When Wet

Rain water is running between pavement cracks

pooling on gutters and trailing along windshields

on raincoat folds, blurring words on newspapers

and staining dust into mud

caught in the wind and drawn by the urge to

thin out in gravitational abandonment 

The map lines they leave are just obvious trails

of liquidations, all those evaporated heat

condensed and precipitated solitude 

we know too well where drops fall down from

darkly cradled far too long

only to race back to anything close to 

the same cloudy embrace

so they come down filling up palms, tin cans, 

dried up fish ponds and abandoned fountains

seeking space to occupy like all matter long to be

wherever they can slither in their

mercurial form into shapes and surfaces

to define them with a purpose

of more than just being slippery when wet.

9.42 PM

Nov. 7 2013

In-betweens

you know how it is

the in-betweens

the interims

the learning curvature

of wanting and needing

and unwanting some more

of missing something 

you've never known

the breaths held

the fingers crossed

the coin-tossed wishes

the wisps of thin candlestick smoke

blown out from birthday cakes

of things we thought we can't live without

and still we breathe a little better now

the sleeps, between wakes

the pause between breaks

the split second sighs

of resignation or relief

that follows the tragic comedy

of knowing the unknown

or waking to the familiar truth you've known all along

Aug 29, 2013

Short cat

she licks her wound in

small, round, clockwise

concentric circles

the scabs have dried into

cold volcanic surfaces

rugged, rusty,  ribbed and rough

a river hardening

in summer, burnt frozen

in place where lakes turn into mud

earnestly, she traces every nook

crevice, flesh on hardened flesh

wet moist tongue flicking on air-dried crust 

as if making out a letter

or tracing out a line or a quote

to make sense from all this french kissing

3:35 PM

Ants

ants have been frantic

gnawing on wet shirt sleeves

you can hardly see these scented lines

they follow, an invisible trace

they disappear on earth tone paisley sheets

silently defying gravity on tumbleweed walls

second-storey floors are no feat

when flood water drowns the moist ground

the heat fishes them out in a frenzy

of finding moisture, almost reaching the sky

one or two wards off the path in missionary search

for sugar maybe, and a congo line builds after

lying in bed, once or twice, you feel the distinctive sting

on the soft folds of your arm, scratching off the itch

only to be reddened in blistered annoyance

for something so small to cause this much sensory commotion

Sept. 08, 2013

3:09 PM

Not a Touch Typist

we move our fingers when we creep in shadows

without realizing we hit key strokes

sometimes we sit comfortably on space bars

and long pauses are born in exponential succession

without us meaning to

before the next syllable slicks its way sidewards

finger tiptoe-ing even when the caps lock is on

all this careful crawling becomes a silent scandal

of symbols above the number line

appearing with the simple press of the shift key

words are magnified by ampersands and pound signs

and asterisks, compounded by exclamation points

that bleed carbon fingerprints for every

single misstep or touch

the dark hardly hides anything from what we know

of where we've been skimming

and the things we say even without opening our mouths

we click our tongues to hide the sound of our backspacing

4:49 PM

Aug. 5, 2013

Embedded

the tear on the bed sheet corner

is starting to show

tucking the king size duvet on a queen

seemed like a practical idea back then

it didn't matter that the pillows

were randomly on a tug-of-war

beneath our heads

or the lumps of folded linen

were stealing sleeps in bundles

every time the wall against the bed frame slacks

the comforter vomits itself on the wooden floor

the room has to shift uncomfortably

to restore some form of tension 

to keep things from falling off

it made sense to just gather the dust skirts

enough to keep the stuff hidden beneath the bed

for who knows what else has blamed gravity

for the things we knock off from our dreams

or things we pretend to accidentally push off in our waking

June 18, 2013

2:06 PM

Blinds

There are marks you leave underneath the shag carpet

Must have been the accent chair screaming all 

across the floor when you dragged it a few nights ago

the stools stood in silence by the bar, Starck, pretending to be 

transparent.

There is so little tufting on the gray sofa, not enough

to hide the wrinkled upholstery and the matching pot-bellied throw pillows,  

just slouch against each other in sloppy abandonment.

The consul table gapes its legs like a mouth, a frozen scream 

or a motionless yawn, or a mocking gag

But I'm sure if the white-washed wallpapers could talk, they would

be saying the same thing, or screaming the same warning

The few white porcelain bowls have gargled enough duck rice

and the bathroom tiles have tasted enough sweat and salt to fill the sea

with things to float, near docks and public shorelines

Because there are certain things it cannot stomach

Silk curtains whisper between panels of windows

because obviously the screens can just filter insects and dusts

but not truth or the prying eyes of gossiping bystanders.

Everybody knows even the blinds cannot block light completely.

So stop pretending that its night time.

10:17 PM 

June 13, 2013