How can i

Already you press so eagerly
against my skin.
How can i give you to the world?

How can i give you to the world?
This world is nothing gentle,
nothing kind
(but there are stars --)

How can i give you to the world?
To the hooked praise of kind strangers,
to our too-knowing darts --
(We will draw out your heart
in strings
and play cat's cradle):

but there are stars --

i will give you to the stars staring
to the smutface moon
to the thin lines of trees twigbare in January
and small frogs crying like crickets.

i will give you to the good, green grass
to the small heartbreaks of snails beneath your boots
to the uncurling of spring leaves, chartreuse, translucent,
tender, brave.

i will give you to the summer sky: unlined
and doorless blue
to the reek of lost birds' bones beside the path,
to the mindless trundling of beetles
sparking gembright in their mud and shit.

i will give you to your days
to their thousand sharptooth beauties
to their thousand thousand betrayals
small and deep.

i will give you to the misery
(the miracle)
of your small skin.
With my blood i will give you to the world
wrapped in your body
so thin a wall, so
permeable

point vierge

The thin crust of the world is flaking off
in old-paint curls
that stick beneath my eager fingernails

What lies beneath
What breathes still with God's heartbeat
What waits to take a breath, to ask --

is it time?

Wings wet and crumpled
still it lies
waiting for the moment
becoming --

My fingerprints are bleeding --
What shape when the world wakes
Wingbright and beautiful?

28.12.2011

This is a small sorrow. Already
i sit bonecold,
unbroken

Tremble: black coffee a
welcome jangle in an
empty--

This is too small for heartbreak.

 Two days. Already my breasts
have lost their ache,
have shrunk unneeded to their
small untenderness--

(Tonight i will drink red wine.
A whole bottle. Two
if i want them.)

Oh small small grief
oh little bittersweet:

you sit across from me
you will sit there tomorrow
you will hold my hand tonight
and cry brief tears.


We are left heartwhole, barely
touched by that
small soul.

Left so little to remember--
just this day, wintercold,
black coffee,
sour on my tongue.

franklin --

o brown and glossy girl,
what have you known?
your tragedy is datelessness

your tragedy is highschool: melly said
you were a slut,

you do not eat breakfast,
you do not eat lunch,
o you are slim, brown girl,
you sip starbucks through a straw

you eat two bites of anything,
brown girl, and you buy
dresses for two hundred dollars.
Your daddy gives you
those dollars.
You do not have more
than your friends.

you have cellphonetvipod
brandnewcar
it is the tealcoloured one you wanted

you do not have more
than your friends

the fifth portrait

And you sleepy-eyed still tiptoe
in before the sun
creep in between us,
breathe our sour morning breath.

You smell, still, of princess bubblebath
and your own sweet child breath.
The halflight shines white off your hair.
Your small elbows and knees are needlesharp.

We lie, wallowed and pierced,
watch the spidersilk
your small breathing

The fourth portrait

It's a damn shame, and already they're blaming
and blaming.
Soon they'll be banging on our doors.
I don't buy nothing unless it's off the books.
I'm stocking up.
They can make their limpwrist rules
up there
but me -- I have the right
to keep and bear --
By God when some crazy bastard comes after my little girl
I will have teeth in my mouth,
I will bite.