Luminescence

 I'm a human glow stick

I didn't know it was dark and then you cracked me open

Or no, I'm the fireflies under the trees in the evening, 

Wanting love so dearly I radiate light

I'm also the fireworks springing apart in the open sky

The very act of your eyes on me is an explosion

You are the stars 

And I will crack and yearn and explode underneath you. 

Heart on your sleeve

This morning I woke up and I could barely fit on the pillow beside the enormous heart 

You wear on your sleeve.

I keep falling in love and writing new love poems

Only really its the same love over and over again.

The same dance steps, the same sunsets and every time I forget the constellations that rise

But the stars are always there glittering inside me. 

I'm not mad at you, I just

feel like you cracked open your ribs, offered up the marrow in your chest and said

"Eat."

And I didn't even know I was hungry;

We are porcelain. We are the thin plastic trash can by my desk 

Made brittle with age and whenever I drop something in it another 

Little bit snaps off and I don't know how we're still standing

With all that breaking and imperfections.

We are fumbling towards each other with cold numbed fingers and fire hot mouths.

I'll lick strips of you away like melting ice cream and 

You'll drip all over my fingers and turn me sticky with all your softness.

I'm not mad but but you should probably do something

About all these butterflies where my heart should be.

Rock Quarry

 I walk slower because of you--

Reminded to find the lichen

Wrinkled along the rock, ubiquitous

And varied, I think of the true

Colors of the rock. Tripe,

Really, my pretty words, my useless

Pleads. What is poetry, rife

With symbiotic metaphor, less

Substance than a single syllable

Laid from your lips with exquisite 

Care? Each of your words is like this:

A gift given so that I may treasure it.

Three stars on his belt

He sits on city roofs and longs to see 

The stars and something twists in his gut, pulls.

Tells him it should be different. Part of him 

Remembers what it was like to chase bears 

And sleigh dragons. When a star dies it goes 

Out in a blaze of glory. 

A gas giant, nebula, galaxy 

Of gas and light and destruction.

But here he sits on a city roof. He can't 

See the stars and part of him that burns 

Flickers in the vast darkness of space.

Star boy. You'll never know how I love you.

Sailor's Reply Series 3

  (a reply to Siren Song by Margaret Atwood)

What a delight it would be to drown

If you could pull me down and I could 

Lose myself in you

Lose myself in the fantasy

Of saving you from the misery of this

God forsaken rock

Damnation sounds so sweet as a song

On your lips. It won't be long 'till I fall 

Into the ocean and you 

Watch me drown

And the ecstasy

Of your eyes on me as I sink

Below the waves

Is worth the fall 

For all the ways to go

This is the way I would have chosen.

You put the ire in desire

If I could fill

Each of your desires

And have you want

For nothing

Today you drove at the sunset and the clouds were pink 

And you turned Taylor Swift as loud as she would shout

"Shake it off/shake, shake it off" blasted across Front Street

And you pulled into Aliyah's Ice Cream Place, tires screeching

And bought yourself a small chocolate cone

I would have

Bought thousands

Of ice cream cones

If only you would ask

Melody Dean

Inspired by Amanda Palmer's  Melody Dean

Today I fucked him but I wanted it to be you

And I thought about how you told me babies forget how to make their own heart beat

Without the heartbeat of a parent to keep track for them

Sometimes I think my heart is forgetting to beat

And I'm forgetting to breathe

Sometimes I come home at the end of the day and I realize my jaw is clenched tight

But I don't know how long it's been like this and I worry my face will get stuck

And I miss you like a house on fire

And I don't know what to save 

So in the confusion and the burning rubble

And the family photos floating in ashes through the air 

I fucked him

But I wanted to fuck you