sometimes i see silence in your eyes.

i want the shape of your toe,
i want the cheapened glance behind ten dollar glasses,

[she should be he]
and you say he's attractive.

all i can do is write today, all you can do is talk.

my eyes will trace only
the lines of your theories and the pathways of her knowledge.
my mass culture infiltrates the way i speak,
seeps in between the gaps in my teeth, splitting scenes into moments,

strobe lights and the revolution.

your skin is too pale in dim light,
and i want to shut the door and twist my words back to you,
these words that spew in revolving themes, gilt-edged doors in twilight.

skin

skin, like words. skin, like words. (like conversation and soft-touch fingers) like straight-line gs and stencil-letters, looking up my name in the encyclopedia, like stale tears. tears, like skin. (like torn pages of books and pinholes in the wall, licking flames of firelight) too many words and the candlelight. skin, like moonlight. like soft pale glow, like fingers moving hesitantly, like the first touch, like it will be okay.

three lines and everything.

i wake, feet huddled together like two spoons,

star-clumped lashes, the smell of you in my hair.

i never imagined this is the way it would be.

i don't think the ira ever ate thai food.

i smell like pad thai and cigarettes tonight.

sexual tension is worse than nervousness,
the palpable difference in the air around you,
and the way he apologized late last night.

the rug smells funny, grease and lighter fluid, pipe bombs and dirty hair.

cigarette butts scatter my floor, looking like ireland.

so many rainclouds

i see you bowing, figures in the mist; wordless
lullabies, wordless, timeless

(don’t remember when you first heard).

i see you leaving, figures in the mist


– remembrancers –

nothing’s real quite like
the books you’re carrying, figures in the mist,
eyes raindrops and the weather doesn’t match our mood

(there’s nothing we can do).



crescendo.



the faun and the full moon,
the figures in the mist,
today’s not human;

i no longer follow that moon,
i am no disciple of the tides and my feet are not quite on the ground,
all saints, carefully.
buck teeth, all saints
(she’s named after a church)

sing the wordless lullaby i’m no longer on the ground,
remembrancers my seers of the past
[look back instead of forward, the woven
ground of history so unlike flickers of
every future]

but no more do my figures dance in the mist,

so many rainclouds

softly.