Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass

I measure time by the days I've spent away from you/ that thought occurred to me/ as i watched the sky go dark from blue

in my veins that roll you run citrus watercolor images of serpents on orange trees quietly arise and grow sweet in my midst

Be the art that life is breathing. Be the soul the world is living.

LA who am I to need you when I've needed so much, asked for so much? And what I've been given, I don't know yet

i like u so much/ but it makes me nervous when u don't call/ under my breath i say/ Don't make me be resilient/ i want to be soft/ if u let me be myself/ u will be the first one who ever did.

You're only as happy as your least happy child.

I stepped on a bird/ cried in my new boyfriend's arms/ to live is to kill

Like a view of the sea on a summer day on the most perfect winding road taken in from your car seat window A thing perfect and ready to become a part of the texture of the fabric of Something more ethereal like Mount Olympus where Zeus and Athena and the rest of the immortals play

there's things you still don't know about me like sometimes i'm afraid my sadness is too big and that one day you might have to help me handle it

and in that moment i decided to do nothing about everything

For years I begged you/ to just take me in your arms/ you wouldn't. Couldn't.

You don't want to be forgotten You just want to disappear

I love you, but you don’t understand me, I’m a real poet! My life is my poetry, my lovemaking is my legacy!

Stay on your path Sylvia Plath don't fall away like all the others

Am i being brazen for saying this year makes me feel/ like we could've written it better/ than him?

Because captains aren't like poets they don't make metaphors between the sea and the sky. And as I thought that to myself I realized - that's why I write.

and that monsters don’t always know they are monsters.

But there’s always been just a little tiny piece of me inside the size of a small slice of angel cake that knew somewhere somehow That I deserved better than someone like you.

But alas this is a real life - and it’s been a real fight just to keep my mind from committing treason.

I picked San Francisco because the man who doesn’t love me lives there

I believe in the goodness in me that it's firm enough to plant a flag in, or a rosebud, or to build a new life.

Don't make me be resilient / i so want to be soft / if u let me be myself / u will be the first one who did

i think about the last time my friends were driving with me how the radio was so loud we couldn't hear the words so we became the music happy

it's time like this as the marine layer lifts off the sea off the dock where we're standing with the candle lit that i think to myself there's things you still don't know about me like sometimes I'm afraid my sadness is too big and that one day you might have to help me handle it

Thank you for being here for bearing witness to my vastness Through the years I’ve called you in and out of my orbit You, in your madness

But lately I’ve been thinking that I wish someone had told me when I was younger more about the inhabitants that thrive off of paradise. That should they take too much there will be nothing left to give.

In me the earth moves around the sun no land all sea

close your eyes and feel where you hold your attention if it’s in the back of your eyes walk it down to your heart center and make that the new place from which your thoughts enter

that i pray that i may always keep my eyes level to your eye line never downcast at the table cloth too nervous to share my innermost thoughts with you

You told me that I didn’t know what I had done You said I don’t know who I am But I do know who I am. I love Rose Gardens I buy violets every time someone leaves me I love the great sequoias of Yosemite and if you asked my sister to describe the first thing she thinks of when she thinks of me she would say woodsmoke I’m gentle I’m funny when I’m drunk though I haven’t been drunk for 14 years