(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

his Love Song

. . .
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

. . .

And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball?
. . .

If you say so...

What you do, the way you think, makes you beautiful.

from "Is He Living or Is He Dead?"

"A child has a caged bird which it loves, but thoughtlessly neglects. The bird pours out its song unheard and unheeded, but in time, hunger and thirst assail the creature and its song grows plaintive and feeble and finally ceases.

The bird dies.

The child comes, and is smitten to the heart with remorse. Then with bitter tears and lamentations, it calls its mates and they bury the bird and, with elaborate pomp and the tenderest grief, without knowing, poor things, that it isn't children only who starve poets to death and then spend enough on their funerals and monuments to have kept them alive and made them easy and comfortable. . ."

don't expect an easy answer

when something like a soul becomes initialized and folded up

like paper dolls & little notes you can't expect a bit of hope.

So while you're outside looking in describing what you see,

remember what you're staring at is me.

Through Glass

Oh God, it feels like forever
      but no one ever tells you

that forever feels like home ,

sitting all alone,  inside your head.

Earnest

I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.

Undisneyed princesses

Every little girl knows about love. It is only her capacity to suffer because of it that increases.

Why We Write

Over the years I've come to realize that my greatest fear in life is a dread of a certain kind of solitude, of abandonment. And I've come to know that by writing I'm creating a presence which fills that solitude. . .

"Just Say Youre Not Into It"

&HEARTS,
they don't lie -- they just quiver in fear...

Tired

Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.

Her

I see her not dispirited, not weak, but well, remembering that she has seen dark times before, indeed with a kind of instinct that she sees a little better in a cloudy day.

Oh, Henry

Our duty is to be useful, not according to our desires, but according to our powers.

Statements of Faith

I once believed [Stéphane] Mallarmé's statement that within him was that which would count the buttons on a hangman's vest was a claim to cold-blooded objectivity. Now I believe it was an acceptance of a world where the trivial and definite can vie for attention with the emotionally overwhelming.

Is Mallarmé's nothing so much different from the man who, after surviving a terrible auto crash and with his wife lying bloody in the car, steps out and begins to pick up small bits of glass? Are words bits of glass? Buttons on a hangman's vest? On a lover's clothes?

Should you reject yourself because you count buttons and pick up glass when all civilization tells you: please, this is hardly the time?

An act of imagination is an act of self-acceptance.

The cup of life

is sweetness at the brim --
the flavor is impaired as we drink deeper,
and the dregs are made bitter that we may not struggle when it is taken from our lips.

Telescope Messenger

As love is never perfect, a cockney prefixing
an "h" to his "eight" seems to say truly,
"Even in 'I love you,' there are hate letters."

The self as given is inadequate and will not do.

Every poem a poet writes is a slight advance of self and a slight modification of the mask, the one you want to be. Poem after poem the self grows more worthy of the mask, the mask comes closer to fitting the face. After enough poems, you are nearly the one you want to be, and the one you want to be closely resembles you. The happiness . . . cannot be observed by others because it is only a different way one has come to feel about oneself. "Nearly," and "closely," not "exactly" and "perfectly." Hope hard to fall always short of success.

White Balloons

The changes in me are likely to be like the weather:

cloudy at best.

(carry me away...i hope they don't break)

...you're not trying hard enough

Our lives are changing lanes; you ran me off the road.

Can't

You haven't answered my

concerns & questions why
you left me standing here,

speechless with butterflies...

go

please put away the attitude?
ill be the one to follow through
without any fucking help from you.

on

how long
can i
go on
faking this life's what i want?

This Be The Verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.

They may not mean to, but they do.

They fill you with the faults they had

And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn

By fools in old-style hats and coats,

Who half the time were soppy-stern

And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.

It deepens like a coastal shelf.

Get out as early as you can,

And don't have any kids yourself.

you can't mistake me for the enemy tonight

How does it feel?
             What does it mean to you?
Your heart is real;  it isn't bulletproof.

Fighting Tao

      it's same damn sun
  in the same damn sky.

—so wilt away.

" Black rose, your thorns are cutting into me
                                         for the last time.

            I watched your petals wilt away;

      I couldn't bring you back to life. "

cry if you want (it's the return of No Sensitivity)

                      You don't have to scream
to say something that you honestly mean.

Work & play were never okay to mix the way we do

I can't say I was never wrong—
—but some blame rests on you.

Polaris

You say that love goes anywhere;

"in your darkest time, it's just enough to know it's there."

    when you go,  I'll  let  you  be,

butyou'rekillingeverything in me.

For Me, This is Heaven

This is what she says gets her through it—

"If I don't let myself be happy now, then when?"

If not now, when?

Summer

   Tried to give you summer,
                   but I'm winter—
wish I could make you spring
(butIfallsohard)

Drive

" Your lips go dry (butthey'resweetinside)—

                            wine must go right to your head. "

every sentence a failure

A slant rhyme is all I can give;

          a half-truth is all I'll get.

Forward to Exhibit: II

Why do you paint?
For exactly the same reason I breathe.
That’s not an answer.
There isn’t any answer.
How long hasn’t there been any answer?
As long as I can remember.
And how long have you written?
As long as I can remember.
I mean poetry.
So do I.

The Most Beautiful Things

Show us all what grace can mean;

              all of what I might be.

(closeyoureyescallitescape)

We'll run away from everything.

and the moon once it stopped was sleeping

. . .                            one day          it will            unroot us

one day        the wind        will tally        our losses


but        not yet             the moon        not yet