when we have gone when our blood has long since ceased to flow in proud torrents what reason have the waves to break? whose hair will the wind roughly tousle when we no longer stumble down the rocky hillsides, our voices tangled with the wind for whom will the grass grow if not for us? and for who the flowers and the trees? when we have gone never to return again what reason have the waves to break?

like mothballs bobbing lightly up front with each step so as to frighten off those damned demons cursing the old with age and the young with youth

I am a woman now I guess and I guess I've been one always even when overlapping girlhood but now I am a woman only and I tiptoe through the world I once trampled bold and barefoot

From the balcony seats I imagine they look Like flower petals That had been plucked For the sake of knowing Whether He loves me, Or he loves me not. Those petals, I imagine, Flutter and spin On the breeze To the sound of Vivaldi's spring. But from where I'm sitting, I see smiling sweat stains On scrawny women Who cringe each time Their toes hit the stage, But who grin like idiots Nonetheless. As the music hits a peak They’re hitting their toes Extra hard, And over the army Of violinists I ca...

I am sleek and golden under this soft pale skin of mine and under this soft pale skin of mine I am basking in the light of sweet denial soaking in the moonlight swimming with the owls at nighttime brushing up by the rocky crags hiding my toenails in the sand my legs forever tangled in the grasses of the steppe

we played tennis in the wet Seattle streets till the lights came on and played on when they flickered and buzzed and hawk moths lunged and dove at invisible dreams maybe you saw them but you've turned your eyes away and up towards heaven or you're stirring up the ivy league stirring up the liquor stores on weekday nights Ivan (remember Ivan?) he got his head bashed in years ago and that bastard Kyle lopped off his lop-sided rat-tail he's a military man now Alla has four kids at 22 and sings i...

mother is slow and her mother slow as hell and me inexaustible and alive all appetite and nothing sagging but free of the wisdom of the ancients and never starved and rarely beaten but so alive I can't stand

cold-hearted summers I prayed to false gods incessantly, denied all faiths at once denied essential truths and wallowed in stories of my own invention on white-washed boulevards, freely concience-less unburdened and drunk on otherworldly thoughts swimming backwards, celebrating marriages of earth and of flesh and of holier things roasting the air to a red prefection until it swells and boils, running over with good will and windfall apples cats in heat and blinding devotion

I am withering in terra-cotta losing it faster than gaining it and howling at the harvest moon breathing in dust and the souls of millions eaten away by hot summer air hot autumn air hot winter dry throated tripping up on my own two legs tripping up on your own two legs five years I've wandered deserts, the marks of cactus needles up and down my arms and I'm losing it my sight and the sand beneath my feet and the sand beneath my fingernails the new moons, toenail clippings the sky pulling the...

madder than mad things I walk through stinging sunlight, ankles twisting over mounds where men and children died and beds where women did falling through clasped hands like grains of sand and I walk through stinging sunlight, ankles twisting out from under falling bodies and it kills me, you know, that you sing for her and I know it but in secret where I walk madder than mad things