light reading.

+ you know that feeling you get when you're reading a great book and you're already been through half of it and you don't want to read it anymore 'cause then it will be over soon and you don't want to deal with the sadness of it ending and all? because each wonderful page is just a step further to you not having wonderful pages to lean over anymore? that's a contradictory equation that I wish mathematicians would solve already. I know that I make things happen. I'm less good at making them stop. the want always wants more. how does one learn that to dove is to build something for as long as it's needed, then release? and that this does not stop the wanting, does not unravel the spell or make the magnet any less magic. otherwise how do you explain what stays on the body for days, invisible to the eye, but so painfully palpable on the inside? the kissed arms, what they've sheltered and what they've let go? does reading it one typed letter at a time is really the solution?

+ tulips

+ two lips

At some point it becomes true that all stories
are love stories. all making, love making.
I didn't make this rule. but it binds me
all the same. I wish there was a law
against condescending against love. against
the economy of fear that says your joy
means less joy for me as if love
were pie, or money, or fossil fuel
dug or pumped from the earth, gone
when it's gone. it's just not true. the heart
with its gift for magnificent expansion
is not coal. not fruit set to spoil or the dollar
cringing in its wallet. when you say darling,
the world lights up at its edges. when mouths
find mouths and minds follow or minds find
minds and mouths, hands, hips, toes, follow-
how about you call that sacred. how about you raise
your veined right hand and swear on the blood
that branches there, yes. I take this crush
to be my lawful infatuation. I will bend toward joy
until the bending's its own pleasure. I will memorize
photographs and street maps, I will acquiesce
to the maudlin urgency of pop songs and dance,
and dance- there's a perfection only the impossible kiss
possesses. there are notes you can only hear naked
in the dark of a room to which you will never
return. anything that moves the world toward light
is a blessing. why not take it with both hands,
lift it to your lips like a broth of stars. this
is the substance that holds our little atoms together
into bodies. this sweet paste of longing
is all that binds us to the earth.
and all we know of the gods.

"Three of cups"- Marty McConnell