When Hugging you wasn’t enough, I pressed

My forehead deep into your sweatered chest,

Breathing in more and more, deeper into your thumpthump

(breath) thumpthump

(breath)

burrowing myself, crouched in your rib bones, into the warmth

of your heart’s contractions, the consistency of your rising chest,

when hugging you wasn’t enough I found a way into your insides and

slept with my eyes half open.

When sitting with warm cups of tea and old favorite books isn’t enough,

I shut my eyes half tight and breathe back into your chest bones, rib bones, breathing

With your rhythm.

I think the sky gets more beautiful everyday

Breaking and being put back together:

Enveloping a cool night sky, a pinhole of a moon (you can see my house from there)

And when morning is almost ready

A bursting like water color on a saturated page ready to firework into the rainbow,

An orange that we have never known

That doesn’t clash with purple or blue.

Oranges usually come with sunrises,

early morning sips of tea,

and sweatpants and loose tees.

Except when orange comes

With rain, blue skies, white clouds,

And an early evening

Spent musing on a train. 

Cloudy drops of rain before the rain slide down the double-thick

plastic windows and a mist

As blue as it is gray is settled on an unknown river.

Autumn is well under way

And the brown trees are gracious with burnt orange and yellow leaves.

Trees go by fast, a mere twenty feet away

But houses and secrets flit across the mist-covered swampy gray that is the river.

A swift rhythm of bumps is the lull that settles my eyes deep into their sockets,

Eyelids following a brief second later.

.. snAp they open with the turn of the tracks

And screeching below,

Short jerks

And an inconvenient stop.  

Tiny Oceans of the Eyes

Sliding down from eye to chin. That cute little drip of ocean, human ocean. It caresses your cheek along it’s journey, giving up loving kindness in an effort to comfort that forlonged face. So it makes its way and it expires, whether it be from the shameful hand or the vacuum-like-nose. Some faces have allergic reactions, you know, reddening eyes, puffy cheeks. And the sad thing: no cure, no vaccine, no way to plan ahead to prevent it. So these cute little oceans, or as we say, tears, rest where they please and come and go like little Grandmas, never failing to appear, wanted or not. These tiny oceans, of the eyes. 

There’s a large tree in the background

bigger than him around.

His hair, mostly wispy,

tied back in an unseen pony-tail.

The leaves are blurry in the top left and right corners

Of the hand-painted frame.

His sweatshirt is dark

but so is the photo

black and white

but I know anyway.

I know there’s a slight smile playing lightly on his lips

And eyes

And even a little

On his nose.

It’s a cute one, not the mountain that now graces his still delicate face.

People say that no matter where you are

Everywhere else always looks better

That THEY have the greener grass, and the better mid-summer-heat pool parties.

Or, in their phrases of metallic poetry: THEY

always add an extra

sprinkle of feel-good sugar-so-sweet

to their occasional sour lemon

set back.

I mean

tongue tickling twists in this theme park

that is life

that twirls around our mind’s

merry-go-round in search

of

the other side?

but hey, I thought YOU said that YOU

were the other side

?

Don’t go messing with me:

i like my acquaintances

truthful

no ‘if’s

no ‘but’s

no deception no lies

you have a problem? Yell it to my face.

No weird metaphors

just trying to sound poetry-sweet.

No armies of alliterated adjectives, active

ready

in the annals

of that sad little mind

that is yours

that sad little face

with that sad little mouth

that spews:

WE have nicer lawns

WE have sweeter lemonade

WE might even have cookies.

But if I were THEM, I would be saying

come on over, WE wouldn’t mind

some company.

Swift lipped kisses

Stolen in the stenched hallways

Back against metal clanging lockers

A breeze for a second.

Does it make you feel good

To act like you have a “successful student”?

Does it tickle your fancy that one of “your” students

Might

succeed in life?

Might make something of

herself?

Because you come over here and pat me on the shoulder

Asking if you can “help me”

Does that make you a good teacher?

I don’t need your help

I get this poetry shit, but

Some

Don’t

Have the family to support them

Or the finance to back them up

Or the parents who make them breakfast lunch and dinner every day plus the weekends

I don’t need your help

But some do.

It doesn’t make you a bad teacher if you try to help someone and fail

But if you don’t try

But yell because

At least you’re disciplining,

If you roll your eyes,

And complain all night long,

And

Pretend

Like they are beyond your help, like

They don’t want help so they will never improve

Then you did fail.

You failed at your job:

To inspire interest in the uninspired

To spark a spark that slumps didn’t know

They held

Inside their chests

Just waiting, beating weakly, for you to come

And push them

Hard
shake them in their lace-less shoes

Light a fire

And teach them how to tend it

To kindle it with a compassion

More important

Than their cigarettes

A new nicotine they can feed

With the addictiveness of words

That slide off tongues

And slither into crevices

And know how to want to be something

Bigger

Than their bodies know how.

THEN you will have succeeded.