walking advertisment

no one wonders if the butterfly feels frumpy
stumbling out of bed too soon, needing
sleep, caffeine, an eye lift, an ass less lumpy,
overwhelmed by all the gardens wanting weeding.

no one thinks about how insects might resist
the bright, electric sun as vicious spotlight,
revealing wrinkles, worry - that whole list.
what keeps the butterfly up at night?

surely things that fly feel down, those days
when it's too much to show the real face
hiding somewhere underneath - the greys,
the not quite-there's one tries so hard to erase.

and yet, no matter what the mood dictates,
the butterfly alights on vibrant wings.
Even feeling off, it never hesitates
to be this visible. He knows how color sings.

Amid a greying day, he refuses to be duller -
with yellow making claim against a darkened sky.
"Just look around at all this color,"
he boasts into the air. A righteous butterfly,

sometimes, but still, he makes the whole world his
by knowing just how beautiful his small part is.

sea and nest

Muddy holes where toys were lost
Window corners full of frost
Alleyways where trash was tossed -
These hold no shine for me.

Aching body, faltering mind
Leaving late and loving blind
Picking fruit for rot and rind -
Why not just let things be?

I'd rather skip than run amok
I'd rather face my life than duck
I'm happy grabbing for good luck
That's falling off each tree.

It doesn't mean I don't get mad
Or have some issues with my Dad
Or lose my temper kind of bad
One day (or two or three).

It's just...who wants to be the one
Who can't enjoy a little fun,
Who passes by a splash of sun
That's aimed this perfectly?

The holes are puddles meant to splash in
Windows open so cheeks won't ashen
The alleyways I like to dash in -
A hiding place to pee.

My mind is working, therefore blessed
My body is both sea and nest
I pick the fruit that looks the best
And there I find the key.

To see what light breaks through the din
To feel the warmth outside, within
To hold each beauty by the chin
And not just look at - see.

Of course there's mess under this rug
And water drains when there's no plug
But my heart knows how to feel a tug
And that's what sets me free.

sing past the dirt

there's so much to keep track of, add up, figure out,
so much to give way and give in and feel doubt.
so much to lose sight of, fall short and fall down
so much to crack up and upset in this town.

the air is so vicious, this world's full of crazy,
it's so tempting to shut down and simply get lazy.
our minds are so loose that our memory's hazy.
we forget which is rose and which is the daisy.

so before the sun rises again in the east,
before our tongues loose of another mad beast
before the rain tumbles and ruins the feast
let's take just a minute, a minute at least.

this night is a pool. let us swim. let us be.
let's ignore all the dishes piling up at our knee.
let's sing past the dirt and the dust and the scree.
one minute's enough for a you and a me.

fellatio

The girl wasn't fifteen anymore, had been
finicky, mostly, about the boys
(who seemed to be taking forever to grow up),
and also, for her, there was a certain fanaticism around sex,
because of her dad, she thought - he was the one
flinging statistics about the frightening STDs in the news lately.
Although, to be fair, no one really sat her down, gave filibusters
about how truly unforgiving fucking could be. So the girl
simply fantasized, sometimes, fabricating scenarios, finding
fresh ideas in a February Playboy issue some friend had
finagled out of an older brother's unsuspecting mattress.

And then, finally, four long weeks after college freshman orientation,
salvation arrived in the form of a fickle sophomore, who did manage
to wait faithfully for the first week to pass before finding his way
toward the fault line of his own zipper, his other fingers
searching in a kind of fury
for the infinitessimally small clasp of the girl's bra.

She wasn't quite ready for a touch like that - frantic, feckless,
full of flaws, which is what this was, of course, in the end,
but in the first throes of romance, and because the girl knew fairly little,
she returned the boy's French kiss,
gave the thighs of his freshly laundered jeans
a featherlight touch, a filmy suggestion of what those fingers
could actually do, even if she didn't know how,
and the jeans where his thighs met did not stay flat for much longer.

Eventually, flitting about the boy, finding some flimsy foothold
in the waistband of the jeans, she eased the fabric down,
though with much less finesse that she'd have liked. Above her, the boy
flung aside the football jersey he was wearing and then, in a flourish,
like a time bomb ticking, his boxers were finished, too,
down to the front lines of his ankles, and the girl felt fear
for the first time.

Still, she closed her eyes, and thus blind, was suddenly desperate
for instructions, a folio of guidelines, with pictures and
easy fonts, any fortification to help minister her fumblings.
Instead, she put on a friendly face, gave a small, fetal sigh
while the boy's flagpole tilted up a notch.

The girl's hands flew to her mouth, and then her mouth,
like a fallen bird,
floated downward to the fertile vertex of the boy's thighs,
where his own hand lay fragile, trembling, almost female.
The girl took a few full breaths before descending and then
it didn't matter what she didn't know because a certain fervor took hold,
this foreign thing, right here, right now,
and her heart fibrillated at the first touch
her lips made to his flexing nethers.

Knealing, she forgot herself, forgot what freshman meant, forgot
the flagellating women she'd found in Playboy, heard only
the boy's plaintive, feral yearning, the way, suddenly
he was all hers, one locked muscle of utter fealty,
stretching toward her like a growing fever, like a fiberoptic cable,
like a werewolf howling silent at a full moon.

And though something inside her knew this was merely
one moment's fidelity, the boy's mind fixating on her
for this fleeting pleasure only, she let herself believe the lie,
that he was hers forever, just this once forever,
which gave her full permission to fake this thing,
unfurl herself from shy girl fame, slide another skin on,
leave some other fingerprint behind.
It required no fortitude, really, just a little
flexibility, some fluffing up, a frameless fantasy
of what feminine could look like if you just
folded yourself away for awhile,
turned opaque as fog, let your eyes go soft focus,
and free-fall.

now, maybe always

"We don't see things as they are; we see them as we are."
- Anaïs Nin

















like featherweight and cottonball
like brass and two left feet
like rudimentary
like hard to please
like language, like song
like a thimbleful of touch
like opera, like epic, like torch song trilogy
like single raindrop on a back woods roof

like daring, like Olympic
like a baby's first step toward a waiting hand
like waterfall on the first edge of rock
like velvet on a cheek, like not even a whisper
like a pocketful of change, like a candy store looming
like thread unraveling from an old forgotten sweater

like now
and maybe
like always

like ice cream in July
like down blanket, like compact heat, like toes touching
like silhouette, like shadow puppet on a far-off wall
like outline, like proper noun, like a vertebrae

like conundrum
like pursuit
like "what if I?" and "what if you?"
like all things bright and beautiful
like corners, the child sucking her thumb, like darkness just a little
like foregone conclusion, like inevitable
like losing direction in the midnight hour

like now
and maybe
like always

like a cold glass of fresh lemonade
like socks needing a wash, like old coupons
like caffeine, like Valrhona chocolate with 80% pure cocoa beans
like a nighttime novel, like leasure, like everything can wait
like hunger
like storehouse reserves
like tight cellophane wrapping
like "I take it back"

like cash
like credit
like savings
like splurging

like don't stop
like let the chips fall where they may
like brick by brick
like letting go and letting fly

like now
and maybe
like always

elemental

no, everything's not alright, but I guess
if you want electricity,
you need a little more than just the
expectation of electricity, more than
essential oils or enigma or ethereal machinations. you need
the opposite of extravagance.
something more like
electron energy, a certain
emperical elegance, engagement, and underneath it all, some atom of
effortlessness, an elemental ember, that says
enter here.

of course, who wants to enter here?
not now, in the middle of
egregious argument, in the middle of another
eagle-eyed stare,
and earfuls of consonants. not me.
pick anyone else.


i want a cup of Earl Grey. my own exit sign.
my own private island Eden. escape.

and yet, this is the escape we choose:
early to bed, you eastward and I west,
eerie silence, then dreaming
eccentrically, unevenly,
what feels like less than efficient sleep
except, by morning, through some
magic touch of Eos,
something between us eases, then ebbs,
an ellipses of time, eight whole hours
spun, as if by elves,
and waking into an eloquent sun, we take one
emboldened step forward, wrap arms around
each other and
thus enveloped,
get back to our earth again.

a thank you note to readers

when stunted traffic jams dredge up
a plume of fetid air,
when smallish hills turn mountain-esque
and I lose sight of where,
when messy work is sprawling
and I'm pulling out my hair -
"there, there," you always say to me, "there, there."

if summer's out of loveliness
and winter's left me bare
if darkness leaves its shadow print
and light seems far too rare
if trying to run instead leaves me
just tripping on each stair -
"there, there," you always say to me, "there, there."

and in the midnight hour
when I'm locked inside my room,
attempting something of a birth
from this elusive womb
you steal in with a word or two
and wrestle me from doom,
then stay along until this bud
has turned itself to bloom.