Honey sick and sweet in your hair
as the morning sun does back-flips off your golden flax strands
and I can watch the lightening dance in your palms
when they trace the window panes
pretty pictures in a foggy field
and a flurry of white beyond the decorated glass.
Frosty eyes, they wrote songs about
the gap between your sentences.
He made a movie around the
crease in your forehead
when you asked me
if I ever jumped off a building
if I would face the sky or the pavement below
and that was when I knew you were a force of nature
and a love
and a death
and the incarnation of a stable soul.
So I follow you to the greatest darkness these
****** eyes of mine have ever been blinded by
and I trust that my hand in yours
will find it safely
to the other side of nowhere.

I lay beside you
to touch you, to hold your hand.
cold marble replied.

Cradled by the rock floating round the fire,
nursing the infantile species into god-fearing beings.
evolved from millions of years of careful formulation
discovery of galaxies
exploration of the depths of the sea
and all the fury of nature
scaling mountains and glaciers
drinking from the freshwater spring
trickling down summer's neck.
the domestication of the wild
the birth of nations
and the love of a brother.
We have lived and we have died
here on our Earth.
Must we believe in all our passion
and our funeral ceremonies
to pay respect to the dead,
must we accept the idea
that in all our glory as mankind,
our lives became so insignificant
to others and to the solar system beyond our sunny skies
that life means
nothing?
Have we evolved into the most
complex beings
in known existence
and have we loved with the marrow of our bones
and the iron in our blood
only to die
having never stepped beyond the pavement
to peek at the roses beyond
the garden fence?

She sipped her coffee even though it carried a faint hint of nicotine.
She smiled back at strangers even when their eyes said:
"I won't be kind, I won't be gentle."
Her skirt hugged her hips
her blouse hung from two silken threads
around a pale skeleton, bruises blossom around her ribs.
Still, she walked beneath the moon
hot breath on her neck from a unnamed man
whom she knew only by the taste of his lips
and the green Jackson's stuffed in her bra.
She begged for the dawn every night.

I thank you for bringing me here,
swaddling me in foil and casting me unto the embers
to burn slow in kiss of the flame.
I thank you for saving me from hunger,
for showing me what McDonald's tastes like
at 1 a.m when we escaped a daddy
who wasn't daddy anymore,
a daddy who flicked his tongue like a serpent
into an empty brown bottle.
I thank you, dear mother,
for dressing me in roses and velvet,
and kissing me on the forehead where wisps of my hair
tangled with yours
and how it was the same shade of amber.
I thank you for letting your tears drench my shirt,
how you showed me it was okay to be weak,
to be a shattered mirror,
and you bandaged my fingers when I tried to gather
the shards of your skin that cut into mine.
I thank you for sending me to school
where I met people who taught me what love really meant,
and how daddies were not all monster's inside.
I saw fear and I saw trust in the eyes of strangers
when they talked about their families.
And i am sure they saw emptiness in my eyes
when I spoke of a little house on the hill.
My ninth home in four years.
Four years running from daddy,
four years of you tasting the forbidden fruit and
following the familiar scent of his cologne.
But I can go now.
I can walk through the embers on my own two feet
and I will ******* own fruit
and pray i am not like you.
Though I love you mother,
very much.
You have weathered my skin
to stone.
You found a new man for me to call daddy.
He is okay.
You are okay.
I am going to find more than okay.
Thank you, mother,
for showing me all the wrong ways to be loved.

A young boy short by a dime
for the cookies in the window.
An officer,
unknowingly
short on time,
"I'll pay for them."
"What do you wan to be when you grow up?"
He describes his dream,
rushing around on the court,
and the rhythmic bouncing
of an orange ball.
"I want to be a star."
The man smiles.
"You need to work hard."
And he promises
this man of the law
with generous hands,
He promises he will work hard.
And the man walks away, out the front doors
and not a second to react,
he lays on the pavement
unmoving.
face in the asphalt, a wasted man.
And in reply to the last request of an officer,
gunned down on the street,
this boy made a promise.
And he makes another one today
not to waste a dead man's
last words.