phoenixes and coffee

The night becomes increasingly foreign

There's a new sense of fellowship in morning

When the sky drowns itself in sheets
Of red coal and heliotrope.

I've become a member of limited invite

one of few who can accept
that the best kinds of tenderness
last only briefly

And Even all the way across this vast city

I can feel when your thoughts turn.

Making a bittersweet fracture

In my otherwise perfect day.

The bruises your ink stained fingertips

Traced along the lines of my rib cage

They begin to darken and ache

And that feeling tinges my world 

Turns it the color you made me see

Though only for a moment

Increasingly Shorter

Before I breath out

And remember to forget.

Horrid attraction: potion number one.

The touch of that mouth to this skin
like the sound of a last desperate gasp for air
horror filled and swollen with intention
Those careful hands on this careless frame
the aging flesh on a face once lovely
Sad
So impossibly full with longing
You are a blissful fall my darling
A rigorous search with no reward
you're my candid confession without forgiveness
the poisoned fruit
a requirement of faith when I have none to offer.

Body Language

There's a pulse

beating like hell in constant rhythm

right along the jawline

while you listen so intently

what message is that?

Those bones

the lines of them pushing out hard and sharp from your hips

right below the waistline

oh god those incredible bones!

what are you selling?

Those lips

spilling sonnets fit for royal audience

not close enough to mine

while you answer nonchalantly

what are you trying to say?

tellmetellmetellme

Well

Well

polished Rubies

they hang from two rusted fish hooks

pushed deep into the meaty flesh of your earlobes

the edges of the holes that were made where they pierced your skin

are crusted brown

Those rubies are the cleanest thing about you

and they glisten so brightly in the sun that I can see them

even from all the way down here

you come each day to smile your toothy grin down at me

I imagine each incisor

a piece of tobacco stained porcelain

that they are sunk

each one

into gums made from red clay

that same stinking red earth which surrounds me

I imagine it must rot inside your mouth

the roots that protrude from my thick soil walls

that those must grow out from under your tongue

like your words

You send them snaking down

too slow through the moldy earth to reach me

only to have them recoil before I might catch hold

and be pulled to safety.

this poem probably isn't about you

I realized a long time ago that you were the best man I would ever find.
your so lovely.
your so lovely.
I use the possessive because it isn't mine.

You know, ten thousand women better than I am would jump at the chance
So I keep trying
Because it's me you choose over and over.

Trust and believe those thoughts are there.
You and me babe, crying with laughter while we turn to wrinkles and ash.
Though I do think you're so funny.
and kind.
and beautiful.
and the best choice around by a mile.
I realized recently that I don't think of you at five a.m.when I'm at my most poetic.

I have always loved with words the only thing I don't ruin the only thing that lasts
for me
So if I don't have any words for you what does that mean?

And it isn't your fault that your edges are too rough for my tastes
That I never cared to learn your bodily mechanisms
I often wish I didn't need the softness and familiarity of bodies that work like mine.

Maybe you just like me because I'm the farthest thing from what you can keep forever.

The Lady and the Leopard

Thoughts run along the front of my teeth with the tip of my tongue.
The tender hollow where your pulse beats
Below the hollow well of a missing adams apple.
slightly
slowly
Just enough to notice.
Pieces of you drag along my scalp with the blades of my too pale fingertips.
The body made for straining and sweat
Every hard and gentle angle of your protracted frame
So incredibly
And uncompromisingly
Sexual to me.
Our hips would fit together
Like sharp pieces of the same puzzle.
Let that eloquent tongue fall lazily
Tracing the curves of my flesh.
Darling
Let these fingernails carve the evidence
Into your leopard parchment back.
Press hard against me
Grind and move until the world is ruined around us.
After all, you still stutter when we speak.

the spine in the bible of things to be admired, but not collected

There is something whispering at me from the corner
Crackling through the air
electro-shocking my senses
kissing my cheek with its eyelashes but disappearing
before I can turn my head.
If I managed to turn a half second sooner
I might grasp it.
I could conquer and crush it into dust
and I would be sated.
Or I might pin down its torso and wings and examine them under glass in full light.
And they might die
but at least I would know them then
fully
And even as the air around me grew stale
I would have the comfort of retention

Or I could lie still
Watch the cold air wash over my fever
as I accept foreign ideas of unattainability
Find the beauty in wanting and being without
Perhaps there is benefit
in tasting only briefly.