escape

Don't take me home tonight

let me close my eyes while you drive

i'll tell you a story

about the world 

and we'll let the waves

wash over the radio

i'll tell you my secrets

in the language that i love

and you'll laugh at me and wonder

where you caught this wild thing

what wind left me here in your hands

lets take the sand grain by grain

we'll give them their own names

and send them sliding down our legs

to anchor our feet in slick pyramids 

let the weight hold us here

caught and captured and content

don't drive me home tonight

lets close our eyes and wait for daylight

to find us stretched out on the shore

just hold my hand and i'll ask for nothing more

from the world

to my parents.

i carry you like a phone in my pocket

a weight that i need to balance me

the constant reminder 

that even when alone i exist

you sit careful on my mind

a door that takes me to a thousand safe places

but that i cannot open

yet

lest i never learn to stand

but spend my days inside the surety

of who i am because you know who you are

and how i wish to slide into it

to become a fixture in your permanent world

introduced in the dependent clause

and let you carry the verb alone

but instead i will stand

with my hand on my pocket

to remember that you are there

and walk on

discovering the places where i may stand

and build my own world

i thank you

for the courage.

Resting in Peace

a little fall of rain

against your white face on this green grass

a little fall of rain

and you don't even blink

watching the droplets speed towards you

and with a suicidal grace explode

against your skin

you move your slender finger

just enough to bend,not break, the blade of grass

and it fractures with a whistling noise

a dozen paper butterflies 

come tumbling through the air

sliding on updrafts with their immovable wings

and then crumpling slowly against the green

with small smudges to show

that the blade was double edged

and pierced both ways 

leaving green on the white slips

and the tips broken off under their weight

the little fall of rain softened them 

broke them down and apart

into the soft paste and then down into the mud

you with your white face facing the sky

smiled just the tiniest curve

in the midst of this little fall of rain

a little fall of rain

cannot hurt you now

so i'll hold your hand and sit a while

while you watch the sky and smile

the weight of change.

two voices make one story

two faces looking opposite ways

can see between them the world

look at these slivers of chains

we carry with us

easily bent

hard to break

sometimes i wish i could pour

them all away through

this fleshy funnel my fingers make

into those glass jars that sit mouths gaping

to swallow what is left of my freedom

but my fingers clench

and they clink against each other

hitting heavy in my fist

and i slide them back to my pocket

to weigh me down until they one day

someday

set me free

She plans to change the world

i'll build for you the battery

this small dense collection

of who i am and want to be

you with your silver chords

connect me

draw from me your sparking drive

and send it spiking

into the gasping arena 

till in the heat of this abscence

together we send shooting light

into the well of this dark world

excavation of the lost civilization

looking through these photographs i have found

the explanation in a silver key

that spins across the bottom right corner

a string of numbers that pulls behind it

a dawn and a sunset and the blur until dawn again

and that is the answer

it looks like a mistake 

like a heavy cloud pulled across the skyline

just as i was pressing to save it forever

it looks as though i failed 

the darkness erased the city

splashed its own black ink across the page

but looking now i realize

what it was, what i saw, and see

what was erasing the lights of the world

it is your silhouette 

standing firm in the foreground

and looking at you 

i can no longer see the spikes of city

the doors and the windows and openings of the world

all i have is you 

blotting out the world 

in your silhouette striking for a different horizon

till i too turn

and leave this world behind for yours

06 06 08

the date on the page

on this old photo album

pulled me into the past

and explained so much of this present.

Little Bird Tell Me.

careful feathered bird

blurred against the blue sky

breathe slowly and sing

a sorrow song 

a song of sunset and of shaken leaves

of the sapping of strength

and the salt of the sea

sing of separation

and the splintering of souls

in sacred silence and in shadow

sing of all the sadness in the world

sitting on this slender sapling

by my windowsill

come carefully blue bird

sing to me the secrets of the world

before you blur away

i will bury these truths under my skin

and they will wonder who told me

and how i became a woman

carrying sorrow and safety silently