In Weed (California)

In Weed (California),
the loose trees are peeling
like ripe gleaming oranges
and tangerine thighs.

In Weed (California),
sunrise tomatoes 
burst like pre-lovers
horizontal
alive.

In Weed (California),
you shine like 
a motor home, brilliant
traveled
and gone

In Weed (California)
I'll sit in raw branches
retrace your hands
with a stone.

For You, duet

I think music sounds the same
to us,
as if our skulls are matching pearl cathedrals
with just the same resonance,
the same banjo bow song
vibrating through our jaws
and cheek bones
making us glimmer
in the dark.

I think poetry feels the same to us,
like words go so far past
basic exchanging of graces
they leap off your pages
shake off their black and white foundations
and edge themselves onto the thermal image
of your heartbeat.
They pick up
where your Technicolor portrait leaves off
and trace the outline of your wrists,
fingertips
and lips.

I hope love will be the same
for us,
the same for me as it is for you
when I am grown enough
to have walked
where you have walked,
I want to light faces
with the spotlight of my eyes
the way you do.

I hope I can teach myself
to love like you,
turn my heart into a snowglobe
swallow the city streetsof my beloved,
tell them, anything you live for
is now safe within me
Your steeple crowds
and snowy hill tops
are all glowing and serene
and I’ll hold them,
like the only way I know to hold you
closely.

When I set out
through midnight streets
and glowing trees
you stepped beside me,
pointing out the ocean,
magnetizing my long broken
internal compass
with your presence.

When I stood amidst
a darkened roar of
basslines laced with instant consequence
I thought of you.
How there are some places
I walk to,
but don’t fit once I settle in.
How I won’t find your
honest gaze amidst these brazen faces.
How I won’t find you anywhere
but here.

When I was left crouching
on bare concrete foundations
of unfinished love
you lent me your pen,
to draw foundations of a structure stronger
than any man’s mistake.
And said:

This is our chance to stand in white fog
whistling to ourselves
building tears shaped like coins
we'll trade them in for road maps
to towns carved from red cedar
You and I,
we'll sleep in wooden churches
count the tree rings in the pews
hold the numbers in our praying hands
only open them for our next embrace
and our eyes will be red cedar
and the tree rings will sing
like the days it'll take for
us to be rid of our coins.

When I first heard you speak
in poetry
I thought words might feel the same for us,
I’m so glad that bus stop
felt the same to us,
like each other’s arms.

Houses Duet

Your body is a city

I shout against these walls

But they echo in veins

Your heart is a house, a home, a cup of chocolate milk

It is cold out here

I have lived alone all my life

In the house that is my heart

With its beat that travels through the city of my limbs like wild fire

Lead me to a key hole

I have golden framed photos on every wall

A grand stand piano that echoes in the aortic tunnels

And makes me ache with melody filled mornings

I love it here

I love from here

I can see you dancing inside of you

Skirt twirling, hair meant for breezes

Your feet bare my stares

Please climb them

Know what I hold dear

Dear, let your eyes hold me like a hole does my curiosity

Ooooooh you

When you smile hello a warm breeze wafts through the windows of my collarbones

The mansions in my gut flood with rain, filled like aquariums when I see you hurt

Parades march down the streets in my towns, with pink confetti and flashing trumpets

When I know that you’re proud

I’ll knock your favourite number if you’d like

Maybe you and I could eat oatmeal in the morning

Plant petunias in the afternoon

Pick whispers at one

And get ahead of ourselves

But I have lived alone in this house all my life

I don’t know how to entertain

You sit perfect happy behind you windows

What music to play

What dishes to  serve

What smile to wear with what dress when I open up the door to this heart

And I know that I have a welcome mat out but the locks are still in place

The curtains are drawn but that’s real glass in the windows

That seem stronger than glass sometimes

I’ve seen you

Strolling past mine, expecting cinnamon buns and table cloths

But truth is: I got none

I’ve got a floor

A table for too many chairs and not much more
I jostle bricks from my sides

To shatter your windows

Close my eyes

And throw hard

If I don’t hear a crack

I’m hoping your windows were open

I could break through

And take the freeway to a meeting place in between our two houses

To a small road side diner where we can decide

Who gets to take who home

Like show and tell

I want to watch you shower sing-shower songs

Sit on the porch after the sun

Brush your teeth

Eat dessert after

Etch every quirk into my cavities to tongue at later on

And I’ll show you how I want to make these rooms a home for someone

I’ll dream about your cupboards, your couches, your electrical outlets

And I’ll tell you that I like dancing in your kitchen with bare feet

Bare arms

Barring all

But you like your kitchen

You must like your house just so

I’ve left mine

So give me your roof

These dark corners don’t last long enough

And maybe there’s enough going on in there that those rooms don’t have room for me

There are nights when these rooms filled with empty engulf me

So I’ll stretch a string with cans at each end to the top windows of the houses in our hearts

I’ll grin you a wind chime

To hang from your strings

And you

You might, or might not, fill my spaces

And whisper “we can kiss each other on the doorstep

But we will always go home alone”

But at least

It’ll ring

And you’ll have my brick to throw back

Ladies

When I grow up, I want to be a lady.

Like style means starting mornings on the fresh sides of our pillows, girls.
Style like silver backed mirror and brush sets,
face down
handed down
Back when vanity was something that saw you before your face went on
I want to know how a debutant ball would’ve launched me
It would have been our beginning, you know that sudden end to our singlehood
satin gloves, resting like paperweight composure on society’s cuff link
when sixteen was made sweet by soft velvet boxes held open
strings of pearls made these girls into women
I want a finishing school crash course on how to pleat poise into my skirt just so
I want a pocket sized pleasantries guide to phrases like ‘just so’
I want a gentleman caller whose pocket watch never reads past curfew like living room handshakes with pipe puffing fathers
I want to know what the bat of an eyelash used to be capable of
I want demure shaded lipstick
I want need of silk slip, to keep my dignity in place
I want the recipe for a blessing
I want to know the purpose of a folding fan
I want to know how to make a home with simply two hands
I want to feel the world from inside lace gloves
I want to live by guidelines like your 4^th finger be occupied before your neck can be vacant
Because there was a time eighty, ninety years prior facebook,  when hairstyles meant status
I want a courtship that doesn’t begin with friend request clicks and profile pictures
I don’t want double take elevator eyes tracing sexual tension
I want first, second, third dates only laced with good intentions
I want to take this feminism full circle I want the rights I was born with the colour of the century that fought for them to happen.
I want the shades and hues from the black and white times.
I want to the very act of walking into a room to be enough for men to stand up for me.
I want a day to pass without walking through seas of girls whose lower ribcages are stencilled by underwear string
I want a day to pass without flipping through FM channels pumping sex through my tympanic membrane
I want a day to come when I finally have the courage to say:
I want my skirt back. 

A Promise

This is a promise-

I know there is a time

when the ashes of the house catch again,

and grow beneath the flames

into beams and drywall and

teacups and children sleeping in their beds.

 Screams fly backwards

from the night into our throats.

 The fire wraps the walls in floral paper

and climbs back into the hearth. 

 Here is the goodbye that leaves us in each other’s company,

 the current that carries the ship back

from the deep and sets her upright.

 Here is the day

when the white sheets in the morgue

snap and billow again

like a flock of birds changing their minds together,

 the cigarette

drawing smoke out of your lungs,

 the wound lapping up blood like a dog,

the bullets lifting soldiers to their feet

like puppet twine in their chests.