she has hands like paper planes
folded -
- in waiting.


some times, meticulously shaped
at others, a careless heap


more often than not, they miss where they are going
but sometimes,
they end up
exactly where they were meant to be.

William Faulkner once said: "The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again, since it is life."

20 minutes

time stretches like a bedsheet
across the shape of the mattress
i hear the springs groan a little
but not from weight, no

the pillows whisper to me
and this is the heartbeat
clik
clik
clok


what is ambition?

his minute is my hour
what does that mean??

why are we efficient in different ways
what is efficiency anyways?

he has eyes
like the weather
they mist when it is dark outside,
or rather, the texture becomes
maybe more like fog, or like the dewy grass when dusk approaches.

the weight of the afternoon spills into the cloudy sunlight (cloudy like your eyes)
your hair tousled
i am wondering where i led us
why i feel punished for speaking my heart

because if i apologize for the way i feel, i apologize for who i am.

"i never learned how to go slow,"
he said
while casually winding down Highway One
"it's really a tapestry," he says,
"these invisible cities woven into one."
he's convinced it's easier to go fast-
it's less painful that way,
or something like that.

we stand on the beach together-
our feet pocketing the holes in the sand
the wind plays freeze tag with my hair
there's madness, but i haven't found a method yet
or rhythm, for that matter.
except perhaps when we point north, there is no north
direction's just an illusion, man, we're just here to
grip the handlebars
keep riding, keep on riding
after a while
i hear your voice in my ear again
"Does our departure create arrival?"

i'm not sure until you define each
"departure:"
"arrival:"
definitions written on my body with your hands

and then i know
yes,
god yes,
i've arrived.

she has hands like strawberries
round- small, and dimpled
when she speaks they tremble
and pucker,
and i know you would have to cover them
when the frost comes seeping in.

après moi le déluge

after me comes
the flood,
i whisper.

when he says "no" in russian,
suddenly i think of her brown hair spilling across the pillow
and i shake my head, "niet" (нет)
to this never lived memory

the afternoon tapers into highway
that's the way i define Time
in a place like houston

this place that swallows and clings to my bottles of dreams
half-assedly stored away.

what are the kinds of unhappiness? let me count the ways
perhaps i'm trembling and beyond your fingertips not because i am unhappy
but because you need to adjust your ambition, or your reach, or something in between


aren't we just migratory birds
and don't the seasons dictate our rise and decline?
like history books and
sunsets
or melodramas on tv


après moi le déluge

5am

I am safe here.


There are haunting melodies of accordion and violin encasing our embrace.

I am safe here, as the flood of light that usually follows the break of dawn is subdued by the curtains of our movement. Our feet follow something, they are not aimless, they are not invisible or ignored for this period in time. I am safe here, among the silent handbells and the fortresses of solitude that we break through. Our cravings of closeness are camouflaged yet resolute. I am safe here, because perhaps this is our halcyon moment- we ebb and flow together, but we are not waves, we are not of the wind. We are children together, or we are of the leaves- one of the two, or both. I haven't decided. Roots, and arms, and branches, and dreams.

We trade cities between our eyes (sometimes between our cheeks), and we are like a nuptial procession, seeing each other for the very first time.
I am safe here, because though the ambulances sleep soundly, your arms are awake
around me.

september 8, 2009

from dreams come days of

dreams are useful in compacting days,
or helping my eyes to hide behind curtains
of haziness or fog
the kind that collects in airy containers outside my windowsill

i know quietude wraps itself
like a shawl, or something made of gauze

it's dangerous to know myself
kind of like
cooking with knives that are bigger than my hands


i have a plan
this micro plan
to live
to laugh

is it cliche?