I'll be quiet
if you'll be still.

your kisses are commanding
commandeering and permanent
they seal my lips
to none save your own.
they leave me no choice in the matter
(though were the choice mine, it would be you always.)

inta sobhi.
and with you, joy.

your skin swims to me
and sings to me

there has never been a poem
of which you were not the root.
nor will there, my love, ever be.
how could there be
since you and me
were we?

you arms are a current.
swiftlysweepingly.

how can I write you.

you're so lovely in the dark.
when I can't see you.

we can wait to love, my love
and love we will.
and then.
then I will write a real poem.

there is only One who has loved before us.
before us, there were no kisses.
before us, there was no passion.
only shadows and suggestions.
let's show the world.
they think they know love.
but we know love.
Because we know Love.

genesis.

Before me, there was

no one.




"It is not good for man to be alone."






Bone of your bones.
Flesh of your flesh.
Taken from you.
Part of you.
Made into woman.
I was created for you.




And it was good.

I love you more than the rain in the afternoon.
And I love the rain in the afternoon.

I love to watch as the rain streams down the window.
With the sunlight shining through...
I love the rain in the afternoon.

I love to lay on our bed and watch the willow weeping
and watch it sway back and forth while the raindrops are beating.
I can hear each one as it falls on our tin roof.
I love the rain in the afternoon.

I love the rain in the afternoon...
But not as much as I love you.

--Luke Ash
(ours)

We are in love.
Did you know?

not finished...

Your neck is the desert
Your skin, the rolling hills of sand.
My lips are two nomads
wandering
with no purpose
save to explore you.

Your hands are the ocean
Your knuckles, the waves
rising and falling.
Your fingers are the commanding winds
Moving across me in urgency.

Your fingers found my skin
and wandered across it.

My fingers found your lips
and rested there.

I am not ironic
complacent
sardonic

not safe
or scared
passionate
prepared

I'm not rhyming
or scheming
pretending
believing

not lovely
true
worthy
of you

I have exhausted the adjectives.

The metaphors.

This language.

The poems are innumerable.

The sonnets.

The stanzas.

I have grown weary of words.

What a poor citadel

they have provided me.

I tire of the implications.

They will never be sufficient.

They have become bereft of honesty.

No more surrogate songs.

I can't write anymore parallels.

The innuendos have diminished me.

If you do not know by now,

surely you never will.

sleep

Please.
Won't you
wake up?
We don't have time for you
to sleep.

Don't you know that we only have
(monthsweeksdays)
hours?
Seconds?
Don't you know?

Let's not sleep.
I'd rather touch you
than dream of you.

I'd rather spend my days
memorizing
your nose,
and its purposeful placement
in the center of your lovely face...
your eyes, burnished and bright

memorizing your mouth,
your lips.
(yourkisses)
your
lips

I'd rather spend my days memorizing
so I can spend my days remembering.

So let's not sleep.
Don't you know that Time is
Devouring the days...
Consuming the hours....
Like a fire, selfishly swallowing the seconds
that I have with you.

Reminder. Remind her.

Where have you come from?

I should have known you wouldn't forget.

I didn't realize how much
I haven't forgotten.

From many years ago
and hundreds of miles away.

You still.

There was a time
when you would tell me
all day long
and show me at night.

After a while, you would tell me mostly
after long walks
or long talks
or when I cried.

Then, you only said it
back.

Today, you told me
for the
firsttime
in a
longtime.

I thought you had forgotten.

I still want to run away.
Not because I'm not happy here,
but because I'm a child.

I miss writing about nothing.
It's so much easier than writing about SOMETHING.
And making it
fit
and faking
it.

There's no such thing as "empty" anymore.

Sometimes, I forget that people read this.
I think a more accurate statement would be, "Sometimes, I remember people read this.

When I used to read
cummings
all the time,
I just immersed myself in the timing
and in the places he changes
lines.
It changes
minds.
At least it changed
mine.

How can I miss places I've never been?

I missed my Grandpa today.

I missed a lot today.

"You're not a miracle, and I'm not a saint. I'm just another soldier on the road to nowhere."
Damien Rice reminds me of you.
I don't even know you.
I think we could have loved.

I don't think I'm cryptic.

The things I want most are petty and unrealistic.
The things you want for me are petty and too realistic.

k-i-s-s-i-n-g

Upon your collarbone, there lies a kiss.
A delicate little thing.
I want to steal it, although I cannot believe it would be true thievery.
There is also one just behind
and a little below
your ear.
This one teases me so.
A perfectly lovely little kiss.
There is yet another that sits at the corner of your mouth.
It distracts me when you speak
and when you smile, I can see nothing
save this small kiss.

Your limbs ache. Your heart is tired.
It is here that you love me.
In the cold.
In the dark.
When you can't find another way to keep warm
other than to steal from me the heat I house.

And so selfishly you love me.
Not for us, but for you.

When your limbs ache.
And your heart is tired.

Advice from the Sea (Personification)

I don't know the sea without you next to me.
I don't know the sand without your hand in my hand.
I don't know the sky without you by my side.
The clouds don't look the same unless they spell out your name.

Summer is coming and I'm afraid the ocean won't recognize me.
She'll open her arms and nod her head and then sweetly to me she'll sing

"Hello! How are you? I'm the Deep Blue Sea!
Come here, my child--you look so lonely.
Come--wade into me. I'll keep you company!"

But when we were "we", she used to sing:

"Hello, you two!
Oh, how I've missed you! You look more in love than ever!
The Moon and all of her waves, they're rooting for you!
Oh you'll make it.
I know you can make it.
Oh you'll make it if you

Share an apple a day and you play outside
and you each kiss your mothers hello and goodbye
and you never forget to kiss each other goodnight

Well...that's how you make it!"

But we didn't make it.
Oh, the tragedy.

I ate my share of apples
I climbed my share of trees
I gave away all my kisses
now my lips are empty
and so are my arms.
and so is the sea.
She doesn't recognize me.

kiss

You want my kiss.
You watch my face, your eyes lingering on
my lips.

well.

I don't give those freely.

I give them joyfully
purely
exceptionally.

but not freely.

another older one. but still so relevant.

I crave obscurity
something that I have found to be
an impossibility with you.

I long to be invisible.
You seek me out.
even my secrets cease to be
my secrets
and somehow

with a look of your eyes
and the soft tone of your voice

they become
our secrets.

I want to hide
to be still and alone and to
keep myself inside myself

but you have
infiltrated my heart.

you breathe light into the darkest places.

one from a few months ago

Your way of speaking pains me.
The movement of your hands across my own distresses me.
Your closeness makes me want to cry out.
When you are near to me, it becomes imparative that I remind myself of the self-control I know I posses
and it is with the greatest strength I can excersise that I keep
my eyes from your face
my fingers from your hair
my lips from your skin.

May I?

May I kiss you to sleep, my love?
I'll kiss your eyelids closed.
I'll kiss your thoughts away.
Your dreams will be sweet.
I'll kiss until you sleep.
My lips will be your lullaby.

What I needed was the sun on my face.
The wind in my hair.

I didn't expect your lips on my face.
Your fingers in my hair.

song4

Too many kisses
An overabundance of "I love you"s
Tell me, what's a poor girl to do?
You say it so often that I don't believe you.

All that I know is if you keep calling me "Darling",
I won't be your darling anymore.

Let me just listen to "Vincent" on repeat
and wish that you had kissed me goodnight
and hope that you miss me tonight
and that you reminisce
about how much easier you fall asleep
when I'm next to you.
when you're lazily running your fingers
across my skin.
and I'm thoughtlessly lacing my fingers
into your hair
I could live there.
Intertwined with you.

finite.

Categorize me.
Put me where you want me.
Where you need me.
Match me
With all the other mes you've met.
Make me what you need me to be.

Smash me into a rhyme scheme.
Cut away at me until I fit.

Classify me.
Diagnose me.
Divide me.


Take away my mystery
My tragic spontaneity
That damned impromptu love.

Make me finite.
I have no more fight
left.

I'm not waiting for your kisses.



Because I will not get lost.

me this time.

Oh to be delicate.
ethereal and elegant.
mild, muted, and tender.

Oh to be a mystery.
A coy, perplexing symphony
of esoteric refrains.

If only I were strong enough
If I sang our song enough,
You would have remembered me.

If only I were eloquent
oh the letters I would have sent
to tell you of my love.

"And you read your Emily Dickinson,
And I my Robert Frost,
And we note our place with bookmarkers
That measure what we've lost.
Like a poem poorly written
We are verses out of rhythm,
Couplets out of rhyme,
In syncopated time
Lost in the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs,
Are the borders of our lives.

Yes, we speak of things that matter,
With words that must be said,
"Can analysis be worthwhile?"
"Is the theater really dead?"
And how the room is softly faded
And I only kiss your shadow,
I cannot feel your hand,
You're a stranger now unto me
Lost in the dangling conversation.
And the superficial sighs,
In the borders of our lives."

nada.

I have no right.
I have no right.
I have no right.
I have no right.
I have no right.

What a selfish girl I am.

Your lips betrayed me.
My fingertips betrayed me.
I have to believe that you are not being cruel.
Just helplessly naive.

You exercise as much freedom as I do self-control.
Let's pray the ratio stays even.

Beloved.
Come to me.
Be still.
I can make you feel.
With my carefully placed kisses
soft lips
and willing hands.

Forget your day
(weekmonthyear)
and be with me here.
Let me help you
Be still.

I can make you
love
me again.
hush while I whisper in your ear
secrets delicate and sweet.
hold onto me.
so you won't forget
that I'm here.

Slip your hand
Into my hair.
Kiss me deeply.

Let me help you to remember
the way we love.
Let me help you forget
what we've become.

When I kiss your collarbones
and each fingertip
your shoulder blades
your eyelids
your hands


I'll kiss away each painful moment
Every dark hour
Any remnants of your broken heart

My fingertips will brush away your heaviness.
My lips will wash away your pride.

Come to me, Beloved.
I can make you feel.

coulda shoulda woulda.

All we were was potential.
The only thing we could ever be was conventional.
I know this now.
Now that I can see you.

Bitter was all that I could be
Once you stopped singing to me.
You all but shattered my rhyme scheme.

You used to touch me so gently,
as though discovering something delicate and wondrous.
I was a mystery.
Oh how history
Repeats itself.
(you wouldn't lift your voice on my behalf.)

When we were new and lovely
Fresh and whole and naive,
On the nights you loved me
It was so easy to believe
That our youth and beauty were enough.

when music was our lifeblood
when the ocean was our home,
the sand our bed.

"hell hath no fury like a woman scorned"

I stopped loving you
the night you wouldn't sing to me.

practice.

How I became your mannequin,
I will never know.
You clothe me in your poems.
You adorn me with your tenderness
with your passion.
I am decorated by your songs.
You whisper sweet things into my plastic ear
and run your fingers up and down my plastic arms.
Knowing(thinking) that my heart is as plastic
as my limbs(you'rewrong)
And that I will model your love to the world
because that is what I, your mannequin,
am here to do.

One day, you will not need me anymore.
I, your practice lover.
You will, unknowingly, strip me of what has
kept my plastic body together.
your words, song, touch...

Maybe that will be the day
That I have needed(dreaded) since the day
you claimed me.
Perhaps that will be the day that,
when I have been stripped down,
layers of practice-love peeled away, and I stand before you,
you will know me.

ice cream

it is
by definition
one big
grey area.

slurring
blurring
melting together
until it all tastes the same

it's dripping down your fingers
(iwanttolickitoff)
and watching your heart break as yours
slips off the cone and falls to the ground
is enough to make me cry.

you tell me your favourite flavors
and I lie about mine.


you were right, my dear brit.
it's never just ice cream.

this is painful.

the way you touch my hair
touches my heart.
do you touch other women
to tenderly?

your fingers whisper across my hands
makes me feel guilty
for how pleased I am at your touch.
do other girls hunger for these moments
as I do?

Your eyes on my face
lingering on my lips
watching me speak and laugh
drinking in and memorizing my features...
do you make others blush so?

as I rest on the edge of sleep

your voice moves in.

infiltrates the boundaries of my subconscious.

the words are foreign and beautiful

and although I cannot understand them, they break my heart.

they are heavy and dark, blanketing me.

"you're drunk", you whisper, smiling.

if I am drunk, than it is your voice that has intoxicated my heart and mind.

you and I are precariously placed.

delicate.

we are new.

and you.

are dangerous.

in the dark, warm state of mind

and delicate state of heart,

with your voice coming in waves.

provocations.

please stop talking
so I can stop watching
yourlips.
please stop walking
so I can stop watching
yourhips.
stop calling me "...Darling..."
so I can stop falling for you.

don't walk beside me,
or our fingers will brush
don't sit beside me,
or our bodies will touch
and I can't be held responsible
for the reprocussions
of such provocations.
(youknowhowIam)

and please, dear, PLEASE
don't take my hand--
I don't think my heart(mind,body) can stand
the way your lips move across my skin
and if you kiss my fingers again

we'll both be in big trouble

I am full of earth and dirt and you.