the light shines through the window
slanted and it reaches for the dust motes
enveloping them in
the gold of ancestors long buried in the ground
under our feet
there are tunnels we cannot see
where all the men who have had enough
and the women who no longer want to deal
with ideas
live.
they stand upright in the soil, barefoot
and walk under times square 42 street
all the way to brooklyn their tunnels
lead and on mondays they slip out through the subway
tracks and join the rest of us

please don't tell me these things
that i do not want to hear
the words that traipse off your
lips slowly
like you savor the red pock marks
they leave on my skin
each consonant
rams its way under my nails
and each vowel raises my pores

i do not want to know
i do not need to know the others
that cut us out of magazines and dutifully
pasted us together with their glue-sticks
i have ripped myself from this scene
i am no longer so
two-dimensional
not so easily shaped by
safety scissors

i have broken out
don't give me words
that lead me back wandering
no crumb trails of pleases and could
have beens and they wanteds

i am done
i am new
and i do not need this
to shackle me

because for once
i am outside of the boundaries

for once
someone whispers in my ears words
i've longed for

and this will not last forever

but you will not break it

and this will not last forever

but you will not break it for me

i was so dark in
that room
but the light folded
softly
the grey dog eared edges
i do not know if i know
my own walls so
well
and you, head-up
staring at me
you were just so
fascinating
so beautiful
your face was so pale
your lips so shadowed
your eyes so curious

and you were mine
and i could touch you
and i could touch you
and you were mine

i am so scared
because i am locked
in this pocket of space
and when i touch my hands to the glass
i will push but i cannot get it to go outward
it just comes inward
the goosebumps are rising on my neck
and there is nothing that i can do

i've figured the way best to cope
is to never think of ends
not of beginnings
like the longest possible extension of living
in the moment
because otherwise it is all too painful
i don't understand
and i don't want to think about it
and you can reconcile future and memories
but i do not want you to be a memory
(even in those times of
slightly psychopathic needs for pain
and drama, the selfish wanderings of an
empty mind)
i do not want the time to come
when i cannot ride up to your home in a rattling
subway car
and crawl into your bed

you change me
when i am with you
i feel that i am someone different
i feel that people who know me
would cock their heads, lean back, and squint a bit and say
soledad?
but these people know only my outline
the fuzzy shades, the opaque shell
i feel weak in the best ways when i am with you
feel bashful and timid and fragile
feel loud and raucous and teasing
you change me
when i am with you
i feel that i am someone different
myself

Saturday Morning

don't make me look
back
on those
pictures
i am so close to you
and yet
i know
i was not that close
so close

and yet you pretend
that nothing has happened
somehow you are my twisted muse
i have written
songs
about you
i have written
poems
so many poems
about you

and i will not tell you
and you will never know
and you have lost the right to know

(and you will not tell me
and i will never know
and i have gained the right to grow)

Poem Pages

   in the writing 

on those pages

   i just fell deeper

and deeper 

   wrapping your

words around me

    like a 

comforter against

  the cold

I was enveloped 

     by my

      love

-------

I hate

how susceptible

I am to the niceness

of being liked

I have my priorities

straight

don't get me wrong

I'm not stupid

but sometimes I feel

inklings of tempting

that I 

wish I could just 

shut down

------

I don't know how to say it

how to drip these emotions

lace them with heavy

words of meaning

------

I never thought I could grow this

comfortable with someone

enjoy the company of another so much

I cannot believe that you

think that without you I would be the same

don't you realize the effects you've

had on me?

each time you touch me I can

feel my eggshell skin breaking and 

you pull me out before we collapse

down laughing

(if there is one thing you are 

not it is shy)

at least not under my eyes

with your long black lashes.

when you grasp me

close I feel that I may

wonderfully 

disappear

in the space between

your arms

the last night of summer

ephemeral
like if you tried to catch in your hand
it would flicker and slip right through
your fingers

lying with the grass
smoothing at your sides
for that last time when you
will be quite so full of freedom
breathe it in
because it will be long before
the weight on your shoulders
is this light

the hot summer streets
i wear my sweater to keep the skeeters off
i wear my sweater to keep the skeezers off

washing it off in
a cool shower
let it run down the drain

the fear eats away
at the pit of my stomach
gnawing gnawing gnawing
(i hate this
i hate this
i hate this)
how are people so frightening with
their soft fingers and gentle smiles
and their words
reassuring you they do understand
in their eyes
a void of incomprehensible
incomprehension

i am not ready yet
please don't push me forward
i am not ready to stay up late nights
poring over books and words
and so many rules
so so so
many
rules
they all seem ridiculous to me
why does it matter
inelegant
colloquial
childish
we are children
we are children
i am not ready
i am not ready
i am not ready
please do not make
me go