Island Blooming

This holds a different type
of greenery, pooled limped between
the scrapes of the pen and
arched between the branches
of my childhood,
as I lay back, caterpillers crawling
down the brittle sides of my ribs,
the mud sliding past my lips,
falling forward into the expectations
I formed on the fields, singing
while skirting the memories of previous days rain.
Yet when I close my eyes,
or run my fingers across the veins
in the bark of the tree in what
is now my city, choking back the mist off the lake,
I'm overcome to write the colours free,
spill the green forward and
spread it across the flesh of the page,
streak my tongue through the dirt
and subjugate myself
beneath the twisting,
pulsing, sadistic love
of the island in full bloom.

Descending

There are these moments
when I find myself locked back
within the confines
of your embrace,
your arms a dead weight slowly descending
upon the curves of my throat,
my fingers locked into
the strands of your hair falling loose
across our faces
as the sounds of breathing
grow louder against
the stretch of this moment
as I pray for you not to let go
before you end it all.

Scream

I want you to listen to the
scream trapped beneath the surface
of your skin,
feel the bubble rising up into the sky
and burst with the realities of
this relationship ending.
Because, because I'll lick it clean when nobody's watching,
simmer in the sweet, kiss back the wounds,
seal it all up while trying to block the sounds
of dying
that echo through these compartment days.
I want you to realize, I want you
to taste the bruises on the underside of
the white picket fence,
drink the dirt down, swallow the garden whole and
pluck the feathers of this dream apart and cook it raw,
Because, because you never know
the sensibilities of emptiness dying,
your body crying the tears that come with
the blue pain of nightmares,
while the voice grows softer still.
I want you to listen to the
scream trapped beneath the surface
of your skin and
realize
that this is the end.

organic

for my college professor.

there are these moments
when I'm left with nothing
but a white haze that slowly
clouds through my brain
in an attempt to rid myself
of your voice in my head.
for it's been eight months
and I can't quite let this anger
dissolve along my bones
and wash away into the fresh grass
of summer, my legs
cross into the sky and this page
still blank of all the empty words
forming in the base of my mouth,
my tongue dry against my teeth
in the silence I carried all year
around you.
because I had given up waiting
for this to get better
and am still trying to slowly rebuild,
to strip away the embellishments
and go back to my foundation
before I let you touch my writing
and imprint your voice,
your rhythm, your structure
and design over mine
in an unconscious attempt to please you
and your anger and disappointment
even though I could never have controlled
the outcome of your moods.
because I want to go back to when
this was all organic, uncontrolled
in an all consuming spiral of words,
the pages of my notebooks sticky and matted
with blood, flowers and molted
with colours against the damp of my tongue
licking the ink from the tip of my pen,
with poetry as my lover,
stripped naked to the core of my words
and my voice scratched raw across the page.
there is no need for your words here.

Forget You

This is the moment I'm afraid of,
the slide of the train derailed,
my breath a white gasp
against my teeth
as I run my body down into the sidewalk
in an attempt to fling myself
into your arms
before you shatter away from me.
I have the blood of your heart
in my ears
and the beat of your body
on my tongue
as I attempt to kiss
our relationship away from my skin,
peel your lips clean
from my hair, gag and swallow
your scent below the level
of conscious memories
of this day.
I'm crying and praying
to forget you.

The Way You Write

For Rosa Saba.

I love the way you write
as my eyes slowly rake
over the page, clutching
the curves and turns of each letter,
your charisma smeared
across each line
as your voice rings though my ears,
pulling me under.
There's that catch in my chest
as this feeling spreads, molding,
stretching, tugging my body forward
as if to embrace your poetry through the screen,
until I feel that I'm close enough
to touch you and capture some
small amount of your talent
and joy, because
you always seem to know
how to phrase it.

Exempt

I am exempt from you,
disillusioned along the lines of your skin
as we trace, fumble together
in the dark, a silver shadow
stretched thinly over the body of the couch.
You speak in rhythm
the roll of my name sliding down your tongue
as you attempt to squeeze me down
between the bite of your lips,
envisioned in the fantasy in which
I never leave.
But in the brief light of the dawn
that shutters through the crack between the curtains,
there's not enough warmth to hide
the empty presence of my body
locked in the fading arc
of your arms.