PAD 2012 - Day 21

We come with the knowledge that everything ends,
without preamble or fanfair
ending silently or with a bang.

PAD 2012 - Day 17 (Happy Birthday to Me...)

Designed with more ego and less tears / I have understood me for ages / have dressed and redressed myself in costumes to fit / til unfitting became fine / more than fine. // Brave words are for pinheads who fear action / or have always lived acting / I burn scripts and live silently / pen to paper / pen / and paper / and ink guns / and scabby wounds / I wrote a love letter and left it on my skin....

PAD 2012 - Day 16

I dreamt I was invicible
bulletproof and invulnerable.

Waking, I cut myself
bleed til it dried.

PAD - Day 15

Laugh, fully-genuinely
be coy, let the pad of your fingers trail
my arms, the lines of my tattoos. Recognize
I am harder than I seem, but still softer than the world will allow.

PAD 2012- Day 14

The thing about extra lives is it makes you unafraid
to really live-jumping
whether or not you can safely land-or die
with the knowledge you can start again.

PAD 2012- Day 13

She asks me if I am afraid to sleep alone
fear of what lurks in the woods, in the dark,
or beneath the lake.  I slide into my home on the edge of the witching hour
head to clouded to ponder what if's or could be's.
I don't allow myself the time to reconstruct boogeymen
the shadows on the faces of supposed lovers and friends
are sharp enough to draw blood.

PAD 2012 - Day 12

"Fear is the heart of Love..." -Death Cab for Cutie

We learn to walk tightropes at a young age
tipped toes and balancing acts.  We fall
for suspenseful pauses and no safety net.  We
tred lightly. 

I have fallen from taunt wires more times than I care to admit,
claim invincibility or pretend to stand
wobbly skinned knees, bloody knuckles; I climb up the ladder again.

PAD 2012 - Day 11

Don't be hazy
I need sharp edges
corners to prick me so I remember to bleed.

PAD 2012 - Day 9

How long does it take to recover from a break-up?
                        -After "How I Met Your Mother"

Twice the amount of time you were together. A week
for each month you were told you were loved.  Half a bottle
of Tequila, the top shelf one or as many days
as it takes to get to 10,000 shots.  Unnumbered days
spent bedridden, like a sickness that's unshakable.  A weekend
spent wild, bouncing
from bed to wall to floor...never alone.  The time wasted
in a bar
on a flight
off kilter
trying to recall who you were
the last time you were alone.

PAD 2012 - Day 7

Mournful, driving away from my fortress of solitude
the life of a straying lizard hanging across my shoulders
I imagine karmic retribution awaiting me.   Wary,
the day is too slow for my mind not to wonder
lizards and lives; the value of each. 
Darkness covers the day and I return prepared
to pretend undertaker, give hasty eulogy.
Open closets to find emptiness, the lizard's great escape.

PAD 2012 - Day 4

Protect your heart
like your land, a possession: Trespassers
will be shot.

PAD2011 - Day 2

Lotto

Luck is an algorithm
a charmed penny stuck next to the pocket lint
in your jeans. The last crumbled bill is a wish
a dream on a variable schedule. Pavlov
standing behind bulletproof glass.

You scratch to the rhythm of a bell.

PAD2011 - Day 1

Maybe I've always been here
right here and you've always been right next to me
or behind. In the peripheral you look taller
or wiser or less devious than you act. Maybe
I look exactly the same through narrowed eyes
and maybe I'm invisible or there's an outline where I stand
a place filler, a human bookmark.

National Poetry Month - Day 30

Is there a sort of death in stillness?
In silence? In turning in on yourself
so much so that you are translucent. Poor
translucent stagnation; this thing that won't allow us to step forward,
we can't always be circling the same decisions.
There are no answers lying in the shadows of circumferences.
What we need is what we dream
desires
those things we have forbidden ourselves from...

National Poetry Month - Day 29

Another late one...this is almost over, but until the end of today...I'mma keep on truckin...

I could be the Mad Max of the mornings
unconciously pressing the petal
I jerk forward, feel myself streaking
the pre-dawn feels collapsible around me
I know it's not, that there are things that might be sturdier than myself;
I haven't met them yet, still aware they might exist.

National Poetry Month - Day 28

I can't imagine if your words held any beauty
because your mouth perfected a sneer
a scar across your face. I'd already lived this present
past tense on what I knew you were saying
though you'd somehow gone mute
or I went deaf, suddenly. We'd stopped speaking
the same riddles months ago. Tongue-twisting a lie to fit the scene of the crime.
I would ask for mercy if it were yours to grant.
You play executioner in bedsheets
a cop to my increasingly convincing robber. I think the bad guy wins
today. I think I stole your heart and got away...

National Poetry Month - Day 27

I'll leave the baggage you tried to make me shoulder on your front porch
between the potted begonia and the dying fern
I hope you recognize them;
if you don't they will surely recognize you
and your handwriting scribbled on the tags
and the scent of you or moreso a scene like dying.

National Poetry Month - Day 26

I have been under the weather since yesterday....here's yesterday's poem:

Exhaustion
means I'm pass the point of caring
about the complexity of the webs we weave
or wove in the past with a passion

National Poetry Month - Day 25

Designing my own desires
I give firm voice to exactly what I want. Not questioning,
no wish or hope. These are the things I cannot give up
a dream from which I can't re-awaken.

National Poetry Month - Day 24

The sun is disappearing behind these white plastic blinds
I barely notice the stress my eyes are under
reading by twilight. I strain to maintain this connection
to something else; words bigger than myself. I can't help it:

I built dreams on a story...