eyelashes that fall out will

never grow back

parts of me always

gone

swimming in these words and

scanned pages of

inky text that tattoos my fingertips

crudely cut sheets slice skin

but fifty four-by-six pages hold

more poignancy than any

published work i've read

and actually paid for

michael stipe, my muse - part II

kurt cobain

listened to automatic for the people

as he carefully loaded a shotgun

in the greenhouse above the garage.

i'd like to think the last song he heard

was nightswimming--

it deserves a quiet night.

i hope that for him

in that moment,

it was a quiet night;

the moon hanging low

over the seattle sea.

my dying wish is

to be buried in warm laundry

things disappear all the time, like:
Richey Edwards or the USS Cyclops
these casualties of mystery
have finally put stones
in their pockets and
allowed the earth
to pull them in, saying
'here,  let me show you
what mysteries
you've yet to leave behind'

Then old age and experience, hand in hand, lead him to death, and make him understand, after a search so painful and so long, that all his life he has been in the wrong

the world is not golden or grey
it is a white-ish cast-off clay

Eliza to Clea

we spilt cranberry vodka drink
now I sit here and think
I love you because
    you'll excuse my cliche
    (the hardest thing we ever did)

was not to cry
oh why

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