desire

I want to see you again, kiss you again, lay in your arms again, talk to you again.

I want... I want the sunny front steps of that big grey house to feel familiar. I want you to care. I want to spend countless summer days at the beach with you. Or anywhere. I want to see your new apartment. I want to know you well. I want to hang out with your friends. I want to see the movies you make.

I want this summer to be dizzyingly happy, an explosion of bright colors, and I want you to be the reason. I want to wake up to sunlight and happy half-asleep thoughts of you, fall asleep to ecstatic memories of seeing you last, and electric anticipation of seeing you again. I want to be sure that I will see you again. I want the days to be filled with the knowledge that you want to see me too.

Before I met you, I lived in a dark cold place. I want never to go back there.

But more than that, I just want you.

want

I don't particularly want to write
or do anything other than
see you
Perfect
sunlight
a kiss with the faint aftertaste
of alcohol and electricity
Your eyes
looking
at
me
Should I have?
Will I
get
more
chances?
This is, you are what I want
So
call me back damn it

i'm happy.

one of the most perfect moments of my life:
lying there on the rocks
warm air ocean sound & drowsily opening my eyes
to you. and the bright blue sea -
my skin touched by sunlight & your hands, well
Wednesday morning everything reminds me of you
the warmth & the deep blue giddy sky
riots of leaves and flowers & the flick of a lighter
David Bowie & the Greek alphabet
Please
can't wait to see you again
falling-flying dizzily into this warm spring

drunk
on
saltwater
kisses

that riotous season

my heart beats in a birdcage
feather-swift
wrought-iron pulses that
are beginning to quicken.

I'm shivering on the seawall

thinking, take my hand don't take my hand
if you wrap your arm around me I am not so cold
I don't say anything but why pray tell am I thinking
that it would be not at all quite so bad
to spend several days in this position?

I'm laughing like there is nothing to lose

soon there will be a riot of color,
color and chlorophyll, spinning
petals in the heady air.
I feel it coming
in this sudden space of warmth -
the rolling of the sea,
sweaters and sandals heralding
the haze and fog and the dawn of another summer.

I am telling you a story

don't trap me don't let me
feel small again.
But now I realize
once I sat here and was frightened of the sea,
felt vulnerable, out of control.
Now I feel quite so much better I think
it may be time to take a jump

We think we have seen the ghost of a pirate
who is humiliated that he drowned in knee-deep water

I think it may be time to go slowly into that riotous season
that I feel jumping up to meet my touch.

guenevere

this morning's lute-strings
ladled music into my soul
Lancelot, it was you
who made me wish so long ago
that all mornings could be musical.
Well look, now I found one without you
and without him.
I lingered in a pocket of the world
where time flowed from my fingertips,
following each delicate cadence
of bird-song in the linden trees.
For once, my love was free to give,
so I gave it to the sky -
but then the treetops rained it back down to me,
and the winnowing wind, he whispered,
"Give it to your knight, my love."
So here I am,
on the edge of thought and time,
the sword of the sunrise -
I have considered your request.
You are wrong
about time leaving me behind,
but how true it is
that the throne is meaningless.
Maybe all that I will do
is give a message to the birds,
and if they chance to find you -
If I chance to find you -
through the message of a thousand wingbeats
and fierce claws that block out the sun -

my dear, you will know me by
the steady darkening of the sky.

languid

I know that
my stage is shoddy
floorboards rotting
yellow feathers dripping from the curtains
dreams caught in the eaves
Turn around!
but Dieu the costumes they are magnifique!

Ashamed that
my eyes are hollow of late
Take my pose away
I want to
write about preachers again,
and Sunday-morning sunlight caught up in the curtains,
Spirits in green leaves,
and sitting in a carriage waiting
over cobblestones past lamp-posts
- for the prince to come?

Thought love would be like
catching snowflakes in warm lamplight
turning a corner and suddenly the colors shift
speaking perfect French without knowing how
and all the question marks,
oh all the question marks
would turn quick into
exclamation points!

shamed I'm scarred of late
"She doesn't trust anyone,
you know."
Whisper winter fingers in my mind
They tell me -
they tell me
nothing
only
lonely
weary thoughts that turn languidly around.

I know that
my age is young and
Am I only practicing?
No ma'am
I think that
I am floundering

I thought I had escaped this theatre
its dust still clings to all my clothes
but darling they are so magnificent

private

I spend a lot of time only in my own head. I don't trust anyone I don't know. I don't trust many people... My family, my best friends whom I've known for fifteen years, select good friends from high school - that's basically it. Well, if someone new comes with an extremely good recommendation from one of my friends, then I'll trust them. And also, rarely, when someone new surprises me by being amazing. This may be just a friend of a friend, someone whom I almost immediately know is a great person whom I would like to be friends with.

I'm kind of shocked whenever someone I don't know shows interest in me. Me, the standoffish, suspicious ice-queen type? Do they know what they could be getting into?

I usually view people I don't know as a different species. Or, rather, they are regular humans and I am a different species, and so we won't understand each other.

Mostly I live inside a private world. Like a house. When someone suddenly shows up and knocks on the door, I am afraid that they will disrupt everything: spill beer on the nice carpets, borrow a favorite book and lose it, break precious heirlooms, snoop into the most secret corners.

In my imaginings I am an adventurer, a brightcolored free spirit who travels the world and tells enchanting stories. In daily life, I'm an introverted girl who longs for something new and exciting to happen to her, but still worries that new things will irreversibly damage the old. And I value the old things like treasures.

I know that getting to know me is difficult. Impossible for some. Because I don't freely share that much. I may choose to share an image, a shade, a facet. I suppose we all think we are ridiculously complicated and that no one understands us... but that's not really what I mean.

Just that I don't easily let anyone in to my world. You have to pass a sort of subconscious test. Most of my friends passed it without thinking in golden childhood. Others passed it in a similarly easy way in high school. But now I hold back more. You can't burst into my world and think that I will easily be swept outside of it. You have to show me that it will be worth it... then I might allow myself to be surprised.

But you never know.

a reprise of sir lancelot's reprise

Now longer, with more backstory & metaphor, and in stricter trochaic quadrameter (most of the time).


What say you now, fair Guenevere –
Does the memory of youth now lay
golden over your sweet slumber?
Or are you, like me, tormented
by ghastly dreams of bygone years,
chasing after each grey twilight?

Well do I recall those doomed days,
when we shivered with desire
in our small forbidden world.
Wretched wraiths of restless longing,
we pilfered sight-lines and soft words.
In the sun-drenched summer daylight,
we blazed briefly before night’s swift
talons tore the secrets from our souls
and wing-beats bore them to the king.
He reclaimed all our stolen glances,
melted away our borrowed time.
Guilt and starving sorrow dragged us
down the gauntlet of our sins,
and scarred we stumbled blindly
back into honor's waiting arms.

My lady! The years have been cruel,
but you, my dear, are crueler still.
Through hell I rode – you let me go
into exile, to save our names.
I would have rather whispered soft
traitor’s words to you for all my life.
And the cruelest thing of all is this:
shattered, torn, bruised and winter-cold,
my weary heart still turns to you.
Do you now long for freedom
as you did when your crown was new?
In agony I think of you
seated upon your crumbling throne,
fading into the quiet grief
that haunts those by whom time has passed.

My queen, I will not let it be.
When the raven sings at dawn and the
castle walls fall down – follow me.
All glory’s gone and gashed. Why then
be harnessed? Come with me
on a stolen ride through hellfire,
for we’re lonely slaves of longing
and hollow withered hope.