April Madness

[it's in the poetic, not the realistic]

i.
august doesn't hold you, anymore
until you remember
that fall doesn't fall
until the red fires of the pacific rim fall under
matching music in wide open spaces
never seemed so small

ii.
and you can hold it, sometimes,
underneath the weight of green leaves
trees long hope to shed
until the bird no longer sings sweet
melodies (the equivalent of "Get off my lawn!") and
no one ever believes the stillness can be disturbed for such human reasons.

4.
it's the same sounds every year
of comfort and routine
and baseball somewhere;
salty sweat caked after hours in the sun
wiped with grass stains and dirt
that finds its way to sock-covered heels

you remember
with nostalgia, not fact,
and the created memories hold sway
over certainty and the lies you told yourself
just to get through

but the sounds bring you back
to the sun beating down
and an old pink radio
[faded and too hot to touch]
that cackles with "strike three!"
between an announcer's butchering
of another batter's name
and the heckling the crowd can hear
from the dugouts over their own cheering
and the ever-circling birds
looking for crumbs.

it's the crumbs you remember.

This is not a poem

This is a word
- a word inside a sentence inside space.
I want to deconstruct – reconstruct but
I work letters in my mouth so quickly
I forget what they mean before I have even
conceived them. Like so many others
I find forgetting comfortable.
This is not a letter - this is
I cannot articulate any more
than I can guess the meaning
of words I've known my whole life.
What does 'no' mean to me –
beyond the qualification I am obliged
(Obligation which I know by heart)
to say is really 'maybe' 'one day' –
Were I mute, could I be free of lamentable
linguistics? I could read but not roll
the incomprehensible around under my tongue
until the taste of it censors the meaning,
tells my belly what to think – what to say
in return. I cannot say the spaces
I am most interested in, the clavicle
of desire, constant between throat
and heart. The bridges between one syllable
and the next. I can say;
I want to invent a new language
without ever learning this one.
I can say – this.

As Though I am You

First time
in a suit, hands folded
careful and still across his chest,
thumbs locked together.
I wanted to touch him,
smooth my hands through his hair
and remind myself

knowing a cheek is empty
doesn't stop the want for kissing,
only thickens the heart wall
pounding and pounding and
so pale, my lips against his
in a dream because reality
hurts.

Words of his sharp against my eyelids.
‘I dream of cold river ripples, transparent
lips and teeth and throat.' And I want
to say back, scrunch my eyes and say; I lie
outside in the heat and leaves where my skin boils
red and thick so you cannot see through.