For Erryn

Hey! I think you’re beautiful

And brilliant 

And radiant

And resilient

I would like to cover you in kisses please!

I would like to write love poems to you

And dance with you

And watch you smile

Thanks for being you

Something about wintertime . . .

Everyone has heard the "every snowflake is unique" bullshit
I get it
Ice crystalizes
Randomly
I cannot stand to give meaning to the universe constrained by six directions
Constrained by symmetry
I held a snowflake on my glove and took it to an old flame
Said, "Look! Watch the perfection of the sky and what it has wrought!"
But it melted before she turned around

This winter I welcomed the coming of the cold
Excited for the clarity it might bring
The clear air, I decided, would show me each imperfection in perfect focus
I spent days focusing on the smudges I found on my glasses
The pimples on my legs
The hickeys that should have faded from her still tattooed onto my neck
Good thing winter is scarf season.

Excited by the days too cold for snow
Where the air would burn my lungs
The act of breathing made harsh by the simple fact of survival
Each sharp breath dragging down my throat
I relish the pain

In parts of Ontario
(She told me)
They measure the temperature not by degrees but in
Seconds it will take your naked skin
(I still blush when she says naked)
To catch frostbite:
The seconds between the moment that the cold wraps around your delicate fingers
Kisses your pink nose
And takes them in first burning and then
Numbness
She and I know a thing or two about numbness

I went for a run last week
Because I wanted to run away from this feeling and I tried to run so fast I left behind the cold and
Although I know there's more oxygen in the colder, denser air
It was hard to breathe
I didn't notice the cold until I got back inside
And the warm air flowed back into my numb legs
So that they itched in warming up
Turning red and irritated
Too late protesting their brutal treatment in the weak winter daylight.
The irony of this does not escape me.


The winter sunlight and I agree about the general shape of things:
We shine together on the snow
Bringing light into the world in a prismatic rainbow of
Color. We shine the sky a color of blue so bright it looks like it's glowing with its own light
We're so bright you can hardly stand to look.
But step out in the cold and we'll take breath away
Without warming the lonely earth
We bring to heat, just blinding light.
Perhaps it's better that way.

This one is dark

I'm doing much better than this poem would lead you to believe. It's a mark of my healing that I'm even able to articulate these feelings. Still, it's not a happy poem.

A Spell for Survival

The sun will rise tomorrow morning, despite your best efforts

You know this as you lay awake in a cold and empty bed

Watching the neon lines on the clock mock you

3:33

Witching hour.

The house moans and it’s not so much the sounds that are unfamiliar

But the silence

The absence of another person breathing

The bed is so cold.

You’ve run through your meditation exercises three times though

You never thought about how easily sleep came

When you slept next to him.

You miss it, the way you miss the ease of breathing when you have a cold.

The darkness isn’t getting lighter (not yet, at any rate)

And the bed is so cold

But your eyes are growing accustomed to the dark

The same way your heart grows accustomed to feeling like there’s a gaping hole inside of it.

Your thoughts happen faster than you think they do in the daytime

Oh god I’m so lonely

The bed is so cold without him

And the distance between you and him seems farther even then a continent

This poem should end with the sweet relief of sleep

Or the fiery declaration of independent, fiery enough to warm your bed without him

Or the hopeful tune of birdsong

On this night none of these things spare you the dark long night

But the sun comes up, despite your best effort.

written in the car on 1/2 driving to the airport

My lips are raw from rubbing against yours

I drink your profile in

Glowing against the street lights 

Not the white dress you wanted

But

Contrary to the sweet words I breathed into your ears moments ago 

Nobody is perfect

body series 18

I would tie your legs and arms to four perfect bed posts hewn from belief 

The belief the sun will come up

The belief the earth will continue to spin

The belief of the kindness of your smiling eyes

I would bind your wrists with lavender sunrise and promises.

I would kiss every inch of your skin in love poems

I would kiss astrophel and stella into your collarbone

Sonnet 18 into your wrists

I would kiss she walks in beauty into the back of your knees

And a red red rose into your hips

I would plant day lilies between your breasts and water them every day

I would watch as the roots twined around your ribs and grew strong with the beating of your

Heart

They would be yellow and even the sun could not match 

Their joyous flight from your rib cage into the sky

Buoyed upward by the essence of you

I would invite everyone we know over and ask them to paint a mural on your bedroom walls

And each of your lovers and friends would make a Sistine chappel to your laugh

And the way you love like the world is living and you are breathing life into everyone you meet

I would cover you with strawberry fields and then eat ripe, living strawberries from your body

Taste the sweetness on my tongue

I would build a mountain of you and play on your rocky slopes

I would ask you to watch as the moon and stars whispered your name. 

"Erryn

Erryn

Erryn"

Country song

We'll dun sing the sun up

I'll spin words into gossamer web
Do I make myself understood?
And before I've gone and dun, we'll have sung up the sun
But I'm not convinced it's doin' any good.

It's windy in the winter and I'll tell 'ya
If you whisper, it might slip away
So sip your stars and listen here real closely
To the words that I'm a gonna' say

The winter weather closely guards its secrets
I just can't read against bright blue sky
It's got no tells, the winter might be bluffing
There's lots of room in bitter cold for lies

It's windy in the winter and I'll tell 'ya
If you whisper, it might slip away
So sip your stars and listen here real closely
To the words that I'm a gonna' say

Come over to mine, I'll feed
You stardust, and I hope you'll find
It sparkly, my mother taught me to feed
My guests the best, now don't you mind

Trap fluffy white clouds
Like tea leaves in the leavings
Of your tea, don't trust but listen here:
The sky, she knows you're grieving

It's windy in the winter and I'll tell 'ya
If you whisper, it might slip away
So sip your stars and listen here real closely
To the words that I'm a gonna' say

I saw you 'cross a crowded room in Texas
And again in bitter cold Vermont
Looked over my shoulder, felt a little colder
Like you were the only ghost I'd want

If only I could read your eyes like tea leaves
If only my future was wrote in your
Palms and I could know where you was gunna go
I'd follow you to every winter shore

It's windy in the winter and I'll tell 'ya
If you whisper, it might slip away
So sip your stars and listen here real closely
To the words that I'm a gonna' say

Met your eyes and did a little two step
Around the clean and cold and stark white room
You turned and walked away to where I cannot say
But I know I'm a gunna see you soon

If only you could leave a little locket
With coiled tresses of your night black hair
And folded tight within, a game I cannot win
A code that says you dun' gone anywhere

It's windy in the winter and I'll tell 'ya
I've shouted so that I hoped you might hear
So sip your stars and listen here real closely
Come back soon to somewhere warm and near.

talk dirty to me

Talk dirty to me

Next time we fuck
I want you to whisper
"I love you"
To my insides
I want to have the kind of sex
That makes me
Understand why people get back together with their exes
I want our sex to be revolutionary in its
Familiarly
I want you to trace every vertebra in my spine with absolute certainty while you stare into my eyes

Next time we fuck I want recite from memory the novel
Written in the lines of your hands
I want to visit the most secret, sacred places inside of you
Come down those well worn paths of eroticism where I have gone one hundred times
Next time we fuck I want to count the constellations of your back and paint the edges with my tongue
Sepia for nostalgia.