Shallow Breath

Today I tell myself I have no use for you
your fine words
or your heartbreaking way of never calling
on a sunny day when I most want to hear
darling devil how I wish you near.
No, your words are for other lips damned
and desperate for your cool water drink.
I blame no one but me for this terminal fall
the last I will have for you or anyone.
I would rather winter my heart and hold darkness
pressed against my skin than for one moment
one shallow breath believe you might have
ever thought more of me than this bone against
body circus in which I am left without a net.

Today I washed clothes
changed beds
and found something missing.

The Things that Might Have Been

old loves like gravestones
dates
names
dried flowers;
things that might have been.
Could I have traveled with him
to Fiji?
Perhaps it could have been me
and not her that held your child.
Do you lie awake at night
and miss me too?
Are you still angle faced
and bleeding heart searching?
Do you still dig fingers into flesh
hoping it will cure you?
What year was that when I lay
tear stained face in your arms?
Did you know I didnt cry when
you walked out the door?
All these things
these things that might have
but never were.

The 5 Finger School

I try to school them
into motionless dreaming
so that you can't read
the sign language
of hands that still knee-jerk
reaction splay fingers
open with palm to touch
your rough cheek as you
hurridly deposit our
son upon the doorstep;
you are the milkman now.
Invisible chains lash the
five fingers of my
beating heart to my side
or let them fly to my
throat to choke down words
I will not speak again.
I think their lessons have
been harsh, yet still they
rebel, those five fingers,
tap out Morris code against
my thigh like an SOS
for you to save me from this
decided lonliness of being.
Lucky for me you never
studied Morris code so you
smile and rush out into
the waiting Sunday sanctified
and fullfilled by her smile;
symbol of a life written in
dinners and children and friends.
Five fingers from my heart
touch his cheek, part you
part me and know that he
is worth every hour of the
midnight silences you left me.
I am something less ordinary
and as with all things
whose nature is more fire
than water I will be left
to burn until the spark
no longer stirs these fingers
into tapping out messages
to you in my sleep.

Picasso

I cannot tell you when I fell in love
with his machismo, his maddening
sense of overwhelming self importance
but I did
like a school girl I traced the lines
of his face old before I ever
slid sickeningly slick out of my
mothers womb
Her lidded eyes half drunk with passion
like he on a late night lay dreaming
through glass bottles that fractilated the
world into
shards of color and light a visual clink
cluttered clash that all drunks hear
so we come to stand in a cold museum
warm fire
his thoughts still stirring our ashes
to kindle wide eyed the languid length
or our limbs against one another
matchsticks
burn the world tonight as my fingers
wish for my brushes and the sound of
his voice talking dirty spanish in my
waiting ear.

Crumbling Theories of Mathematical Reason

They say for every soul
there is another soul
whose aura
pulses like a quasar
the same thrum of heart
beat
beat
flesh and bone
a sacred homage to self
sung at a late hour after a
long conversation
composed of yes
and you too?
Do you feel me?
Every theory,
every salvation
every piece of mathematical
reason tells me
that it isnt so
still
as your eyes blue beckon me
cajole me and caress me
I hear my heart
my breathing
still to one sound
a sound that surely topples
the white towers of reason
of promises broken.
I hear yes
virginia
there is a santa clause
as i wish
second star to the right
that nothing is reasonable
and everything is madness.