how morning turns 

cheeks tart like apples

and chatter into ghosts;

how snow dusts cold

March mud puddles and powder dusts

questions caught in wrinkles

of a lady's smile; how 

we say goodbye, no more

than squirrels that dash through parking lots;

how a tree's stiff branches still wave at the gray sun,

how i feel,

and how the man in the elevator uses his dog to break 

a world of ice. 

I am so many

feelings, each a grain

of sand left by

this winding-through-me-day;

I am a pile of it,

and years in a smile,

a frown, the minute

it takes to rub my eyes of

tiredness; I am centuries

and the mountains they 

build, and this poem

that cannot possibly say it all, 

that is bursting forever with everything. 

Something that gleams 

in the hot bath water, sparks, 

and my jerking thighs. 

                                   You, falling

          from my lolling tongue and 

                 quiet of cooling smoke.

I'm a twitch

of rage, a pinch

of anger, puckered

like a volcano, erupting

a moment or two.

bent double, I birth

islands floating 

red across the warm

bath water

twisting papaya

threads; a split 

and gutted fruit

days like a single moaning

wave pass me, nudging

i swallow an ocean this way, gulp gulp

Want me, explode me. Splatter my bones

on museum walls. Worship me - 

lips, rosebuds never blooming; eyes, winter 

sky diamonds. Never know me, but 

speak of me, dream of me, embalm me

like the 'i'  in 'extraordinary' - a syllable you 

swallow to make it work - and call it love. 

You knew me

once, the once- 

I. I 

knew her

too - 

her two eyes charged with

violent sunlight

were mine. I remember violence. I remember

breaking

lines but now I shatter words -

I cling to thoughts wrung out I try to

climb the rungs up, out

I try to shout, but the hand slips. 

I'm a tongue tripping up, I watch

the motion of lips

gibbergabbering. 

My ears are

old. My fingerprint

decays. I delay. 

I've got nothing left to say.