'return to desire' (september 2009)

I want to see
feel
what it is
to be the movement and trembling
that falls down to a page
to be the repayment of a debt
and the promise of more

your liquor
a fire that burns to be poured out
is all I want to claim and seal
strip back
peel away
though always looking at the outside of things

I want to tell you
everything
I want to sense
that my name is somehow
embossed in clay
written on the wind
seared into your skin

I want to drink deep your thoughts
I want to swallow your mind
memory and body
heart and soul
the atomic tick-tock of everything
that your heart has ever known

through my eye
your curves and body
collapse to two-dimensions
and your lines on the screen
fall into shapeless place

't-minus' (july 2009)

These words falling to the page
arrange
themselves
in an impolite way.
These sighs marking off the days
display
themselves
in a frightening way.

And I don't know if what I feel
is a ghost or something that's real.
And I don't know if what you say
will follow me when I'm away.

These times ticking on the face
replace
the times
I could just be alone.
These words creaking in my throat
devote
themselves
to praising your ghost.

And I don't know if what I feel
is a ghost or something that's real.
And I don't know if what you say
will follow me when I'm away.

These waves crashing on the shore
implore
that you
will forget my name.
These words burning in my ears
all fear
that you
are wishing the same.

'falling for a ghost' - (july 2009)

I don't want to leave
I don't want to stay
I don't want to wake up
just being in your way

I'm paper thin
resting on this glass
whittling away
the checkers of the past
crying for your skin
falling through your eyes
not remembering
the truth or the lies

you're lying (I don't want to leave)
you know (I don't want to go)
I'm dying (I don't want to leave)
hello (no I don't want to go)
to say hello

I start to wonder
when you're not around
if I'm the only person
who thinks that the sound
of an ambulance rushing
to take me away
is the prettiest thing
that I could hear today

I'm dying (I don't want to leave)
you know (I don't want to go)
you're falling (I don't want to leave)
I hope (no I don't want to go)
for a ghost

I'm wishing I was there
like the rain on your cheek
a memory spared
though we'll never speak
you might think of me
when you wipe me from your face
fall into his arms
I'm erased, erased

you're forgetting (I don't want to leave)
I know (I don't want to go)
you're letting (I don't want to leave)
I hope (no I don't want to go)
me go

'georgia' - (december 2008)

I went to the shoreline
and planted my foot in the sea
waiting to witness
how my toes would turn to roots
in the salt water
and my outstretched hand
would blur into a canopy

but the breakers on rock-shores-
the rounding of pebbles and stones-
spoke to me
like a whisper of bark
falling from arbutus trees
saying I have no place
among the land-makers
among their rock-breaking waves

but roots deepen, ensnare
and the rustle of feet
across new-minted sand
says that the waves
are just as untested,
unwelcome,
here on the shoreline
the in-between land
of their advances, retreats

in my ebb from the shore
back to the land-ocean
the sea laughs
at my notions of equivalence
as I retreat to the line
of less adventurous pines
the greedy waves suck away
at all hints of my passage
desperate
in keeping their no-man's-land
while
the crack of rock-sand
keeps us both at bay

'ontophony' - (january 2009)

When I first heard you
you moaned
in a great quiet,
and your tremors floated,
flung distant, free,
on the wings of sparrows
awakening with the dawn.

When we first came to speak
I laughed
at the ease of your words
sliding through my nerves,
coursing down through bone
and blood,
flying down, bursting through skin
burying themselves
in the cackling of keys
or the low chuckle
of pen across paper.

When you first moved
I swayed
my arms spread wide on the wind
splayed
against the push of your breath
I stiffened
and twisted
yearning to feel your force
and bend my bow
to drink deep your current
and travel far on your song.

But my arms
fragile sticks
were useless to tame your wind
and broke, useless
your voice a distant drum
carrying an echo of sound
miles across the ocean
but no longer could I respond
to your rhythm-
my head, sunk,
confounded,
released the memory of your shadow
to the whisper of water
hissing under the keel.

But the currents,
clueless, careless
gravid with possibility
looked alive
with the stumbling fire
of my clumsy land-bound lips
shot through with saline,
and were at once
known
and unknowable
ancient as my newborn heart,
and all at once
in a great fire
were a chorus
poised on the edge of a melody.

The plying of waves
shot patterns
and rhythm
tesselations!
whispers of tone!
and your voice,
audibly unheard,
singing in its
great quiet
music-
the tune of my being.

'imperceptibility of fear' - (june 2008)

you jump,
fly
and a scattering of shadow
breaks a line
into a tangent
falling under your feet
we collapse together into the sky

and I am
unascertainable,
a thought
buried
behind eyes of uncertainty

you recoil
to the imperceptible
the unknown

but
you know me-
a machine
toiling at alien tasks
impossibly unknowable-

you know me-
a giant
lumbering down shadowy roads
watching dimensions collapse to lines-

fearful
that we have a uniform task
you jump.
and we,
impossibly alien together,
watch the breaking of lines
into shadows
unknown
falling under our feet

'block' (december 2008)

when I try to commit you to lines
and a series of images
your nature is revealed to me-
unnatural.

the attempt at bringing you
into the focus
of phrase, rhyme, verse and foot
defies my terms
and you are left unbound

how I dream of claiming you
breaking your shape
down into words
the verses purging you
into a form reconcilable
with its formation
a paradox
perfectly fitting in its imperfection