Two Poems from High School (2006, age 18)

Grace

This is the way
it was meant to be:
plastic bags and newspapers
neon signs and symphony
of homeless wind.

There's this girl screaming
"I'm never gonna let go of this balloon!"
So I guess it must be Mars
rising over us later on Main Street
Like the way your face shown
the first time I said your name
Under the sun on the best day
to ever grace the Park.

Sprawled in grass
bathed in the borrowed light
of our watches and windows up high
reminds me of a fish out of water
and I think of how I want to-
but there is this man whsipering against
the nape of my neck, saying
"I never want to let go of this
balloon!"


Finis.

The down is up. We wait at the dockside
since midnight. My 18th, threshold
of nothing really, but cigarettes and lottery tickets,
neigther of which I celebrate
and instead of parading down the lapped shore,
tightfisted and unruly, I have been calling my name out
to the water's edge for hours
begging my youth to remain attatched
to my branches like unripe fruit.
I hope I listen.

Simple

I missed you today
Similiar to how I miss
Jolton Joe and martinis
stirred, dry and never shaken.
Almost the way I miss
Marilyn, Billie, and Bette Davis
and the way "What Ever
Happened to Baby Jane?"
made me give you a stern
and steady look as if to
say "If that was us-I'd kill you."

I missed you today
the way Kansas missed
Judy in that little dress
before she went
Hollywood and Liza
hit Boradway like a fever.
I miss you in that way
where I know I'll never

see you again.

Leather & Let Her

I.
You will always misplace keys,
important documents, wallets
and remote controls. But there
will always be an abundance
of random,
useless pennies and my great
worry.

II.
My Life as a Novel:
I woke up and then
something happened.

My Life as a Poem:

happened.

III.
On a plane ride across
oceans across languages
and tanlines that cut flesh
like cookies on a sheet,
a dear friend wrote me
words for the new year-
a simple recipe that I have tried
to follow and gain taste for-
"I hope love is your only addiction and
that you can be your own ambition."

IV.
A resolute chin and a
boxy-ness that lacked
any spring...I told you
the wind would shimmy
down this way. I told you
that the seasons
would alter, puker up and
malaise like women becoming
handbags digging in their handbags
for handcreams and photos saying
"Look here! New Zealand! Look here!
A cruise!" Saying "Look here!
A handbag for my hand in a bag
and I am digging out the bottom
of myself every day for sixty years!"

Lipstick collected in
the crevice of Marge's
bottom lip and offset
her wig. I wonder if she
found love, kept pennies.


V.
My life as a commercial:
Smile- it happened.


VI.
You will always
misplace key things.
They will always be
at the bottom
of everything.

For Mitchell Candreva IV

One
I walked-and not many men take that miracle as it is:
to walk, to take that split second between footfalls
where we are bent forward yet backward as if ready
to tumble this way or that-
I walked in the way that I thought would make you proud.
That is to say, I walked with a smile on my face.

Two
I slept
and that says enough-that I could find the time to lay to rest
without the heat of your chest
and dreamnt of the shape of your arms around my neck.
A noose that gave warmth instead of taking.

"From the streetlight outside your window" or 'A Moth's Song'

I.
How much could I get for my eyes
on the black market? They have never
failed me in the dark.
Or my legs- they have carried me far
and away and yet never at all.

II.
How much would I pay for your
shoulders, headrest for my sad
thoughts.
How many pieces of silver
could I exchange for a golden
morning in your sheets
Light coming through fibers to reflect on
skin to wake us but no

III.
We don't wake and you-

You are priceless.

'Alice' and 'All of This'

A bottle that said Drink Me:
Bottle, your eyes- what's the difference?
I had a long draw and grew so high
I could mistake it for flying.

A sweet that said Eat Me:
A frosted cake, your kiss- who's to say
they are not one and the same?
I had taste, followed by a feast
and shrunk to a world where all
I wanted was more and more and more

A book that said Read Me:
Printed pages, the soft skin of your
body- pick and choose the finer points
but I read your body while you slept
fingered the fine printings of hairs
and pores, scars and steel muscles.
I studied- but there are things I have yet
left to learn. This is the story I read in
dreaming- the thing I yearn to study
the most.

A Queen that said not "Off with his
head", but a Queen that said:
"Take my heart, you have all of it
in exchange for your Wonders."

Three Moments in the Life of a Bird:

1) I am skirting around brick streets, bobbing up, bobbing down
around the edge of a man's vision. He wears black leather- I can barely fly.

2) I am re-hatching but not from an egg, but from the dark in the folds
of green sheets. This is what happens when you say you love me.

3) I am picking the worms out of myself and offering them to you, building a nest I am proud to lay in. Singing your name your name your name your name...