Moving Out West…

Manifest Destiny

I’m not the dirt crusted beneath your nails
I’m the internal, eternal process of being you.

You were buried beneath western plateaus
and I was drowning in eastern seas.

If the desert once French kissed the oceans
do you think they miss the waters—

miss it like you say you miss me?
I’m following the trail you carved

etched out pocket knife love on cacti and oak trees.
All that matters now, is you and me, is we,

the awkward following of pine trails and tumbleweeds
hear you calling me westward in the petal lifted breeze…

I am more restless now that I am aware of you,
travel these old shattered highways to be near you

only in mind, in dreams, in wishes
send you the wind with messages and kisses.

“Blue, come to California, to L.A., westward to me…”
but, I’m chained here still finishing time under Florida palm trees.

We Kill our Saviors (When I thought it Could be Fixed)

-After Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz

-For K.

The last time I tried to save a soul was 2003
my back was unaccustomed to angel wings
grandiose thinking had my halo breaking light
Leslie
I knew if I could hug her she would break
the pieces I caught could be remodeled
melded and molded into better
I could make it better

singlehandedly
s curl and cape; Here I am to save the day!

she needed me
I needed her to need me
you need
I need you

So maybe I don’t save souls
no angel the devil hasn’t touched.
This is the only poem left to write…

This is the poem I’m writing
instead of writing how I now tear off strips of paper worrying
them between anxious digits, whispering mantra:
she loves me, she loves me not, she loves me, she loves me
not…This is the poem I’m writing instead of a poem calculating
the new distance from me to your arms instead of the poem
metamorphing your brown eyes into glaciers instead of the sunset
glancing off the trees where I will propose to you poem.

I am writing this instead of buying bouquets of I love yous bathed
in entwined hands.

Because I never saved anyone

And if some poem
unmasking my alter ego’s failures can make you remember
the way my face feels burrowed in your neck,
how my back arches into you, how you’re the only one who could love
my Clark Kent flaws…

If some unmasking poem could do that?

Then I am no angel, no devil,
I have laid down my cape for you
we can build mud castles over it together.

Liner Notes

“The language of love notes is the same as suicide notes.” -Courtney Love

Stringing twenty-eight measures together / she wrote all her lyrics in pencil / unsure of herself // staccato thumbprints lined around the edges // sing her a song that won’t asphyxiate on contact / untune her breath // an octave below what she needs for her heart to beep beating / overdosed on rests // she counts her own backbeat / kamikaze rhythm // escapes climatic overtures: / scribbling sharp kisses / strumming death chords.

Breaking Up is Hard to Do…

“I think we need to see
other people…” I whisper to you in the rearview mirror
you’re unresponsive, avert
your eyes.
I idle along hoping you’ll get the hint:
I need space…
at the next red light you’re just as ambivalent
to my needs; bobbing
your head to the music; too close for comfort.
I sigh heavily, roll my eyes
and when the light blinks to green, disgusted
by your inability to understand my subtle hints I pause
then leave you in my dust yelling at you as if obscenity was your name.

Anti-Aubade / Another Morning After / Lie

Afterwards the sun drowns me in filtered orange
she’s padding almost soundless
from my darkened bathroom
I’m pretending to be asleep.
She stands between me and daylight draped
in one of my t-shirts and says
“is this anything more than a poem
you’ve already re-written a dozen times?”
I snort, half-sleep—most lie; turn
so she only sees the plane of my back
and let my breath becomes a sigh

“what is it again that I’m suppose to write?”

Nothing, But Itself

Terrified, I cower in the darkest corner
shaking in my boots
this creeping unknown swallows me
a gift I didn’t ask to be given. Trembling
I open my eyes to the repeat of nothing
an errant branch scraping against a smooth windowpane
the shadow of the curtain whipping against a bare wall
is nothing
but what it was, it isn’t in the illumination of the light switch
mush less than my mind creates in the imagination of the dark

Depending on the Kindness…

Three-quarters of the way to absolutely nowhere
another nameless gypsy-prodigal daughter finds herself
or loses her former self
at a quintessential dusty truck stop diner. Her waitress, Nell,
carries coffee like priceless jewels on a plastic tray.
Road weary she orders not out of need, but
out of knowledge that food is a necessity.

Everything tastes like dirt and decay, anyways;
and she has felt like death won the war with life
for miles. Watching shadows play on the deserted desert dunes
she manages a wispy smile at the setting sun of her past.
Uncontrollable tear stains are what she tips Nell,
though she thinks herself too solidly jaded for waterworks.

She reaches to touch Nell briefly before rising to leave, a thank you gesture—
And finds herself clutching to the warm palm of a stranger
the first form of human kindness she’s felt in years.

If You can Say My Name

And just how would you react,
if someone cheats you? A deal
is a deal is a deal
is the power of your word: a promise.

I spun gold
from straw. Do you even know how labor
intense that process is? How thankless peasants
in dungeons become
when they shift the ivory tower?

She got it all: the fame, the fortressed castled,
the handsome prince. Was my fee really so high?
She would have other sons
I will never have an heir to teach the magic of strands
from straw
to repeat my legacy
to bear my name.

Shopping His Script

Lucas pads into the kitchen after 3am
roaches scattering across his sticky floor
and up the yellow tiled walls.
Beneath the oval window a rusty faucet drips
he knows the rhythm by memory;
the clinks as the stale water hits crusted dishes;
oxidized silverware, a tower of mismatched promotional cups:
the summer blockbuster from two years ago, a new energy drink,
the 1999 final four…

Lucas lives life out of necessity not nostalgia
never has he gazed into the moonlight with dreams.
He stands half-clothed in front of the fridge and contemplates the john in his bed
the reality of the money he doesn’t know is no longer in his wallet
all because he thinks Lucas has a tight ass. Lucas knows he has a tight ass.

He also knows that every line is well rehearsed
the screenplay of the city he’s been acting in since 14.
He squashes a lone roach with a calloused heel
stuffs the night’s earnings with the others in the darkness of the freezer
and strolls back to get rid of the snoring benefactor who rented the script he was selling.

Better Late Than Never…

Solar Return

Where were you? The planets aligned
moon reflected craters incomplete astronomy
the circumference of another year
postcards to nowhere

constellation trails unlike breadcrumbs
lead to no home
another decade withdrawn replaying retrograde footsteps
orbits of time only moving forward

through telescopic lens imagine
catching the light of passing comets; refracted flares
of a former you, a latter-day me, untwined
succumbing to a gravitational pull.