It was there that I found you, sitting out on my back steps,

            humming a tune that reminded me of home.

You were a left hand glove,

                                    left in a child’s lost and found

                        with no one to claim you aside from the hole torn in your

            fourth finger.

Your whole life was spent heating the souls of others

and maybe it was time for yours to be held.

            I tried to pick you up with my dreamcatcher,

but somewhere between the beads

                        and the feathers

            and the strings

you slipped away.

            You’re a raindrop on my windowpane.

            You’re a freckle on my sun burnt cheeks.

You’re everywhere that I need you to be,

            But nowhere that I need you to be;

                                                No where that you need you to be.

It was there that I found you.

                        And I rang the bell. And I called you in,

But maybe where you were from it wasn’t dinnertime yet.

Time is a tricky thing.

            I’d like to pretend that I don’t look for you every time a shadow
                    crosses my path.

            I’d like to put on princess clothes and a crown and play dress up
                    just one more time.

                                                But time is a tricky thing.

           And we never got it right.

come close,
let me splatter you
with my primal perfume.

bodies fuse together,
the taste soaks into
your dripping chocolate skin.

our echoes arouse
the sleeping meadow,
ears perk from their night-beds.

sticky embraces smolder
into dreaming.

I am become   once the sleep comes on
a sort of color-taster, see, I know no 
limit to the potato chip essence drawn
upon a song tonight at a show, so,
so surprised was I to feel a feeling thus:
               “Why’s this happening to us?“What I meant to say was this:
It hit my brain like a toothy kiss
when the man at the mic split
his mouth in a grin and wasted
air on spilling words that hit
my ear with a smelly tasteNo, no, I haven’t made it clear:
It was as if all of Frito Lay
spilled its salt across my nose
hissing, “Eat it, you fucking queer.
Try for once, to just straight say
what you mean, rather than compose.”

you cracked my confidence like finger snaps
like that rock shot to the river when i felt like nothing could change in me
like no solution would ever take

with a bad case of transplant rejection ripping my new heart apart
i sat down at the banks of the river i once tried to shatter

but the market had shifted and a new damn was built
so i sat at the fetid banks of a motionless mirror

and inhaled with the relief of a man whose sense of reality was confirmed, for better or worse.
and i cupped my hands
and i drank.

my lips dripping with stagnation, i kissed all hope goodbye
but i guess all that self-loathing tastes bitter
because hope twisted away with a look in her eye that said.

“this is not the time for us.”

I couldn’t stand the depth of her eyes – or my eyes – for another second
so i grabbed the nearest rock and shot a bundle of all my hatred
and relived that moment between you and me.

that moment that stretched miles, with spreading cracks and the sound of a thousand little finger snaps.

the sun hit the rock for a moment as it spun and i caught all its colors and intricate designs.
it was far too pretty for this task
and far too small.

the tiny splash distorted my features – i was hoping for obliteration –
and I became far uglier
and far more lost.

i realized then that I could never break the mirror, only run from it.

i’m still not sure whether i’d rather be right about myself and the world
or find out i’m living a delusion and everything is beautiful and everything is still.

i put that question away for the moment and walk back down to the banks this time, i’m bringing a cinder block.