more things stay the same

1000

"and you cried all night. you've created a stream and it flows forever, that's made of dreams that didn't come true, and i'm sorry, there's nothing more that i can do. when we get together, take apart my fantasy, and we are done, we'll work on you. it's sweet, lie emotionless, staring at the ceiling, back turned up against the wall. my skin is clear and you can see what i'm thinking. i'm thinking hard about all the things i've been dreaming. i've been dreaming about you, and only you."

[ intrans. ] partly coincide in time :

you wanted to know but

i hadn’t (like money freckles

and paragraphs) thought

is what you wanted here

with wickedness

fixedness, this

is a flash flood

as normal as snow on

purple swells, gazelles

run, they run from this and

like a speck, spotting

a spirit it settles

pointedly on my nose

(like Eskimos)

--see? it’s sweet, it’s childish it’s

me saying, me saying

here if you want it, part

-time invisible, it’s your

batted eye, blind spot, no instrument

could say so much as that

had i said so much

as that, had meant

a part of that, like

that thing about the igloos, transience

like icycles, like Eskimos, tip

-toes, “overlapping”

just like we were going home.

look at us in our boots, my ankles

turned out. we were so drunk that day.

we were on chairs or one another’s backs

on the way to the rain that hid

who lost. we were better

than i thought, we were good.

what’s snow to california kids?

what’s snow to us?

i wish it crushed or muffled more

mistaken sound, or shadows

under eyes with a trying smile

because i was hiding from you.

these blankets will creep into puddles

and stain and flood and rush away

without her making it, even if you learn.

it will happen without my help.

leaves and rugby will return, a century

of acres of our bludgeoned mission.

later i will tell this story about winter grass,

bas coeur (the buried heart), a good view

of icicles, stars and the marking of the sacred

and the rooftops and the scared,

the crying in the bathroom

for the only immortality you and i may share.

be colder. it’s

melting faster than it sticks.

modesty is essential for stargazing.

here is a solemn dedication

to all the professors who said

my papers were built on straw men.

they were.

they were about alice. they were

about wendy. they were about me.

they were not about cognitive constraint

and i had not tried to constrain them,

and they had not tried to contain me.

so here’s to surviving, to messy or minor,

here’s to laughing through trials for justice.

here’s to living through all the ends dying.

we’re wendy and we can’t fly but we can wake up.

there are warm days. there are warm boots.

and in the threat of 230 years of nuclear fallout

we should survive all the things we can.

hothouse roses

in the warm lit tunnel of stairs

no one is staring at the stars

closed eyes watch from offices

with glassed-in birds whose tongues are whirring

in the tunnel of green stems

no blood is stirring

if i could stop sensing scent or shape

i’d maybe believe we spent long hours like

august through november or longer

just waiting for christmas to arrive

when we’d be special, fancy

we’d be words that were capitalized

when i find us eating red herrings

for dinner i believe that we are fancy now

these things protect us from the cold so we can want it

and unravel from an unborn coil

panting for hands, for warm dark spaces

paper like blood, and water slow like oil

michigan seems like a dream to me now

coyotes know they’re wild

with dreams as shattered as rocks

that turn to carpets on cold beaches

and freeze and poke feet

with dreams as crushed as dreams and

as strange to remember, they don’t try

stairs understand that they are dangerous

they catch ankles and elbows at terrible moments

with no malicious intention

walls know they suffocate to protect

they wear pretty things and open glass eyes

and kill when they die and

flashdrives are built to remember

lights are created to illuminate and

bleach is born to erase mistakes - but

people aren’t made to do any of these things

only to try until we break like rocks into sand

and then we have to understand

footnotes

gin and rosewater sold out quickly

so we don't have that here we have

everything but not that although

our tissues come in mint (but cost it too);

which amounts for the

thirty i lost in the mountains

and the look in that dog’s eyes saying

really? this person again? really? karlan help;

and all the ends died and fringe is out (subtlety in) as

we greet them with a song (etc) and with

the watercolors i brought while

forgetting hunting clothes of both kinds;

also i have a history of choosing

weather-inappropriate shoes

and a tendency to pick death

(metaphorically) over liberty,

like bartleby the freaking scrivener

or people who turn into beetles and

don’t even make it into their own stories’ footnotes;

WHAT COULD CAUSE THIS TO HAPPEN

view of beowulf from a rainy sunday

in cases of sin there are hourly bells and

if we bleed, there are banks for that.

so we try for a little weightlessness,

a brief thinning of the blood -

fast shots or slow, we can be that hero.

here is something to battle

gloriously, towers to invade

with spikes to tear our clothes,

homes to raid in the fight for strife

and a hero’s life, with a little bit of villain

and blackened memories to fill in

with war stories as we peruse our silly bruises.

what the tongues can fix they try -

we stay far away from salt,

compare our wounds and watch the

rain we ran through, reading for reality.

and later the flatness will slip, and tip

us onto cold streets to light fires

and fight them, and we’ll survive.

this is laundry.

i have greens and you

you want to know what's going on,

i have blues and these

are under blankets i can't clean -

here are pinks

geraniums

anthropology, twitches or winks.

these are my socks -

this is hair from a friend

who couldn't come and couldn't count.

the tiles are wet.

i was unsure what some things were

such as illegal love and fur -

but this is fine for me, this

is laundry, with 30

minutes to wait. this is laundry.

as for water let's please

continue the debate.

i can't sleep when she's gone

i had nightmares but i prayed

for fraternity, for artists without ambulances.

i waited for shooting stars in your yard

to burst righteously out of puddles

to wish on, and wish it gone, and wish

you'd be the magnet. you always were.

my blog is pink, i lied

about how much i love you.

you're a marathon runner.

and i wish i was more fragile. it would be

a better excuse. i lie about everything

that matters too much to lose.

you yelled for her, i drowned in salt.

i looked in puppy eyes and pretended to pray,

and pull white over me like a body in deep snow,

someone who lost the fight for her life, but i couldn't do it.

under thin sharp shards i just found stone,

the beat of searching and delirium ripping us down

to our protesting bones, bent and begging.

there's no breath near me now and all i have

to make a struggle for is soft made fur and warm

false eyes, and this, like you, doesn't want my help.

even when i gave and gave to life, it didn't take.

he arched his back but i miss her roughness.

feste

on blue and gold days let's remember gray ones

let's remember shipwrecks while we swim

and purchase diamonds on a whim - 

let's mess up and drown

we'll burst right back dressed up in masks

that slowly strip to shreds and we'll be prettier -

all our promises will luckily be lies and

yes, we'll explode far into the future

roaring like bears and eating music

trains

only the split ends need a trim

i'll keep the pictures, milk crates, socks

so fit it all right in

it's just a name, it's all the same, and yet

i thought i couldn't wait

last night i watched the laundry again

like i thought i did then

the slip of powder soap, the sound

of rails and singing in the wind and tying ends-

take my arm and hammer it home

i still hear my little whisper look

i wrote this poem for you

but it was for new england towns and snow

and dark skies and eyes - a cloud casts, a spark flies

a star falls and it's gone

love poem for tahsis

come lean on me sweetie

you're heavier than any heart

and this is easy

on the staircase you're a railroad car

but i'll remember queen anne's lace when we're apart

because i know how soft you are

my castles

everyone wants a name to say in answer
some people just prefer chances
and to run away to run to you
is never what i really meant
i just sort of expected my heartbeat to pause
dramatically and join the downbeat

i waited too long but i wanted to
and i wanted pieces of paper with
a print more visible than a lifeline
briefly pressed to mine on a page
a rubber stamp of monday skies
and my risky knife-edge age

the backs of your knees are prettier than mine
and i guess there were some people who knew the truth
so maybe all we needed was a little more time
because i wasn’t one of them
and neither were you, and scents fade
but i meant it to happen that way

ruby slippers

the fiery kiss, the reunion tour, or
the fist bump with fireworks
i want to know what i'm going to have
but now i’ll take a running leap
a burning, fatal dare
and see how easily i scare
and find 100 places like home
and see you every christmas

wonder woman

stars and stripes and
quantum leaps and
video tapes and
eyes to wipe
but no more eyes, that's why

i miss her, i miss
having days to save
and my little miss america wave
and proving a point
with more than just barrettes and tiny stars

and this is the heroine i choose
when i move inside the laws of natural selection
and maybe i should buy back the jingle--but
my wrists are the last things that need protection
and there’s really not a lot to lose

vomiting in slow motion

we were blowing bubbles just yesterday, i promise
when we had to play games to find each other and it seemed so possible
but trying not to look is just another way of looking and blankets
feel so thin when it’s almost warm enough

lucky hunting/ill shipping

all the horses are pretty
and when seaworthy winds blow clockwise
i would love to be your friend

no, ange

it would be nice to see motionless hands
and shiver under white paper showers
and stop these flowers, it would be nice for me

and i just want it to be christmas again
and for you to make everything shine for me
and me to not need to make it right for you

in high treetops i’d rather let gravel fall like grains of rice
and give up taping everyone but you

and press 'pause' and never leave the truth in blocks of ice

but change everyone's mind, and never leave at all

jewels and good endings

i gave you a lot of ways out
a lot of caution tape and doors
and it’s like you not to go
and it’s king arthur to me, you’re not a leaver
(or a roadkill, or a beaver)
and really, there’s only one person
i’m afraid to abandon, and it’s not you
because i’m not afraid of missing any of you
just her

but it’s me
and i can’t cry out the truth in eye colors because
i don’t cry much and there’s no such color
and perhaps no such truth, not anymore
it’s the first lines that sound wrong to me
and i was always better at leaving
at the right time, and ending
on a sweet note, like everything i wrote
about false battle and devotion "hard to begin
and easy to end"
and "fields of gold" and imaginary friends

saltwater dishwashing

i can’t drown if the ocean is
all of me, i can’t drown in myself
when leaves flutter above sea level
with my hands, and i can
swim to them

the whisper of your eyelashes
draws out blood and muscle
tying strings through dark
ribcage trenches, pulling out
so much salt and water that
a mere ocean would blow
to the poles, left bone dry
with nothing but sand after the encounter
but it wraps in quantum days
and i am far, far
deeper than that

the splash of rocks in your eyes is
a dangerous push towards
odette dives
or to close mine
shut my ears, melt
my body, turn to water, let each particle
betray and abandon its family
and sparkle, a little bit of bright light
on every blue crest

but mine are green
i build islands
and i can swim

foreign diplomacy

your mind is foreign countries
sharp as ninja knives, dumb as
spit off the eiffel tower. and
heavy air (but not just april)
clouds horizons i’d maybe rather
not reach

when i talked about waves it was not
sinusoids and i promise i understand
just not you
and my sinuses are clean
my hands in black sea salt
and i just don’t know who you are

i need surgery as much as you
need a belt and i want all those knives
kept blunt, by making sure
your words are not. and yet

even patheticness
is a part of my noble ancestry
and sweaters, well, even the itchy ones
keep you warm

mona lisa

you're like her, far from me
through dangerous glass that i don’t trust
to not fog up with my soft breathing
and anything you say today
sounds like a heavy heartbeat
a little too rabbit-like to be catching
but the fog helped.

you’re just like her, i can’t seem
to understand the sight or take in
every facet of your form or
countenance and maybe
i won't ever, without leaving fingerprints
on your face and learning
what you are smiling about today
(or forgetting to) but
no matter if you do or not, mine
won't go away.

oh, sweetie

it’s never been your eyes i mind
it’s not your mind
i want this for you and
we’ll fight together

it’s not the kites, they already fell, and
it’s not the dog, he was not born
and it’s not the mummies, they don’t
need our help to die

it’s just you and me
and we’ll fight crime together
and take ourselves under
with sightless wings

and breathe on pyramids of glass
until we have to wipe away the fog
and dream that it had never been that way, not
in real life, never for us, not us--

as if we were anything like
so mismatched, i’ll kiss your hair
and try to leave it up to you

amber volakis

when sunlight comes and moves
the little leaves across the
grass, the ground remembers you
and no matter what can ever
drift away, i hold onto the blankets
and i wonder helplessly
how much of everything i loved
about your world was only you
and how empty the afternoons were
that passed behind you
through king’s cross station
with only a breath left to ask
if it was real, or only in my head?
and either way, did it matter
if it was one and the same and
everything i misunderstood seared
permanently into my heart
and i still cry for things
that shouldn’t matter, and we are all
still scared to be alone?

missing the prince

elsinor knows what slides
between the teeth of a comb
what dust motes float
between the curtains and
quietly watch crimes
in the bright light

and executions may be symbolic
and he may never have lost
his head, her heart, the hand at cards
if he plays soft and we
play right for him
and never tell

that we knew him well,
and loved him ever
as shape shifted shape
because he was so clever
and there was no reason
to use him thus

but it is not unjust
it is simply life
and he is not macbeth
and doesn’t have to fear
women or a ghostly knife.

middle school

i should have climbed these steps at age fourteen
when i would have understood your walls
i should have known what would happen
to minds and shoulders and streaky glass
and we should have made then
all the promises we’re trying
to burn into each other’s palms today, and
we should have known then
which of these things would never leave
and we should have slept on it
and never tried so hard
in which case there would have been no need
and we should have kissed
and given up on those who didn’t want us to
and we should have ignored the myth of
the moulin rouge, and stopped waiting and made romance
and we should have stopped the tears
and not allowed those things that we allowed
to live so large in our shoes
and we should have gone even further and
given up on the shoes
when our feet started to hurt, we should have
given each other the dirt
and tried all the things we secretly wanted
to try. we should not have waited for so many years

to laugh at those silly fears

corollary to everything

in the case
that any of us survive, someday i'll tell you

about middle school
and hamlet and amber volakis. but
today i can only say, no more questions
about empty space. everyone secretly
wants their daughters to die. but

if you refuse to
love for no reason
other than faith, i'll do it. after all
there are worse ways
to waste a year than dreaming
pointless dreams about her waist. maybe

it will somehow legitimize
the things that drowned
when you didn't, maybe
it will stop the nightmares
about permanent marker washing
off my back. at least

holding on doesn't make
anyone stop eating. at least
i'm not risking any vital organs.

"maybe love is just a reason to believe in something."

what is and what should never be

these letters on my steering wheel
just go to show
you can’t erase from every kind of paper
and things don’t simply disappear if you
simply go away from them
and these unfamiliar water stains
on my steering wheel, they just go to show
the absence left by empty spaces
but it’s never over for us
not if you jump, not if
every hair on your head turns black, not
if you burn--or try,
it just doesn’t change a thing
and poison is still poison
and there’s no antidote
and we’re all going to drown together
and we’ve all cried for you
and we’ve all cried because of you.
but we’ll always love you
and there’s nothing you can ever do
to stop it. and any one of us can say
“i’ve lost count of the times
i’ve given up on you,
but you make such a beautiful
wreck, you do.” because some things
about the past are permanent marks,
and you’re a part of us--
a fractured bone in a strange body,
but there’s no amputation, no novocaine
to change the truth,
no medicine to make it go away…
and you have to let us love you,
because it’s nothing more or less
than the very most
and least we all can do--
and not one of us can ever stop
so you can only choose to let us stay,
and you can only choose

to be amazing and

to be amazed.

ill (still)

only now do i perceive
no matter what i win
you’re not the prize

on seeing bleeding suns
in bloody seas, i was so deathly
certain of the worth of crowns
and merry-go-rounds, and even songs
for no one, i knew, i knew--but

i just don’t now and grass
goes gray beneath
the huge crushing softness
and i let myself spin

dizzily round, round to finally
realize that it’s not just spotlights
that move eyes forward
and i’ll never once be able
to keep you

bittersweet daydream

upstairs the little white ivory keys
in the dust of shattered crystal, they
call “please, please” and dust falls
from everything we erased

and the color in the center of a
waterfall, it grows on you, you
exhale no smoke, your heart
could heat the school

the finger on the clock
lifts to play rows of notes, and
tritones in jade, pages of murder
in the halls of the heart and
angelina jolie’s lips, dresses
made of sunny water on
the curve of her hips

and sliding down soft heather hills
to the trees, a faint
surprise, bloody knees—felt in
felt-tip pen, but we
will never be here again

Laura va être Eve…le coeur va être à la main…if never again…?

a message to my bones

when i was younger you terrified me
and i still try not to think about it
but maybe there’s a face in you
to keep all the little parts together

i sometimes fear my spine will not survive
all the pressure of the eighth letter
on the ninth vertebra, but i fear more
the anonymity of being without you

i’d never love you less
if someone spent all night gluing you
back into me
just to get things back to the way they were

more hero dreams

in the hold
shattered things sparkle
the font leans bold if glass
blown over cellulose
sends the trail south and i’m looking
up the proper dose

north by northwest
we go, bitter not doubles
egos conjoined and begging to die first
watching for angels in dress shops
to ring a bell

inclination indicates
we should both survive and
only the door
disagrees, the taste of iron
lingers and i’m looking

the softness in your heart

my preoccupation is not
for the french
i have no dependence
on a constellation
no lake, no sweater, no courage, just
tiny shooting pains of terror, stars
shooting up, as if

of a different time, a
gray time, and dreams
dreams of kitchen knives
raised in heroism, shots fired
in self-defense, or the defense of you
and ditches not driven into
filled up with snow not melted, strikes
not broken, mugs identical
and things i would stab to save
and thunder-and-lightning worries
about that softness in your heart
and the beating of rain and
growing pains
and pendulums that strike
and the clever hero: me, and us
at least a little bit alike

medicine hat

so you see that while treading water in
multiple directions it’s a little bit of
a lot to look for shore indoors,
and heidi klum runs fast for her age
(her legs are long). write me a song
and i’ll draw you a map, one that
eliminates the possibility of looking
back. then we can stick our tongues
to lamp posts, laugh about a
horrifying lack of a second act, and
ram into plaster walls that are secretly brick
and very thick, but with luck my head will also
prove to be so. if we see out of the corners
of our eyes that the clocks are sliding into
puddles of water, it may seem
we have not accomplished all that much,
except rolled eyes and a craving
for cinnamon rolls. don’t let the claws respond.
i promise it’s not even worth arguing about.
let’s all just go cry to emily deschanel.

la liberté de l’art

under the bridge at mirabeau
the seine is moving with all our love
and remembrance of joy
that flows into the well of pain

the church bells are ringing
and i am still alive

hand in hand, we remain, face to face
while underneath our arms
a cold river is rushing
and eternity flows

and like the water, love goes
it goes as life is slow
and hope is crushing
violent and strong

days pass, weeks go by
but neither lost time
nor lost loves return
but the seine comes around:
water under the bridge, you say...

the church bells are ringing midnight
but look, i survive



{-with apologies to guillaume apollinaire-}

and blue

in the place that will be the home of
your heart, hands and eyes
i see grass, i saw snow (sitting on
a steamer trunk, agent of silent shrouds)
and blood red, blue, and i cried silently for you
because nothing in you
told me that you ever would:

then i was nowhere close
to gone already, and two
halves cut three in three with the demand and
little tri-colored braids come undone as
we run
and the pieces of that heart
you brought west come apart
and if we did not find
so many words soft as “baby, you’re losing it”
to whisper across the dark
we would see simply
“wounded knee”
in black letters, cold crossed but still:

the softly crumbling dreams
on the trail of what
was it, me, everything fell
and the urge to bless
the broken road blossoms—

but you’re beautiful. in your simple
little way—every little piece
that seeped into the ground, the grass, the sky
that terrifies me as much as… i just love you
in visions of three kinds of thread
floating together to stay apart
and not turn light lavender
(as when lilacs last…)

it is this brutal sky blue
which never can stand alone
and never can stand for less than nothing, for
nothing more than a war, it is more
and rivers flood their banks with salvation
for their torn, scarred, beloved nation
and it is only the best we can do
to cry at pieces, smile at a
summer night—
and be stronger than stone, and red, white

ships

your lips sink ships
and the sparkling blue of the ocean
left behind in your eyes
is deathly and permanent

to sleep would be a silly lie, simple proof
of “don’t touch” and colors melting
with my bones

my lucky fingernails flake away, flecks
of mascara dot my footsteps
with wasted eyelash wishes, salt grains, blood
stains, in a rush
to abandon ship

on this conquered cliff, snow
flurries fly suicidally
towards the sea to drown
and i tell the empty air that mongols
must have won this war, a fearsome army
but kubla khan is nowhere near
only the sparkle in your hair

please, where is my ship

life after hector

it was thundering when 

you failed to speak

i spoke of you

beneath the spokes

of his wheel, behind

sun falling, stones falling, that heel

a feel for your face

snowstorms

like greeks

come out of the sea

and do not join but cause the melee

please rise, please bring me rose gold

the reign of the sun

a son

at last bring me astyanax

with words to heal, to beg

this tunnel to end

or else sand blows wide, high, i

am undone

it does not matter what comes

to me now, when soft dusk steals

coins from your eyes

i cannot pay again, i wish 

this time that you had won