Kisses

Some kisses are like chores
Others, like bores unimaginable from before love
Some kisses like ill-fitting shoes
Like games cut short, then resumed
There is not meant to be space between the curves of my lips
The tip of my tongue
And the shape of your desire
Now consume me
I didn’t say bite me
Kisses like dinner, like someone didn’t feed you
You want me
Don’t eat me
Don’t need me
Now kiss me
Like teaching
Like first kisses
In the back seat of a mini van
I held you
Kisses like breathing
Seventeen,
Jitterbugs run ‘round my head in green
A kiss that’s short but clean
I in her room with lips that played on mine like pawprints
Your tongue tastes like remembrance
Mocha smoothly runs down my chin and pools at our feet
We are soaked in the heat of the kiss and she says, no, not that far
I am gone.
You see, my first girlfriend
I could kiss her for hours
Back seat thunderbird, lonely parking lot again
An hour is gone in lips that tend to melt one to another
Her fingers on my side like they own it, gripping flesh that desires
There is nothing of air in kisses that burn the very enamel off our teeth
Glowing white to blind us from our own imperfections
And kisses cut short
Home at midnight
On prom night?
I am gone.
But kisses call from love’s broken vow
And I in her bedroom again, with satin running cross my cheek
Does this mean something?
Don’t speak, in our kiss there are words enough
For lifetimes remembered and forgotten
There are lives lived in the lostness of that first kiss
That last kiss, playing hearts with hearts that beat
I am gone

It is not 'til twenty-two that I recall
There are kisses that require their own absolution
Kisses that hold tight to music
That play on each note like they own it
Gripping tight to its side and slipping from the downbeat
Uplifted again
There is kissing that is like dancing
Like forgetting to begin
And forgetting to let end
There is kissing in him that remembers that I am whole without you
But wholer still within your mouth
There is forgetfulness in kisses that consume hours
Forgetting there is somewhere to be
There is nowhere to be, no climax, no letoff
No escape but kisses that amble round the dancefloor and exhaust even the orchestra
There are kisses in time that hold moments
Bringing you to the forefront of that moment
Just as weed puts you to the tail end
Moments begin, moment begin, moment begin
I am gone.
I live for kisses from your mouth
Dancing on my couch to “Will You Be There,” baby already there
There is completeness in your embrace and I forget that love could be so innocent
First kiss at twenty-two and no innuendo
I am let go to love like I loved myself
To love like I’m a normal person and this is my life. Now, come in.
Kissing is recreation but with you I celebrate
My mouth the party site, your eyes my invitation
And I just can’t imagine shutting the doors
When lips lock tight there is no hope for escape
No crowded rooms full of people I don’t know
But only you and me
Our bodies moving synchronously
Forgetting to let time forget that we are two
We are one and we rise and fall with the music
Which does not approach us but is in us
We are performing it
And we know the same song
I forgot to tell you that Jennifer Knapp taught me to pray
And you taught me to pray in communion
There is silence in our laughing there is laughing in my breaths,
I forget to breathe sometimes and breathe you instead,
Inhaling every bit of you to be remembered when you are gone
Like a team we rotate positions
Because hours fade on and my arms get tired
But I still laugh until I cannot breathe and
I cannot decide whether it is the music that is making me happy
Or the openness that you make possible
Beneath you I am open to be extracted and placed on an operating table
Know myself within you and make myself your mask
There is nothing of emptiness with you and yet
Inside I mean nothing but you and this kiss
I am gone.

Love in a kiss is love in material
Affection born strong to remember its grounds in the physical
I kiss you because I remember your name but couldn’t bear to speak it
Because verbal communication necessitates separation
And your voice calls to me from within
I breathe through you to know that the air that I breathe is not for me alone
It is only this kiss that generates our sameness
Only the kiss that tells me your eyes hold the promise of my existence
In your kiss I am blind to realities where I exist and you do not
For in the economy of the kiss you equals I
Equals you equals I
And there is no sight to be met where all I see is myself in your eyes
The endless mirroring of vision that plays out already inside my head
In you I am reflected and able to know myself from without
Your fingers in your dark hair my hands on my own back
There is no shame in the love of the same
When the same is you
A kiss that melts one into two and calls them me
I kiss you because I could not otherwise know what it meant to be.

Things My Father Taught Me

Airplane seats are about as wide as elementary school desk chairs,
And they’re just about as difficult to get out of
Mrs. Ayres, a pale, feisty woman with bags beneath her eyes and wings pinned to her lapel calls from the front of the classroom
“In the case of an emergency, oxygen safety masks will fall from the above compartment
Replicating the much more disastrous fall of the plane as it plummets from 30, 000 feet,
Please place the cup over your mouth and breathe normally”
Southwest seems to think its funny to scare the shit out of its passengers
Each and every time they fly
It builds confidence when it fails to come true
It steadies nerves.
People laugh
I guess its working.
I have been numbed I suppose to any sort of fear of flying
When you live this far from anything you might possibly call home, you begin to forget that certain death is only a malfunction away
I lean the seat back and pull the tray table down

Just last month I was flying to San Antonio,
It had been six months since my last visit
It will be six months until I return again
Makes you question definitions of home when two weeks a year is all you spend

It has also been six months since I have seen my parents,
Six months between visits,
Between hugs, embraces, recalling safety unconditional
Eyes familiar beyond recognition as belonging to anyone but myself
Six months since a good week of free meals, free rides, free board, free cash
Six months is not long enough to recall the distance that space drives between people

The wind rattles the plane gently
A nudge to remind us it is only air,
To our eyes, nothingness, on which our lives are resting

And yet space cannot compare with what it is I know of family
There are hugs built into our fingertips when we recall that someone taught us to write letters and numbers
And shoulder rubs in backpacks weighed down with possibility forged from a parent’s unfailing support
The lift of the wind in my hair recalls the pride of a father’s mussing it up as he heard me praised by my teachers
Whispered by that same wind, “good job, sonny boy”
There are family vacations in the rustling of trees
And safety of person in the warmth of a bed
There is no loneliness in the reach of a father’s love across a country’s divide

And yet, sitting here upon a plane, I realize that there are moments in memory it seems false to recall without you
Mind turned upside down, reflecting pool of what it was I learned from you
To drive stick shift, to “do” a lay up, to hold the board steady
Who am I kidding, these things I would not let you teach
There was always resistance in my frustration, your frustration my resistance
Mind twisted round backwards in an attempt to squirm out of my discomfort in not being able to figure it out for myself.
I sat at the back of physics doodling because I wanted to teach myself.

But yours was a calm bottled from canyons and aspen frocked trails that rained gently as we huddled beneath ponchos
And yours was forgiveness not for wrongs done, but for forgetting to trust…
I couldn’t win in the game of giving with you.
And perhaps there I left you for a moment, forgot to look back and remember
That there is nothing of me that does not hope to speak your name in footnote,
There is nothing in me that does not seek to mirror/
Reflected against the black of the night sky,
My face gazes both into and out of the porthole windows of the plane
Eyes darkened searching my own face for traces of you

Constrained by your obligations, Colorado summers, Texas Christmas
My aesthetic took form from the contours of your devotion
I practice ritual with solemnity in solitude
Perform my humility in silence before the sacred
And yet still refuse to remove my hat when entering the Alamo.

Jeans are the sign of my honesty in worship/

Communion plates are signs of my gratitude
And in them I recall your name and offer forth my own
My hands stretched forward to receive
Running copper wires of veins, tinting red
That recall with simple pleasure
A scrap of glinting metal,
A blue green rock
Reminder of what it is God leaves around the edges for us to discover

In you, I am adventurer

My eyes exact dimensions from each room I enter, like Indiana Jones
My mind running mazes to construct a floorplan
There is logic to the mapping of my story
And it is not my own
Colorblindness does not a deaf palate make

In you I am craftsman

Hands, still fully fingered playing on wooden instruments
Creating music of saw songs, of shavings, of twice measured precision

In you, I am thrill seeker
I am dream weaver
I am counselor, protector
In you, I bite with sarcasm because it’s not worth it to live unthinking

50 years do not belie the age of your impact upon the act of living itself
Remembrances of things done right and wrong reverberate through time like seismic shudders
Shaking a soul forgotten unto itself
A soul with rulers in its eyes and jollity in its cheeks
I know truly, truly I say to you
I could not be otherwise
I could not be otherwise
I could not be.

And planes destined unfamiliar places are always headed home
Because I carry you with me
In seat back pockets you play through my music
In book crammed backpacks you guide my eye to truth
You smile in humility, in grin beneath grins
And know that
I could not be without you
I could not be without you
I could not be

And eyes meet eyes in darkened skies backed by city lights
Seeking brilliance in skin and hoping, hoping helplessly that behind light I might but reflect you

Angry Poet - 12 Month Revision

I was a poet once
An angry poet
With flames jumping from my paper whenever my pen lit upon it
I shouted at the world and screamed Injustice, oppression
And a chorus of chinga tu madre pendejo huero,
perhaps more aimed at myself than at the supposed man
But time and temper, broken and remembered eventually only smolder
Flames capsized upon themselves expel the red and yellow of romance and turn beneath the ashes to brood and to collect their thoughts

I was a poet once
A desperate poet who cared enough to force the rhyme in every line to cheat you of your conscious thought
Who forced a beat to bubble and brew beneath every carefully examined and crafted phrase
Who knew you well enough to know without so much you would not care to listen
But empty pops and silent drops are not enough to carry me today

I was a poet once
A poet who thought I knew you well enough that content could not muster the strength to tell you what you knew and only through flattery and through rhyme would I convince you that your life was not worth living this way
But you went red and taught me that we were different

I was a poet once
A poet who spoke as though there were one populace and I was it and you were me and all we had to do was share the wealth
Of information for everything to be alright.
Cuz you were me and I was right and, no, not that right, but writing words upon a page that would frame tomorrow in hopefulness and clarity
That would stop the senseless dribble that makes you laugh but leaves you empty and leaves you
the same.

You see we were poets once, but then He stole our hope
Stole our faith in words
Cuz his language is no different than ours when he uses it that way
Cuz small words dropped in carefully crafted ways
Upon willing ears who know he must be preaching something
Will believe him when he says he did
And the more I say nothing the more you listen and the less you think
The more I spill rhythms of alliteration mixed persperation the more you dance like I were singing real music
and sometimes I wish you would dance when I spoke plainly

The man lied and no amount of poetry will change the fact that you nodded in agreement

You see
I was a poet once
A hopeless poet with bad rhymes and cheap turns, but with conviction and fire and hope that what I said mattered
But you have taught me that words are cheap and votes are cheaper
You have neglected my words and they long to turn inward, to nestle up in a space too small for cats but perfect for souls to curl and sleep
my poet’s heart is torn by eleven states saying they won’t allow my love
while my soul is abandoned by a home that asks for a repeat on that violence and falseness, violence and falseness
that one man preaches with conviction
while a tall white man with none concedes with grace
I didn’t vote for a good loser

You see
I was a poet once
A storytelling poet who spoke of men with valor
But when there were none
And when there were no words worth speaking
No one to listen to them anyway
They continued dancing to the nonsense



And twelve months later the nonsense is still playing
Everyday into our ears
Asking us to forget cuz its too hard
move on cuz its too far
Hold out til it matters
Slippery slopes are two sided
and ain’t just the christians gotta worry bout getting butt fucked in the night,
cuz prison rape ain’t about love
Its about power, and strength
Its about beating you down and making you forget you are human
Stripping you of your conscious voice
Wrapping it in a conch shell and shoving that conch shell up your ass
You see, twelve months don’t make it better
Twelve months just make it clearer that four years is a long time
That four years is long enough for you to die
Twelve months is long enough for Brad to adopt Angelina’s babies
Even if it ain’t long enough for him to marry her
Twelve months is freshman year, is sophomore year
Is the year you forgot what it meant to be angry
Twelve months is time enough to realize
To forget
That what you said matters even if it was them that won out
Cuz we won out here in California
Cuz teenage girls still got possession of their bodies
And Teachers are getting benefits they deserve
Unions still have the right to organize politically
And presidents are still accountable to their constituents
There is not time to be complacent
This is no time to be calm
You still have a voice and an obligation to use it
I was a poet once
A poet who thought I owed it to you to entertain
Thoughts of your own self-worth
But damnit if you don’t have a word, you ain’t a poet yourself
And there are too many silences surrounding us for the canvases to remain blank
The silence of whiteness oppresses me
Two thighs pounding into you at night and you think not screaming is sexy
Perplex me
And know that I am a poet, a mad poet who cannot forgive, not forget your silences
cannot let them go unanswered
There are answers to be had, benefits given, time qualified and ears rendered deaf by the weight of our cries, rendered open by the softness of our lips
Mad Poets Disease: Spread It