In Which I'm Tired of August.

it's floating in
just behind
these last lightning storms --
and the leaves won't change
and the sky won't turn that proverbial
iron grey
but we'll feel it
we'll dance in it
we'll sit by our fires and breathe
over hot cups of cider or cocoa
knowing somewhere it's cold enough
to see that breath before rosy noses
somewhere
notebooks and pens and brand new shoes
mean something is changing.

In Which I Miss Being Able To Stay Up All Night.

ain't no comfort here, oh no.

ain't no good-time-girls tonight,
no whiskey shots and no
fireplace stoked, 'cuz
ain't no warmth inside
this shanty town this time

ain't no comfort here, not here
where that breeze blows hot and
the Big Man's the only one who'll
give you a ride

well, ain't no music here this time,
boy, ain't no
jazz, no swing,
ain't even no blues hangin' 'round
these crossroads tonight

ain't no comfort here tonight.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Johnson_%28musician%29#Devil_legend

In Which My Skin Feels Like I Have a Fever.

can we just live in
arms, please?
in my arms and yours,
wrapped
wholesome and warm,
and never leaving you
nauseous from your thighs
to your ribcage
aching from your scalp
to your fingertips,
never leaving you burning
bones to skin or
shaking in between --
never leaving you at all?

In Which Music Is Influencing Me, Again.

pounding, that beat
slams,
that song hits with
every dark or dusky word,
with every
lung-wrenching riff,
each cymbal crashing like
eyes clenching closed
or wounds sewed shut,
the very sound is body is
arms-legs-neck-shoulders
thrown hard against
walls of air or
your own life,
brain against skull --
the only struggle you have
left within you,
inescapable and
pounding.

In Which I Have a Headache.

so here's another
lost-soul-baby-girl
crying at four a.m.,
inhaling her failures
along with the nicotine.
life is oh so tough, isn't it,
when you're in-between
and underpaid?
when prayer is
less effective and
harder to come by and
burns your insides more
than the contents of the
bottles on your
nightstand.
give it up, give it up,
baby girl,
cuz no one's gonna steer
this ship to shore.
no one's gonna anchor you down.
no crew to help you weather
this storm.
i'm not here to unmix your
metaphors, not gonna
take the wheel or
be your wings or
carry you home.
no one has the key.
not you. not even you.

In Which If It's Going To Be This Humid, Then It Really Should At Least Be Raining.

they think in promises or
fragments
of spiderwebs between
curtains and windows
or spells and magic words
floating on certain kinds of smoke
(not inhaled not burning throats
but) silken
across the room,
or sometimes
every once in a
blue moon they
think in weather formations,
and that's when you get
those storms those
lighting-hot boiling-rain
thunderstorms
that make you weep
and at the same time
be.

In Which Lame Things Are Happening to Relatively Good People.

they say bad things happen
in threes, so
one -- you woke up
this morning
before the sun, even though
it's summer and at this
time of year, the sun rises
even before the birds
start to wail and
two -- glass on the asphalt
glints prettier in the daylight
than the stars ever bother,
cuts so deep and smooth
you don't even notice until
you're bleeding
and then, finally,
three -- you're lost,
standing in the bright hardness
of this panting city and
wondering
how you got here,
where you were going,
why no one cares enough
to help you home.

In Which -- Holy Balls, It's Fucking HOT.

there's too much sweat
running from my scalp
to my fingertips
in rivulets through my
fingerprints
to really write
anything
tonight.

In Which It's To Fucking Hot Everywhere I Go.

one time i saw
this old, half-burned cigarette
on the sidewalk that was so hot
if you dripped water on it
it would most certainly
hiss and steam like the skillet
after you fry eggs,
when you stick it under the running faucet
just for that sensory experience
of cold on heat,
and that cigarette was still smoldering
a little, like the coals do
on the grill
after a big family barbecue,
where your dad got a little too drunk on cooler beers
and your mom ate a little too much potato salad
and you played a little too much in the sun,
but some of the tobacco
had fallen out of the paper
and was strewn
in a line out from the filter
as if the wind had blown it like leaves,
like every late August when
everything living isn't,
but is brown and parched
and covers the ground in scentless,
temporary piles,
and i thought how maybe
i read too much into things
sometimes.

In Which "Bad Moon Rising" is Stuck In My Head.

i see a
not-so-great sun
rising
but i gotta meet it, baby,
yeah
gotta meet it despite
or maybe that was
in spite
and I can't tell you,
sweetie,
if trouble's on the way
but monsoon season's
certainly
around the next corner
or the one
after that,
soon enough to merit caution
or at least
a glance ahead,
and, honey,
you might be prepared
but more likely
you'll just be in time
for those clouds to burst or
break.

In Which Arizona is Gorgeous, but Fantasy Worlds are Better Sometimes.

keep your head full
of living forest shadows and
moonlit wings dappled
with evenstar-wishes and
golden leaves falling in cool breezes
from oaken-strong trees,
for who wouldn't choose that
bliss,
those misty mountains,
over this never-quenched
and still and stinging desert,
its jagged cliffs rising from
thorns and rocks that have never
met moss or even morning dew?

In Which I Think Maybe I'll Give Myself Weekends Off Of This.

it's only sort of
in spiders crawling under
sunrise-golden door frames
or in breeze-ruffled
oleander-petal afternoons or
in evening sips of cold red wine
through previously parched lips
or even in the burning
incense that takes me back to
starlit-jasmine summer nights
when everything was
not better but less hard
not softer but less responsible
not lonely but less full of you.

In Which I Describe My Weekend/Monday In Stupid and Disjointed Haiku.

Saturday:

Even after so
few hours, your scent lingers on
these blue-moon bedsheets.

Chattering and smiles
should be given more credit
for the lives they save.


Sunday:

Every day should be
so lullingly spent in dreams,
so full of heartbeats.

I wonder if Jane
shows off her pubes in heaven
and laughs at her fans.

Monday:

The day flies right by
when instead of headset scripts
you've got vampire sex.

Even words on screens
are better than solitude
on scorching Mondays.

In Which I Love Summer Storms.

these clouds don't hang
so much as swoop in
on rising winds and
fading light,
calling the girls
in their summer apathies
to dance
just as surely
as would the sanguine roll
of a doumbek
or the lighting-chimes of
a good set of zills.

In Which Everything Is Different.

maybe it's a dry heat,
but anyone can see it makes for
sticky situations,
especially when mixed with
equal parts
hidden tensions and
changing priorities.
you can only do so much
before you crack or worse --
fold in on yourself
like an old letter
(or more like last summer,
when the nights that
used to bring you to life
turned against you and were cold,
sharp).
she's been trying for too long
too hard
too much
to let that happen this time,
and
it's her turn now.
it's her turn now.

In Which I Forgot This Blog The Very Next Day

So this counts as yesterday's poem, since I totally forgot I made this within the first 24 hours. Because I'm an airhead like that.

Follow me,
out to the summerdusk.
We'll jump ship when the parents leave,
walk the plank and
drown together in catfish grease and
Captain Morgan's last diet cola --

and then we'll sit in the dark
while you talk and smoke and talk
and I'll think about how little it's always taken
for my lips to start to go numb.