how fortunate are those who are loved.

carefully i type these small messages

on these slender slips of paper

i punctuate them with numbers

secret dates

that no one but i (and you)

will recognize

then with my quick fingers

i cut the thin circles 

from the flat rolled paste

and with an easy mostion

slide the slip in and pinch together

the circle until it stands

a swollen crescent

to be roasted until rich and golden

and slipped into its see-through sheath

and sent casually out in stacks

to meet the world

one day, under tacky dragon decorations

you will lay aside your clumsy chopsticks

and read, after cracking the vanilla crust,

"the one you love is still waiting

hurry back. be safe."

06 06 08 

Pauper Princess

she says it like a spell 

every time

shaping the sounds carefully

and rolling them off her tongue 

into the silence

they stick and she shifts them 

with her hands in the air

like a child adjusting their photo

against the paste

and they wait for her

to get it just right

and then begin

because they know 

"once upon a time"

could be a door into the future

thats what she hopes anyway

in her concrete castle

futility

i built this house with a broken door

built the walls straight and strong

and a broken door

raised the roof snug and firm

and a broken door

made the windows bright and tall

and a broken door

packed the floor clean and tight

and a broken door

made my bed soft and warm

and a broken door

i hung my mirror high and safe

and a broken door

i made this life the best i could

safe and strong and soft

with straight walls and snug roof

with beauty and grace

and its nothing at all

in this castle i'm defenseless

i should know that its useless

no point to build at all

i drop everything when you call.

why poets die young

don't they inspire you?

all these people with all their dreams

all their clumsy solutions

the fears they wear like tattered cloaks

to keep you from seeing the needs

that are eating them up underneath

they always do

they inspire me to despair

they still think life will be fair

that one day we will all fall in love

that dreams lie in reach tomorrow

that they don't have to be alone

one day they will beat sorrow.

Just look at them.

and then look again

these people and their passions

their hopes and their homes

so separate from us

they shake their heads and say

oh these poets and philosophers.

all children are poets

poets who survive adolescence

with all its clumsy dreams and stumbling vocabulary

grow into philosophers

who sit and wish and wonder

why the world works works works away

then the philosophers gather together

with all of their nothings to say

stand and say good bye 

and walk into the night

they wander and fall by the wayside

how the statistics lie to us

telling us about the homeless, the hopeless,

about the philosophers and poets

not in so many words.

The mortality rate is high

when you look to humanity

to be inspired.

Peter and Ariel

dont forget, as you have forgotten,

that i am the sea child

i will bide my time and you may come to see me

tame and easy to bind

with your rude rudder

you may put me aside in your sandstreaked mind

like an old toy, an old love

but remember, you will remember,

the way i swept you away with my long fingers

that reached beyond what you understood

and took you away into the depths

of what humanity, and the sea, dares to be

in the secret caverns where all is dark and light

where you reached for the sun

and i lifted you with all my swirling strength

and threw

and now there you are

standing on your silly shore

looking out at the waves as though they were a backdrop

for the more important shot

you'll never see your shadow slipping away

sinking into the salt water with your soul

I'll sew it back on with my needle and thimble

in your dreams that you cannot forget

and you will wake up and remember

what i told you in that last moment

I was the sea child. until we met.

Now I am a woman grown

I charge you. do not forget.

Neither you nor I were made to live alone.

sh.

today i have nothing to say

the wild crush of humanity and its noise 

beats against me and i am too weary

to thrust my individual voice into the fray

every striving voice  stands alone

against the swelling crowd for all those solitary voices

will always band together against your own

because there is no sense in cacophony

nothing but noise in the wide world

there is nothing but noise in the world

so today i am silent

today i have nothing say

they have said it before and louder

they love they despise they prize they hate

they beat against me like a thousand echos

sometimes i realize why i am so afraid of humanity

it is because it reminds me of me

self.

this is my secret soul 

in the center of who i am 

behind the similes and smiles 

comes a scritch-scratch pain

the increasingly blunt tip of this safety pin

this pen of safety scrawls the truth

into my membrane into my weak brain

and they wonder why i weep

why my eyes roll back into my head 

they must read

they must read the truth 

my poor eyes that have spent

their whole life looking outward

watching the world wander by in its wicked way

to suddenly be set free

to stumble like philosophers towards the burning sun

and it burns it burns it blazes

it brings me to my knees

and makes me wonder who i am praying to

when here in this sentient center

i find that there is nothing but this nightmare

my face alone scratched on the surface of my skin

again and again. again and again.

this is my secret. that at the deepest point

there is nothing but me and my safety

nothing but the screaming stanzas

and the chorus that pleads

'me me me me

i i i must survive'