Boiling Water

Arms extend

Not to pretend

But to bless

the white sheet with boiling water

A life without end

 

Spread me out thin

Across a desert of sin

Or on a damp car lane

with its rusted lips

collecting rain

 

Boiling water burns

Like the night you took your turn

And made my insides churn

What an impossible lesson to learn

 

When my body won’t hold me anymore

And it finally lets me free

Please take me no further

Than steeped in boiling water.

Dear Mom

Dear Mom,

I’m writing to you from the inside
looking out the window
of my despair.

And I wish you were here
like Pink Floyd and Christmas in the snow.

Mom,
please tell the boys I say hello
let them know
that I love them so.

I think I stopped biting my fingernails
sometime back in January
but then the first snow came here in Portland,
but then, he left.

My fingernails look like they’ve been chewed
into oblivion.

I’m so sorry,
my dear Mom
for the grief I caused or did not cause
who’s to say I’m that special?

I left just like the rest,
and the snow here is wonderful.

Come see it sometime, won’t you?

Sending all my love (and sorrow and regret),

Your dearest daughter.

Gateway 17

It was the straightaway

concrete, painted yellow and iron

with the biker bar and dispensary

sitting desolate on the sides.

 

The bridge between beauty

and suburbia

where you can glance left and see ocean

and look right to see

loneliness.

 

The part of highway 17

where car bumpers fall in love

at the scene of peril,

risk and probability.

 

A mountain man’s waltz

and a blind woman’s paradise,

 

The overpass of abnormality.

As I Listen to Debussy

Brown of the eyes,

of the hair

peeking from the corners

 

Of your face

in which I hold

in mine

 

Kiss me,

and I can reach out

and touch love

 

Like a thread

of a blanket

on the bed

 

A tremble between fingers interlaced

or a stumble

upon words spoken

 

You feel, to me

what life

is supposed to be.