for alex; catch up

1. you were small
and i was old
you were two huge satellite eyes
floating above a kitchen chair
and i was quiet hands in the lap
and feet on the ground.
you were high pitch in your voice
when you got nervous
and i was always waiting to be
let back into my girlfriends room.
you were worried
and i was sure.


2. you are lake sound
and i am sweaty armpits
you are in Korea
and I'm still here.
you are room for all things go
and i am changing my mind again.
you are smiling long spine
i am a racing little mouse.

best friends

i feel this way about everyone
i meet now.
i cant seem to know anybody
i cant seem to help anyone
of get much of help
to touch somebody
to really see in their face that
i g-e-t their whole gig here.
i cant seem to get moved
to feel like i am growing a new
arm out of the mind, or at least
grow some good muscles for the arms i have
already.

something else needs to happen
for this kind of connection
some kind of specific chemistry
or evolution
when organs open like windows
and tumbles of wind
and soft leaves are allowed in;
each tooth swings open
and your tonsils can finally see their
first inch of blue sky.

( third degree burns and then
dips you into a mug of half and half
until the new skin feels
fresh paint
or the pink belly of a dog.)


i know i can know someone like this
by the way you rested your arm
over my sleeping chest
this morning.
i know you completely
even when i don't
even if weve said everything we can say
i can hear your ticking
inside me like
the wheels inside a clock moving

when you cross a biological clock

when you cross a biological clock
with honest to god daily prayer

you get the sweetest eyes
youve ever seen for yourself

i look at my dirty tennis shoes
on the mint tiles
and i see how round they are
how darling the way
they are footed perfectly
in front of the fridge
like a two step

i stare at my half baked hands
and i remember how brave
theyve been carrying
so many heavy appliances;


i trace my own handwriting,

because the guru asks

for my mother i offer glass surf that brushes against fine sand like a vane in wind.

for my darling girl i offer a canyon of evergreens after its just rained and the sun is out to warm them

for my best friends i offer white stone houses precariously watching over a cliff in the Mediterranean

for my brother i offer the grand canyon during sunrise.

for my father i offer a farm at the bottom of a hill, with animals carrying bells around their necks and a garden as wild as fire.

amen.

for candice

when i sit across from you
at our breakfast table,
your face like an orchid
in the sun, among the shining bricks
i feel braver than usual.
even though i know
we are always simultaneously
afraid and brave together.

Picture this Gallery Submission

Sunny January Series

nothing means more
than the bright nebula
of gnats over tall grass
in the sun



yellow leaves fall like
a school of goldenrod minnows
and decorate our wooden
picnic table like an altar



men in striped collared shirts
with silver crew cuts
wax their Mustangs and Cadillacs
just before twilight
& their slow revolving hands
among the smell of smoke
reminds me of another time

12.19.10

corn blue eyeliner
under the mist of a mountain;
the long foothill neck

tuffs of coral shrub
silver blond sheep and
elderly green wigs balance

the prison lines of naked
orchard with tops like
wet redwood
dusted twigs
with plums pitted

from the far away view
trees turn to sad mothers'
scalps
sitting at breakfast with empty bowls

barbed wire measures out
the units of surface of

flounder plain
with the small Australia of aluminum
liquid above this flat stomach

(all house lights look
the same from a distance
the dull orange
airport bulbs)

but when strung across
the fog facade
of a purple coal mountain
they are the most soothing thing.

sexy excerpt of short story

Then she wiped the glossy gunk off her mouth and leaned in to press those pink tulips against my rigid mouth. The first kiss was awful. She pulled back to stare at my expression and I knew that I was giving it away that I was horrified. I was terrified of what rushed movement might do to my fragile sanity. I tried again. I kissed her and tried to mean it this time. But in the make believe, I was reminded of all the old minutes that I did mean it. So I kissed her some more. This time with tenderness on the neck. Right next to the thick vein strung tightly into her shoulder, and I let my mouth open this time; to let in whatever poison she might perspire. I wanted to get knocked over. Her shoulders dropped and her hands found the back of my neck under my ponytail, where they used to rest.
I remembered why I loved her. I remember how mild her voice and words were was when we first met. I remembered that I had never felt affection as unmotivated or sweet as hers. Other people who I had been with since have learned how to give away their warmth, either it was beaten in or tamed like their love was a gentle circus animal. Her kissing felt like seedlings poking their thin green necks out of the soil for the first time (you want to protect them because of the courage it takes, being that flimsy in the wind). I wrapped my arms around her tightly and felt the heaviness of her chest press down on my sternum. Her soft belly get hard when compressed against my ribs. One of her knees hung in between my legs, widening my stance. I liked the tension of her jeans stretching on the skin, and the way the deninem went white around the knee.
Finally my anger and my fear and wishing began to throb in and out, like allowing the blood to flow into the legs after sitting on them for too long. It ached, and it stung, but I felt more space inside me to breathe into. I felt my teeth loosen their grips from their gums. My toes spread wide in their shoes, the blood running everywhere.
She wasn’t the reason I went to crazy.
As I was squeezing her I was forgiving us for how reckless we were trying to scratch open the saran wrap that was suffocating our lives, keeping them too close to unbearable elements. Her hair smelled like product and her skin smelled like baby powder, just the way I remembered. The long multi-colored strands of her hair like a a bamboo shade, swiped back and forth over my hands and forearms; the ends were cool and felt like the inside of a shell. By now she was kissing my ears and my neck and my brow, kissing the cut-in before my mouth under my nose. Letting her tongue slip across my mouth, but not vulgarly but with wanting and too much waiting in between. Her neck would collapse ever few seconds allowing her forehead to slam into my shoulder. She liked it when I tightened my elbows around her waist. Then her body in its entirety released and its gravity sunk her to the bed, pulling me down with her. The kissing got wider. I filled my hands with her inflamed chest and felt their shape swell up on one side and deflate on the other. I felt her forehead heat up and dew.
Suddenly I was back when I was 19 and she was 15. We were walking across the border into Tijuana. She took me to clubs snorted coke, and drank too much. She would cuss men out in Spanish and hold my hand in the streets so everyone could see. We found dark corners on the dance floor and she pressed her face into mine. It was summer, and the rooms were humid and dusty. She kissed me against the wall with her hand pressed up against the red paint. Biting my lip and pressing the big metal button of her jeans into me. Holding the sweaty back of my shirt all balled up in fists. Her hunger made me feel small and helpless. i loved it.

britt's poem take 2

You taught me how to soften after
being fossilized
by years of polluted current.
to heal a canyon
one handful of mud at a time
or love someone completely;
carrying a heart
rung out and stretched over
this big sky of the west.

To: Eckhart Tolle

Self help literature might as well


just eat me alive


seriously, its a lot of hairy yabbering


like apple sized crocodile molars in the river


that is flooding the houses and drowning the livestock


right now, in East Australia


and the old Mary is sticking it out alone


in her galoshes.

britt's poem draft 1:

When I met you

I didnt know what it's like
to hold a dead bird
in my mouth without screaming.
or how to soften a muscle
that had been fossiled
by years of polluted current.
or give away my pride;
a first born, pink and still attached

I didn't know how to heal a canyon
one handful of mud at a time
or to love someone completely,
with space between each tooth.

to have a heart
that no longer takes shallow breaths
or has hands who have carried
homes from one side of the continent to another
who is unafraid of whats inside of it.
with enough room to fit most things.