Ja. Mu.

Not so intelligent now

your fingers are worn from typing

all those times you stayed up late

just to get a glimpse

Inside the library of your heart

she hides behind the Melville and the Tolstoy

waiting somewhere behind the poets and dreamers

and the ones who are neither

yet both and the same time

Crying deep tears of a lion caged in the zoo

the small fence that seems to impossibly hold him there

he could jump it if he really wanted to

then we'd all run screaming the way we should

Quaking and dancing in the parking lot

we'd all scramble home to our TV's

and tuna salad

to our stairmasters and rusted bicycles

to our swimming pools lined green and

brushed with yellow leaves from the neighbor's elm.

Spring Fever

There it is again.
That springtime longing for fall's forgiveness
and the urge for summer's passion.
It gnaws and whittles away inside you
til those insides ache and you're
more unhappy than you though you ever could be.
So you read all the old letters under your bed,
smell all the T-shirts in your dresser drawers,
then line up all your shoes,
and throw away the bouquet you've had
since he told you he loved you.
But not before you save one dried blossom,
maybe a carnation,
and stick in evilly with a thumb tack to your wall.
As you press down, you watch the blood
quickly rush from your thumb,
applying way more pressure than is necessary for the job at hand.
You feel a curious satisfaction in piercing the undead flower,
and simultaneously turning your finger a weird purplish-white.
You turn off the bedroom light and lie motionless in the dark,
governed only by the moon
as she issues her feeble blue light across your bedspread.
You run your tongue across your teeth and realize
you haven't flossed in weeks.
You finger the lining of your pillowcase
and twist a strand of hair, damp from bathing,
around and around.
You re-script every conversation,
and play them again and again like an old movie..
of which you will never tire.