how provocative

i'm half sleeping, exhausted, a flower between teeth

how provocative

dried and dying carnation
i've been waking up to broken petals in my bed

dark and bloody red against my purple sheets
i dont know where they came from, floating round

snapped stem

in my dreams i speak another language, older than the languages that we together know, mine counting hardly for anything; your coin is worth more than my own to me

this habit will make me poor, i expect
very poor in the long run

but i know i'll wear it willingly
and make it mine

you've never minded my silk scraps anyway
never minded my frayed edges
tired beyond time

in my dreams i speak another language; silence, and eyes. it's easy to be fluent
to be eloquent, in dreams

it's all as mysterious as time
yet unrealized

a bloody flower forming that long line, across a pale mouth
what features
so defined

how provocative

I. summer feels strange, and it feels strange because it is strange. this summer has been touching me strangely. a summer movement caught me in its languid lover's grasp, overwhelmed me with its heat, closed my mouth with its hand

i might have said no had i been able to say no, but most likely not, i rarely say no

cant struggle stifled by my own weight, the weight that i feel especially in summer; a freeing and a dooming responsibility. To do, to say yes, to succumb

be disarmed

open entirely like a lens and receive








II. i am not being made a fool of if my soul is still free, if my heart is still free to me. but my heart isn't free to me, not really, so i am a fool indeed.

this has been my state perpetually. i'm sure it'll continue, i'm very rarely free, there is a weight i have long known and it seeks me

it continually seeks me; i have always known the feeling
of being its prey

but that's my life. i suppose it's okay. I bleed as do you, and as does he. i turn my face to hide my face and close my eyes so as to see

i wish i understood
something

i keep my turquoise in my poison ring, to make me strong, for
it's a wonderful woman that's strong,

but all i can own to is doing the best i can.

VII.

sometimes i prefer not to speak. i love not to speak. i love not speaking when you are speaking; i love when you are speaking. i like it

that my heart can feel free of that heavy weight that has been pressing down upon it for an inexorably long time, an unspeakably long time

sheets crackle like paper, isn't it lovely how
why begin now why begin now
edith piaf would not stop now, edith piaf singing. there is a morning feeling,
one that no one ever could wish to leave

climbing up the orange tree
and on it grows

my mind seems to love to return to these things.

i do not mind seeing things through a haze if that is what i do. to me i see clearly. i wish to see you clearly which is a novelty to me, to wish but not to know if my own sight is true

i could only dissolve
into the night with you

three steps backward into darkness that is where we're headed to and let's not return
any time soon

correction
correction

let's not return

I.
I am not going crazy this morning, the ocean to my right, those crumbling cliffs to the left. i am only tired, so tired. Rusting signs nailed to driftwood posts proclaim quarantine statistics, tired. Train tracks run along the bridge, splintering, creaking, tired. In less tiring times, in our youth we'd climb like fugitives up its scaffolding and inch our bodies onto the huge cement blocks that kept it grounded in the sea. a six pack of something cheap in cans suited then wonderfully. the cigarettes were marlboros. Even then I might have seen, my palms foretold it in their lines: tired. The ground shakes with the passing of the train. No passengers, just unidentifiable freight. and an egret suddenly midflight.

from somewhere this sadness rose in me like moss, green life; it broke through the ceiling and surfaced in my chest. it grew quickly and lithely, little purple flower facing the sun

i am proud; my pride won't let myself admit i gave a little bit away
and that the bit i gave left a well in its place. deep dark and blue

but the truth is in my eyes

looking so sad

i don't ever want to scratch the surface of the comprehensive history of lovers. even when, in the night, i turned toward the window and saw the ghost of
her all in blue, my great grandmother

i knew that she didn't belong and that all must lie after a time
so tired

sleep is what we all have to do, i said to you
you agreed it was true. you were glad it was true

and it all made me glad for you,
so i sit frightened now.

these days i speak a different tongue, i want to sew myself into the hems of silence,
blow my warmth and my wishes into stones;

i never had a tiger's eye til yesterday. this tiger's eye my mouth: now i need to crush it small, pulverize it to dust to set drifting in my blood, i will be strong

summer solstice come and gone yet only just begun. and i must let that wrap me in its long arms, and i must let that make me feel i have a friend

that there is still the best thing left, the only thing
still time. fibrous and foliated and sometimes, on a good day
merciful

1 train wreck


I know myself to be a train wreck now, a train wreck to the core

and i can be in a roomful of beautiful people but still look toward the door
only wanting to slip away to my room and listen to the night moan

i seek a cold and smooth stone to lay my body down upon

to dissolve into the night
i would adore
to be stronger than my wayward, flailing heart

i've got to try



2 Four minutes

I only have four minutes
four precious minutes, fleeting and incorporeal and green
i've just lost three of them in looking out the window and seeing

not yellow daisies, honeysuckle and dead vines
but a different view entirely, in my folly

the four minutes have passed
yet i remain optimistic:

i no longer care about the time. i care only about the song. i care only about the song: the way it aches in my chest, the physical pain of beauty

very distracting