40-no distance to lose

the sound of a smile gets
lost in the web of
signals transmitted over
a thousand miles. your
mouth just beyond mine
is another story,
no distance to lose
the message held in each
compression of air.
soft smoothing of
skin on skin as lips
pull upward. hair not so
silently rustling against
another. silence, wind running
through the leaves, before your
smile is pressed against mine.

39- crystalize

if i could only bend and
twist into something immovable,
permanent. muscles crystallizing
atom by atom into marble.
forever moving, contorting my
body aching for the
knowledge of what was known
before. how does no one wonder
what it was Galatea desired,
arcing her back in ecstatic
pursuit

38- a real physical feeling

fingers trace from an anatomy
book. mons pubis so
tenderly grazed, the body learns a new
reaction. back arches, pulse
quickens, raw inhale.
cleft of venus never before
pursed with another's hand, the body
so innate with desire knows
before the mind can comprehend a
next move. an out of body
experience within each cell, nerves
passing unheard messages
to tell the brain react, desire,
touch, be touch, love, be loved.

37- structural elements of my own

no longer a planar map of the space
my body inhibits exhibits

the cavern of my chest an expressive cathedral not
tethered to the control existing in the synapse

support beams of ribs shift with every
inhalation exhalation each breath

beneath the cathedral a lake of organs
each undulation a ripple of process

the skull a shell protecting
the nebulousness of thought emotion knowledge

the skin an exhibition showing off the architecture
structural elements of my own formation

each motion miraculous meticulously
crafted by the hand of god

for my god is the logic of the scientific process
of information of physics mathematics chemistry biology

belief in a higher sense of sentiency
believing based on facts and figures


proof of existence not
proof by existence

36- unspokenunheard

you're not listening (to the words
that come out of my mouth) but
the words left unspokenunheard
that are said (between
the beats, rests of breath)
in earnest. yes, they're
true ofcourse but
the truth (which lies
in the inbetweens
the heartbeats of phrase)
leaves an echo.

35-pulse

the pulse beats as
each layer of self
becomes undone unbecoming
of a lady as
inch upon inch appears
glowing in the stark
blackness of the room
shoes become feet socks into
ankles until nothing remains
but the original
copy all layers removed
the pulse remains
beating

34- hands

my hands? --yes, your hands. look
at them.
why? they have always been they
will always remain constant. --look
at them when you
realize you're dreaming.
dreaming? but
i flipped the light switch and
they light turned off. right
away. --but your hands, they aren't
right, look at them.
they look as they always have. small,
rings on, little lines crossing
creating tiny pathways and maps.
--but where do the maps tell
you to go?

33- them

the light will keep them away,
a mantra for young children and those
still a little afraid of the dark.
them, the unknowns, the shapes creepy-
crawling along hallways, lurking
just outside of shower curtains,
behind the wall of clothes in closets.
the light will keep them away,
repeated again as the light switch
is flipped, above the depths of stairways
leading to their domain, the crawl spaces
below.

32-like and because

the tips of my fingers just
grazing the beginning of feeling.
something undefinable, just
outside the haze of comprehension.
the hallways are empty, still,
like and because of the missing
piece in my heart. each detail
slowly turns this place
into my home, but it's too
still, undefined. a location
in time and space, but not
home, now, always.

31- heartbeat count

the minutes add up and up
everything counts, i hum, as my
brain buzzes with electricity
preventing the sleep my feet crave.
the minutes add up and up as the bug
once again bumps
his antennae into the shiny
halo of light crowning above.
the minutes add up and up as the water
foams and froths in the gorge below
my fire escape, just beyond.
the minutes wind down and down
in the clock beating to the seconds
determined by my heartbeat,
a paradox of time.

30- father's day

my favorite picture of you is not
faded, lines blurring in the shadows
of the past in the present.
the picture of a picture of
innocence, pure adoration and
admiration in a gaze.
mermaid shoes and blunt cut
bangs, standing on a red
adobe porch in the heat.
lines purely defined, etched
into permanence.

29- actors

"cinema is life," you say to me,
a quote from Godard. your intonation
is light, fleeting, but the thought sticks
to me like a burr on the hem of my jeans.
this could all be a film, then,
playing on the bigscreen in someone
else's movie theater. their hands
reaching into a tub of whatever
their version of popcorn is, eager
to crunch down on the snack as
our lives play out before their
eyes. it's not fair, i think
drifting to sleep. actors get
scripts, know the scene that
they're expected to play next.

28- fingertips

the picture floating in a sea
of others, ones you can see only
by rifling through a box dusty
in inches, beneath boxes of
leather, jewels, buried treasures.
hidden moments, scenes of surprised
emotion, glimpses into what makes
us most us. the thought passes
that we will be the last to
pass our fingertips over the soft
corners, smell the scent of
decaying ink.

27-medium of expression

we are so much of ourselves in
writing; the ordering of letters on the page
into words, phrases, sentences. the private
becomes public through the pressing
of keys, indentation of pen into paper.
so much truth and trust given to
the recipient of one's writing,
one's self. "i miss you" is a state
of constant being. "send me a pic?"
a request to be close, physical
once again despite a distance. by expressing
these thoughts, desires, sentiments,
we are giving ourselves over to the
medium of expression as well as
to the eyes that receive.

26- creating a certain order

therapy. the act of caring
for someone, treatment especially
of body, mind, behavior. creating
a newer natural order
inside, outside. a favorite
type of mine isn't
prescribed,
not penciled in once
a week fortyfive minutes
a time.
it's spontaneous,
alive, breathing,
moving, loving.

25- before desire

there are satellites
surrounding
us on all sides
all directions
extending
you wish to learn
communicate
between the systems
of knowledge
reaching
a wish of mine
before
now i just desire
the sound

24- a prior list of fears

the rain pounded like heartbreak above the bed
coming through the cracks in the fire escape
outside the window. the phone buzzed next to her ear,
something new and exciting, she assumed. she opened
the message with eyes fighting the delirium
of the sleepies pulling down her lashes. forcing them
upward, she concentrated her gaze at the screen
blazing brighter than the aurora in the blackness
encompassing the bed, an embrace of light pouring outward.

23- sorry.

he watched as she walked away and
in the reflection on the car door she
saw him standing there head cocked
at the slightest of angles
he thought to himself that she must
have meant what she said but
couldn't wrap his mind around reconciling
the two sentences "i was still hoping
this could work out i really was"
"i'm sorry" because at that angle
the world tipped ten degrees those
two statements could not be statements
either true or false
one must be both

22-what has been seen

beneath the crystallized surface lies
another reality. truth? or maybe another
misconstrued knowledge or sense of the
true situation. or maybe another
lie altogether. if you had never
looked below, though, your face wouldn't
have had to take that shape. form that
expression. blissful in the cocoon
of your previous knowledge.

21- the passageway

the leaves on the trees seem to bend
towards the earth
embracing those coming through
the passage between
an enclosure of branches
embracing those below
arcing
aching
to be enclosed by anothers
arms

20- systems of scansion

the word itself is nothing formidable
three syllables: for-ev-er. a cretic in
metrical feet, and yet the images it creates
can be both daunting and incredible.
stretching out from this particular moment
to one that we can't even imagine, an infinity
away: for-ev-er. the possibilities of what can
occur start to form a lazy blur in my mind.
a sea of blues, greens, skin tones, places
people things. one image of a future forever away
comes forward from the obscurity, then scurries
back to the haze. did you see it? can you remind
me of the specifics, or was it as i remember;
a moment captured far in for-ev-er of
you (macron) and me (breve).

19- the repetition is lost

the words float over the crowds unnoticed.
thank you. thank you. thank
you. sitting among the multitudes your face is
part of a larger mosaic. eyes glued to the floor,
a tissue clutched in your hand. each word
uttered by the speaker, you turn the tissue
over. the repetition is lost on me. it can't
be you who she is thanking, if you don't even
hear the words. but how can she be thanking
me, listening so intently to each
syllable, if i am not even there?

18- something pretty

if we immersed ourselves
really became minuscule on the
atomic scale would the things we
define as pretty still
hold that same value
would their quarks be more
attractive more colorful
(red green blue)
their flavors
(up down charm strange top bottom)
more well defined than
the quarks that make up something
we'd call ugly

17- two windows.

a young child sat facing
two windows, one an outlook into
a perfect world--range of trees
and clouds floating by. the other,
equally an outlook but not into
perfection--rather destruction,
combustion, extinction. the young
child did not know the difference,
and so kept looking back and
forth between--the clouds moving as
quickly as the images on the screen.

16- but now I avoid railings.

stairways always held an element
of mystique, for as a child they are
impassable, insurmountable behemoths
leading to another world that was only
for the adults
who didn't even realize the
magic they were using to elevate
themselves through the passageway
to the higher plane

15- the technology of voices

the voice on the message really isn't
a voice, per se, but rather a
complex set of codes, changing
electronic signals into something
we want to hear. not a series of ones and
zeros, not a pattern of beep boop beep but
the vibration of vocal chords
that we recognize.

14- something definitive

we seem to be collectors, my dear, of moments
great moments in cinema, you tell me. i laugh
because i wouldn't know they're great without you
informing me of that fact. after watching, we
always talk about the latest addition,
you pressing me to make decisions about what
i thought about the film, me not wanting to
say anything definitive, certain. i liked it, i say,
it was good, while you are able to pull entire
scenes from the backstores of your memory. something
definitive i won't tell you is that sometimes i'm
not really watching the movie, instead, i collect
my own great moments of us, of being here now with you,
things i replay in my mind, my own private cinema.

13-

silence is never really just
that. a heartbeat creates the memory
of one not your own, the sensation
of yours pumping beneath my cheek
then continues on, the sound
of your breath, nose pressed to
my hair, rustling. the soft vibration
of skin moving against skin.

12- successor function

one way we define numbers is through
the union of sets; the {empty set} and its
{successor}. n+1 = n U {n}. a body is a number
then, a cell and its successor and its successor,
repeating more times than stars in the galaxy.
two bodies together is a new number
undefined until the union is created,
a body and its successor,
its partner

11- commonality

it's said that lines are meant
to converge into one point, somewhere
in the distance of space. an origin,
of sorts. what if it's possible that
all entities on earth are meant for
the same? maybe not at the same time,
century, even. what if there's a single
commonality, a place that everyone passes
through, at least once in their short
lifetime, in the cosmic sense.