birdseed

here is four thousand dollars.

I now owe you nothing.

you owe me what money can’t buy

you owe me my un-tattered dream.

a first wedding.

a dress whose white hue is significant.

a smile in the photographs.

desires I can kindle in your eyes.

“only if it’s real” were my apparently vague terms

for the deal (a demeaning term for what should have been

–for what I thought was–

something more.)

a deal! I’d already decided

I didn’t deserve love in its entirety.

a caged bird sees so clearly

the skies she’d blindly held

beneath her wings–

the power to be loved.

it is power, after all–

we must be conscious that we own it

to survive.

I know now what I deserve

and it’s far beyond the seeds you’ve been so

hesitant to scatter

on the floor of my heart.

yes, now that I am starving I see

I could have eaten

long before.

 

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today

I had the power to stay quiet.

I wasn’t even restless

as I lay

by the window of your rain.

 

Under pretenses and invisible umbrellas

I stretch my limbs.

I wish I could sleep as deep as I daydream,

my skin would glow.

 

you are tide,

never ebbing.

 

 

new water

you are swans on a lake
glossy water and windowpanes
dance in Japantown San Francisco rain
blue diamonds and gold chains
you're making me colorful
rhythmic, tidal, magnetic
like subway doors and deep brown eyes
you are steely guitar strings
skinny paint and city garages
steamy glass and red wine dreams
coffee and cream like
velvet roller-coasters or black silk
urban waterfalls
electric raindrops, over your head
wrapping, wrapping around like
golden boas, I want to know you
like radiowaves crashing on the shore
I'll be your shell--glowing under the sea
only if you'll dive in and swim for me
arms outstretched, pulsating, sending words
out through the waves like sonar,
I think you may have found me. . .

Matches to Ash

my first words from this chamber of my heart,

from these depths of my belly and consciousness–

the first glimpses of my silhouette in an honest mirror,

the first taste of oxygen after life under rushed waves.

once his lips were so close–

now only echoes on my skin.

my chest swollen as my heart tries to leap

through my ribs when he leaves,

my bones know tonight’s solitude–

a manifestation we can’t return to;

matches that burn like dominoes

long enough to enlighten,

then dying quickly in succession,

with fading steps he progresses into the horizon,

pure ash in my pocket

 

 

 

 

 

Forlorn city

hiking up Ocean Street sidewalk.

flannel blustering Chinese afternoon

yellow lights and markets, garbage and coffee,

a woman drains my mind

of anything I’d meant to think about today;

I try to romanticize the stark pain haunting my belly,

calculate how couldn’t she think of me.

our deep blue night broke into me like porcelain.

sighs and words from her tongue

replay now that I’ve made it

to San Francisco, driven across the dawn,

walked under chipping fire escapes and neon motels,

the whole lot—

lungs drowned in empty air, breezy lights, midnight faces,

rogue broken beauty and forlorn city loneliness,

no place for love;

only lust and nights and loss and sweaty days and docks–

amidst thousands of lips and hats and guitars and hills,

she is still impossibly not.

A resolve despite her loss

She turns our vinyl to its B-side

erases all her words

so that only whispers cut into me

and the residual luxury of her skin melts into mine

in the maple memory of our sunlit night.

still my soul billows in the wind

like fresh sails on a familiar sea, made foreign

and haunting like ash in my burning mouth;

her cinnamon fingers and amber eyes seize my ribs

crushing me with grace, and the other soft movements

she emits—

this is my heart’s storyline and beat—

my soul’s repose for which

I’d searched forlornly

all life long.

is Home truly on the highway? free breezes and fields from the passenger seat view?

when night falls, my soul’s never been so vacant as my eyes fill with blue

Home is where it’s always been

I never knew this before being continents away

before my heart was abandoned in my own lonesome bed

before accomplishing freedom (a deepening loneliness still)

and wearing stories in my skin and mind that

never filled that emptiness, never warmed my bones

for more than one night at a time.

Home is an assured place. soft voices and lightbulbs

Keep to the road

pepsi cap jingles on linoleum floor as it falls from a glass bottle in the afternoon cyber cafe,

I can feel how wonderous life is

from the rusty glass sunny windows and autumn breeze over the computer screens,

raspberry plastic juice bag and crunchy rice chocolate

to keep my belly full on a morning of wind and reality,

always on the move but I sit still here, embracing how life moves by,

at times it´s too slow

to even feel,

so I hope to keep to the road…

Off the City Grid

I am off the grid as always

taking time, wandering,

exploring and simply breathing

sometimes crumbling..

under volcanoes and baking chicken,

cold summer kitchen nights,

shoes beer park lights, cement like we’re young,

free world and alone souls in the Santiago dark,

rain lightly falling over the city, foglights green through mist

and we are leaking boats, holding each other

to stay afloat.

Ocean Water

i will keep you warm when cold waters flood the present with the past

I won’t let you freeze from the glaciers of pain I used to cause

but you’ll have to feel for me with all the empathy you can find

abandoned homes under the sea where tsunamis used to strike

don’t let your heart remember, you’re above water now

I didn’t know you, I didn’t mean to sink your trust again

I didn’t know myself, I didn’t mean to sink so low

there’s no oasis in the middle of the sea

no way to make it up to you but spend every day

steering us to shore.

I waited at the water’s edge, dried by the sun

seeing your shape on the horizon I began to focus

my vision and now my eyes only swim with memories

of the future.