red.

I think once in a move i saw a woman leave for a trip with red painted nails.
Ever since, it's become one of things i do. Summer looks so much more promising when my red toes press deep into the horizontal lines of a gas petal. Spring feels so in blossom when there is dirt beneath the red tips of my nails- the kind that fills me up when my knuckles bend on the handlebars of my bike. In the winter; on my way home from way up here- as i sip my last mug of hot cocoa and let the car warm up, my hands anticipate travel. And how many of those fall runs, did i take barefoot with you following my red toes, and calling me crazy all the way.
But the night that i got on that plane last week, to go out and see you, my nails were blue.

People are disgusting,

People are disgusting. 

He is disgusting when he runs. When he runs, and his back sticks to the cotton of his shirt with a sweat glue, and he breathes like he is taking his last breaths. It is disgusting, to see him push like that- to feel so in control, when really his body is wet, and dirty, and soiled- but high. He can't even smile in such a contortion. and he smells like all the smells a body makes that people buy air fresheners to disguise. It is disgusting, but it's admirable. 

She is disgusting too. When she eats. Watch her chewing, with her elbows on and off and on the table again. The circular motion of her jaw is rhythmic but still ever so unattractive. And the sound of bolus production is something i struggle to stomach. She eats all of everything too.Her forks scrapes at the plate, and sounds like nails on a chalkboard. She is eating, and she belches, and she accidentally opens her mouth occasionally, and she mists out the kind of saliva you produce to digest when she speaks. It's disgusting, but it's healthy. 

He is disgusting when he cries for attention. When he cries, and throws his rattle. his hair falls out of its photogenic display and into his eyes which he wipes tears from with his nasty chocolate covered hands. He cries so hard with that little body that his belly expands and contracts with every dramatic breath. Saliva  bubbles in his opened mouth, and drool dribbles from his pouted lips. He stomps his mud covered feet and lets out some ugly squeals. He is disgusting, but that is passion. 

They are disgusting together. They are disgusting behind closed doors, with the noises they make and the sighing they do. They are disgusting with the smells they create and the messes the make. Everything is so physical, a connect and disconnect- connect and disconnect me harder Baby- connect and disconnect again- again, again- faster-relationship. It is disgusting when they stick like cling wrap, and slide like butter in a frying pan. They are disgusting, and moist, and sweaty, and loud, but they are the happiest it's physically possible to be. 

She is disgusting when she is sick. Sitting in her wheelchair, her grey hair as void as a flowerbed in October. Her wrinkled skin can sit more still than she can, and she looks like her body alone is suffocating her. And she has no control-of her shaking hands, of her excretory functions, of her loose and naught body, and her illness is disgusting. No one wants her to touch them, with soiled, bent, hands or kiss them anymore with her chapped and orange juice drenched lips. She spits and spasms when she speaks, and no one wants to wait and listen to the engrossed body of what once was a woman. She is disgusting, but she is resilient, and she is alive. 

People are disgusting. But then- perhaps that is just what makes us people.  

Summer Loving

That summer: I was seven, he was nine.
he had auburn ringlets and sunkissed cheeks,
He was rough and tumble, dirty, and mine.
We loved enough for a lifetime, in just weeks.

We skipped stones in the river at sunset,
we danced barefoot in the street after dawn,
We held hands under a mosquito net
and dreamed of together in his back lawn.

He walked to my house all alone at night;
he broke my window with a bat and ball;
he didn't understand his wrong from right,
but given the chance i would relive it all.

We weren't yet ready but where passionate
He was the only love, i don't regret.



***that's right, i try sonnets for fun.

thunder and lightning

She taps her nails on the cedar wood of a table that would be ideal in a dinning room if she had that much space.
It thunders.
She takes a drag off a Camel Blue, even though she promised her six year old she wouldn't smoke inside.
It lightnings.

He rises his right knee, calf, ankle, foot on the pedal of a mountain bike struggling through the storm on a sidewalk.
It thunders.
He slides, he falls, no one is there to hear him scream.
It lightnings.

She climbs into bed between her parents, and her innocence replaces the stench of adult talk that separated them before.
It thunders.
No one wonders if the bills will be paid anymore tonight. Her daddy holds them both.
It lightnings.

She puts her her ballet flats.The ones that make her bleed.
It thunders.
She takes them off, and goes outside in the soft grass. it's cold and wet, but she can't ever remember feeling as much as she does now. She whispers "this is ballet"

And somewhere the sun is shinning.

Tracy

She had dreams, you know. Like, big ones. Ponies for her tenth birthday, a car for her sixteenth, and a prince with an accent eventually. it is too bad things ended up the way they did.
He had dreams too. Crazy ones. He was ganna run away at ten, be an actor at sixteen, and clean up and settle down as a prince one day. Same goes for him; it really is too bad.
She works at a fast food joint now. Her long cedar brown hair can be seen only as far down as seven weeks without a root touch up on the trashy blonde allows. Her hair is thinning, like it shouldn't be at twenty-nine, and those drugs she cant afford, they are keeping her teeth pretty fragile too. She wanted a convertible, and she gets to drive the '96 mercury three days a week now to her part-time, minimum wage job. If she's lucky, and feeling wealthy, she can sneak in a stop at her dealers where she's reverted to paying for her addiction with flesh and favors.
He isn't any better. He works at a gas station, four days a week. They make him park that mercury in the back. His freckles look like a disease, his blue eyes are empty and blood shot. We all used to be into his smile, but it's better if he keeps his mouth shut these days. He smells like they shut his water off (cause they did) and like he boozes it up in the back room, (Cause he does). He'll get fired eventually, by a nineteen year old manager or something, and the girls paying for gas at the counter when he walks out with that nasty polo slung over his scrawny shoulders, they'll giggle.
And when he gets home, the neighbors will suspect he's hitting her. They won't call anyone or anything though, it isn't there place and it would put them out even further then listening to it would. Sometimes we think the sadist in 'em likes it anyways, they feel like she deserves it or something; maybe she does. last week someone said not to worry about her crying and what not, cause it wasn't like we'd notice if he knocked out another tooth. Then one of 'em will drive away in that car and the other will just sit outside and chain smoke. We wonder if they go back inside at all, cause they are there when we get kissed goodnight and there when we drive by in our 4X4s on the way to church. We judge 'em in our hearts, with the gospel on our lips.
We were watchin' her out there on the porch this monin, and something different happened though. Mom turned her head, smiled, and told us - "I think her name is Tracy, or maybe Terry, but i think it's Tracy."

Tracy huh? We'd always just called her Trash.

beloved Dreams

 I hear it is romantic to dream of a beloved.

So label me with an adjective, because I can’t sleep without thinking of you. I can’t eat anything without wondering how much better equipped for you I would be if I were sixty pounds skinnier. I can’t hear a song on the radio without wondering if someday it could make you think of an us that could someday exist. I never get out of bed until I’ve checked to see if I’ve heard from you. I never run without thinking that if I manage to accelerate I could build up enough stamina to get beside you. I never hold hands with other boys because they just don’t fit the same way. I never say your name in populated conversation because that just riles up the butterflies inside me. I always turn away to refrain from the blushing and smiling when someone else brings you up. I instantly think of you when someone mentions a “plus one” or a “date”.

But don’t dare think this is about you,

And don’t dare fell too loved; because I never, ever, dream about you.

                                                                                                                This is way too conscious for that. 

Yellow Lines on Poetry.

Listening to poetry,
is listening to beauty.
It is watching someone steal
watching words trot and stretch about
hearing words make sounds,
hearing the laughter from the sound of a sob.
I see somber smiles
see thoughts i never finished thinking dance.
heartbeats and life in rhythm
noting the sound of fact and fiction
and their discrepancies.
I watch reaction,
watch people move each other,
and people become a temple-
devoted to the worship of art.
I am reaching down and picking up the double-meaning
spit by the mouth's of thieves.
If it were up to me,
I'd make them take a test on road rules,
before they gain poetic license.