A Love Song to Stumptown at 1 AM

Who would've thought,
that your best words were said when you were half-asleep.
I heard your bridges sigh
as my car's exhaust passed along the edges
Your streets laid bare,
no people to clothe them
Your sky-scraped office lights embraced me,
and kept me warm.
Your streetlights whispered through the glass,
and I could feel your breath through the vents
We spoke different languages,
but I think you said
"I miss you already."
I crept back home,
lost,
and raptured.

Cassandra

There is an entire world between

knowing how to save her life,

and saving her life.

In that world there stands

white-washed doctors,

and mud-slung legislators,

and a computer god,

who judges without mercy.

Here, common sense is worth less

than two pennies,

but her minutes are worth more than gold.

I could buy diamonds with her lucid thoughts,

and rubies with her smiles.

Pandora's Box

Every memory of the hospital

I locked inside,

with the lost cds,

the forgotten Christmas,

and the Easter she slept through.

_______________

Each 21 days Death pulls out a key

and unchains the chest.

He allows three tears

to escape. The key slips

into his hollow cape.

______________

In the cavity of his chest

he holds our ache,

But he also holds our cure.

But my visions are in verse

I opened my eyes to my dining room.

My laptop, painted in cherry, sat on a crisp tablecloth.

No trash had found the table yet.

_________

She stood at the crossroads of

the sunny kitchen,

the cloudy family room,

and the crimson dining room.

_____________

I backed away from my dead mother

who stared at me,

breathing with her eyes wide open.

_____________

"Oh honey."

Her arms drooped slightly

while halos found her chocolate curls,

clinging to her head.

____________

Slowly, as all people do in dreams,

I walked.

____________

Then I ran.

____________

I wrapped my arms around her,

and clung to her silk and pearl nightgown.

______________

Her arms  wrapped around me,

warm and dry for the first time

in five months.

___________

We wept,

and our smiles shook.

My life is lived in prose

I tossed and turned that night. Even jet lag failed to introduce me to my pillow. My bones, tissues, and skin shook under my quilt. Cold tears slipped down my cheeks and passed my chin where they dipped down my neck and pooled on my chest.

Never again haunted me. As I lay there I buried my head underneath the fabric, refusing to face the Mother's Day ahead.

I couldn't meet the way her skin sagged after her soul and spirit left her tattered bones, her infected tissues, her swollen fat, and her leaking skin. I couldn't forget the color of it: washed out green, tallow, ashen, and limp. I couldn't forget my father back home, alone with a cat who hated him.

My eyes closed to forget.

Stage Fright

I step onto the platform,

and the nerves hit me

like a bucket of water.

The room once smaller than a classroom

now looms over me like a cavernous cathedral.

I don't recognize the voice that

spills back at me through the monitor

and the words I'm reading off the page

look more Greek than English.

I say thank yous more

than I ever have in my life.

When I finish I vibrate

like a cellphone,

but my body shakes not

when the message arrives,

but when my message has sent.

Crying jags and rough spots

The man in the moon know what it means to cry

in the shadows of his darker side,

and then smile for the whole world to see on his brighter side.

Oh, if only I could dive into his seas

and swim until the silver-grey water sapped

the heaviness from my bones

and loosened gravity's hold on me.

Only then,

could I fly back to Earth,

burning bright like a meteor,

and leaving behind

only a trail of pixie dust.