let others be romantic and speak of what it is that they are and do and why it should matter so much to me or anyone else for that matter
i will love and hate and keep their words in a cage for all the yearning
for the click of homecoming
they create within me
yours is an ugly history
and i do not know why
you would choose to share it with anyone
let alone me
with my unpredictable attention
my wayward compassion
my compulsion
for seduction
and inept philosophy
why would you throw three such stones
there, at my feet
do i appear to be accomodationg
or, in some way, lacking
unable to put things back where they are meant to be:
fear, being the heaviest,
its surface craggy
grief, the smoothest
and love, there at the center,
broken and holding light in captivity
i do not need nor want it
i have my own stones, you see
i like a book to have its stowaways
post-its and postcards and tearaway squares with the purposefully faded butterflies and coffee cups that you can impose yourself upon
even cocktail napkins
i like when you pick one up, how there’s a falling of leaves and words defined and abandoned poems and the phone numbers of men you should not have written down, let alone stowed away
i like how these stowaways gather up against the beginning and end
and between the sewn pages ordered and re-ordered over and again
i like the semblance of self found,
added to the enterprise of another:
be it an entirely formed story
or lined and awaiting what someone, such as yourself, may have to put down
i like how, over time, what was once stark, just the two colors:
one for the page and one for the ink
pixilates and blurs
and may no longer lay flat enough on your desk
i like how, in the reconsidering, it perpetually appears and re-appears both simpler and more wrought than it once did
i like how the stowaways are sometimes cast away
and sometimes just lost
and others still that show up as replacements
i like how, given your curiosity, vanity and your sense of preservation, that you recognize such a volume for the infinitely renewable source and resource that it is
1.
i was swallowed whole by a man again
he took me in for the sweetness of my skin
and spit me out for the bitterness of my bones
2.
do not say my name unless you will loose me from this prison
unless you will swallow me whole
maybe it’s the lightning bugs
and then the heat needing to break
and flow
maybe it’s his voice in my ear like
rain on his tin roof and
soft as my skin
maybe it’s the map of more than one soul stretched taught against the dome of the night sky
and me just drinking it all in
now, finally, untethered from your grasp
all of you
with your withheld words
your fear
of my need
my silken soul
my headless rush into oblivion
and how does that make me any different from you
except, perhaps, that i am better with words
cloudy
though non-committal
filtered sunlight
and drift
it had been raining earlier
warm
humid
birdsong
and the sun lost its dress
like me
(see; drift, warm, non committal
some song and light
naked to the moment)
the other world
the one that dovetails with the one more readily known
the one that never touches down
or holds me down
and holds dreams
the one that can only glow soft
and speak quietly
and dance there at the edge of the calculated world
held smooth in my hand
concerned only with my breath as it wings inward
and out again
slow to principle
quick to feel
knowing more than she can articulate
because she has an openness bordering on recklessness
a hunger that requires more than a balanced plate
and i get that that is not enough (in the way of explanation)
and that i give you pause
as i have switched to first person
but only to better serve you
though with too much sweetness
and not enough salt
as well, more than what would be deemed a sensible mouthful
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