Pushing

I push
Push into the water
Falling deep underneath
I'm sorry I'm not sorry
'Cause you hurt me
You're just kissing me

Kissing a Kiss -
Me, don't stop kissing me
Until I push you -
To the brink
You're on the brink
I'm sorry I pushed you to the brink

You kissed me until
Until you left me
Leave me, leave me
Please don't leave me
Just keep kissing me
Kiss me

Push me
I push too much
I'm pushing you
I'm sorry
I will be here
Move on, move on baby

I wont move on
I'll try
Try not to push you
Pushing me
I will try to move on
I wont move on

I'll keep trying
I will be here
Sitting on the moon
Legs will dangle off the speckled orb
Legs dangle off your bed
Off your bed

Pushing off the bed
Against the wall
Don't stop kissing me
Pushing each other beyond the sheets
Sheets of white

I'm pushing
Even with this petty attempt to spill the anxiety onto a page
I am pushing even with the good night kiss
Kissing, kiss me
Don't stop kissing me
I push and push

I'll be here
When you're with them- I won't push
When you're with me- I won't push
No pushing
Just idle
I'll be here

On the moon with my legs dangling off

Personal Essay (Common App) TAKE TWO.

        Preparation for the future could be determined as impossible, for who really knows what’s to come, if it hasn’t already happened? However if it was determined impossible, then every night before we fall asleep, our memories of waking up the morning before would be completely erased. We would have no recollection of how the sun rose, and how the frost that sat on our windows was the first thing we felt. We wouldn’t be able to prepare ourselves the way the soil has for the rain fall, because the future would be unknown. In spite of that idea, this is not the way the world spins. We prepare ourselves for the next minute to come, just as clocks prepare us for business meetings and appointments. 

High School is preparation in it’s purest sense. We rise with the sun and frost kissed windows, because the clocks we’ve set the night before have rung. Our lives begin with each step through the halls in which we’ve spent the last four years. Yet, with this universal preparation we are divided individuals. Each of us is a link and every link, every person, is connected with one another. We are thick metal strands comprised with a hole in the middle of every one of us. Through this hole is where we shine our individual light, then creating a fiery luminescent mass. We create this universal light, through our solitary holes. The light which is shone through consists of our lives. Every day accomplishments, family reunions, first jobs, first kisses. If we juxtapose high school with this light we would see the lines of preparation in which we subconsciously created ourselves. 

I am a link with grooves in it’s metal consistency. I intend on shining unfamiliar light. Throughout these past four years of my life I have come to many realizations, not only about myself, but about my contribution to my surrounding community as a student, a daughter, a sister and a lover.

Through the experiences in which these grooves on my link are placed, I have really found myself within writing and visual art. Art is a constant companion, especially to those who don’t quite see it yet. It’s always there, mostly within oneself. The ability to find it, to take action upon it is just the start of a masterpiece. Michelangelo had once said, “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free”. The ability to see the angel in the marble is where Michelangelo’s art began. The carving of it’s wings was the action set out for the public, for people incorporate into their own realities. I strive to do the same as Michelangelo, to find the angel in the marble and begin to carve. On the other side of the art world is writing. It provides me with the opportunity to be whoever I want to be, just with the simple stroke of a pen. It’s a form of theater, just without a projected voice. Rather, one that could be interpreted how ever it may be by the reader themselves. I like to make people think, I like to inspire people. Through writing, painting and photography.  Some of my favorite authors consist of Sylvia Plath, Ernest Hemingway, and of course the members of the beat generation; Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William Burroughs.  It’s not often that these poets are are taught in school. I lie between the field of appreciating that factor, and completely despising it. I want to be the author that people react to, whether with hate or love, confusion or disgust. Regardless of being scoffed at, or admired, these people created a reaction from the general public, and I know I have the ability to do the same.

I am interested in the smaller things. There isn’t a time where I’m not thinking in one way or another. I’m curious about how things became, and the art within everything. I like to push limits and explore boundaries within the academic, political, and social world. I am a hard worker, and when I want to know or create something, I will. I am drawn to diversity and issues. I believe I’m a leader and have strong listening skills. I’m a good friend, and put my heart into everything I do. I am only one link within this chain, we are all a part of the gradual pull and the creation of light. We’re connected, and through the preparation we’ve been handed we’ve evolved enough to realize who we are. I am Emma Cherry, I am a writer, I am an artist, I am one link on this chain, and my light is different. 

Basketball Game

Your swift, bolting movement across the court
A marble squeaking beneath the feet of the athletes beside you
Sky blue and red flashes from one net to another
And if I tried to take my eyes off you my mind would yell and yell

Right across from each other
On opposite sides, you winked your eye I knew it was for me because after my blushing and a look down to my feet your stare was still there
I thought I've written about something like this before, but I swear I swear I haven't
My fingers can't type the words fast enough
My head can't compile the sentences
My heart
My heart
But is it in my heart where I feel this ?
This push and pull, and please please please say you feel it too

We've been trained
Told that it is in our hearts where the lovers are felt
Where the passion beats
Where the need stays

Maybe it's because the heart is the one thing we can feel functioning inside of us
If we allow it to, that is
Maybe it's because the heart is written in all of the books
All of the movies
All of the classic literature
One of mom's favorite thing's about you is that you want to be an English Professor

What if instead it was all of us
All of our body, not just the beating of our hearts which felt this thumping
Thumping of your feet from the shower to your bedroom
Thumping of the three squeezes you give my hand
Squeeze squeeze squeeze
I            Love    You

Instead it was everywhere
The warmth in our cheeks and lower backs when we walk in from the coldness of the streets
Into the christmas tree lit living room
Instead I felt it in the heat of the pan as I made you dinner at 1am
I felt it in the reflection of our faces upon the computer screen
More pictures to add to the collection we already have
I felt it in the seaming of the couch which we fell asleep on
I felt it in the middle of the night
In my neck as your breath hummed against it

I feel it in every move
I've never wanted to have something so bad
Never been so driven to have this
This This
You
You and I are squeezing each others hands in the car
And we're kissing at red lights
And I feel my heart thumping
Not just my heart
I feel the seams of the couch kissing my shoulders like you did

A swift bolting movement across the court
And with every basket made I wished for you to be mine again

Believe Me When I Say

I’m trying
I will always try to love 
To love is to be convinced
Convince me
Convinced the jury, no murder here 
My friend
You’ve murdered my friend 
My heart, I’m trying to love my heart
Can feel you, You aren’t convincing 
You’re trying 
To murder is to kill, to rid of 
Get rid of the dirty fucking plates
Plates on the table, 
Plates of renewed skin 
Skin touching my heart and my eyes can 
Try, trying to convince
I am trying to convince my heart to murder my love 

It's Snowing Now, You Kissed Me in the Summer

'You were made to meet your maker' -Mumford and Sons

There will come hill
You'll see
Made of candle wicks
Lit for every stumbling heart
You'll hold hands with yourself and walk over fire
Awaken, Awake

Without Your Hands

How can we possibly come to terms with disappearance of coffee cup? 

We built the cabinets in which they lived 

How can we fully understand the lawn which grows 

And grows

And grows

Without your tender palms to tell the flowers to grow as tall as they can 

Will they begin to flourish in the spring ?

With the bed unmade

And the dishes in the sink 

I've been standing here 

Idle in this house we shared 

How could we possibly come to terms with the molding of the wooden picture frames placed on the bed side table

How they are so often glanced at

Cried over 

How they melt in the winter and re grow in the spring 

Like the flowers who need your hands 

Like the coffee mugs who miss the greeting of your lips 

Like the dishes that stay in the sink 

Because I refuse to touch anything you left behind 

How will I come to terms with the reality I live?

It's distant inconvenience has intruded my vision 

Welcomed itself into the closet we shared 

Ripped apart your clothes and tore every dress of its hanger

Smeared its smile on the mirror I can't look in

What will the flowers do without your hands?

We are unusual and tragic and alive 

Wolf Guide

Beneath 

Her feet crushed 

The foliage 

That had remained untouched 

For years of long decembers

Silent

Quiet, undisturbed springs

She couldn't seem to find 

The Redwood tree 

Which was marked with 

Spongy bark 

That was soft 

It was this tree 

That showed her which way 

To turn 

Today, instead,

She followed a wolf 

His thick coat 

Raised 

In the back

The grey tips 

White underneath 

He began to walk 

In front of her 

She followed 

His soft foot

Steps along the cold ground 

As he guided 

Her home 

I Need to Start

writing again

you're all i fucking think about
get out of my mind, god damnit.

TIRED TRIED

Personal Essay (Common App)

Emma Cherry

Personal Essay 

Applying for Fall 2011  

Two oceans, two seas, one soul. I was created with the movement of the sea. Jamaica, 1988. My father fell to the grace of one knee before my mother. He held out his hand, and revealed the emerald ring which she would wear until the day she died. This was the beginning of everything. She wore an ivory wedding gown, a pasty tone of silk and lace lay upon her skin. Her bridesmaids smiled in their dresses; a velvet hunter green, an accent to my mothers  hazel eyes. There he stood, hands sifting through his thick hair, rich with the shade of soil.  As if everything else had combined into a coherent whole and was lost beneath the hard wood floor of the New York church, my mom and dad fell into the biggest moment they had ever felt. These sixty seconds which started with the slip of a golden ring on each finger, and ended with a mutual kiss from each of their lips and had expanded into five years to themselves. 

My mother grew up on the shores of the Hudson River. The warm apartment she called home, we still visit today. As a child she became familiar with the rough seas of Maine, every summer between the ages of three and eighteen her feet traveled the rocky beaches searching for sea glass and broken pottery. As a college student she traveled to Spain, spending Saturday nights embracing the brisk smell of the Mediterranean Sea. I know I will smell those waters one day. Mom and I are connected as you’ll understand further into this essay. 

Dad was different, sequestered, but not in a bad way. He grew up in a small town immersed in the quiet throws of Cincinnati, Ohio. He didn’t travel much, but he was my mothers everything. No ocean would ever match up to his love for her.  After they married, most of their time was spent on Block Island. They rented the same cottage every summer, spent their days on the beaches. Next, to Scotland they went. Sharing kisses on back roads over looking the North Channel. I was born shortly after, opened my eyes to the streets of Maplewood, New Jersey in 1993. Just as my mother did, as I child I grew familiar with the rocky beaches of Maine. I looked for sea glass and pottery just the way she did. Dad would be reading in the hammock just above the hill, moms hand in mine guiding me over the sharper of rocks. I loved the water. To play in it, to be beneath where everything was quiet and still, I loved to steer the sail boat with Dad. Three years later my sister Isabel was born, and two years after that my brother Jack. We were a family of five, but not for long.

September 11, 2001, a normal morning. Dad off to work and Mom embracing another morning with three young children. Off to school, make sure you have your lunch, soccer practice this afternoon? I was seven, third grade. Isabel, five and Jack, three. My dad died that day. He worked in the second tower of the World Trade Center, we became a family of four. I wanted the ocean. I wanted to fall beneath it’s glassy surface and feel every vibration of it’s stirs. 

We’ve grown up since then, my family and I. Mom misses the water, and so do I. When I was twelve my family and I moved to Chagrin Falls, Ohio. Lake Erie isn’t much of an ocean, or anything I’d like to swim in, but it’s still nice to look at. The move was anything but easy. I entered middle school and was tortured. I remember this one boy would follow me in the halls as we walked between classes. He’d stretch his arms out, as if he was acting as an airplane. His voice forming the words ‘daddy, daddy’, over and over again. With his arms stretched wide, flying his airplane. I never thought someone could hurt me so badly. I began to self harm, I developed an eating disorder. I was far from who I ever wanted to be. After leaving the Chagrin Falls School district I found myself at Andrews Osborne Academy, in Willoughby, Ohio. I got into drugs and alcohol and was in and out of rehabs for three out of four years of my high school career. Here and there I’ve visited different shores of familiar places, but I haven’t been back to Maine. I miss it, Mom and I talk about it often. She’s become my best friend. I’ve learned honesty is key when searching for the calmest way of living life. I’ve developed a severe anxiety   disorder, which has kept me from living the way I believe in; calmly, at peace. I’ve been sober from drugs and alcohol for about a year. I live one day at a time, and when things are hard, I breathe. To notice the rise and fall of my chest, to feel my pulse lessen it’s rate, to wash the ocean of my mind with a different wave, that is how I live. I’m seventeen now,  Isabel fourteen, Jack twelve. Dad’s been gone for almost ten years, and we’re closer than any family. I’m not like many seventeen year olds,  I grew up at the age of seven, I grew up with the ocean. 

I'm Sorry My Heart Picked You

"You keep fucking fighting, stop fighting for me."

Lamp Shade City

Can't wake up with coffee, but with the people you rise 

Inside the city, tented by a lamp shade 

Keeping its members alive and warm and well kept, because anything less than a strict mothers approval in her kitchen isn't okay

Can't sleep with solace, but with the sinners you dream 

Along your eye lids hills have been drawn

This village is the bulb, it's incandescent drips of morning have a submissive tone 

Can't walk with unmarked hands, but with the pious you fight

---

Please don't talk to me, I fall in love way to easily
I'll find myself completely over analyzing the 30 seconds you took to look at me,
And I may very likely fool myself into thinking you waved me over
This is the part where I'd walk over to you after catching your eye at the coffee shop
And I'd ask if you like cream and sugar
And you'd try not to stare at my bitten fingernails
I'd possibly ask you for drinks and lure you in with my ability to be the most awkward co-worker
And like a heavy stone I'd lay,
And settle myself into the ground for months because you never called
And someone else would stumble u[on me and try to strike up a conversation
And this would be the part where all I muster up is,
"Please don't talk to me, I fall in love way to easily"

Home

You have authority over this house 

The uneven wooden boards beneath our bed belongs to you

Every coat hook and coffee stained counter top is yours forever

I am a guest in this shoppe

Laughs and glasses of gin for sale 

Your heart's half price 

I've walked in to this shoppe, this house of yours 

We got drunk on your kitchen floor and we held each other close through the waves of night time 

I know this house is yours 

Everything inside belongs to you 

I call it my home 

Tangier

We live in the city of Tangier, where the Mediterranean meets the Atlantic
Where we sit out on our work breaks and stare at the thrashing winds when they greet each other in the night
I came here with you to find the comfort of a home
A refuge
I work as a hotel manager
Where business men and their mistresses come to have important dinners
None of them wearing our clothes, but dressed in America
You work at the train station, lonely
Clicking tickets into seats while thinking about me
People write books about people like us, you know
They make examples of us
Everyone here was once alone
They came just as we did
This city is full of colors and people come to see them
Writers and artists and they try to imitate our lifestyles, to become us for the weekend so they can "feel"
I know you feel me
I'll see you tonight, my sweet love
We can sit out and watch the oceans meet

Taxi Loungers

We are the only birds that don't sing upon your arrival
We know you'll leave again
Just as the taxis do
To take their tired back seat lovers home
They call them the taxi loungers
Sometimes three or more at a time
They always leave eventually
You follow them to their homes
And we don't sing for you to come back

My Ocean

I can see this heart sized canal behind the cove
The sun is the energy in our hearts
And there is dark and light in all of us,
Because when we grind our teether, screaming for a muzzle while we sleep,
We end up writing more than speaking
And the waves of perception create a decision we have to make
To raise our left hands or our right
Because either way, each hands is experiencing the vibration of its state

If every possibility existed, I swear I'd be a better man
And I'd just want you, my ocean
I'd just need you, because the frequency of the East hasn't given you the answer you want
Even though it's night time
Your heart is light

When You Feel It, But She Doesn't

I suppose the worst part is knowing
When you know, everything else drops into the mass below you
And the knowledge itself eats away at you

Settings you both were placed in play over and over again among the blank wall before
These settings where the both of you were together and she smiled because you made her and when you both laugh at the same thing just because
These settings where you both were wrapped beneath the blanket of lust, where you gave yourself to her and she gave herself to you, because she felt comfortable
Because she just wanted to
These settings where you drove in your car with her in the front seat and you sang along with the verses swimming out of the speakers and into your ears
Prying deep enough inside of you, so you over analyze the words and pretend the song was written for to two of you

These settings haunt you when she says good bye
When you don't see her
When you lay in bed beneath the sheets which you shared
When you glance at the strip of snapshots above your lounge chair, and you sit below them and wonder if she's thought about you today
When the plans you once constructed together never happen
When you feel it
But she doesn't

You know these settings
You know she said 'I love you'
You said it back
And you know that she's with her
And not you
But that's okay
You'll be okay

Goin' to College

In this very moment we are younger than we will ever be again
We are treated like the old
No one can tell because our feet walk softly and our hands are cautious
And my pastel cheeks are being kissed by members of our time
Your held up by the wooden cane which you carved for grandpa when you were seven
Ten years later

And we're saying good bye to everyone

Cola

You are a crushed can of cola
With hard edges
Points that could scrape my freckled back
the way mother does after another failed attempt
To fall in love
You are a crushed can of cola
Pointy and edged and empty

Silent Mirage

Your life has become a silent mirage of family photographs
And while walking through the luminescent streets hand in hand with your mistakes, you have just come to the realization that those hips you've held with your hands,
that the shoulders that stood so close to yours,
that the eyes which closed at each flash of the Nikon, had completely fooled you with their ability to please
Never had they existed at that broadway play in the city
Six seats, half a row
Never did your brothers eyes actually follow yours as you opened your christmas presents on the frost bitten December morning
Your mothers hand never sat on your forehead when you had the flue
Daddy never said 'I love you'
Your life is a silent mirage of your lovers family photographs

The Strand

 Jump and jump and fucking hurl yourself beyond every line that was ever drawn before your feet
And if you find yourself too far away from the orange cones that were placed in a circle with you in the Middle
Then walk back towards the center of the sun and call out for every saint that had ever held your hand and
If you can no longer hear them whisper through every thread of hair that flows from the tired scalp you call your own,
Then you will no longer be a part of the strand
The strand that is so carefully woven through the straw bails of every cattle lawn
That is bitten
And chewed
And pulled apart through every kiss ever given by any member of the human race
No slow motion bull shit played back between flashes of your bathroom light
None of that sweet and syrupy mass will be wiped on this plate
Set on the table woven by the strand

Wine and Time

She prayed for three hundred clouds
And God gave her seventeen instead
She wanted to go to sleep,
But couldn't go to bed
Her coffee she spiked with bourbon to get rid of last night's thrill
She asked her boss for a longer break, to drag in as much as she could
And her little lungs screamed bloody murder, and they focused on the good

She went home and kissed her husband, and asked how was his day
He replied with quite some certainty he was destined to be miles away
So he packed his bags and left her there, and she poured her glass of wine
Called her corporate boss up, and asked if he had the time

They spent hours upon hours just layin' there in bed
He asked her a few questions
She could not answer, she only cried instead.
Between her blubbering mess of sweat and tears, she asked him why
He replied with quite certainty, because I had the time

So from that day forward she went to work
And her husband was her boss
They went to lunch together,
They shared quite lovely talks
And if someone asked them, oh how did you meet ?
They'd stare down below them and couldn't seem to speak

But in both their heads they knew a happy thought
That miles never mattered, it was forgiveness that had been taught
So she smiled back and replied to them, he seemed to have the time
He looked at her, and blushed with them while he said, I wanted wine.

The two walked away silently, hand in hand they were
And after that day people questioned the common stir
But no one ever wondered what life was like for the two
They all knew they were happy, because they fell out of the slue
And now in pairs, we all stand around
Staring at each other without making a sound
And if someone asks for some wine, they all will gladly say
Here good friend is a glass for you, i'm glad you have the time.

//\\

i wish you would say

                                                  please

because the indecency 

of this scene is over bearing  

and i wish you understood 

but you 

                                                  don't

and that's okay because beyond 

every point lies another

and between these points is a

connection that will never         

                                          
                                                  leave 

and i will not forget the wind 

that took my spine 

and every bit of who i was

and said don't forget 

                                                   me. 

Stranded

Our souls and our hearts are all docked at different harbors,
But set out into the same sea
Letting there sails up
For the wind to guide them
Between storms and rays of heat that burn will them
Until their sweltering surfaces melt at the core
And until they become swollen masses that form into one

And the concept of a soul and a heart will become a single object
The sails that so furiously strung out               and held the plight have been worn and teared
And they're sinking deep into the sand beneath the sea
Where the wretched lay
Those who once had hands that pulled them in
The same hands that left them
And the souls and hearts that have become one with each other are now stranded
Lingering in between waves and laughing sailors
And they're floating in the blank palate of nothing
Stranded

lifeless float

and she'll remain in her lifeless float
because that's all she'll ever be
with hair so blue and strong
with eyes shut because even though her muscles aren't keeping them there, the pressure of the deepened altitude has glued them shut
because the opaque consistency her skin has taken wont allow light
because she is lifeless
and floating 

Reduced

                                                                                    We have been reduced to small digital pulses

Every sigh has become a series of 0s and 1s and we don't even notice anymore because our necks stretch so far that we lock our jaws in the ether

And we loose ourselves in the hums of fingers typing

We filter the good and the bad with the ability to juxtapose our lives to one another 

We're adapting to a non existent reality and we don't even care because every time we feel ill, 

We flush ourselves with better things

To cure us of our indifferences 

And when we are told to try again 

We give up on ourselves 

And stretch our necks to search for the strength to continue 

Grace

We will live in these bodies 

And we will die in these bodies

And I will ask you to bare your grace with the flower in your hair

We were made to find our other half 

But what they never told us was that other half is inside of us 

And in fact never existed as a tangible walker

And I will ask you to refresh my cold, cold mind 

Remind me of my name, because I have not found my other half 

And I will be told that I can be whoever I want once I find my grace

This land will be given all it can to heal 

And it will flourish with the thought of a home sitting upon it

And it will cry once it learns we are dying in these bodies

Only half of us lives

With a spine so fragile 

And grace in our hair 

 

It feels like you can't see me

Was

I loved to lay in bed and count how many stars I thought were my own
I was much less understanding back then
I was waking up early to put the blood back in me
I was not a patient person
My body was lighting up the sky and there was no way to avoid it
And people who were coming out of diners would notice me
And train drivers would stop on the tracks because they saw me
And the children that pointed at me were happy because that was all they needed to feel complete
I would put my flesh back into the grass again
I finally belonged and I began and
I was there and I never got old

Wonder

I wonder if one day I will have a house
With a front door and rooms to sleep in
With a fence I could jump over
With a back yard to fill the gaps

I wonder if one day I will be a mother
With a child who looks up to every light
And sees the whole universe instead of glowing glass
With a little boy or girl who likes to ask me questions
And thinks of home when they smell the sea

I wonder if one day I will be sick
And brought to those who know me more than I do
I wonder if I will be lying there with my baby safe at home
And if my wedding dress will be still be in the closet
Inside the house we built for us and our little one
I wonder if I will be kissed every night
And held
All because someone loves me that much

To Be A Child

I would like to be a child again
I have lost all recollection of what it was like

To scream for my fathers hands
To pick me up and lift me into the clouds
To cry for his chest
To press my cheek against
To be a child

I would like to fall into billows of everything I cannot remember
Every place I will go I'll take a piece of it with me
I will protect each one and keep them mine
I will not die and leave them alone
Because they will then they will forget

They will have mechanical failures inside of them
They will ask to be children again
To be pieces of something bigger
They will cry out for their fathers
To hold them during the night

But they will have no chest to rest their cheeks on
And they will become parts of the billows
People will fall into them
Asking for a chance to convince them that they had a past
These pieces will cry with us

We want to be children again

i miss my blue and blonde.

I am Part of the Tornado

My brain is empty
There is nothing left within this walking carcass
I have become a part of the tornado
I sleep inside of it's whirl winds and I pick up houses and bicycles with my bare hands
I eat on tables I've stolen from the kitchens of innocent families
I am empty
and translucent
and ghostly
But I have the power to damage
To destroy
To take away all of the courage the world has left
Trembling at the thought of an empty terrain
Without life or houses or bicycles
I am part of the tornado

Mental Notes

I've been taking mental notes
Breathing in the dust your hoofs have left
And yes, i'll comb your hair
So thin
Brittle, like your sentences
Keeping lists of when you were lively
Will you blink for me again ?

So still in your stall
Lifeless among your hay
I love you, dear
Don't be afraid to die

The Cold Breath of an Arctic Demon

Wouldn't it be beautiful to find something we thought we had lost ?

Consider the snow storm I am standing in

Like the cold breath of an arctic demon, the wind will blow so hard that I will start a whole new world war with myself

I will stuff my hands in my mittens and pretend it's time to trade my goods again

I will give up my wife 

and kids

and horses 

horses, horses

None of them were ever mine anyway

I want to give everyone everything 

I will never say no to the skies that will open up for me

I will stop bathing in rum, I promise, I promise 

I Want to Live on the Tongues of the Human Race

I want to live on the tongues of the human race

I will give children lollipops
And I will become the sweet and sticky sphere resting on their tongues.
Seven years old at the zoo with grandma
Who will point out the many millenniums of daffodils and Geraniums
Yawning and crying

I will be the cough drop sucked on with a passion for health
Twelve years old, reaching for the ceiling of adolescence
Tip-toeing on the floors of innocence
In a white night gown

I will be the small strip of hallucinations when they have turned sixteen
I will send them into a dream
A dream in high lighter colors
Where everything is bigger than it usually is

I will be the white pill from the orange container
I will be placed in the back of nineteen year old throats
I will descend within and rid these heads of their chemical imbalances
Curing the shaking of legs and tapping of finger tips

I will be the powdered cylinder with the letters "AZT" on the trembling tongues of twenty-five years
Sliding into blood cells
I will not fail them
Providing life, I will

I will be the green straw on the center of your tongue.
With the pressure of your clamping mouth, I will spit rum down your throat
Burning you, and you'll bite the edge of me
Slurping away at forty years old, business dinner with your boss and his wife

I will be the thermometer placed in your baby's mouth
Drenched in the spit of a sickling
You're fifty-four
She's just shy of six months

In the hospital bed next to her
I am the tube stretching into your chest
You have given her your sickness
She's dying
You're already dead

Been Searching Through the Deserts and the Caves

Clothed With Your Lips

Your smile feeds into the pores of my skin
A bare figure I am, but clothed with your lips
Your finger tips create the fabric of my garments
A kiss compiling every stitch

I'll stop you
And pull you closer
On top of me
I'll ask you to feel me
Touch me
not with your hands
But with your heart
Not with your kiss
But with your eyes

And with your mind, I'll ask you this;
Be free
The ocean of your thoughts must calm its waves.
Allow it to be a gentle crash of liquids.

So with your kiss, find me
With your hands, notice my faults
With your eyes, follow me
with your heart, be with me