I wish God only loved the old:

wrinkled lines of sage,

mild tastes, soft clothing.

I wish God didn't so love

the opaline perfume that surrounds a baby's milky breath

and the flicker in a child's eyes.

I wish God loved knees that creak as your round the stairs,

instead of

strong lungs that breathe

short legs that run

and a heart that pumps.

I wish God wasn't so infatuated with human's first trembling breath.

I wish He didn't so love the young,

so He wouldn't take the children away.

somedays

i think only of the boy in the blue swimsuit,

sinking down into the sea.

and i remember

how his lashes looked thick and dark against the blue

and the blood floating out of his ears like smoke.

so sometimes i tell myself

'stop thinking about it'

and then all i can remember

is an orange lifevest

bobbing vacant in the water.

Short Street

is the name of the avenue

we just drove by

and i craned

and craned

my neck

to see all the little munchkins

pop out of their little orange houses

to trim their bonsai trees

and drink lemon tea out of kiddie teacups.

and i craned

and craned

my neck

to see the little roads

and little cube cars

and all of the little munchkin children

rollling and bumbling down the driveaways.

but Short Street was blocked by a tall truck

-the irony-

and i couldn’t see all the munchkins.

somedays i wish i wasn’t all

long legs

long limbs

so i could drink lemon tea

out of little plastic cups.

this is what I thought of

when I thought about my sunny Vienna days:

sitting on a wooden bench in a train station

just sitting,

no tickets in my grubby hand.

I am again

entranced

by the cadence of everything:

the rickety tracks

the whistle

the clickclickclick of the suitcase’s wheels.

I am in love with the inky black and white page set before me;

I can see those faded watercolors,

all pastels and soft reds and blues and grays,

like the ones in my grandmother’s children books,

slightly worn.

and I watch the girl

-that girl-

who is waiting by the train

and I like the fact that she has a suitcase but no map,

whose crisp lines wouldn’t agree with watercolors.

I like the way she is standing

her chin straight ahead

twirling the fifth button on her jacket,

and I like the way she has sun in her eyes and toes in her boots.

I think she is the girl I would be

if I had tickets somewhere.

but then again,

I don’t,

so I go and sit in my marigold kitchen,

feeling the cool granite underneath my thighs,

and pour a cup of water from a pitcher I keep in the icebox

and write more poems

and think less about tickets,

because I suppose I punched mine on the way to Vienna anyway.

today God broke an egg acoss the sky

all robust golden yolk spilling out at the edges

watercolors bleeding out across the countertop sky.

he let the eggshells fall onto ground -

a highway sign

a winding road.

he dropped the sugar

and watched it billow like a milky fog.

sprinkles of chocolate chips fell through his fingers

as He walked across the kitchen floor,

and then all the ants began to crawl over

the cocoa lanes.

by afternoon He had taken the broom

and whisked the cornflower sky clean

brushed the sugar into the trash can.

i am looking at the sky today,

robin blue granite without a speck,

and thinking bout all the eggs

I didn't notice spill across the sky.

boom boom

there's the shadow

and now

boom boom

the bullet is sinking into my calf like

sting

and my body is filled with the guttural

b-u-r-n of losing you and not being able to find you.

and then

boom boom

I am running again,

slipping round corners

panting

feet slapping.

sometimes i feel your grubby fingers winding round my ankle

yanking me c l o s e r, c l o s e r

but I run harder.

I am

|running|

down the dark canal that wafts the slide-slide down feeling

for what seems like forever and then

boom boom

click click

boom boom

I'm gone.

her breath always betrayed her.

the hitch when she was trying to hold back tears,

the steady hum-hum-hum when she was pretending to be dead for her neighbor

the panting when she was acting like she ran.

that stupid human act

kept continuing

on and on.

I wish you would remember

just my sun soaked skin

and stock photo laughs.

But really I suppose

my venom and my night shadow

is much more interesting.