but you can have it

Your voice always shakes
breaks through the glass screen
and baby, when you scream
it gets me weak in the knees.

I pretend I hate it, because
I know we won't make it
pretend, I said,
I'm just faking it.

Well, we've both been waiting
for him to leave me, for you to
need me, knead me like dough for
bread, medicine for your
thick, thick head.

My days are long and wrong
but you can have them
my knees are weak and bare
but you can wear them
my heart is battered and broken
but you can have it

hear boy

[Side note -- lack of updates due to broken leg/pain meds.]

I'm making all the pretty turns
and run around words
but I can seem to veil my meaning
quite thickly enough

what if you see me, really see me
what if you don't need me, won't need me

and here I am, open again
showing you all the inches of my skin
and here I am, love drunk again, struck again
work is supposed to make you think
but my heart is still just so thin

hear me, here boy

Just a Little one

When you look at me, I feel naked
paper thin, can't wear a grin
staring at your chin, your stubbled chin.

I grow my hair so long, cover myself up
the boys say I'm tough, tumble and rough,
but they haven't seen me, not even once.

Siren Song

I swear, I'm a succubus
I destroy every man
that I see.

But next time I've got to remember
to do it to them first,
before they get to me.

Then and Now

The clock looks at me so hungry
face all empty and hollow
This house is big but it is empty
save for the shadows
and me.

I remember when we lived in a trailer
with copper wires and avocado green ceramic --
bathtub, toilet, sink
and tiny brown moving legs
and tiny brown watching eyes

Now the TV is almost as big as me
it covers a big green painting
impressionistic blurs
an anniversary present that costs far more
than my mother's diamond wedding ring.

When I was seven we ate
ramen noodles for dinner and
we drank water from the faucet
took drives while counting cows and picked
black-eyed susans from the side of the highway.

Daddy and I don't go out anymore
he sits in his recliner and I cook for him --
steak, filet mignon, medium rare.
He comes home from work so tired
but his pockets are deep and fat.

Every day he drives down the highway
but I won't touch the steering wheel
we didn't hang up one of those fake flower crosses
we don't need an acrylic memorial
to remember such things.

I thought I was miserable back then, hormones
rushing and bones aching, growing taller
but I was lucky then, living in a rent house
or a trailer or with my grandparents
but it was still all gonna be okay.

If only I'd known it then, so many people
always seem to say. But they don't know
it still, they still don't know it. A withered
waitress rests her hand on my father's back
but the only comfort she's providing
is for herself.

It Still Burns Me Up

The only thing you ever caught was on fire. Constantly on fire, there it was on your tongue, living in your head and shooting out your mouth. I felt it fizzle and flame when our tongues met but always thought it was a good kind of warmth, something solid, something real.

I was younger then, not so much in years but in the wrinkles and folds of my mind, younger in the fluid in my spine. I felt younger, too. We blew bubbles and rolled in the grass like children. I never had a chance to be a child but with you it felt familiar. What I couldn't realize was that you were not returning to some former lost grace or innocence. You were wearing your youth the way a bride wears a veil – pride, glory, attention. But the veil has to lift sometime. The girl gets married and becomes woman and grows up. But not you.

Your tongue turned to ashes and it painted my body black. I felt so sooty and old but still it seemed natural. I've been living in the dark for a lot of years. I'm not like those other girls, with their charcoal eye liner and painted on sad faces. I know those girls because I used to be one of those girls, before the real trouble hit. Before the house burned down. Before lumberjack turned to withered, blind sack of skin. Before new car and fresh paint turned to new wreck and fresh blood. I went quietly but scribbled a lot.

So we bathed in the dark, in what we thought was art. You said I was beautiful when I cried. I hated that. I knew my face was red and puffy and desperate. I never wanted anyone to see me that way. I always kept three spare tins of face powder in case someone walked in on some private shame, in case I got upset at the last moment before some important meeting that simply could not be skipped, wound up too tight like an old clock and even older man was trying to fix.

And the fire came out. At first it was just smoke, thin and grey but steady. The smell was almost comforting, once again, familiar. I guess I'd never really met any men worth talking to then, and maybe I still haven't, yet. So I didn't mind, not just yet. But it got denser and grey, came out all secretly through the telephone wires. “Is she with you? Where is she?” your voice would meander at some boy across the room. As if I could catch fire with anyone else. As if I'd choke on another man's smoke.

The little pages were nipped and scorched. “I never meant a thing,” you'd say. I always thought fire was supposed to be bigger, brighter. Instead it was just steady and spreading fast. It burnt up the bedsheets and melted silver and gold. It slipped into my notebook and charred love-scrawled pages. It burnt everything in my house save for your voice, flat and hollow. You can't burnt up something that was never there.

Go away

All right well, shit
I guess this is it.

You say you want it bad
This one thing, you could have

But now I'm up for grabs
and you hold your hands [back]

You bite your swollen tongue
empty your frost-bitten lungs

No more longing
for lonely me

I danced around the plot
tried to fool myself

You had me almost caught
then became someone else

Go away, go away
I'll say

But only because I know
you're too much not enough
to stay.

A little more each day.

Will, will, will.

You left us a puzzle of yourself

in refrigerator magnets

and the bottom of whisky bottles

Red label, I read your label,

more like honey than liquor

sweet, no bite.

Now the days are empty

Like your once-lover’s arms

But we’re still singing your charm

I’ll keep singing your charm

The buzz will wear off

But we can’t shake you off

We can drink ourselves numb

But without you, I just feel

so fucking dumb.

Your momma’s real religious

and your lover, she’s real cross

me, I don’t know what to think

watching her twitch under hospital sheets

‘Cause when the blood slipped under the sink

I was holding you in my teeth

biting my tongue and missing arms

stunned from too many false alarms

I’d come home

I’d kiss your grave

but I’m a fool and a coward

so I sit here alone, in shame.

Good night, skinny boy

Good night, humble man

Good night, devil dreamer

Good night, and I hope you made amends

even though we never believed in then, anyway.

Small Writings

Sachrine

He's candy store sticky sweet

rots my teeth, rots my teeth

but he melts on my tongue

sticks to my gums

'till my throat scratches numb

Fear of Heights

I fell from a pedestal
"well, is this it?"
on the ground, now
here I sit

getting to the top
takes a long time
knocks the wind out of you
that's the price of the climb

so don't place me up there
so haphazardly
just because you're tall, naturally
it doesn't mean a thing

Recently Published

You can check me out on page 24:

http://www.omagdigital.com/publication/?i=39156