Have you ever stood –
naked,
in the shadow of whispering pines,
moonlight dappling your shoulders,
as a spring storm builds?

You should.

I find myself
meowing
and mooing 
and making 
milkshakes 
in the morning. 

I mimic 
monkeys
and mothers
I mocked 
who knew 
that mammoths 
jump over
the moon
in monsoons
and married
men who move
mountains
and mulch
so mulberries
and magnolias
can bloom
among marigolds. 

Dada
is magic
and muscle
and mooring. 

I know
your reach
and wings
flap my name
but your mouth
is my muse
and the day
your lips meet 
I’ll be a meteor
mesmerized. 

All the couples are holding hands,
touching at every opportunity,
they can’t keep their hands
off one another.
They’ve all come from lovemaking,
a taste calls for more.
It’s a look like I just got up from a nap
but with more smile.
Easy to recognize once you’ve been there.

If I kissed you, would you kiss me back?

Our second kiss was the memorable one.
With you, our second everything was always the better version.
A bit more secure, more resolute, more intimate.
It wasn’t the revision that comes between drafts, 
but more like the second pancake,
a softness and crispness from a properly warmed pan.

Your silence at the end left me without a proper story to tell myself, 
and years later I think about pancakes a lot,
about our breakfasts after nights of laughter,
our coffees and cannabis, and our first pancake arguments.
I visit the room permanently reserved for you in my mind castle
and find disjointed memories and mismatched versions that ache with misunderstanding.

I’ve lost time excavating the truth from the grave of our relationship,
wondering if I missed the unsaid along the way or buried it in the soil of my delusion.
Though I think that miscoded indifference might be the simplest answer, 
which doesn’t feel as cruel and monstrous as the alternate endings.
I’ve come to the conclusion that our story was never about pancakes,
never an issue of waiting for a pan to warm or getting the recipe right.

I was merely your cilantro.

The earthy goodness that lights me up was perhaps merely unpalatable to you.
Making sense of the Jekyll and aldehydes of it all,
I understand now that I was flooding with the romance of your consent,
experiencing the best flavors of life as your lips met mine
and felt your body heat and heartbeat trick mine into feeling acceptance,
and you were kissing a mouthful of soap.

If I kissed you, would you kiss me back?
The answer should have been, “No,” but how could either of us had known that at the time?

Workshop, studio, office, study
Creative spaces
Maybe not-so-creative names
Is the name or the place as important as the act
Of creation?
Nah
But I think it helps.

Shuffle, shuffle, smooth my energy over cards

“Am I betraying myself on this path I walk?”

Am I allowed to be an innocent, happy thing?
When God, I am so scared
it makes me wish I was religious
Then there would be a place
to put hellfire and damnation
the story of this lustrous girl dethroned
all her lovely friends smoked out of—

XVI: THE TOWER.

I do not know tarot but I know
waking up cold at the image
of butterfly effect-ing my way
into a cave that collapses
a man that takes my womb
and a job that takes my will to live

I have always been a queen of dreams
I have this picture in my head
of a little purple house, a black cat
a full table of hearty orange stew
a door mat framed by familiar shoes
I fear I couldn’t accept anything less

Somewhere between
the magic eight ball in my mom’s desk
the paw prints cemented in the sidewalk
the endless disorder of the universe
I will find it

How lovely it is to live in a place I can fall from.

If you don’t remember the past, are you doomed to repeat it?
If you hold on to the past, are you doomed to re-live it?
Aren’t we supposed to learn from the past and then move forward?

If we live in the present, doesn’t it change from second to second?
If we are always conerned about survival, do we never plan for the time we can self-actualize?
What can we learn from Maslow:?
What can we learn form Anne Frank, who didn’t have a future?

The future constantly reveals itself
Maybe we should remember that.

A robin darts past the window.

I am waiting for atomic energy
to crackle to life in the back yard,

to flash white and scatter
papers and spreadsheets around

the room, to erupt and flip
me over in my office chair,

a sudden change of position
for a shifted view of rough spackle,

the ups and downs and jagged
points, the nooks for dust and webs,

the walls and ceiling
like a slow bomb, dropping.

Where is the goddamn sky?
Where are my wings?

A robin dares past the window.

I get a weathered extra-long shoelace 
Kitties watch one end drag along the floor
Curious; observe “prey” from hiding place
Stalk softly; pounce on shoelace; look it o’er

Observing from behind the open door
Crouching alongside that overstuffed chair
Trembling in anticipation before
Slinking over to cardboard box with care

Hey! Look! Two ferocious cats in their lair
Reaching, batting, with movements sure and quick
Their favored shoelace “fleeing” here and there
Which they happily gnaw, bite, rabbit kick

Playtime is fun for Lyra and Butler
Tired out; contented cats purr, purr, purr

Someone once told me
“If you were a seasoning…
you’d be flour.”

They spun their stranger like head around quickly,
and unprompted—
not knowing more than the fact that the first
letter of my last name sat directly
next to theirs in the alphabet.
The blade of a thought spewed from their gums
as they created an everlasting lash in my mind
and then continued
unfazed throughout their day.