Beginnings are always so much more beautiful than ends.
The placement of kisses,
slow and deliberate.
The hands searching for the Electric Fence.
Through clusters and clouds of expensive smiles,
we searched for each other. Wildly. Unyielding.
With no use for or comprehension of The Next Morning.
In the beginning, no grass could be greener
than that Newborn Heap beneath our feet.
From this mound, Everything could grow.
Tangling vines. Buttercups.
Fig Leafs, as is customary....
My love, you were so much more beautiful then.
But then, so was I.
The End.
The End.
Where is home?
Where your words end and your body begins
is like an X that marks so many of my inexperienced spots.
We fear our lives are unimpressive.
That we may not understand
where silence is comforting
and necessary.
That the thrill of the kill is imbedded in youth,
while the wiser of the two
knows very well
my Average.
So often, I've wished I could reach for you.
But the act seems so stark and contrary
to norm....
you remind me of everything I've ever smiled about.
A sharp echo of laughter
ringing throughout a waking museum.
A vegetable forcibly inserted
into the library's virgin ears.
Love, tell me where home is,
and I promise
I will understand.
as if pebbles underfoot
the sky sings a coarse lullaby
we sit
stubborn and thick
in the clenched pipe of time
unable to pass us
it seems strange, now,
thorns have cleared a path for us;
clouds bulge
in dark promise
oh, the envious hymnal breeze!
how it wrings its wrists
in heavy handed disbelief
a cathedral of trees
holds you and me between earth
and spangled evening
our geometries slowly converge
the unknown looks away in fear
as the pulp of our understanding
sweetens the ink of our verse
intertwined
from broken shells the bird steps
from her beak night screams
missiles of ancient light
weave the moon
With an ear to the fountain
I listen for copper
as it dunks
kerplunks
disappears
into a manmade cave
echoed by the roll
like a child’s first steps
they teeter at first
but soon find the grooves
spiraled
lining you
oh, that I could watch them go
returning to the cast-iron nature of thought
melting
becoming strong enough to hold
I would cast them all day
with an ear to the fountain
listening as they are dunked
kerplunked
"The title doesn't make any sense, Brit"
F***.
We have resolved to bite the feeding hand,
with all its depth
and its curves
and its bursts of pastel amnesty.
Instead, we have taken the family photo
and shattered it.
Rearranging the pieces
to resemble a beating heart.
Our beating heart.
A single muscle cut in two,
charged with expression
and burdened with moving parts.
This disarrayed image
has become our war on the earth
and all who would say,
"Let the cubists be damned!"
Well damned is what we are, my new friend.
Do not mistake our canvas
for something so tender as the sheets you share.
It is rough.
And it is pain.
And no matter how passionately we illustrate each other,
we are only
Ever
paint.
You are as a seashell
lacking the static of the ocean.
I go willingly insane
listening over and over again
but not even my most earnest imaginations
can put the tide in you.
Like an album spun out of order,
our transitions are altogether abrupt
and violent.
The good times pan from left to right, no sooner do they come
then they are already fading out.
Regardless,
we hold each other close
and dance slow.
Those too enraged to look away
plead with us to let go.
"Before it's too late", they say.
Understandable, I think.
I can see the shadow around us getting darker,
hear the piano calculating the fall.
Let it be said, then,
that in a fit of love
and useless heroics,
we went down with the ship
we hoped would save us.
For a moment,
I imagined you sitting with me on the dirty concrete steps.
Knees together,
eyes on close watch for any wildlife my size 5 may have missed.
But the thought faded quickly,
giving way to the present.
Three sets of seven steps
roughly seven feet in length.
Three doors to guard.
Three hours left.
My phone has gone back to the One-A-Day buzz,
"Home! Love you!"
Silence the rest.
My voice doesn't carry past the steps
so I sing and think of you again.
Fortune exhausts itself with the details
and enough time has passed where I am content to dismiss them.
Flashcards of laughter and wonder and wanting
no longer seem fitting in the middle of July.
The climax has passed;
everyone has gone home.
Recounts are less vivid
and I am slow to tell them.
In this way, the present shall give way to the future.
What seemed Impossible then
is unstoppable Now.
So I will hold my lover's hand with care
lest his heart take fatal notice
of all my odds and Ends.
Our fingers are no longer hooks.
Our tongues, now, in Plain Public view.
Our jokes, cozy single story studios.
I guess, then,
we have done away with the Cube
and begun placing smatters
where they fit at the time.
Spackles and speckles...
a pastel Nightmare.
But.
Reasonable.
From a (permanent) distance.
Sleep, little lantern.
Don't mind me.
I am just another eagle
Drawn into your fire.
Reaching where my definitions
Have no use at all.
You are still too far away to touch.
So I place kisses under my chin
For you.
The planets shirk us.
Align in the mountains
where we cannot reach.
Send venomous mixtures
of signals and signatures,
pictures and spider webs,
links and links and links and drinks.
We are arguably powerless beneath their weight,
though the shifts never seem to come our way.
Our age has become the Only truth.
None of this can go on forever.
The trees are tall
and hang over the street
like an Awfully Green awning
where acorns fall
like rocks from an overpass.
I am sitting and waiting for the mailman to come.
Kids are walking home from school,
their backs already aged beyond their Lineless Worries
and dog-whistle giggles.
I want to tell them as they pause to acknowledge me,
"In a few years, none of this will matter."
Not wanting to burst their sticky pink bubbles,
I smile instead and explain that I'm waiting for the mail.
Content with this, they walk away.
Dodging falling acorns.
Making jokes about war.
I have been waiting for near an hour now
and my thoughts are beginning to turn.
From foolish excitement
to embarrassed sobriety.
"That Box, like those stars,
and Our poems and These feelings,
it is nothing more than a seductive shadow."
"I am no different than those kids walking home
with skewed views on what can be Mine
if I really truly want it."
I begin to walk back to the porch
when I hear a voice,
"Ms.Ortega?"
It's the mailman.
Holding out That Box.
And with joyful abandon
I forgot Everything.
I can tell you what our love looks like
but, I swear, This is All.
These tiny diamonds,
your Forever promise...
They're Ghosts
spread across the darkness.
A billow of smoke
so dense in my lungs
suddenly Exhaled
to join the Moon's Balloons.
White, then Grey,
then Gone for Good.
But a Jew-k Box FULL
of nylon anchors.
I can tell you where I'm headed
but, I fear, this is all.
Beneath the light of a Mighty Bright Sun,
I am gathering the murmurs
and the No-Shows
and the bullshit,
and I'm tossing them from
my very first boat
on my very first ocean
by my very first beach.
Adding a sorry contribution
to the Salty Water Rim,
but that first breath, I think,
could wipe the tears from That Tree.
I can offer no more than this.
Priority Treasures
inevitably bested by her Overnights.
Love that cannot Wrap your Mind.
And words that Burst
like a Hopscotch Minefield.
The distance between us fits on a page.
2,082 miles. About 1 day and 10 hours.
But for a while, it seemed as though they'd left out
the Shortest Route.
We'd happened upon it so naturally
that I'd spoiled myself on the Straightness of the Line.
In seconds, we held each other at waist level.
A quick glance down separated us from the Grind.
Smiles lasted for minutes or hours....
or Days when we included all 1000 words.
It seemed as though we'd outsmarted the traffic,
becoming comfortable and magnified
more precise versions
of our Eternally Public selves.
Summer has already ended for so many girls.
Salty first kisses now sting on their lips.
It's not long though
before they examine what happened
and appreciate the weight of their mother's discoveries.
That love cannot exist 2 months at a time
and Forever is unfoldable
unsendable
unreadable.
The distance is Never Changing
but the satellite backroads seem painfully still.
This is the way with all things, I think.
And I will have to accept what those girls have professed.
That Pocket is any Empty House
and Drips don't belong Higher.
That Moon is a Forgotten
Tray of Ash
and Sun is a Tank
On Fire.
My desires are a Far Away thing.
A pillow daring me to breathe.
What I want exists on paper Only
And I am Exhausted with the lack of dimension.
Sometimes I can see him,
Like a finely-tuned ant farm.
Maddening Methods only my sugar could still.
And while he is paused,
I can rest in his maze.
A Perfect Intruder.
A Public Demand.
If he left me tomorrow, then I'd understand.
Who am I to imagine such things?
He is like a glowing orb
floating in the darkness for the lost
and lonely.
They, the brief intended,
take great pleasure
in his soft white emanations
illuminating the hidden corners of their cobwebbed obsession -
making new,
everything.
He is intoxicating.
His glare catches the eyes of passersby,
in every way designed for the beholder.
He is like a lover's secret,
coveted by the shovers in line
who'd swear they never saw a crowd.
They, the stone and chisel,
toss their inhibitions with the, now,
Things of Old
forging their bushels with a false sense of surprise....
He is like a glowing orb,
beautifully burning
all notions to the ground.
In a way,
My poems to you would be
a concession of kisses
Wrapped and handed
in Passionate offering.
What shall I do if he accepts these scribbles?
Will my tongue Swell with Competition?
Or will the shapes of our Pistols
become like Daggers to the page?
A lifetime could go by
Before we realized the Time.
Two Cubists in a Round World.
Without End
Or Proper Introduction.
These words,
These Lyrical Adventures...
You've spoiled me without ever leaving Home.
My pants are transparent
Unless you're in them.
Buzzing happily, cleverly. Happily...
I want So much to understand
the writings on the wall.
To back up and see
Plainly
what the Youniverse would have me do.
But the value of faces is not taken at face value,
And I am, again,
hunched over my scrawls.
Dreaming.
Freckles of sunlight play tag on the ground
and I look up to see my cloud
a little less Important.
The cartoon lollipop loses its stick
and becomes Bulbish and Bright,
fighting through the shadow,
dancing, I tell you!
Even the Sharks
start to play with the birds
and fly to where Hollows need a fill.
This was surely not MY doing
so to thank the one responsible
for prying my "once weighty eyes"
I am sending to him
the sleeve of my favorite jacket.
I thought of all sorts of things -
My first journal
A quarter I'd turned into a guitar pick
A made-to-scale model of my Writer's Tongues,
to name a few.
But I found the sleeve most appropriate
and I'll tell you why.
For every cigarette I had on a chilly day
and every beer I hastily downed
For every tear and snot I wiped when it hurt
and spots of drool when the hurting stopped
For every love found and love lost
that found love in my arms
For every 4-legged plastic chair canine pup
with Starbucks breath that I didn't want to bore
and pools of Carnuba I didn't want to waste a chamois cloth on.
I'm sending You the sleeve of my favorite jacket
because nothing has ever been more a part of my life
than that faded gun sling
And I want you to have it, man.
I want you to have it.