touch

it's funny how little things can affect you
like smooth fingers running through your hair
or a hand gripping your shoulder
or a clumsy kiss on the stairs

before i know it, ronnie's on my mind
more often than i like
cigarettes burning holes in my concentration
but it's not really him, anyway,
it's just
the kiss

"i have never wanted to kiss you"

we are bound from
nothing but the closeness
my stomach feels against his
i try to tell john the truth of my feelings for him
i am so direct i surprise myself into doubt
wondering if my words are really my heart
they sound too good to be

really, every moment i am touched
i deliberately memorize:

the way my lips graze ryan's ear

as we hug for the first time

jeff's hands tentatively rubbing
my shoulders, quickly letting go

wondering how our bodies contain
such immense talent when i embrace alice

kathleen's maternal touch that draws
her complaint and makes her responsible

holding greg's hand, knowing his fingers
discovered neil's body but that they won't love him

douglass anne wants me to be physically closer to her
i am afraid to let her
because i see myself and i
sense familiar thoughts of possession and jealousy
i know the power of even the most foreign hands, and necks, and shoulders
i know what sway touches, kisses, and embraces have over me

and i don't want that power over her or any girl

but if i'm going to deny her
then i have to at least understand myself
and not want to ask it of john or neil or jeff or greg or ronnie
or anyone

the dedication

i don't know why but i'd been thinking
i would give this to someone--the person who
loved me completely. my partner.
my other half. the one who would fill the rest of my days
in sickness and in health till death do us part, or something.
it wouldn't have even needed to be that important,
just a person i felt was right. i would almost given it away easily, i'm afraid.

but you drew me
out of the lines of your own
ten-year existence without me
you called me down into being and
loved me so hard that sometimes i couldn't even see it
and let me go--probably the most important and
most difficult job a parent has to do. so i decided that
i wanted you to have it instead. it's my heart
scribbled out for you to decode, even though a part of me knows
there will be no need.

so i wanted to show you that i'm grateful, and even though actions speak
louder than words, let these tell you how much i love you
and how much i appreciate your presence.

gifts for an opening

it started tonight with the glasses
elegant champagne flutes whose thin stems
play with the light. sandblasted
with our show's title
which in a few years might confuse me
for a moment until i stop
and remember

second, a rose
charged with an aura of such sincere thanks
this gift is more feeling than substance
it touched me
for once.

there are hugs--the tangible grasp of another body
whose warmth helps ground you in the moment that is already slipping by
now no matter how long i hold on i always feel like it's not long enough. but
at least i'm glad i can finally recognize my need for it, and
i'm learning to understand the gift
those who want to touch me are trying to give.

how do we hold onto such fleeting and happy moments?
sometimes we compare precious moments to draining grains of sand in an hourglass
but i think it's even less tangible; more like a pleasant breeze that flutters past
silently playing with wisps of hair at your temples and making you
wonder if something has even passed at all.

21.10.07

tonight i know again how ineffective we all are
and how little we can actually touch positively.
how much we think we do from a distance
to look closer is to see the
details of people's real pain
and real danger
cracking systems and motionless bureaucracy
seem to do nothing to help that;
an hour to go two and a half blocks.

pens scribble words of supposed release upon forms piling up
like dead leaves in an er waiting room where
the sense of stagnation becomes overwhelming

why are you here?
because they brought me here.
what hurts?
nothing.
so why are you here?

you trip and fall in the orange light of the sidewalk and throw up. so you have to go to the hospital.
it doesn't matter what's best. it only matters that we follow the rules;
rules made from so far above us no one can see their actual result,
only measured in statistics. and so hypocritical its infuriating.
it's for your own good. and we've helped a lot of people.
is it because you're trying to show us how dangerous it is to get really drunk?
how much we really need hospital care after vomiting gracelessly in the bushes?
hospital care being to wait in the waiting room.

it is the emergency room, right?
i guess they meant emergency in plant time
because everything moves so slow
you can't
even see it
moving

what i don't understand
is why alcohol is held up as something distinctly
adult; for an elite group of "responsibles"--
who aren't even, half the time--
and why children expected in all other
respects to act like adults
are judged
and punished harshly
only for emulating what they see
as something grown up.

senioritis

october is a pregnant month.
i hate being this busy, and i love being this busy.
maybe it'll give birth to something interesting.

yesterday i sent two text messages of apology,
if only because we are, as usual, all stressed
beyond our means and the last thing
we need is to be angry with one another.

sarah told me she wants just to go home
for being broken--
it reminds me that almost everything
is about momentum
her words put a few more things into perspective.
i still think john/matt are lucky for having one another.
and i think they get it.

but no matter how much something is worth holding onto
sometimes it slips from your grasp

i don't want to do these things anymore
nothing is more mundane than work that transcends
moments

billy writes them and i consume the pages like the angsty
teen i am inside. i would care about nothing
except for to want my soy chai latte
bought with negative gworld dollars,

to close my eyes, the blue wind fluttering my eyelashes
listening to voices talking about "important" things
and hearing my phone ring
canned heat, voice on the other side
making me smile and
punctuating another moment that is
both and neither happy and sad

14.10.07 / mowing

i remember the smell of grass being mown
as tiny droplets of rain began to fall
three mowers make for short work
but they weren't fast enough and
wet grass is hard to cut

i was ignoring the mowing;
somewhere else
flailing like something magical
thinking we could all fly if we
moved fast enough and wished it

the darkening wood of the deck
like a spell becomes something dangerous
i don't know what's happening but
i'm under the benches and sprawling
through the air
buzz of mowers suspending me

is this what flying--
crash to the ground
the buzzing more intense
no pain, just hurt inside
tears mingle with the rain
...is like?

one mower stops
arms lift me and hold me up
to the sky
i cried even harder because
it wouldn't take me

taste of earth and blood
this is our reality--
wet and hard
and humming with ignorance.

piano lesson

today Frank was proud of me
because i had practiced hard on the haydn

i didn't tell him that
what he'd said last week:
you'll never have more time to
practice than right now

scared me to death
because i secretly know it's true
and i'm quickly realizing
how little i might leave here with,
like everyone

we had the lesson in a practice room
afterwards he had something for me
it was debussy
des pas sur la neige
la cathédrale engloutie
twenty black and white treasure maps

frustration against ivory keys
leads me to the treasure's recreation
subtle, haunting beauty

dream boy

in my dream you were behind me
gripping me violently and growling in my ear
licking my neck and kissing me

the force of your kiss propelled us
through a hallway, twilight air grinning
as i felt the burn of your torso against mine

even though i liked it at first
your tongue soon became something
alarming, boring into my skull

trying to push you off
why are you doing this
in front of everyone?

a circle of chairs and
blank, parental faces looking up at us
two empty, one for you and one for me

i think am scratching and hitting you
getting nowhere with my blows
i feel no difference between pleasure
and pain

as you cling tighter and tighter,
coming into me
soon unable to tell whether it's me or you who won't let go.