½ May 2009
Half-birthday dusts its tiny fingers
along the fold in the crook of my arm,
whispering what I wish were not true—
half a year gone by and I am not different enough.
I usually celebrate it,
now I don’t know what to do with it.
It’s like reaching a mile marker,
I’d rather not have gotten to.
If I run slower, will time give me a break?
Let me be?
With time you are supposed
to learn life’s lessons.
Instead, lessons are being
thrown at me haphazardly
with no concern for the damage
they may do to my psyche.
Like rotten tomatoes
thrown at an unwanted show,
I am being pelted.
Being given little time to recuperate
before a new shower starts.
The fifth of the fifth month of the year,
does not find me
dizzy with the desire to celebrate,
but rather dizzy with tears.
Half-birthday dusts its tiny fingers
along the fold in the crook of my arm,
whispering what I wish were not true—
half a year gone by and I am not different enough.
If I were—
I’d be accustomed to this assault
life has planned for me,
or have found a way around it.
Half-birthday why did you come so early?
I am not prepared for your meaning.
I am not happy to see you.
Please excuse me,
as I sit this one out!
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GHOST October 2008
the ghost of what might have been,
disappeared into the light.
melancholy settled in,
as the burden of knowing
with certainty, rested, nestled inside
and around me.
I abhor uncertainty, but knowing
can feel more fatal.
the ghost of what was,
slowly traces what was left of you—
around the corners
and on the other side,
where you sat listening
as water pipes groaned.
I can only recreate what I did not see
with faint strips of memory.
Plastered to what might have been
without ever truly knowing.
The vacancy you left behind
only exacerbates my strained attempts
to recreate what I wish was.
Even though I do not feel my body, now,
rejecting your absence, invisibly strangled
by lost hope—a hope that built itself without scaffolding,
wanting just to be.
It’s as if you never existed.
Strips of memory, shattered,
with whatever necessary.
the ghost of what might have been
has disintegrated inside me.
I am only reminded
of your voice, rough-around-the-edges but also soft,
by the strange distance I feel.
This absence of pain—
collapsing what would never be
into what never was,
burying hope and the love already lost
to what never could have been.
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ECSTASY July 2008
how would you look with a touch of ecstasy
on your cheek,
an imprint of heat rushing to the surface;
Beads covering your face,
like followers of a saint—
collapsing themselves
inside your brows.
Your head tilted back;
Time erasing its fumbles,
hands tumbling back, all pointing
to your open mouth.
how would you sound with a touch of ecstasy,
sending your inner tenor or bass a little higher?
a reflection of myself
in your breath?
I can only guess,
as you sit there.
My musings draw me into you
and for a few moments
I see you change—
the answers that I seek
transform you.
