i don't pray

but
last night

i asked for help
for you and she

and i.

[in progress]

last night
i was
so
close to uttering
a set
of tiny words
trapped
in my closed throat
in my
precious, white
balloon.
i want to
untie it
gut rip
the rubber shell
apart
but
i am afraid
to only
find
more emptiness +
all the air
like helium
holding me up
will have
escaped.

rush hour.12.22.05

a sea of red lights
winking at me
like they know a joke
i don't.

raw.

i came home and
ate all the cake
batter because i couldn't
bake a cake for
just one person
to eat alone so
i licked
the bowl clean and
thought about how far away
i am from you and
you and you and you
and i wondered if
you'd like to have the cake
and eat it, too.

dreamsquasher.

today

a girl came to me
her dreams in her hands
asking me to validate
what she had been doing
all of her life

today

in the blink of an eye
i took them away
her salty, slippery dreams

today

i squashed them like a giant.

postlapsarian.

i am of soft leather
worn yet strong
a street light analyst
the frame for what follows
i waited then for the shadows
of your face to be that way,
between five trees
i expected the water at the beach
to be different, or at least
for the slow, yellow carp
to be moving under the bridge.
it was then
with the departure of our hands,
with mankind falling
inducing the fall of oak leaves
that only the ghost memory of bells
would ring
and your body would sound in the morning
and me in my blue and white dress
and you in your shoes
with pointed white tips, and my boots
would crunch through perfect white snow
only the salt
of me is not your stranger
and the shouldering whiskers of you
are not my father's, nor
the whip of your tongue
the lips of my mouth
the teeth of human bone tarnished
from something you once spoke of hating
could i leave you then
with some blurry vision of me
with some frame of reference
that you've constructed playing over and over
in your forehead
like a carousel, and only in the eyes of you
and only the emotion
the alcohol in me
singes the tip of my tongue
enflames my throat my lungs
but are not the strangers in me
are not my strangers
you in your pointed shoes and
me in my white and blue dress
we could be sitting on the edge of nowhere
but we still can't see it coming
and you say that we smell human
and i fixate on childbirth wondering
when i began to know myself.
i extended a leather hand
to graze a charcoal stained finger
over your cheekbone
and the streetlight casts the color
that is the yellow of a six day old bruise
that never completely heals.

note to self [NTS]: figure out where you lost your fucking mind.

finding god.

in a beige hotel room
the maid has left me a bible.
as if i may find god
in a place so anonymous as this.
i haven't heard from him
in quite some time
and i'm not keeping my hopes up
that he's going to show his face.
i toss the bible on the table
and wonder
if there are other ways to find god.

small solace.

single window.
two plug outlet.
three bath towels.
six tile hexagons
pattern the floor.
one porcelain white tub

until the red ocean
spills over.

panoramic landscape.

a forest of pines
sporadic oaks
infiltrating. our feet crunch
already dead
leaves of red + orange.

climb the hill
together
while i pick tall grass
yellow ochre nerves
picked apart.

the bench
allows us to be close
enough
without touching.
you say

i look cold
and i am
in my heart
but we stay
because i need to see

a majestic view
a silent expanse.

line work.

i ran my fingers
along the lines.

coloring book
criss-crosses
red
not black.

connect the dots
no numbers
no chronology

now only
indecipherable
history.

while you sleep.

alone
in the bed
grey purple sheets

different now

sheets of glass
more fragile than before

i lay
without you
without breaking glass

without breathing.

aleatory. [freedom from the past].

remember the song you asked me to play for you?
the one with all of the apologies?

i think i threw away the sheet music.

when we were prey.

hyenas

on the summit
of the precipice
i can imagine
with vulture wings
and yellow eyes.

surrounded
in the company
of serpents
we stand still

you laugh
and squeeze the life out of me.