pleading with the moon

when days become difficult to fill---

with this and that and those

and these...

i've been known to prescribe

myself with a veritable disease.

can i hold your hand,

even when you go to sleep?

late late into the night

i wash my hands of the

outside world. i push

away their expectations

and remember what the

face of the earth was like

before the sun topped over

the spindly trees.. your

heart beating against my

cheek as we were pleading

with the moon.. oh please

stay where you are. and

lets just stay up late

watching the stars.

i'll run out of words one

of these days. perhaps

today is the day, i've run

out of words.

i will love you.

is empty

all grey in my eyes

and between my ears

and in front of my hand.

i can't remember those

days, the old drug. what

was it? its gone now and

i am still here in a

monotonous grey world.

i'm a glass of water, only

you've already drank

up the water, and here

i sit, i'm a glass of water.

i could have been your

swimming pool, only the

drought came faster and

the water's all gone.

maybe i'm your swimming

pool. i thought i'd be your

saving grace, though the

saving's all been done before--

am i your grace? all thats

left in this shell? i could

possibly be a small legume

find me in the forest and

remember what i was.. back

then. when i came and saw

and yelled and went under

the world in sheets of rain.

hiding loss and hiding pain.

was i under the world so

softly again, so that i wouldn't

hear the cries of you. you who

are me, just like me. we'll stay

alive only by default, maybe,

but default couldn't save us

baby. would you let me

be your empty glass? we can

say what i am, if you'll say it

fast. oh please, let me be your

empty glass. i don't think i

could tell them.. i don't think

they'd want to see. that i've

been empty for longer than

you could've known, that i'm

not what they want me to be.

the space between my fingers

in the palm of your hand

rests my heart--a bit

battered and bruised from

a time before.. but there

it rests, in your capable

hand.

it's intoxicating.. the steady breathing,

the up and down of your chest as we

lie (i've never lied) here under a canopy

of hiding stars. i can't remember a time--

before-- when i felt so complete, so completely

content. your arm felt nice wrapped round

my shoulder as you teach me slowly

what the music should have meant.

it's the light behind your eye and the whistle

in your voice that brings me, entranced,

hungry. but this wasn't what i meant

to say, not now, as i breathe you in--

every drop of you. we see the world in

gasps or we feel the world in those feather-

light caresses that chill my spine and stir

my soul, almost nonsensically (i bet others

don't feel that way) and i can't stop i can't stop

i can't stop falling in love with you. learning

over again, what it's like to rest my head on

your chest---i'll be driven insane just in

remembering the way the moonlight fell upon

us that night.

trust

shortbread on my tongue. its the inconsequential

details that tell the story as my throat goes dry.

or maybe the agony that surges like an electrical

storm that rips up the gasp that found it's way out

of me. your voice in my ear, my back bent back

our boundaries--forgotten, remembered, denied.

and in those intances i need you as you fill my heart

and speak to my soul. (do you love me?) i specialize in

answers as i calculate your words. your love and your

words. and my trust holds us together when all we have

are words. i look to a future--limitless and bright--and

i see your face in my trusting hands. and i pray to god

that we find a way out. will we find a way? (i don't know

a world without you dear) take my hand and tell me

you have found a way. i've always trusted you

desert eyes in a thunderstorm

i do not know what it is inside me that leeches

my pity, empathy. as i watch you curl disintegratingly

into yourself. your crescent moon self isn't

who you used to be. and my inverted tears don't

do you justice. i gather up reasons for apathy

and hold them out life a fanned deck of

bicycle cards. turning the wheels of your rising

and falling chest. you suffer through, dangling

above a void of unknown untold... they use your

body like a research rat. yet i have no tears for

you. a sliver of glass rests in the corner of my eye

but your face is erased from memory. how could

i say that a person deserves... agony? far from mute,

though it is i who cannot say what it is about myself

that keeps me from bothering to glance back behind

my retreating shoulder

i pass on

there wasn't ever a window
that blurred my vision or
told me stories of the world
that were not true. there
wasn't ever a ceiling that
boasted its stick-on plastic
stars were brighter than
the milky way. there wasn't
ever a story that gripped my
heart so firmly in its grasp
than you and i.
there may (may there) never
be a time when your back
recedes into a misty distance
when a slow dull rain descends
upon me like a broken wing.
(will there be a time?)

i may well never learn
to unlove my heart from
this knot it's fused itself
to. i may well never move
your hand away from the
infinite gossamer strings that
move my soul into being.
if you play the music, the
air will sing, and if i can no
longer breathe i won't ask
you to stop--the way the
grass moves tells all that could
be said. if you let me pass on, i
will never find exactly what i'm
looking for