spies.

i never told you
about dusty lace
and the soft exhale
of a ceiling fan
slow and in-time
with decaying heartbeats;
it does not bear explanation
that i left you on
cold linoleum and lonely riversides
to contemplate your own skin
in comparison with
harsh sahara sands--
it is not a life i've left you with,
but a city block
where nobody lives
and what did you expect,
wire-bones and industry-eyes?
there are no petal-lips or
silkspun locks
for you to hold or touch,
because i am steel-on-honey
in all the wrong ways
and how can you not hate me?

How to Not Know

i am picking up stars
of crushed velvet and space dust
to set gently on iridescent eyelids
because nothing is too good
for you,
sweetheart.
how would rainy bust stops feel
if you didn't know the destination
and your footsteps were glass-on-grass
like a lightning storm?
you are a function,
variables of an artist
but i love you still--
hearts are not streetlights,
darling.

jupiter and glass

we find ourselves
in coppery confines and
soft rose glass,
the fractals of our choosing--
but do we choose to love,
or does it fall from
sweet flounder lips, unprecedented,
galaxies without names?
let us run rapid, rampant, ragged
i love you brimming with sun
and if i were jupiter
tell me you'd be my red spot.

[aren't there things we've never said,
places we've never heard of?]

if your face was a hearth
i'd never put it out,
love,
fling our lives from skyscrapers
and laugh when they hit the ground--


[tell me you think we
were worth it all--]

solarprince

when it hits me
late at night like a migraine
or a storm wave,
you are staring at me with wide, wide
greenasyou'deverlike
eyes
and you are reminding me quietly
that we are the same,
and all the words wrung from your soft
weather-lips, whether-or-not
i could hear them,
were a beautiful blur seeping into the spidery veins
in my ear
like a steady stream of cool water
coupled with hot hot forestfire breath--

and oh how i knew i loved you.

when you sing,
you carry us away like a natural disaster
and we no longer feel man-made;
we ache for beauty and oxygen
and we are enough because
we are Two People
among billions
who happen to love each other
((and have you heard that you are a tidal wave,
mistakes and beauty and perfection?))

let's listen close to goldfish and snowfall,
all the silence they've ever said
may be worth more than our spoken vows
and perhaps we are lily-skinned and
soft-eyed
but what questions can that ever answer?

[let us be more than the sky,
let the galaxy spill between us]

[i]
[love]
[you]
[more]
[than]
[the]
[stars]

July

july
is a small word
but it contains orange-sateen skies and
the heated way your tongue traces my earlobe;
smoldering evenings are on the rise like inflation,
and i find that i cannot get enough of you
even as you fill me with
hot hot ember-breath-youareawildfireonmyskin and
Dear God,
let my bones be flint and marrow-matches.

[have i told you, we could burn to death
by the way you look at me?]

i crave your legs wrapped tight around me
like a scorching security blanket--
we could hotbox in our own love
and it would not be a stretch,
and i want you to hear that
no words sound ugly when you say them.

[the only words i want to say are
i love you, i love you, i love you]

i love you and it seeps from my pores
and fills my lungs from ground zero
and pounds through my head like drums,
my skin rises to yours as if called
and i whisper your name overandoverandover--

july is such a small word
to contain the two of us.

put this in a bottle and drink it.

i will not start by asking a question,
but tell you i always wondered why
we have eyelashes instead of soft robin wings,
and why our pupils are not star-shaped like our minds,
and most importantly,
why my skin pools to fit your body like rain.

[i have questions but you are my favorite answer.]

perhaps someday soon the world will end
with a river emptying its currents into our screaming
mouths
wide like an earthquake,
and perhaps someday soon we will be found
far from home but at home with each other
and all of the things you sing about
around our lovely heads.

we share words like we have joint custody
on the english language
and it keeps us together when flesh is not an option;
i keep tripping over long nerves and tendons
telling me your brain is one with your heart,
and you are everything--
friction and absence and electricity and oxygen, and

imissyoulikeyou'remyskin.

fight club.

are you ever just tired of hearing me say the word 'oceanside'?
do you ache for synapses and cerebellum, do you want my words
to leave you sinking? intensity in a teacup, do you want
to be left trembling? do you ask questions, love, are
you in love? because i want to be stripped down and
left with nothing, sing to me until i can't hear
anymore. i want your words to leave me without
nerve endings, fingerprints burnt off. let's
feel so much that we'll never feel again,
let's spontaneously combust so we won't
ever feel too hot. you and i and late
nights, oil spills on lakesides, we
will go out with a conflagrative
finish and if we peel away our
identity, we will never feel
that we don't belong. love,
we will belong everywhere.
don't you wonder what
people do when they
cannot seem to
remember how
to breathe?
lungs are
filthy
lies
.

Lighthouse Teeth

you tell me
'baby, we're all made of star-stuff'
i breathe in your words like a promise, I promise
we are northern lights in a bottle,
we shine where we like.

love, you're a sun in the gears of a man
and our bones were made for ocean winds
with our lighthouse teeth.

together,
we are velveteen storm clouds
can you feel
our bodies shake in beautiful tandem?
and you with your solar heartbeat,
we wake up over warm atmosphere.
we live like we love,
we love like we live.

we're dying for a breath of sky,
lungs and love and oxygen
hazy eyes but clear vision
we are going places.

[we shine where we like.]

box of letters

dear You,
our skin is an explosion,
kerosene and love
and we rise like fog on wet nights
to breathe in heavy atmosphere--
i want to paint you in shades of gold
because you glow like a chemical,
hot like the sun;
and if we are alive,
we will love like Rockets.
sincerely yours,
--Me

dear You,
together we are star-stuff and
lamplight,
an unlikely pair of celestial lovers
and one bright heart between;
i want to take you someplace you haven't been
but you leave little else in your wake,
velvet storm as you are,
and i know that if we die,
we will implode
together.
sincerely yours,
--Me

dear You,
i associate you with yellow paper
and soft pine,
and you are such an artist, glowing--
i want nothing more than to breathe you in
like a warm night,
soothing and all-encompassing
because i always want to be closer to you
and my favorite part is that
we could stand apart, too
[but we choose not to]
please
letmefillyourlungs.
sincerely yours,
--Me

it's only a chorus if you repeat it.

dear you:

i have never written you a letter
because words fade fast with time
and i want nothing permanent
to remind us that we're not.
i believe your mouth is a stormcloud
and i've always loved the rain,
how are you soft electricity
like a lightbulb wrapped in velvet?

[circuits and veins, we are a design
meant purely for ocean winds, love.]

dear me:

you spend hours carving names
into your heart like a bad joke,
but you've put it away now
set softly on a tabletop somewhere
mid-Atlantic
and you can breathe again.
ask yourself how you'll manage--

[answer that you don't care.]

things to be Undone

i am a reactor,
violent fever
and i fit snugly between tendons
like night air,
smoke in a wineglass
and we are seething;

[seek us out in the stars,
obscurity and galaxy]

i speak straight into veins,
words a heady obsession
and you love what they do
to your breathing;
you know our hands
are a ridiculous
stunning
contrast
and i can't get enough--

[can you feel us?
we shake in tandem.]

back to Multiplication.

stifling,
oxygen is a scandal
just off your lips
new like the world
but less like traffic--
inkonhands,
has no one told you we're an artist
dying for a brush of red,
wet on our bones like a
secret?
[keep it fresh, keep us here]

stack me up, i'm a library--
burn me down and breathe me in
ashes to the wind
is a dirty joke,
you will never fly
[how is your head, dear?]

pounding pavement,
praying for a prelude,
prolonging paragraphs of
pedantic parries--

perhaps we are beautiful,
and love, we are quite
in-finite.

when i haven't got the time

i am repetitive,
and 'speechless' takes too long to write--
a gap between us is more temporary
than presence
because we are drawn,
like magnets or sketches,
bodies close and physics notwithstanding.

strings from fingertips to stars,
we are a heavy glass of evening
heady and incapable of smooth breath;
have you heard our spines lately
as they wrap dreamily around streetlamps?
they tell us that language
is a toy--

[and i talk like it's going out of style.]

there is no try, only do.

possibly,
you are a second skin
or rather
you are a dream--
all the most comfortable things,
you are a comfort to me
darling.

possibly,
you have always been there
rain-soaked and wide-eyed
greengreengreen like velvet,
because i feel as though we've grown
upward and outward from bad weather--
sunrise-like, we wake up
together.

and possibly,
we are wheels or words or whimsical longing,
something permanent or
perpetual
as i'd like to be;
although we are fleeting,
we only decay at our own fixed rate and
i feel very much as though
we could be less like clouds and
more like atmosphere.

[and quite possibly, i'd like to hear your voice again every time you stop talking.]

CHANGE

eyes closed,
how about we drink up
mid-afternoon skylines and
it's funny because we used to Be;
am i significant?

Call me in the middle of the day,
Heavy lids and heavy limbs,
All heady summertime and sidewalks;
Never do we climb glass stairs,
Going up--
Everywhere you are, i am not.

you are a paper airplane,
designed to fly--designed to fall;
four seconds of grace then you're a
car crash, bar fight, comedic relief
but it's in ill taste--
hot mess, you're just a Mess.

you know you're an outlet--

to be blunt,
your lips are a train wreck and
i am elated to burn to death in the
spatial explosion your mouth on mine
inexplicably and consistently creates;
i am finding that we could be plaster
molded to perfection
and still not be in love, sweetheart,
and have you thought that maybe
it's all summer leaves and no
wind?

although you are green grass to my
sun-stormed sidewalk,
i have energy enough for the Atlantic
and i miss ocean-dipped fingertips
along my skin.
there is no 'us' except when we're alone
because we can't stop thinking about
the way our lips are built for each other,
petal-shaped flesh soft like air
but more than i've ever needed--

once again,
i miss your touch.

consistencies

i know now that
if you want to bottle sunshine,
be prepared for storms:

proximity is just what it used to be
but More--
three hours is a long time in an opium den
but it makes me want to cry,
and the worst part is that you know
already.

[i hope my face makes you want to dive from a
Skyscraper
because it's the least i can do in return.]

this is where you stand.

opportunities are not unlike cobwebs;
in all likelihood they were always there
and it's only when you brush them away
that you note their presence.
and you, with your bone-straight hair and
skin like soapstone,
you are a memory with a depression in the center
where happiness pooled like rain;
and in the end you are the only thing
i ever wanted to try
more than once.

but i'm here to tell you that
you're back, but you're not alone
and i won't let you be alone,
because i am not dependent anymore

[i move surrounded by things that i could live without, love
don't you know that breathing is an art form?]

and i've said it--

i want to fall from the sky and land like a rock,

freefalling is the art of living and you've taught me well,
ongoing river of electric though you are;
round eyes are not a part of my day, i've learned to
guard myself well-- and there are some things
i can live without, things like sun and picture-perfect
veins, a highlight even in January, and as of right now
everything is forgotten.

your gaze will still inflict heatstroke like an
oceanside fire, but today i want you to know that
underneath my skin, blood still runs.

i can't quite stop.

there was that time when
we danced on linoleum
sticky with spilled coffee
and we were a lovely couple
in a filthy little hole;
we hid stars in our pores and
laughed when people said we shone
and our greatest aspiration was
only slightly more than a dream.

your laugh was a degenerate thing,
not unlike a sewer rat in a bowtie;
it's funny, but only if you don't think about it.

i distinctly remember your smell,
and i find increasingly that i'd like not to;
twenty-four hours is more than enough time
to forget you if i try hard enough
and it is inexcusable that i haven't yet--

[i am inexcusable.]

i hate to say this,

but i'm leaving your sun-starched cliffsides
burnt orange with time, and i'm leaving
your starry-explosion-oceanside
for a better view of my own insides,
all earth tones and matching palettes--

i am leaving you
for a better view
of myself.

--

the sound of bones popping makes me think of you--
you are marrow in my bloodstream,
deadly in a matter of seconds and god you hurt
when you go down.
you're a pill made of sandpaper and brambles,
painful to swallow and no good for the soul.

--

i want a change of scenery,
but even more i want physical harm--
let's hit each other until our brains bleed
because i love the way my cheek feels on gravel,
fill my veins with fire because i like the way it glows;

my passtime is imagining your face hitting rock bottom.

although i'm sure you've already noticed,

i want you to know:

i notice every inch of discomfort you are ever in.
when it's cold outside i think of you.
when it's cold indoors i think of you.
on warm mornings i hope you're happy still
because, much like the sun as you are,
you still complain about the heat.
i associate you with celestial bodies of light,
and not just because your eyes look like a
deep-space nebula on days when they shift blue.
i am hypersensitive to your touch, and
wish you were as sensitive to mine.
i feel very much as though you were built
for another time or another place,
but am content to wrap my arms around you
here and now, regardless.
i think about you more than i'd like to admit.

i love you.

lessthanStable

halfway home smells like honey and irony,
i could turn around and be farther than i started
but i could never remember where i'd come from
[except your skin, your skin, your skin]

please keep up, i cannot lie
you are a natural wonder and like a tourist
i would travel milesandmilesandmiles
to see the phenomenon your existence creates
[how could you know what an experience you've become?]

i may have a problem dear,
i simply cannot stop breathing your air--
proximity is a lightheaded drug to which i'm sadly addicted
and i haven't the heart to tell you
[don't be concerned, because i love you still]

touch is better than ecstasy,
touchisecstasy.

It's My Job, Baby, I've Gotta Go.

you have to work to
stay alive to keep on
working for the hope
that someday we will
be broken bones and
dust in your eye on a
late summer day, we
haven't the slightest
idea what 'alive' can
be because we're all
working so hard to
be
dead.

true Blue melody

setup:
this is a monday, cold and concise
softened at the edges by your sunrise grin;
let's get on an empty train
just for the sake of
going places Together.

remember how much i love your hands?
but your face is a thousand to one
and i want to be the one to tell you:

you have seasalt eyes and
sungold hair and
a heart like late july
[because i miss it when it's not around]
we are
an oceanside and city lights and
coffee at two a.m.
i feel most beautiful standing next to you.

let's go and not stop, drive until tomorrow
i wanna get out of here but even more
i wanna get with you
stargaze a hundred miles from your house,
don't forget me--

you me and the city dear,
we're a breath away from making it
but please don't go--
i like the way our hands fit together and
i think i love you.

intersecting planes and Us

once upon any given place
we were so close there was friction in our absence
and there we stood,
overlooking our whole lives.

i say 'we' because, in combination, we have:
two homes,
four hands,
two voices
twenty-four ribs
too many eyelashes--
one perspective as we fall,
one as we fly,
one as we leap

[one heart and half the blood any two people should possess.]

Industrialize Me,
says the dreamer to the world:
Jump,
says the grounded to the sky--

We,
say the two on the skyscraper
on the fringe of permanence,
Are Only Where We've Been Falling So Far.

[Diving, says the observer,
Skyscrapers are built for Swan-Dives.]

the act of moving-

i wrote a song a long time ago
about stale air and beautiful people.
it was wonderful in a
paper-in-the-atmosphere kind of way,
i-made-something-for-you;
my hands toil because
you are a work in progress.

i love you increasingly as i put you together,
you stand still like a model or
a tree, awaiting my touch--
won't you let me run my cold fingers
along perfect rose lips,
open my mouth against sharp collarbones,
leave dusty fingerprints where our hips lock?
how could you,
lightning-human as you've always been
and i confess;

i think i would like to be electrocuted
by your skin
every day
until i
die.