward
Against its will
Colliding into the unsuspecting girl
Realizing that I am about to fall
That it is certain
Responding with frozen self-awareness
Ceasing all motion
Knees locking, body tightening inward
The apology dropping sloppily from my lips
As another crashes into me
And all that had steadied me
Blew out from beneath
The long, strong legs that have carried me
Through marathons, through storms
Down the streets that led me to you
Where the words still echo
Hauntingly in my ears
As they foreshadowed a truth
That was yet unknown to me
She did it to herself
Says my myopic opponent
The words rouse my venom
While the irony tends the wound.

Tattoo

Let the pain sear my skin
Ink stain seeping
Into the beautiful scene
Overwriting the story
Which is how I like it
Hardcore artistry
Riding the edge of unforgivable
Real permanence branded into the heart
By hot pokers cauterizing the wounds
I'll laugh as I let it bleed
Alternately the sadist and the masochist
Dual nature pulls me toward it
As I push myself away
And I am as drawn as your design
As changeable as my upper arm seems to be
Amorphous and amiable
In this evolution of passage
Sloughing off the dead cells
Trying to find some continuity
The real meaning so obscured
That it's finally obvious.

Today, Part Two

Loss is replete with meaning
The experience of pain
An opportunity for growth
An acquisition of strength
An agent of transformation
As we inch towards our truths
Mostly by way of fits and starts
Occasionally grasping them wholly
They dissipate with the moment
And new truths emerge
Initially confounding
They eventually illuminate new meaning

Segue

I wonder where it is that I go sometimes
Slipping into an ambiguous ether
Where icicles are ablaze but do not melt
Their frozen heat reflecting clearly in my eyes
While I am paralyzed to describe it
I can only tell you that I am both the happiest
And most discontent person here
In this other paradigm of life
Where I have been denied the pure pleasure of simplicity
Displaying my shackles of higher truth
Purpose and rightness
Whose key I have always possessed
Preferring to shelter myself in their service
Sliding away into the shadows of night
Where I can weigh the day's collection of ironies
File them by merit, arrange them by mass
Drop them into the neverworld and let them sink
Down into the depths of the things I forgot how to feel
Which are now leaking into the pools of my dreams
The flavors they imbue apprehend my regards
Tasting the pieces of the past without the usual choking
Staring at a door wedged into an invisible wall
Contemplating just when I will decide to unlock it.

River Dell

The water will catch me
As it always does
Watching myself with bemusement
As if from beyond my own skin
I hear my voice chuckling delightfully
Pushed off a cliff
Flying through the air
Throat dry
Stomach plummeting
Cutting through the surface
Of the viscous edifice below
Breathless submersion
Bobbing to the top
Adrenaline rushing through my veins
I’ll climb to the top again
Because the water will catch me
It always does.

Anticipation

It's like chewing on sparks
The electricity fizzing on the tongue
Sizzling with possibility
Beckoning the unexplored territories
Like an overgrown forest
Left magically untouched
Waking from slumber to life
The stillness has been rended
And now everything is alive
In shocking greens and prolific blues
Shouting in a whisper
Shaking its roots skyward
Blooming in full force
The energy of the beauty
Radiating from each petal
Impregnating the air
When they were just molecules
Seconds before
Now they are the unknown

Sunrise

Fog swirling in tandem with the wind
Raindrops rapping gently against the window
Sliding down
Melding together into pools
That gracefully relent their form
Under the gaze of the morning sun
Breaking through in colorful rays
The day bursts forth anew.

Elle la Lune

Midnight
Let’s follow the moon
She would say
As entrenched as we were
In the delirium of innocent love
Starlight casting our shadows
With wishes cascading across the night sky

Hope yet untarnished by time
Meets with desire, diminished by reality
And the girl is just a memory
Imprinted upon my heart
Glimpsed rarely, although verily
Under the admonishing gaze
Of a moon that I dare not seek.