In a conference once

I saw you-
ducking under the table
and the room froze.
You reached out fingers that I've come to know
outstretched and the fly in midair hangs still.
But I can move
because you make me magic
and I sweep under this wooden desk
to my knees that have been swept under my heels--
And when my fingertips, marked with time, kneed the carpet,
your eyes lift.
Pools of excitement lit perfectly by the lights--
And I'm reminded of the lavender velvet sparkling 
portrait we admired once. 
Crawl to me.
No. Don't.
Stay there; in the frozen room--Captivated
while I crawl to you. 
Crawl to you so you can help me stand.
Stand proud in this unreal world that your hands
and mine have molded like a painter whose taken up clay.
Molding the biggest Vase that will hold one Red Rose.
I'm Thrown. 
I'll let you throw me anywhere.  
To find Red throrns.
To find Red rooms, lips, and apples--Cracked red fingertips.
What I'm trying to get at here --in this room with no noise--
Is that My deep brown hungry eyes have gone to you
every moment of the day, 
And if I could let them crawl to you, 
as you pick up your pen,
I'd kiss you here...In Front Of Them All.

Chameleon

This morning
My eyelids did not gracefully find the light,
The second after they opened my mind and body jerked.
around.
all over.
like a tantrum thrown in front of the entire super market 
just cant control
just couldn't control my feet as they chased each other in the earliest part of morning.
running.
running.
running.
putting into action what my mind has been doing
what my mind cant stop doing. 
what i escape from when I launch into characters in 
"the banana man"
or "the 17th of June"
or "Say de Kooning"
plays im in
characters i play
colors i change into.

banana girl is -...purple. deep deep purple.  
she wears multi-colored bracelets and tastes like rainbow sherbet but her true self is the deepest most royal purple.

i walk out of the class room. rain soaked pavement smacks the red stop light onto pink pants and the energy glides up my legs as they march on
 
to being Kat - a sister concerned with keys to a Camero. A pale Blue.  a color that is reminiscent of joy and ease, but too pale to actually fulfill anything. pale blue shirt, with pale blue sound in her ears, and pale blue eyes with far off thoughts that

when the hour is up-- fade back to whatever the color my eyes actually are.  And move through the arts center to my last destination, 

Mandy- color: orange.  But not the color of my shirt today (consequently the shirt I wore yesterday as well) but the closest orange to red--blood orange I've heard it called, but Mandy says vibrant orange, the word blood makes her queezy.  from the center of her passionate heart, this orange soaks up everything around her --like the ink from a sharpie when it spreads across a napkin. 

  And then I walk out the door and to this coffee shop, feeling the tints left on the windows of my eyes:  rich purple, pale blue, blood orange--and I feel the swirl of my own life tunneling in my head: green, blue, red, pink, orange, gray, black, pale yellow--colors I don't understand- and they take their turn with me one at a time.  

Ordering tea: i don't know, peachy?
--peachy with flashes of teal because I had to be sassy with the cashier.
"I meant HOT tea, not sweet tea..."   (then back to peachy, quick) "I'm sorry.  No, no no, it's me. i should have said Hot"
Walking around campus: on a great day: warm yellow, glowing
moments of doubt: off white.  
the color i am right now: a blue so blue it's almost black-- slowly fading with time to pink-- ill probably end up crazy-pink today..

i dont know i dont know...im just typing 
and changing colors, 

chameleon.
me.
Have I ever told you I'm a chameleon?

Chameleon: They are distinguished by their parrot-like feet, their separately mobile eyes, their very long, highly modified, and rapidly extrudable tongues, their swaying gait, crests or horns on their distinctively shaped heads, and the ability of some to change color

the ability of some to change color. 

at work

Hello, 

From work, 

at the desk of the books. 

I've just gotten cast in a new play!! 

Horray!! ( https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-superhero-and-his-charming-wife#/ )

But alas, I am obligated to my tasks

Here 

Each day for a little while at least

and quietly I wonder where the voices have gone

They were just in the middle of some sort of acapella treat

A snikerdoodle song about how quiet the air snaps these days

when the running tail of a red ribbon led them off

knee cap pancake mistletoe hurricane

and I'm supposed to be entering these invoices into this database see

but instead I'm found on a climb of my favorite magnolia tree

Nostalgia.  Those sugar cookies in the zip lock bag that I brought for you once. 

Someone else's poem, because I wanted to be good enough. 

I know I know, Lena Dunham tells me I already am.  

I pick at my face anyway.  To spite my dreams of using it one day.  

http://youtu.be/PQ01AT5mI4Y <---ohhh commercials... 

__But I have been meaning to write

as i tend to say

and tell you I've been thinking of you

as i tend to do

To wish you happy Hanukkah for my father's side and Merry Christmas for my Mother's

Reaching dancing arms back to grab at the ridge of a hip bone

some kind of tale

soft like the clouded dreams where ex's present themselves

and it's nice because the low frequency buzz is gone

and it's nice because I'm still in bed.  

and it's nice because I haven't started doing anything yet,

only, I'm fondling myself.

Thank you for treating me to lunch

Dear Inventor, 

I've been thinking about your situation ---- that you were speaking of ---

I keep coming back to it. 

I write to remind you that love is --- all things.  

Love is complicated.  

Love is old. 

Love is incompatible. 

Love stinks! Yeah yeah...

LOVE STINKS! yeah! yeah! 

  

My friend Kaitlin, who I spoke of, once
in her volleyball booty shorts painted in her doorway

"Choose Love".  

We tell each other that on the phone.
I guess I'm telling you here.

When fear bites with pains of venom,

the mind aches. Visions like claws in your mind pull this way and that!
It feels, to me, like stretching out "why!".....

...........Somehow things even out and we survive.

Choose Love.

Your friend, 

It's True

Feeling powerful and infused.  

Feeling like a floating piece of lint. 

Feeling alive. 

Feeling alone. 

Feeling surrounded. 

Feeling un drowned 

Like I just re woke

Like I just re wrote

Like I've never left

Like I was only just yesterday crying 

Only just yesterday climbing

Only just yesterday dodging the 4 square rubber ball bounced from my brother's hands into my square 

Into my space, my mind, holding all these memories like feathers sure to blow away. 

Like the moments I'm not proud of. 

Like the moments I wasn't a part of. 

Like the moment that may or may not have existed. 

Like Santa Clause 

Like Tinkerbell

Like my sophomore Halloween costume

Like the chair in the upstairs library

Beside the staircase

Beside the theater books

Beside your backpack and the little black book with colored ink drawings of figures and bark leading into words leading into your winding thoughts in the light of day I proudly wore all that I could of you.  

Because I didn't want to go home. 

Didn't want to be me.  

Liked being a we.  Together.  Housing love.  Houses. 

Like the ones we grew up in. 

Big with two parents

Two parents who we saw crying 

For years 

then showing us true courage

Showing us forgiveness .

faith. 

Love. 

Love in my veins makes me run. 

But not away from.  To. 

To what?

I'll never know. 

I do keep you

It's all in my back
my memories of you.
You with the parting hair.
You with your candle.

I do keep you.
Haven't had time to untie anything.
Even if I did, I wouldn't.
I keep you. In the levator scapulae muscles,
the ones that hold my neck, connecting to blades.

Behind me is a giant stuffed bear wearing a bath robe.
He is mine.
I named him Wesley.
Behind me to my right is a painted goddess in red acrylic oil.
She doesn't have a name,
instead she clutches a shard of broken glass.

Maybe she too has wind swept emotions,
Episodes of mania, grip slipping nights.
Like when I locked myself in the studio,
fighting the slave owner psyche.
My heels felt like hooves.
A saddled horse, kicking holes in the closet door.

I was drawn to the hammer beneath the sink.
Took it to the large mirror in the hall.
Beads of light crashed to the floor, spilling heat of rage.
7 years of bad luck, felt about right.

And again, I think of you.
How you danced in your quiet house,
How I drank confessions from your temples as you held me goodnight.
The January snow muffling mangled sobs.
Your bar stool's red swiveling seat.

My heart space tunnels, gliding awareness past darkened wine cork collections.
What was a metal ball shoots down tilted pin ball lanes,
rounding corners of birthday clubs,
lighting up ocean side promises, continuing on,
through my chest, through Wesley's stuffing,
out the walls of the room, a black hole,
expanding endlessly in every direction.
I'm a book, open on a picnic table,
hit with digging wind.
Hardwood underneath ripped up carpet.
Your nakedness under new t-shirt blue bedding.
Your rolled up tubes of toothpaste.
Your YouTube Valentine.

"Anybody ever tell you how beautiful you are?"
 "I adore you. "
"There's a place for you here, always."

While in Bray, after the Italian chocolate, there was a climb.
Each of my steps landed inside your own.
Then later a beach of round stones.  And portraits.
The little girl child flying face first into the rising tide.
Chordoroy legs, train rides, frisbee tosses and laughter.
So much laugher ...I wonder why I had to burn you.
Playing with fire, fingering the wax
I'm kind of a pyromaniac.

A siren screams down the street
The curtains my father installed hang translucent, matching the clouded sky.
The albums crated in soft, clear light.

One time, you didn't go away.
Disintegrate, Bleed out, or burn to ashes.
Once you remained through the bucking, back stabbing fear.
Through the attempts to smash and incinerate,
emasculate, ruin, flood.

After my typical upheaval, you returned.

At first it was distant sound.
A yodel bridging the valley,
humming, a buzz. An omen.

Then a package arrived in the mail.
You began on the day I fed you your first avocado,
Ending with telling Topanga night drives, glue stick pictures of me stretching the length of a tree.

I softened to the echo.
On our way to the Getty
Lydia's backseat felt like warm water,
A steamed salt bath.
You pouring tea.
You in your coveralls, shaving, suggested we put the mattress on the floor.
We did.
It's underneath me now.