Reflection

For this time being, she swept dirt away from dirt and from cactus and captured the memory of a small home made of partially buried lava rock and desert rain weeds. She swept Earth away from itself, angrily debating existence. And it was comfortable.

She wanted to sit and invite a sister and a mother to laugh and admire her desert. Without a roof. Without water. Without time. She wanted to stay and wait for a summer moon to smile at her with pride, with knowing.

And night came, but the desert never becomes cold. Coyotes came to practice midnight and bury sharp hunger through the necks of jack rabbits. The universe came to cover her head and remind her of tin roofs and frail wood spines of old women that shriek with each step she steps.

How cold the desert becomes in that small house.

Elvis is alive. Fact or fiction. Electric theory travels across a nation. She meets guitars and drums and sex and drugs. She is seventeen wild in a broken city. She is chained to an old lamp-post that jolts to life at sunset. Her lungs are clogged. Smog takes over. She inhales a damp determination for life that doesn’t smell like rot.

I meet her at twenty two and Newport Beach. Carpet stained by black top walks and coffee. It’s an LA Times kind of morning. Knit tops cover immodest mannequins waving to her from window cages. He head hangs to her knees. Cracks in the sidewalk taunt her. She is guilty and broken. She doesn’t speak or mimic or cry, but she can hear intent. I give her symbols. Ice. Shadow. Flight.

She chooses to choke.

Summer leaves her. I leave her in an hourglass. Her slim smile leaks through the sand. Time is running out.
She starts talking to the desert. A language I can’t understand. Ink leaks from eyes to her young lips. She tastes words for the first time. I stop to watch. She is thick with rage. We are intense and struggling. Our muscles melt together with neurons and we know each other. We are scared.

We see doctors and pills and whiskey and we time it just right so that our bodies do not fail. And we buy reviews and our way into a new way. Oranges explode and we drink fruit rinds. And I miss her when she is not there. We discover each other but we do not know. What is truth? Where does it begin and with who? We softly debate existence and beg for an out. Shamefully we beg for an out.

And here we are. In the middle of the Earth. Gravity. Cells. DNA. Still so unsure. Still begging for an out…

until we step into his driveway at midnight. Our hearts shake. His sharp hunger examines our every layer. One hand behind our neck. We stop breathing. We are out.

Waiting For Alignment

She says to watch the waves. The tides are mixed, we wait for alignment.
It could take years….and in the meantime my bones slap against the equator.
The water is low.
Fish flop belly up with baby jelly beans dangling in reverse….the tide is turning.

Zenith encourages direction. I am vertical; midheaven.
God is intersecting.

What house do I belong in?
Am I breast and bone?
Am I flesh and blood?
Am I fire and system?

She says to watch the waves. We can go from there. The sun must first come
over the horizon. I strain East. I feed on the ecliptic axis and wait 90 degrees
like suggested. I wait

until I fall beneath the Earth. X lives here. X is virulent and understood.
X is ability and invasion.

She says I have to learn how to be with the disease. Who I am is bound
and fruitless. I will never find alignment when I greet
X in such short periods. X will never release the bacteria and set me
back on land,
on shore,
on sea,
where I can wait with the tides for alignment,
and drown out the suffering.

Whiskey Breath

First greet is at seams
that thread life to life.
She blossoms fresh blue,
nervous laughter sifts through

her eyes. Not me.
I am fog thick of red rage,
a fire smoldered by hard smoke hiatus,
stoned like rolling tonic waves.

She dips her fingers down my throat,
caressed by silence – she knows me at once.
I pour myself onto her.
I tell her how I know the moon,
how I sleep with it’s chill and
am never alone.

She tells me it’s habit, like her
laugh, that I’m addicted, I’m turning
to ashes. I say, “I don’t know if you’re a ghost of
me or I’m a ghost of you.”

She swings bright over Summer where
I plant my roots, under bed sheets
and claim the Earth as our own.
She was a kingdom,
I was in ruin.

I let loose my whiskey hot breath
on her air,
she strips bare of deliberation,
dripping thirst from her soft light
and we creak together in the shadows
of sensation.

And in the mix of time and transcendence,
frost grows over my eyelids.
I am blind.
Mouth froze,
then my insides.

She hammers at me for weeks,
heaving in heavy tumor.
She begs back for the comfort of the
roots we birthed together.

Life drops wet down my cheeks,
she drapes over me
for years,
Or is it me over her?
I wish….
I want….
The seasons have stopped.
I can’t find her blue through the fog.

Like I Am

I did not touch yesterday, like I say I did.
My fingerprints are missing.
I lost them on a glass man,
wrapped my hands around

his whiskey sour, like I shouldn’t have.
He mingled with fire over
victory, like a beast gnawing
on my shoulder

I looked over his shadow like I owned him,
but daylight quickly ended, now
here I am. Fingertips dripping
off frozen glass,

as miserable as I planned it,
and here I still sit,

alone and empty-handed.

Intruder

I am younger than insult.

My hard body soaks in salt water.
If you like it, I will bottle it,
a beautiful, gentle tea.

I smell steady. Like a brief cut
across my fingertip fades,
so will this scent. Let me package it.
Let me blush while you reach for
my confessions,
let my heart run a rabbit’s run.

Touch my breath,
intruder! Take me as a stranger,
open legged;
a boiling black tea.

I gracefully apologize.
This is me.