Motivations for Connecting

I look at you and know
Exactly what we are capable of
If I drop the matchstick
On all that falls from you.

Pillow talk without sex,
Stories that can perform,
And lots of tea.

I look at you,
Speak of your forests
And leave without incident;
I have enough fire for now.

Deep Sleeping

I am not as light a sleeper
As I need to be, my father says,
I sleep as if the sheep have returned,
The pastures are empty,
And my day is done.

Sometimes I wake up
And a whole day has passed
And I feel the truth of my
Complete replaceability.

.

I hug a waist in front of me
Before I am wakeful enough
To fear rejection --
Perfume and sweat
And I am content.

Getting Through

Your smile is fake and beautiful

Don't let people democratize

Your right to stir yourself

When you can't move a muscle.

Deep breaths, deep breaths,

People around you can afford

To fight and break and make a mess,

Energy is cheap and abundant.

Deep breaths.

Try to talk after the polite nod,

People can't see you busy

Deep inside your chest,

Servicing invisible demons.

Let yourself fall, love,

There is more to you

Than what can fall

And break completely.

Weak Love

My love is weak-shouldered, love,
When the blades in their pits ache,
I look for the sting of the cold
And hurry my warmth around you.

My love is slow-cantering, love,
When the sun rises in the bloom,
Half of my legs create distance
To better see your blush in pastels.

My love is closed-handed, love,
Your smiles light up the coins
Hidden on our valleys of frost,
I spend my summers making walls.

My love is high-fevered, love,
I contract contagions like a trader,
All of me is a battle-field, waiting,
You're my death-bed every time.

In My Hands - A Ghazal

Iron and fur brooked the cold in my hands,
Long before there was gold in my hands.

Too many stories end with morals,
But I write of the mould in my hands.

Dreams are won on fields outside dreams,
That's where I met the bold in my hands.

In closed rooms inside my chest there lie
Victims of what I sold in my hands.

I was worn where the dream was won,
My story is the old in my hands.

It is this: my youth is my age lost
Beneath every fold in my hands.

To survive ambition was to leave
All that I could not hold in my hands.

Miss Me For I Am With You

You miss me and grow envy
In the eyes set upon lovers
that can see the space between
Their toes.

Heart, you forget that love is inward,
To miss me is to have me to miss,
My hands and kisses are only
Your skin.

Losing at Poker

Sometimes, when thoughts settle,
I imagine dropping through city air,
Waves buckle inside my chest,
I fall into falling careers of cars,
Sometimes when thoughts stay,
I imagine myself imagining death,
And it makes me sad to know myself,
I pity the pity in me as if to
leave my weight on the fast winds
that lift others into solid mediocrity,
I am a character in a musty book
and happier readers air my sadness,
Swirl it in cold glass to deepen flavours,
Speak of sacrifices made into chasms
with the abyss looking into me,
Confused with what it was expected to do,
Reminding me of the lawlessness
That governs the heaven as we string it
on numbers, to prophesy inert whims,
I am failed prophecies and gambling,
Poker games with a sleeping universe,
I am the space between decimal digits
That causes stars to collapse.