When we have run out of canned tomato sauce
When the candles have all burned down

When the nails against the door grow loose

When your eyes from prolonged fear protrude

When we have stopped sleeping chest to head

And started sleeping back to back

When we have stopped everything but touching

When even our fingertips seem loud

I will still love you

When the empty hands find our boarded up windows
To bang out patient rhythms
When this stale sanctuary becomes a death trap
When the bars of our cell are pulled back like broken ribs
I will still love you
I will fight beside you
With table legs and toilet lids
I will die still loving you

When the empty hands and red mouths come.

There is little room for more pain in here

said the woman from the floor

her leg bent at an odd angle

even for a middle aged woman.

.. ..

There is little room left in here

she said

I’ve had three children

gone to college now

and I have little room left

for heartache what with the

dishes and the board meetings.

.. ..

Perhaps

said the woman

I could lease it out

contract it out

get someone in to fumigate

but first I should get up off this floor.

.. ..

But there was too little room for her to move.

I tell you

I’m not a cuddler

so you know

that me touching your arm

is like

The Israelis and the Palestinians

putting down their weapons

and creating one peaceful, secular society

earth-shaking, time-stopping, news-worthy

and never happens.

So when I touch your arm

pay attention

My caresses are as

subtle as

Free Trade Negotiations

You won’t really know what I’m offering

until you agree to my terms.

When you touch my arm

remember

I have closed borders

please stop at the booth and

declare all contraband

or I will never let you in.

But like a first world country

With free healthcare and a great pension plan

I am so worth waiting for.

When they come for you

Tell them you are poppies

You are Styrofoam

Show them the scars you carry from paper cuts

Tell them you are weak

And sorry

Press into their palms stones smoothed by the ocean

Tell them to take a piece of you home

A pound of flesh

A wound made fresh

Tell them you don’t bleed

Tell them you live in a tea cup

You saw a flying saucer

Tell them you are weak

Tell them anything you want

But speak.

Take time

To fall away and kiss concrete

Sound the long gone gong

There are cracks in the stones you walk on

And sand on the beach where there used to be mountains

You too are a mountain

Take the time to break and fall away

Kiss the concrete

She is your daughter

Your father is the sky

His rain on your back

Will beat you down.

Take the time to kiss the world goodbye.

My girlfriend tells me
she is scared of walking on needles
That when she closes her eyes
the ground beneath her is covered in needles
Small as confidence
Sharp as sadness
These failed needles waiting to find her feet
and fill her with stale doubt.

My boyfriend tells me
He never wants to see the band he loves
That when he closes his eyes
the voice he hears in his head is clear
Close as confidence
Sharp as strength
These poor failed shapes that could not hold
the gods he has made of their voices.

I am light

I am beauty-breaking-down

I am too-still-stillness

I am falling

I am often wrong

I am learning to speak

I am learning to seek

open spaces

I am fault lines in shaking ground

I am beneath concrete steeples

sacred ground

I am curbside lost and found

I am heavy

I am too bright

I am light

I am beauty

breaking

down.

I must be gone and live

or stay and die

                Shakespeare

Here I am all unbound

The night has unravelled and unwound

I have worn my heart on my sleeve

and taken it off with my shirt and panties

and played with your breath until I lost my voice

and now by my choice I am naked, and silent beside you.

But while you are spent and sleeping

I lie still,

blood pumping down my neck and chest and stomach

still awake, and staring at the ceiling.

I am unbound by the feeling

that I am alone, though you lie sleeping

I am alone and this makes the hour dark and long,

and yet I am bound by convention to lie beside you

bound by a convention of unconvention

whose rules we never named or shaped

to be bound like a virgin to an altar

I have chosen to lie upon

in this day, at this age.

I am alone and still awake

in the dark hours while you sleep

unable to find peace in our brief communion.

Here I am

all unbound

And you will never know

how the blood flowing from my eyes as tears

onto your white sheets in silent smears

propels me

to the bathroom

and to close the door

slump naked on the tile floor

with head in hands and elbows on knees

pull at my hair

and wish that I could bleed

to drain this ache from my veins

and find relief,

And you will never know

the coldness of the tile floor

or the chill that I’ve found myself here before,

slumped and naked behind a closed door.

And you will never know

the despair of returning to lie

sleepless and alone next to your prone form,

My face marked by tracks of tears

and my emotions all unbound,

For in the cold light of the bathroom I have found

no stillness, rest or peace

But I will lie

down

and not leave.

i see you again on the number 14
i sit across from you
but you don't notice me
you are
still plugged in and dreaming