raindrops on roses

...now i just chain-smoke and eat costa rican chocolate and whine about these preppy awkward clean boys who pursue me.

we dismantle bikes in the park and ask you to read shakespearean analysis aloud, greasy hands and sunburned shoulders and forgetting to go to work on time. when i lay back barefoot in the grass there were dandelions everywhere and we blew endless white fluffy wishes to the wind.

when i kissed him last night i knew he'd still bore me sober.

when my friends can't keep them straight i know they're all the same story. i'd like someone grimy and crude to crash into me, no more of these ones who flirt and retreat and look so scared. tonight warm turned to cold and you forgot yr bravado. tonight i forgot to close my window against the wind.

a meditation on my pretenses of idealism

we talk of revolutions till our hair turns to dust, till the whiskey can no longer wet our parched throats; we lean excitedly forward plunging elbows into tabletops, jutting feverish foreheads into the chasms between our ideologies and realities, into circles of dialogue and inspiration as our hands fly up in wild gesticulations flinging unseen scraps or romantic ideals to the rafters out the windows to flee or maybe flit back gently drifting to land like lint to be brushed off our shoulders. & when we settle back satisfied into our chairs, drop damp shoulders limp into wooden embraces, silence hangs dense between our exhausted post-satisfaction grins. flickering lights to hide our doubts in the shadows, to bring our stuffy words to fiery life.

cough

watch out or i'll cough you out of me too
expell the last vestiges of yr smile still clinging
to the insides of my chest
i think by now you've stopped calling
& i think by now i'm glad
cuz i was feeling guilty
about never having time
but watch out or i'll let you forget me
watch out or our eyes will lose
each other's silhouettes, imagined,
in those empty lacking spaces.
my memory's not so good these days & if
you don't force yr way in
i think i'll disappear for good.

critical mass

& we rode for miles giddy in the crowds of bikes & yells & grins, and we found sidewalk drummers, found our rhythms so we blocked the intersection dancing in the street laughing and shaking our hair pounding our feet on the asphalt till we got too hungry then away! away! to long tables where we packed around huge pots of dim sum and ate till we were glowing flushed with spices & full bellies, pedaled home talking about summers & histories & tired thighs. home to catch our breath, then to parties full of dresses and careful hair where we burst in tousled and sweaty to sit swinging legs off the edge of the roof raising cans of cheap beer and stealing drags off wet cigarettes. police intrusion so off shivering to another apartment full of party stragglers and no more booze, sat crammed on the back porch between drunk boys who couldn't remember our names. swigs from a plastic bottle. conversations not worth having. yawns & bike rides home. crashed into 4 AM sleep, then woke to a blurry weekend of rain and grey, a dismal reminder of the way things can be.