the days i'll miss most were with people

i will never meet again

with elbows in ribs and feet planted so canvas

and rubber could crack the concrete as

bodies urged forward

i would stretch my neck in the hope of

cool air and the chance of meeting

eyes with one of them

i screamed every word

even if i had no breath left

hey, milan kundera, didn't you write a book on this once

I dream sometimes of falling into
the sky, scrabbling my nails furiously
into the dirt as grains of sand
fall up with me and gravity forgets

itself. below me the seagulls circle and
scream, growing distant as balloons
against blue skies.

sometimes I do not know where
I am headed. I look in the mirror
and ask myself if I am important yet,
if I have become a woman of substance.

what was it my father told me
about wings and wax—
how flight melts when you examine

it with a magnifying glass?

a break from angst (for liz)

this poem is for

the other side of life

--chocolate covered almonds,

drinking gin until your stomach is warm,

the smell of old books, and the

sound of rivers in the moonlight;

things that will never fade or change,

never disappear in a fog.

life is still lush on the other side.

I promise you,

I'll get there soon.

sometimes my Urban Outfitters hip pants

don't seem so relevant

walking through streets that are

boarded up say

NO TRESPASSING

with grizzly men and women carrying their

shopping bags

I have gone back in time

much of the world's time

Bloodlust

if life begins death
we lose nothing
in the red carnival

let my hands wrap
around the stiffness of a weapon
let the shrapnel of the enemy
find a home in my willing body

when the Revolution comes
i am first to the barricades
when the Terror follows
i am first against the wall

put my marines in dark navy
something that ocean waves can carry
men springing fully formed from foam
saluting angry skies and terrifying seas

jesus
i've never seen so many men
with swords
outside a renaissance fair

black eyes

Skinny skeleton, prancing down eye mall
percussive bony ass shakes to lil wayne
you got two black eyes and a mouthful
of broken teeth

Two black eyes, blacker than the blackest girls on the lawn, squatting in chairs

They see the stoned skeleton, holler at her
bitch you think you so fly? You vermin, you a janky bug

She rotates quick, shades off, fingernails drawn. Screams a word this observer can't type

The darkest word
The word of oppression
A word that hurts more than two black eyes ever could

I watch the white girl suffering
While deciding
How violence
Fixed her mind
Hating forever