La-Carmencita

We have filled envelopes with paper And our souls with poems… I have always thought that the sounds of the city were the most beautiful Nurturing a fire in our throats, the fire of poems and songs and fall and winter and wine and dashboards and new dawn rising The fire we have named Walt If I smash clocks to slow time, what can I do to make it go faster? I am listening to the voices of poets Forever clamouring, wrapped in whispers around the trees and sprinkled among the stars that shine over us both. Write to me again, friend Together we will paint poetry over the rooftops of the world

We prize these memories: Of moonlit nights, cold, light off the dashboard reflecting like stars in our eyes We place those half-remembered objects on the altars of our souls, yellowtail, dark rooms, ink on pages, records spinning Offerings to our passionate god God made of words! God made of poems! The abstract "one day", the dawn of our new era, the future Waiting coiled in the base of my spine Watch over us Walt Whitman         Over the rust on my hands from the inside of freight cars         Over the ink staining your lips Oh God of words God of my mother God of cold-water flats God we sometimes call inspiration God that m

you are my poem your line, the curve of your hip, your verb drawing out adjectives from my lips, into verse - I think I've finally come home. let me write words and dream in the caesura between your arms shun the sun for a blue florescent glow that affirms our newfound innocence. when read, we can be seen. as what I am, imagine me. you taste of ink, of healing and hope hands in my hair bind me to you so gracefully together, it is possible to be whole. your meter, the rhythm of your heartbeat is felt at every point where our skin meets.

The light of winter made it all feel like early morning As though time were standing still for us I pressed my smiles into the skin under your collarbone Your poetry ruffled the strands of my hair And grins made it hard for me to kiss you Nothing else mattered. We were alone and alive I felt safe for the first time in too long And, though both cold, our fingers fit together          perfectly.

I am drunk but that is good I bought peanut butter and two loaves of bread today If you want we can lock ourselves in here and never leave

I never knew angels. I did know you, for a while And you still drip like shivers down my spine While I wait in white-walled morgues For my tin-can coffin I knew you like summertime With heat like this three penny coffee          (And just as cheap) My name broken on this loudspeaker Seems sweeter than your mouth Trying to pack all this baggage above And inside my head In this kind of limbo I forget how long it's been It's always light above the clouds. I knew you like death          (Like falling) The very taste of the ink you write with This turbulence Is a frightening reminder of my own mortality Empty eyes are warmer

He watched her hair get long In preparation for summertime And her lips grow redder. He watched her get lost inside her mind Watched her mouth on the bottle And cigarettes in cold fingers. He watched her sip coffee in the morning Until she was alive enough to let Her ideas roll off her tongue- He watched her in many languages As she hid from snow and ran from wolves Became dark and thought as bright as the sun Until she mirrored him in negative.

Hope haunted the corners of my eyes like tears And I let myself believe That dreams are for waking.

I've given a thought to summer, Though the frost in my head makes believing impossible. I want to mourn the ever-changing tides Sing funeral dirges for the leaves rotting gently Because I'm the only thing out here not dead. You didn't understand my hatred for snow And I couldn't explain That it was a reminder of solitude, And how things are always changing, Good things may die forever, but the cold always comes back.

I opened my tight clenched fists To see if the sunshine I caught was still shining Only to find burnt, blistered palms