flowers and starlight

It is light and consequential warmth that is attractive.

But try as we might to shine, there are just those of us

who dwell in places where the shadows are taller than the sun.

Somehow, we will always emit a cooler fire, of desires spurned,

of feelings unreturned. While it is we who make the bigger

effort, go out the longer way, it is lightness and effortlessness

that will be our doom. The absence of trying, the apparently

natural always seems to be perennially beautiful.  Anything else

is overlooked in rejection.

But then there are those who take fondly to the dark, a special

attraction towards the uncommon. Not everyone was after all born

with flowers in their hair. Some were made to hold starlight in their

eyes. There are those who walk nimbly in shadow, where birds 

and flowers close their eyes or otherwise grope and

fumble. Adventurers dare to venture into the night, and it

is often they who discover the secret beauties that shelter in

its folds. For not everyone knew to bask in light. Some of us have to be

discovered, uncovered, and revered all in the dark. It is not for everyone.

But it is for some ones.

written on paper 06/18/2008

in your next life, then series - 3

The last brick fell between us when you dropped your words like goodbye, upping the blue in your child-eyes and plunging my heart to my feet. It felt like we lost that hole of opportunity just enough to lose our heads in a kiss and our hands to reach places. My dreams leave to explore other potentials and my mind fills with just you.

With that final brick, the feeble illusion of freedom shatters and we find our grips tight around the bars of time between us, driven deep into the years before I heard your body speak. What I would give now to own your eyes and cross the breadth of your shoulders to wherer your hair sways to the strength in your arms. Even now I risk to learn the shapes and planes where the eyes are closed and the mouths are caves. But when time does the masonry, iron is steadfast and bricks will harden in the mortar.

in your next life, then series - 2

I am Atlas and the Earth is my loss
for your gentle eyes are not mine
And I pull the moon without you
My mind cannot fathom sometimes
the nearness of your shoulders
or the firmness of your chest
as it fleets from my back
I could only whine with my eyes
what my heart might put in my mouth
To hurl against your ear
A smile is but my weak consolation
I'm not in love with your lips
but the smell they give you
spirals up my helpless nose and if
I had no body, you would hold my soul
as my mind holds them now
so intimately crushing against my own
Though these dreams make me foolish
I wait like a clown for your next life
where I would be yours and time
becomes our best friend

in your next life, then series - 1

The deadbolts of your words
And the aching gentleness of your eyes
Feel not unlike regret
Though lamentable that the first
Real emotion between us
is sadness, of chances flying by like arrows
Not taken because time did not permit us
I am still glad
however remotely or less than you
or I would have liked
I feel the pull of the Earth on
my heavy loss
but just give me your gentle eyes
and let me devour the breadth of your shoulders
and hear your broad chest and powerful height
for each day that I am in
love with you
You can go home without me
just come back at the hour
with the sun and until my heart is whole
come to me when your next life has begun

pieces in my sleeve

i've been tucking in little pieces of my heart in my sleeve, and now i pull them out even if i bleed. you are too much like the rest of them, and i was blind. or maybe i just did not want to see beyond smile and eyes that always cost me, and not just with you. and though fooled, even now with just one gentle word i cave in, waiting to die again.

i am an i

they'd like me to come to them, keep me at arm's length...perhaps to own, to add another lump to the facelessness. but i'd like to keep my uniqueness, thank you, not subject to the tumultuous sea of emotions and thoughts that will crash around my ears. no thanks. i'm me, i don't want to be your padding while you are snug in the heart of it all.

slowing to a stop

I'm going sane. coming out of danger, finally.

the dawning

fear creeping in, mouth slightly agape, pale face, tight chest, eyes wide, the threat of pinpricks behind them, trembling in my knees, a hollow i cannot swallow, the dissolution of resolve

and falling.

A frog in my head

i save tons of various things that catch my eye, touch my heart, and grab my attention. i save to not forget. but they pile up anyway, gathering digital, virtual, and actual dust.


sometimes, there is one thing screaming at me in my mind and that is to smack you awake to the reality that i only want to be a stupid naive princess waiting to be rescued by some fumbling knight smart enough to recognize what it is that's been keeping my heart beyond your reach. but, like the princess, i'm just stupid, and, like the knight, you're just fumbling.


if i long for it this much and for all this time, i'm willing to believe that traveling europe is my personal legend.


i want to decorate your body with a richly ornamented sword, just so i could level the playing field and get back at you for all the heavy throbbing things that force my eyes to expel diamonds and poke at my heart to produce a million shiny pointed rubies.

chugging down to your happy place (the best of luck)

this distant silence, that nonchalance even now, feels so much like the fine knives of goodbye. i am always competing with your golden love and the intoxication of being with your friends, even when i am at the front step of a new door and our end.

i love old places. my soul glows with all that history.

chin up little girl

lift your chin up little girl
ignore the number of your steps
don't worry where you place your feet
and watch not the ride of the road
hurry on at the pace you desire
blink away the state of your hair
keep your head up, just look ahead
for you never know, the stone
that sticks out to trip you
just might be the truth.

cold hills night stars

in the convoluting corners of my mind
are cold hills night stars
and a smiling face that smears itself
across the back of my eyes
for every second i'm awake
i am brought back
to a patch of darkness for grass
underneath a twinkling roof
where i held your hand
a quick and measly moment
before you walked away
toward sleep and forgetting
now around the rocks and stones in my way
basking in the muted stars
my chest lifted with lightness
while all there was you
my head and mouth could hold
and when i watched you go
back to your life and your love
there went your heart with you also.

make for cold hills

there is a guy whose singing sends me
hesitantly, to rocky paths
make for cold hills
where horses tread
the sound and stink of milk
and where a fleeting memory
of a smiling face floats in the cold air
the clutter of bags and quick glances
and his distinct laughter in my sleep.

light up

your breath lazily traces invisible curls in the air before it twines and snuggles into the waves on my head as you exhale, settling there for the night. i am annoyed at this fact. but you look at the others and give an oblivious smile, a pretty, lazy smile that starts and ends in the eyes, of staining teeth in perfect juxtaposition, although they don't reveal the secret wayward molar. the conspirator fingers are somewhere near your legs, a burning strip in between --the commonality of your spoiling parts: fingers and teeth and mouth that like to travel in earthy places. no one else seems to notice.

(éè_)

i seem to be going in life forgetting exactly how i liked (or used to like or should look for what i like) in people, in the first place. with the smallest hint of annoying flaw, i pull the shutters to its fullest length, mostly never to raise it again. i fear how i am going to run out of friends in this journey at this rate. i do not want to become this person. i will lose the friendship of the universe.

you

you who lays official claim
to this heart and most everything else
you who never fails
to leave no emotion chambers empty
and my brain with trains of regret and flight
you who each single day tries
to greet a laughing good morning
and remind of yourself
you who at half a chance
would be left behind without remorse
you who always end with
the shorter stick and secret running eyes
you who should start thinking
of another heart twice or thrice

another you

out of nowhere an image just jumps out in my eyes
blocking my view of the blue square screen
and I didn't even see you in my mind
maybe that is how it works
you lurk in the darkened side of my brain
away from light, but there,
waiting for your spotlight

you are being removed
from a prominent place in my chest
but you claimed a seat nevertheless
even against my permission
you have been ruined thus far
to expel you from your wanderings in my head
but there you go claiming your importance
in the middle of my ochre paper and olive pen

seeking Opportunity

untangle myself from the locks of seeming impossibility
to see the tiny exit holes that must exist surely
into the realm of my dreams and secret heart
where my happiness lies and fulfillment trickles in waves

little trapdoors, shrunk to just my size
concealing the meadows of narrow cobblestone streets,
terra cotta buildings and sleepy countrysides in hazy frames

I beckon for that honey comb that will work through
the knots of an over-ordinary life, loosening
jumbled skeins of creeping despair with amber strokes and caramel sunlight

brittle black and brown rough wisps trailing
of dust and dandruff of plodding days
that take me further from the real beat in my chest

so I will seek to stumble into just the rabbit hole,
no matter the dark musty terribly strange claustrophobia
if only to help this Alice remove the rose in her eyes
to find the warts on these smooth dreams

a friend

hair lengthily spiraling over sharp dark eyes, cursing twisted back, rejecting incongruent hips, closing eyes over lopsided chest: the real worrywart, super obsessive compulsive, routine/habit freak --but also weaver of words, Master's in Un-emotion, fashion forward, lonely little only girl, mature innocence, little woman of the world

maybe you can take me with you on your grand elaborated carousel in my next life

:'(

Do you know just how difficult it is to stare your biggest dream in the face and not see any gaping hole through which to fulfill it? DO you KNOW? When all you could do is see it filter through flat glass as if on display, seeming so close but really an entire impossibility away. You know it, deeply and hopelessly stuck, in your gut that it IS what you want most in the whole Deep Blue Sphere...and yet there is NO WAY to get there. Money? None. Qualifications? Zero. Even if you fill your bank ceiling to floor, it will always just be temporary, it will have to end, and your mind will replay over and over your terra cotta house just slipping, away, into thin air, poof, nothing. Because you are poor. Because you are nobody. Because your dream is just too big for your tiny existence.

I want to believe in the universe conspiring in the fulfillment of dreams so badly. Deeply and helplessly.

refuse

because it would hurt me so
i hope i do not end up among your decrepit shoes who once owned
the glow in your eyes
or the flowers of my written effort
that eventually find themselves in some forgotten corner in your house
may you acquire the sense it takes
to hold my heart well above
the dust collecting beneath your bed and sticking to your window pane
i can only shut my eyes and wish like hell that like you look at your pot before you flush, you would do the same and find me before you throw your garbage out

cryptography

if only i could pay a penny for all the secrets in your eyes
or the key to the back of your mind fall into my eager lap
how easier would it be to not need
the rosetta to speak your codes
decrypt the puzzles you feel the need to create

cowboy

if you do not see the signs, you must be falling asleep. all the letters i read are about the sad thing that is us, twisting and pulling a rope around my chest as a bull that struggles to unman itself or a dog scratching at its fleas. in melancholy lines i read the hurt in your eyes and i feel even more the helpless watching i am doing in this bad movie. we are strangers back again, thinking we know each other too well that there is nothing new to know and contempt is all there is to reach for. you are struggling too much to be the strapping cowboy that you are not and i douse your ego every time for saying so. and you never fail to bring me my comeuppance by hitting on every nerve you think hurts the most, but of course i am more dynamic than you think. i bury my aces beneath thorny roses and you have not thought to dig, perhaps dreading the dirt under your nails or the scratches to your flesh. what you will find is always worth the pain, i guess, but you are too afraid of hurt and would rather drown yourself in a golden stupor with ye old faithful friends. why is it that you believe you have given a world of effort when you haven't even hit the heart of what it is that keeps me at your side? the clock hasn't struck twelve and you are ready to trade in your guns so that you can pursue the craven life you feel safer off living. you have not even seduced my mind and yet you believe you have earned the right to keep your hat on while you follow the button trails to my breasts. even though you keep me on the edge of breathlessness, i am more inclined to kiss a man with a purple eye and bruised lips. you are more beautiful than any, but i have other plans than become a mother to someone who shuddered between my legs and thought of his horse.

bitch

is that a woman that shapes the secret in your eyes?
or are you really who you say you are?
am i leasing the use of your body without pay?

if you should decide that you need more than all i am
all at one time then heed that so soon you will lose
the right to my lips and the deed to my eyes
you will only so quickly drown in the eager
wetness of your woman and her fake fragrance
but thirst for a whiff of my mouth and a whole jug of my scent
and one day you will wake up in the staleness of her lips
on your face and long for my dewy thoughts that will
never again touch your parched ears