11:11

11:11

Beds are so cold at that spot by your feet when
you wake up too early in the dark before the sunrise.

A little girl imagined that

beneath her blankets she was safe

from the skeleton monsters who creaked

and peaked inside her bedroom door.

I can’t get back to sleep while the light outside of
my eyelids is turning blue. The ceiling fan blades on pause.

I never notice how stale my breath might be because my
nose is crisped like grass on the first day of winter.

Best friends can sleep on the carpet floor

and don’t mind so much if there is

a lack of pillows or space.

Alarm clocks become birds on Saturday mornings.

Zebra stripes of yellow move across the wall; shut my eyes -
close the blinds. Bury my buzzing head like an ostrich underground.

Forced dreams fill up with jackhammers and the shooOOOoosh of cars.
White and black commercial fuzz raining inside televisions left along highways.

Slow for the working man constructing destruction. You can’t complain; you
pass this way every day as I sleep beneath graffiti bridges.

Women learn to enjoy the smells and stickyness

that come with being held late in the night.

Never really sleeping, pretending, who needs the abyss

of limitless space when you can be kept so close instead.

Fighting the light until my eyes open to blackness once again.
Red circles read 11:11; I wish I had never met you.

Headlines

Plane Crashes into Buffalo Home!
Nearly 5 million Jobless!

I apologize.

Prop 8: Love, not Marriage!
Christmas Eve Massacre: 16 Orphaned!

I ignored you at breakfast.

Polar Bears on Thin Ice!
Drugs & Babies & Jena Six: Blame TV!


The coffee was just fine.

Wal-Mart Employee Trampled in Rush!
Afghan Girls Attacked with Acid!

It was only the headlines

US Nation of Cowards!
Obama: Save Us From Ourselves!

distracting me again.

Sources:
Plane Crashes into Buffalo Home!
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/02/13/plane.crash.new.york/index.html

Nearly 5 million Jobless!
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN1949726420090220?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews

Prop 8: Love, not Marriage!
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27650743/

Christmas Eve Massacre: 16 Orphaned!
http://www.newsmax.com/us/orphan_christmas_killings/2008/12/28/165877.html

Polar Bears on Thin Ice!
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4097703n

Drugs & Babies & Jena Six: Blame TV!

Wal-Mart Employee Trampled in Rush!
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/11/28/black.friday.violence/

Afghan Girls Attacked with Acid!
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/01/22/acid.attacks/

US Nation of Cowards!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/20/AR2009022003643.html

Obama: Save Us From Ourselves!
http://quakerorts.blogspot.com/2009/01/isreali-womans-plea-to-obama-save-us.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-j-elisberg/dear-god-save-us-from-our_b_139222.html
http://www.postchronicle.com/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi?archive=102&num=181329

Love Lesson [poem]

Did you know the Poets of old
believed their rhymes held the secrets
of Divine Balance in the Universe?

Do not get lost in that celestial sea.
Please, do not tell me our love
is like the glow of some eternal moon;
a cold, hard, rock light years from here

where we lay in the summer grass together,
with the crickets.


And do not compare
what we feel for each other
to infernos or licking candles or lighters,
flicked and sparkling in an alley of night;

But let the embers from our campfire smoke and smolder,
burning our marshmallows black.


Do not abandon the whole of me
for my lips so sweet and slow,
or my cool eyes, untouched skin,
a deep whisper in your ear.

My hair smells like discount shampoo, not roses or strawberries;
and my curves are shy, but proud.


I need only to lay
my palm to your chest
to know how heavy your heart beats -
how unsteady and uncontrolled.

Mine: all the heavier when your hand lays there.
Here. Everywhere.


Save your sunsets and your butterflies
for some other girl who needs more
than the existence of you
to entertain her.

To be honest, your poetry is awful.
Can I read some other tale to you tonight?


Do not promise me forever,
enternity, soulmates, destiny.
Can’t we just enjoy today, as if
that’s all we have.

I’ll leave all the happy endings for the movies,
if I can learn how to live in a world so real - with you