Venice, Italy

cracks

the birds kept circling the stoplights

as i drove home

i watched their tireless efforts in my rear view mirror

you smiled like nothing is always wrong

even though we’re every time finding something empty

you are the same as you were the day i met you

today i saw what it meant to be alive

but nothing changed within

no explosions

not a drop of bright climbed into my eyes

“Sir, we still can’t find any light!”

and still nothing shines

my hands remember

i am only one person --

just stop right there

remove my gloves to touch your face:

it still resonates in my mind

and my hands remember

the way last Christmas and the one before that

felt and is still feeling

you are only one person --

it’s happened to you too

Barcelona, Spain

we carry no crutches

crookedly crawling away
a nameless generation
who once danced through starbeams
now aching in encased cold
numbed into believing we are warm
we are doing just fine
guiltless of your crimes at least
our hands dripless with blood at least

abandonment gave birth to us
and we spun our protection out of the scraps we could find
we didn’t know what to look for
we didn’t know we couldn’t see
you smiled as we fumbled — our eyes glazed with loss
you watched as we cried and screamed to silence
and never received any reply
so we spoke among ourselves
and glued our broken spines into shapes that almost stood upright

did you hear that?
no, it was only the wind
it will not speak to us
the time for pretending has long since passed

Geneva, Switzerland

isn't it pretty to think so?

the light can sit on me
and layer over my hands

or it can flow through my veins
if I hold my hands right

or I can be the light screaming through the window
if I find the right window

into your room
and then I can sit on your skin
and layer over your hands

i can look through, into your life
find your skin
be in your veins

if I would let myself

wordless goodbye

an apology isn't one if it's just a springboard for insult
the last word tastes bitter in your mouth.

you are a drug, and i suppose i am one too

this was doomed from the first breath --
the cigarette put out but still smoldering

i watch you drive away with goodbye halting at my teeth
as the smoky moon climbs up the broken spine of our world
that's crumbling

dirty name

He sits in the back seat of a taxi. The rain envelops the car -- a drowsy air nervously floating near the window. The cab is filled with the emptiness left by previous passengers.

Quietly and with delicate attention, he studies his hands. Thinks of what these hands are capable of and, in fact, have already done. He stares at his first finger -- decides to make use of it. He writes his name on the fog. Calls this space his own for the time being.

A movie-like quality invades his consciousness. For a number of moments measured in streets passed, he feels like he's a stranger in his own life and certainly in the world.

The lights blink green in succession. A glow filters down, cascading like snow and sinking into the skin of the taxi driver. Sliding down the fog, puddling on the street, slinking around buildings.

He wishes he could be beautiful like the lights in the fog. But he knows he is the dirty name on the window -- already fading as the water cries down the glass.

these words are not safe

wrinkled by a thousand days,
her hands smooth the page of a letter
meant to keep her mind off other matters
the words crawl off the pages
bridging over her fingers

i can see them walking up her arms —
small alphabet ants
broken, trudging, tripping,

she flicks one off
a sentence sails through the space
between us
the emptiness filling for a transitory moment

the syntax climbs to her shoulder
a comma slips, catches itself on a conjunction
i watch helplessly as the words creep into her ear
they’ve certainly reached their target destination by now:

the ridges and canyons of her brain
defenseless against the onslaught of invaders
who tunnel their way deep like a burning seed
melting into the gray matter
pushing tears out of her eyes
manufacturing space for their inevitable spreading
eclipse
of oceans
of thoughts

the drops hit the now blank page
where the words had been kept

it sounds like rain on a puddle

the paper dissolves in her hands
that have grown more wrinkled than before