been so long since i left myself alone like this that the serpent
grabbed my heart tonight

he said
never forget where you come from
and I'm proud of you.

a neon "art" sign mocks me. mocks everyone.
not that this town doesn't deserve it, but

this is the last place on earth to make art.
anyplace else will do.
Lorain OH
Villas NJ
Philadelphia PA
Lewiston ID
Corpus Christi TX

All places where art isn't and the soul strives to be.
but
not
here
not
in
oregon.

no bullshit. i love you.
you are unpredictable language and a universe i have
always begged for. you've given me love when no one cared. given me laugh lines.
taken the darkness of war movies from me and replaced it with the tears of romance novels.
i've changed so much with only some asking. i would be the moon for you if you asked.

i would become the moon if you asked. no bullshit.
if you knew, laying there in our gentle grey sheets the gazillion beautiful
things that you made grow in me...

I want to give them back to you

in the form of bicycles and sunday morning breakfasts and snorkeling the gulf coast.
but we are jammed tight into a world of survival that only these words can be cheap enough for:

I'd become the moon if you asked. this is me. this is me. no bullshit. i love you.

white boys fancy themselves tradesmen

white women fancy themselves Bowie.

all fancy themselves liberal
in a communist city

where a girl writing and drinking in a
bar is as strange a site as it is in a small
jersey town

someone grant portland a sense of humility
and me a way out of this town.

the softness of our pillows makes love too easy and sex so much harder
i feel a new hardness in my chest I'd forgotten

not since red wine and war movies have i felt so ragged and hurt
not by you but by my own ineptness at feeling

in fighting sleep i have accepted a cold universe
where love is a job not a vacation

but still if god exists it is in your bones