Be it soft, sudden, strained, or unsought;
There is nothing in human interaction
So frightening,
So fulfilling,
So frustrating,
So assuring,
So dangerous,
So tempting,
So torturous, or
So sublime as
A first kiss.
By lips, yet unvoiced;
Face to face, yet unseen;
It is the replacement of dreams by reality and reality by dreams.

Nothing steals as much as
Mornings spent napping
So far on the way to
Being together
So simple and yet
Heart too hard to hold
To do anything
To say all that needs to be
Held in mind and soul and
Other places no one sees but feels
No one hears but still falls

Never you mind
This is but looking in from too far outside
Burn for him
For her
For fire does in this life light
More than faces
For warmth of skin on skin
Burn for him
So simple and yet

No one hears but still falls
Never you mind
There's a reason why love is deaf as well as
Mornings spent napping
Two is better than
Never say no when
Sunrise catches you together

To do anything
To feel more and more and
To burn
This is what we burn for
When the sunrise catches us alone

So simple and yet
You must fall
There is no other way to know

So fall

i want to bring something uncertain to
doors and stairs and what falls slowly through and
down and up them

i want to speak the words that bring sweet tears to
cars and cubicles and cyclone fences and brick façades and all the hungry and lonely
emptinesses that call them home

i want to raise a hammer and drive madness into
idle hands and happy feet that build only things and dance only steps
taught under the light of neon beer signs

i want to retire comfortably
in the knowledge that lovers still cuddle
with cheeks covered in playfully stolen kisses
innocent of dreams shattered and hearts crushed
near a slowly dying campfire
at the hidden lake

boxes of holiday joy
carefully cushioned by foam peanuts and obsolete periodical media
formerly known as newspaper
bring a seemingly rare look of wonder to the eyes of children
now hidden by dark circles and crow's feet

watch how they grin as the bows fall
tear off the fading wrap
and tease away the strips of tape
until all that's left is the gift of remembering

what it was like when christmas morning was enough

for fire does in this life light
your face in its softness
arising through folds of quilted cotton
one side to the fairy flame
the darker side to me
i ask you to turn and tell me what you see
but the shadow doesn't turn with you
so wanes the light
then crescent
then silhouette
then eclipse
and the annulus whispers
come to me

Underdetermined love, overdamped spirit;
Category errors make for charmed bedfellows.
How can one plus one equal everything?
Contradictions fill nothing but an empty set
Of words, of sleeping beside a stranger
Known since before eyes were more than eyes,
Of secret victories shared and failures traded with you and
Who you said you were,
Of endings that weren't.

Some pain is asymptotic, never quite reaching zero.
Some is only conjectured, never proven,
Dipping and diving just beyond the critical line.
My pain is elliptic, doubly periodic;
It defies elementary deconstruction.
It makes circles into squares and
Fills the complex plane with distortions of you.
It lingers in essential singularities,
It bleeds infinite residues,
It drags the frame.

Ways of knowing your innermost
Laughing at misunderstood jokes
Calling just to say
Forgotten names paired with faces belonging to vanished children
On the edge of seventeen

Asking your forgiveness for
Falling in the spring, springing into fall
Well-trained voice speaking recklessness
A lock of hair pushed aside an evergreen eye
Doesn't bother me; does your conscience bother you?

Work-weary and worn down
Downy pillows in pristine hotel penthouses
Snuggling in the sleeping bag on mountain mornings
Recalling all your best days and all my worst
It's bound to be a better ride than

Good bye

Quotes of dead poets embrace the legs of lonely high school girl blogs.
Dancing smileys renamed emoticons because this isn't your grandaddy's internet.
Dangling participles cause epic flamewars that bring the downfall of mods in a community of pet lovers.

Wii are the dead.
Wii are the dead.
Wii are falling into the chaos surrounding a singularity on a flat earth.
Wii are keying immortal nothings into the ears of bored NSA employees.
Wii are wearing fluffy house shoes and pajama bottoms and wifebeater T-shirts and raccoon heads stolen from football mascots.
Wii are not touching lips to lips, fingers to cheeks, ankles to thighs.
Wii are waiting for someone to tell us when real life begins.
Wii are all together all the time if we want it, but
Wii are alone anyway.
Wii are the dead.
Wii are the dead.

U r teh ded.

She is a secret age
When days go by between the sunrise
And midnight cries.
She lives in cotton and paper
Written in hands living and dead,
Flirting with tomorrows, watchers, moments.
Somewhere soars a heart on wings of stained lace,
But she knows him only by the brush of wind that holds him.
Together is a prophesy she read on a leather-bound page;
Still, she looks up to the top shelves of her neighborhood book store,
Hoping at least to recall the author's name.
She would sing the color of autumn leaves, but soft
The sound of his shadow's passing makes her tremble again.
Waiting is not in the clouds with her sun-dazzled becoming;
Up there swing and spring only the self, the now, the here.
Waiting sleeps on her shoulder at night and crawls onto her breast in the morning.
Awake, it whispers, but not loudly enough.

And hollow thoughts come with the traffic,
And glaring, shiny nights pass under streetlight skies,
And all the dreams of her lunch break drowsing
Are drowned out by are you okay and conflicts
In the name of time clock friendship.
She is a shrinking, outside the world of vacation pictures and randomly filled bookcases;
She is only the growing when a silent sun, brushed aside her pillow by that faraway forgetful heart perched on delicacy,
Warms the place where waiting was, only two long breaths before.
Sometimes the hidden places of her room are larger than nations,
And populated by more yesterdays than faces.
Once she had glimpsed He Rides the Sky, the name of that day as lost as all the others,
She could only see blue through her bedroom window,
She could only dance to the sound of thunder,
She could only touch the night through cotton and paper,
She could only shed tears at the last hour, and
She could only hear the beating of butterfly wings,
Still louder than the voice of waiting.

Rise. Turn your face to the
Treetops in summer, flowering and flowing with gauzy spirits
On wing and wisp hidden.
Ride staccato siren songs
Up through the warm green into the
Pearly blue wanton sky, open wide to feel your
Fertile penetration.

I told her how we met the day
Seventh grade started and you got lost
Looking for homeroom.

I was alone and you were new and
We were two of a kind.
We shared the lock in gym class and sat together in the stands.
We did each other's homework in the scary hall where the shadows hid our hands.

Oh, Sherry, it was the `80s,
When love was on the radio and each sunrise meant I'd see your smile again.
Hold on, hold on.

I told her everything;
How the boys would run down the scary hall,
And throw pennies to distract us from each other.
How the girls would laugh about the parties where they kissed,
But only when the boys were there.

I was your secret love and you were my life,
Trading smiles between the pews in church.
We saved up our allowances to buy music for one another.
We met behind the trestle in the park, where the boys never played.
We traded Friday nights at each other's houses
And talked low on the phone so our parents couldn't hear.

It wasn't gross.
It wasn't selfish.
It wasn't sick.
It wasn't a sin.
But we hid every look behind our books
And every touch beneath our sheets
And every song that said I love you,
While the other girls laughed.

Oh, Sherry, it was the `80s,
When holding hands meant everything and each sunset meant tears washing away in the creek.
Hold on, hold on.

I told her how we lost each other
On the porch when your daddy saw us kissing,
And the rain began to fall.

I was alone and you were so far away,
Just down the street and around the corner.
We didn't dare pick up the phone when it rang.
We didn't dare change before class or sit in the scary hall.
We didn't dare look at each other in church but still
The other girls laughed.

Every thing I said at home was somehow wrong.
They blamed you for my grades.
They called you troubled and said that it was for the best
When your parents stopped taking you to church.
I lost my way.
I lost my heart.
I lost my faith.
I lost my key to the lock.
I lost my only love when they found you in the creek behind the trestle.

Oh, Sherry, it was the `80s,
When kids played games like truth or dare and all the songs were about us,
And each Friday was nights under the covers and lights out and
It was never something to laugh about.
Hold on, hold on.

I told her about the day I had to stay home
When everyone in our church threw flowers at your feet,
And lies were spoken over the Book of Life.

I would be fine, they said, because I was strong,
But you were the brave one.
I was afraid of their eyes and their words,
And afraid of the pain,
But I didn't dare follow you for fear
That what they said was the truth.
I lost too much when I lost your smile,
And never again sat in the scary hall.

Oh, Sherry, it was the `80s,
When you were like a cat in the dark and then you were my darkness,
And all the days and all the nights became one long, lonesome prayer;
Wait for me in Heaven, my first and only best friend.
Hold on, hold on.

I was off on some meaningless tangent,
Giving my attention to code and ugly dudes in the Blades Edge Mountains,
When I just happened to clicky...
And you were gone.
Years past, you were no longer down the street and around the corner.
Distance more than time, separated by the arched gateway.
Yet your face is still there in shadow, even now.
Your eyes...to say it would be smoke rings in the morning fog.
Your lips...of course there are the other things, but these words are foxholes;
I can hear the bullets flying, though I can't see them.

Don't go. I thought you were gone before, gone to the midnight sun,
But you only went far enough to lose-
Again, the tracers fly; a warning shot to silence me.
I thought you were gone again, then a voice spoke the sacred word,
And here you were, your voice barely above a whisper, but still your face before mine.

Don't go. As long as I know you're out there, I know there's a world I want to be in.

Fractal dragons force fed fairy dust
Shit galaxies of grilled goatse
Through the tubes.
Dogstar fargate fantasies,
Fansite sanctified slashfic,
Cum laude come hither camgirls,
And the backroom hackers who love them
Hold court where the sun don't

Summer Rain-
     Pine soft mountainside-
           Gravel road into Cripple Creek-
                 The heat, the light, reaches down, between green and blue sky,
And gleams in a drop of morning dew.

a handful of plastic
six colors for six faces
intricate inner parts
only a few turns give more combinations than all the particles in the universe
solved in ten minutes

Civilization on the vine-O,
Staggering down the alley wine-O;
Some things never - for the moment, let's just say -
Change.

Marauders run into their neighbors' village waving sticks and throwing rocks,
And the President says
Bring back the Cold
War.

Machetes swing and slash and arms and legs fall away
So that diamonds pass between the right palms
Before gracing the fingers of American
Fiances.

Pipes become bombs, become filler for potholes, become
Flag-draped coffins.

Oil?

God?

Greetings, Professor Falken.

Shall we play a game?

I decline
Through puffy clouds, then thunder
Awakens the spirit hidden away long before the journey began.
Just before I reach the ground, I pull up
And graze lightning-sharpened treetops.
From below comes the warning songs of birds,
The roars of cats red in tooth and claw,
And howls of great apes marking out brutal kingdoms.
I slow my flight and stand upon the tallest leaf,
Wondering why I ever feared the jungle.

One second in transit
The magic that is mirrored in your eyes.
Twenty-eight days,
Yet only the fullness is celebrated
By lovesick fools and backwards-looking dreamers.
There is magic in the darkest of nights,
There is fullness in the cup overflowing,
And the wolves do not sing of love.

One second for the light
Of silent mountains and frozen seas
To reach behind your eyes,
And one second more
For the tear in mine to fall.

Such beauty...
Such beauty...

In the new moon.

Four o'clock and that's all I've got;
Twenty minutes until ten years gone.

Reach out while young,
Or those who got away will lose their faces
As well as the feeling of their hands in yours.
Those things aren't supposed to be
Perishable,
But all things pass...
And keep reaching out,
Because holding hands is not just for playmates
Or first time lovers;
Even the most jaded can find warmth
In a touch.

Motherfucker, tittysucker, two-ball bitch;
Your momma's in the kitchen cooking red hot shit.
Your brother's in jail,
Your father's in hell,
And your sister's on the corner sayin' pussy for sale.

There is a woman on stage
Coaxing stories from ivory, wood, and wire.
Elsewhere no doubt another works hard at her job thinking of anything
But me.
Never forget the one
Crouching in the grass.

I've known older hornier yet set
In her ways.
I've played games with coequals coworkers coeds now wed
To God and the next generation.
I've toyed with girlie girls bobs and curls pinks and pearls
Everywhere but on the necklace.

Nothing I've learned that can be taught.
Not a word I heard that can be bought.
Neither hide nor hair of them can be found or caught.
The only thing I can say for sure is no matter how many I've loved and lost,
Never forget the one
Crouching in the grass.