Riding in near twilight
[pedaling pedaling]
fast at first, determined.
Where am I fretting to go?
Someplace this being doesn't belong.

Everything comes slowly
unexpectedly
warm breaths and cool
smells of spices and sewage
men and summer,
incense for the taking.

An orange glow draws my body
just behind the mountains.
Trees, buildings- please move,
there's glory to be seen.

Reaching home,
my pace is fast enough to avoid falling over
and slow enough to breathe in
the ugly and beautiful.

That tape keeps telling me I should
live in the now-
current day, hour, moment.

Really?
I'm almost maybe kind of wondering
if that's a crock of shit.

All these something actions
producing lightening speed reactions but
someday here transforms to there and
now morphs oddly to later.

A cat is gone, I'm out of perfume, CDs don't exist, and Lara is addicted to everything.

Please,
sit down with me and we'll hold hands.
I'll talk about the mountains and
you can explain why you want to live in the sea.

you look at me and i'm supposed to believe that you're happy.

some do.

[but] the drops of melancholy
coming from your ducts
are so large that i can't avoid them.
you're not crying,
but i watch them roll down your check
and plop loudly onto the linoleum.

while you flood the house
my soul is scratching to listen to yours
[but]
i'm busy- got to run, you say.
not even my puppy dog eyes will hold you.

come and put your head on my lap, i tell you.
slow motions guide your body to me
and lying on the couch i read your favorites,
tonight is walden, thoreau's nature of dreams.

fifty years have passed and you still tell me
that you're the most still and safe reading
with my hands in your hair.

Clouds covered the sun
all afternoon and I had few
complaints.
More and more I find comfort
in these gray days,
like sunlight might be a
bit too bright for
my soul right now.
But
as evening was lurking in
it rained,
and like a man after he comes
sunset broke forth in all
its orange and pink beauty.

I was so happy to see the light.

My head aches
like lightning with no strike.
All I want is a man to lay with
someone strong
and gentle.
A quiet lion on my bed.
There is nowhere I feel safer
as I fall asleep in his arms.
I want to stay that way for days.
Asleep
and waking
with this pounding restlessness
gone. I'm so tired. This anxious
soul is treading water.
I keep hoping that some mystical
door would open, that I could
jump in and drive for miles and
miles only feeling beauty and pulsating
music. To be content and
be free.
I have to get away.

Lying down on the coarse grass,
people encircling us
but we are alone.

I'm looking up at the sky
and you're listening,
trying to hear the world move.

You tell me a story.
Something about your day
and I'm still looking up.
Laughing at all your dry
clever remarks
and pausing to think at the
memorable things you say.

We've become an entity.
With you, I can feel alone
and also one person.
A piece of beauty
so fleeting and so new.

There is only so much to be said, you tell me.
Maybe that talking,
that incessant nagging is done.
The kind that eats into my soul
leaving this bit of emptiness I don't know what to do with.

I miss your traits.

I've been mistaken for different people in my life
but all I really want is to touch and be touched
to speak honestly and leave no bullshit.
To observe and be observed.
There is so much for us- it's all waiting.

When I watch you move
I'm not thinking about you naked.
Looking up and down I see how easy
and carefree
your joints bend.
And how you ripped the designer patch
off of your jeans.

As I touch your arm I'm saying
I like you,
your company.

You look at me.
I hate this fucking shirt, you say.
Well, I tell you, throw it away
and stop bitching.

The trees shake from battering wind
and my mind/body/soul is tired
of adjusting itself
to a reality full of games.
I won't do it anymore.

I speak not of love but of life.
Of sad, depressed, paranoid
figures. Always assuming.
People like me.