masterpiece

He paints pictures
with his mouth
impressionistic fragments of beauty
and landscapes richly textured
layer upon layer
as he strokes his tongue
across the pale canvass
of my thighs.
I am his work-in-progress,
the word made flesh
from the palette
of desire.

So what if his arms curled
as Picasso wilted? I watched
his back with my eyes closed,
counted the moles, there, until
my teeth fell out, jangling like
a bag of quarters that could
no longer pay for the calls
I tried to make.

He would not have picked up anyway.

hahahah, Krista

"...dude are you a pussy? NO! You were written up for battery. You're not a fucking pussy!!!!!!!!"

Acidic Properties

Your fingertips of
acidic properties.
Slip under my tongue
and tastes of nectar
and deceit.

It burns a thousand
words into my skin,
and you’re unaware
of bare-handed sin.
But I stand with

eyes open, and a
heart thrust with
intention to listen.
Ready for defeat...

tricks

to feel the absence
of hands i never knew,
will never know,
is fate's cruelest trick.

Some words, if left unspoken, will repeatedly carve themselves in you until you preach them.

Keep It Together

Safety pins are
only safe
if you remember
to keep them pinned,
and paper clips
don’t hold as tight
as staples, stuck
through papers’
tattered edges,
and glue sticks
can’t fix
broken hearts
or shattered windows,
just like 
duct tape
won’t save
a leaky pipe 
or make you
forget
last night.

I grab at everything, I end up with nothing, and then I feel bereft.
I mourn over the loss of something I never even had.
I am a sick, sick girl.

cycles

This is the same war
I fought before.
      Different man,
      Different lips,
Same deception.

ambiguity

confused uncertain insecure self-aware worried paranoid frustrated stressed etc etc

all bad things

Cozy

Eyes fail under the sun,
they've adjusted to the night,
and I'm eating at the darkness
because I hate my own light.
I'm wearing myself down
though my spirit wants to roam;
these walls I built around myself
were never meant to be a home.

Sight is another spectrum
that I don't understand,
the wrong sensory input..
like tasting with my hands.
And this prison that was safe
is where I'm most alone
and the walls I've built around myself
is the place I call home.

ugh

just a while
just enough
to catch our falling breath

don't look
as i change
just promise
you'll still listen

if i change the tone
of my voice
it is only
to near the surface 

if i come out
looking worse
then hand me honesty
honestly

there are words
still left unsaid
before the clouds burst

and if it pours
you know
you can always, always
stay with me

time well spent

I'm spending my time
rediscovering myself in
all the spaces of you:

the round dent in my pillow,
my place on your lap,
the dip in my bed,
your hands on my back.

Combustion

Are you the hairs that stand
At attention on the back of my neck
When I experience the juxtaposition
Of language I never imagined?

Are you truth compounded
Upon truth birthing beauty
So much like the burning elements
Which bore our first brilliant stars?

Some fires just can’t be put out.

How bad does it hurt

to fall from that high cloud nine?

Comforting Silence

He didn't know he could write, but he can, and so beautifully. He wrote this for me after I told him his silence is comforting, using my shoulder and an index card while I dozed on his lap:

"This is true silence I suppose,

with shallow breaths,

lips sealed, and eyes closed.

I let you rest because I know your emotions are overthrown,

and to see peace in you, that angelic glow,

is the most comforting silence I have ever known."

I hope you all get to experience a moment as special and wonderful as that was.

P.S. you're amazing

STOP IT

there is something about your eyes
that infects my thoughts
as it searches for a spirit
that was purposefully lost

there is something about your smile
that on my walls pound
as it hunts for a heart
that refuses to be found

there is something about your being
that whispers to my pain
saying to my soul
you don’t have to hurt again

The Information Man

"After over 300,000 miles,
12-dozen breakdowns nervous,
one too many midnights
and a bunch of broken laws later...
I have come here from out of the rain
and into this rest area.
Caught 22 miles between you and me,
watching the information man
behind his information booth;
juggling predictable conversation
with folks who look like iceberg lettuce
and who believe that somehow
the flat lines of small talk
will give us life.
I want them to leave:
like a big deal orchestra
removing itself from the stringed section
so I can fiddle with fate and make music.

There is a distance the size of bravery.
It forms like words
in the mouth of a baby reaching out
for the point where all things meet.
On one end of it sits an info guy
(who I imagine holds down
his second job as church bartender
behind locked doors leading to the bell tower
we are not allowed see, sinners).
At the other end of this space
I am standing
like shoe polish on an overstocked shelf
hoping that one day
someone will pick me to make things better.
This is not a showdown or a shootout;
we are not facing off.
But I can feel the
r-r-r-r-rumble between dusk and dawn,
as if the chance to come clean with myself
will be outlawed
unless I relax.
It takes a long time to make love
with someone who hates themselves.
It feels like I've been standing here
for exactly that long when, at last,
the rain outside drops off
and takes everyone in the rest area with it
except for me, and the info guy.

If we were created in God’s image,
then when God was a child
He smushed fire ants with His finger tips
and avoided tough questions.
There are ways around being the go-to person,
even for ourselves,
but today I will get the answer
and you know what I’m talking about,
THE answer.
Emphasis on EE answer...
So I put my best foot forward
and take the kind of deep breath
that gives me away
as someone who deals with
anxiety 
and odd numbers
every other 
other every minute.
In between it,
the info guy’s eyes grab me
and shift
back & forth,
like mopping floors
(with the sweat I sweat
in battles against myself).
He’s got me locked in and is smiling.
If you’ve never been rocked back
by the presence of purpose
this poem is too soon for you...
Return to your mediocrity,
plug it into an amplifier,
and reeeee-think yourself
because some of us
are on fire for the answer.
I am ready for rejection
and rebirthing balance in my stutter steps
when the info guy finally pipes up
like C.R. Avery on a piano box
and says to me:

I can tell you're lookin' for answers...
Listen, if I didn’t have so much of this life all wrong
I would have gotten it right by now.
I talk a whole bunch
but I really only know a few things,
so I'm not saying to follow along verbatim here.
I’ll just tell ya the things I tell myself -
the things I know –
and you can see what sticks…
I know our shoes were stitched from songs about highways.
The best songs are the ones about Georgia
even though I've never been there
because it’s the only place that still believe in Jesus.
I know that no matter what it is you believe in,
you've got to spare yourself the futility of making fun of God
because that guy hasn’t even talked in like…
ever.
I know troubleshooting yourself in the foot
and acting as center of your own universe
is a tricky dichotomy to deal with
but, yes, you ARE the center of the universe.
If you weren't
you wouldn't be here.
So as the middle of space and everything floating in it
it is your job to know
that the emptiness
is just emptiness,
that the stars
are stars,
and that the flying rocks –
fuckin’ hurt,
so please
stop inviting walls into wide open spaces.
I know everything is out there.
It’s why they call it everything.
I know there are times
when you will lay your head to rest
and have a moment of brilliance
that grows into a perfect order of words
but you will fall asleep
instead of painting it down on paper.
When you wake up,
you will have forgotten the idea completely
and miss it like a front tooth
but at least you know how to recognize moments of brilliance,
because even at your worst
you are fucking incredible.
It comes honest.
So return to yourself,
even if you’re already there,
because no matter where you go
or how hard you try
or what you do
the only person you're ever gonna get to be
(and I know it)
is you."

Infatuation

I think — I think I give up. I resign, retire, deprecate my hope, for you infatuate me. The captivation has triggered a realization, unveiled a pattern: what I want to happen, never will, and I have never wanted the possible.

Infatuation is the love of my life, lifting me up to be dropped from a height perfectly calculated to hurt rather than kill me. And in the moment before I fall, I look up and see exactly where I want to be but my wings cannot take me there; my wings are painted on so that my passages to the top feel a little less artificial...

It is not over, but still, I think I should just give up. I have not yet reached the height of my fall from you but you should know I already brace myself. Sometimes I dream that this time I can fly high enough, high enough to look into your eyes and that your gaze will be as steadily locked as mine is; maybe you'll reach out a hand so that the expected plummet doesn't come?

But I dream when my eyes are closed. My eyes are open now and they look up at you, for you infatuate me. The captivation has triggered a realization, unveiled a pattern... and my muscles are tense in readiness for the descent. But each time I blink I dream that my eyes will open gazing into yours and I will have risen past infatuation, past impossible, past distance, and into time, together.

finally put it in words

I try to protect myself in the future,
so I can't live in the present.

you

Allow me to entice you,
tonight is just the beginning;
by the time it’s completed,
this will be more than befitting...
My melodic crooning,
wooing you into submission,
delicately implanting
my erotic intentions...
Close your eyes and listen,
let my notes hit your drums
as the euphonious hum
strums your cerebellum...
I’d love for your
consonants to cruelly caress
my various, vaccinating
and voracious vowels.
I’d love for my
acidic articulations to 
aggressively assault your accents,
and for our sinister syllables
to sensually stroke sounds — into sentences...

we tell each other everything,
muffled moans into pillows,
different kinds of confessions...
his lips not only kiss
and smear
and love
and bite
not only do
heated breaths of passion
burn past them,
hesitated sighs of lust
leak through them,
not only do they love
and save
and revive me
but his lips destroy me.
brutal honesty spills out
like bombs packed with glass.

Unwritten poems smolder in my bones;
lines the length of kite strings,
words the weight of worlds.

square 1

He peered
From the depths of his
Immaculate
Eyes
He spoke to me
Without voice
Without malice
Without vengeance
Without apology
Wild
Untamed
And the world slept
All but the two of us
We were transformed
We were
Redeemed
We were
Willing
Eager
Brilliant
Slobbering
Panting
Powerful
Anxious
Full of life
And lust
And wanting
And our lips met
And tears ran down our faces
And we shook
And we fought
And we ravaged
And our hands brushed
Against our cheeks
And we called
Each other’s name
And our wings protruded
And they were off
But we feel the eyes
Those vindictive eyes
Eyes of experience
And they pursue us
Through the space
Through the walls
Through the night
And we take flight
And we run
Deep into the recesses
Of our world
Of our making
With hope as our light
And only memory as our guide
And we will go to the furthest
Corner
Of our creation
And we will stop
If only for a moment
And I'll drink in his gaze
As he drinks from my lips
And we'll consume each other
It'll become a small death
And our fire will become ash
And it was only the feeling
Of being so near
Of being touched
Of being alone
Together
Loved
Cared for
Protected
By each other

The Glass Essay

"You remember too much,
My mother said to me recently.

Why hold on to all that? And I said,
Where can I put it down?"

Threshold

That slim

lip of land,
the liminal

verge
that slips

you past
your brink

when and where
you blink.