after work, in the evening

We open our eyes, blinking behind smudged glasses
trying to refocus on things that splash
behind open drawersand emptied backpacks.
I slide off my socks first, then my pants.
Head all slippery from non sleep and I laugh
at sitcoms about kids who are older than I am now.

Portion controls of pleasure are important.

sometimes i write from a place neither here nor there but it still looks green
and the people have all kinds of polka-
dots and jelly bean bellys who lick all over
we feeling and being nothing and everything
all at once when everything gets lost
we all sittin pretty and we get found
sometimes there is someone here
who doesn't care how big your tent is.
they don't care what is in your plastic
bag as long as you put it in beside them and there is a dark arm
slinging around your blue-jeaned thigh
(you haven't changed your blue jeans in three days
but you don't smell yet) and you look
juicy to someone.

it looks like a lollypop down here.
and tomorrow i will still be alive to lick it.

i love someone bigger than me. i love someone
nicer who never bites unless i ask. i can rub his
pretty dark head and we can be quiet, and sit, and watch.

and then we talk about buildings and the colors of leaves.
we listen to music about miracles and never share our business
with anyone.

i can leave you alone for three hours because nothing of
yours will belong to anyone else but me.
that is mine, and that, and that p

So I Should Write Them

Sometimes only a voice can call me back
from the distraction that has become me...but some days I get so sick
of I, of me, of myself.

However, I want to remember these little bits…
I can’t turn off all of the forgotten people and voices
or flush them from the inside of my mind—

the colored beads, one silver hooped earring,
a stray sock from that baby who used to sleep
with her gold corona-ed head dipped inside my neck, flushed with sweat and sleep.
Why do all of the good things slip past my fingers in this singular way,
dribble from my ears and down the hollow of my throat until
I am inside those dark nights when I can't even remember
my middle name, and suddenly they come to me,
unbidden and hoarse...those memories push out
from under my finger nails and get lost in the crumpled cotton of used bed sheets...There are seconds that I should isolate,
trap insulated under the flute of hollowed glass,
those moments to tamp out one at a time,
like small capsules that fit into the palm of my waiting hand.