Poem #1
July 31st 3:06 am
To: Ginger
From: Billy
You were the last chance I had
not to let the words speak themselves up
into one big act. My last line of defense
against the threat of taking myself seriously,
dreaming a fixed idea’s idea of a joke,
a child's imitation of catastrophe.
If I could have been anything other
than this silly intoxication with death…for you,
I would have.
But I am nothing but everything
I say online.
I will never fall in love again
Poem #2
July 31st 5:28 am
To: Billy
From: Ginger
The biggest risk,
other than saying yes,
was to be brave enough.
If fear is your mirror
throw yourself
at your own face,
bleed and smile,
you are mostly water,
it will wash away.
I am love without a choice,
seeing you in return,
with pride and open arms.
I will always love you,
if you give yourself a chance or not.
Poem #3
July 31st 10:20 am
To: Ginger
From: Billy
For as long as I can remember,
I’ve wandered through the desert
With an old three-legged camel
And a wrap around my eyes.
One day I had a dream
That the sun wanted to talk to me.
I woke up blind, with blood in my eyes
An eclipse had darkened my sky.
Scared, I ran and ran
Until I tripped, and hit my head.
The next day, I could see again,
And water poured from the rock I’d split.
Before I learned the water there
Was mixed with fire, I had broken open
So many, so many, that nothing else
Could soothe my manic thirst.
Because I no longer loved the sun,
I stayed in the caves, basins and quarries.
I sold my camel to Bedouins for remedies
And a recipe, to make fire water on my own.
Even now, so far away from that place,
Where I left behind me only drought
And evil memories, I can’t feel my face
Unless some fire, any fire, settles my doubt.
All this is to say, I have never known pain
Or taken any risks. I hid deep in my cave,
Never spoke to a soul, or felt the touch of skin
That wasn’t burned raw by my own cowardice.
Fear
Fear
Fear
That’s all that I am, and all that I feel
Poem #4
July 31st 10:38 am
To: Billy
From: Ginger
You cannot change
because you are rawed
or halted by what is
merely sheer strength.
You love machines
and ruins and wounds.
I tend to beasts
and hurricanes,
to gardens
and graves alike.
When its harder to feel
than to think,
you're want to
settle for struggle
over the climb,
for blindness and thirst
over deep wells
hidden under mirages.
You chose to wander
through me like the desert,
unwilling to sink your hands
into hot sand and feel me
run so deep,
so full of power,
and flowers,
and fire too.
Poem #5
August 1st 2:46 pm
To: Ginger
From: Billy
What remains of the garden
When the hurricane has its season
And the beasts are stirred from their graves;
That’s what I wonder about you.
I’ve learned not to trust girls
Who can read me at a glance:
Because I’m transparent to myself too
And read myself in everything.
I have to know how much give your calyx can take
Before I lay my stolen petals at your door;
Before the green shoot, and the stamen
I need roots I know won’t leave me out in the cold.
All my machines, ruins and wounds
Taught me how to use, and not to be used.
I wonder how hot a gentle sun would have to burn
To thaw a ruthless truth, too easily broken.
Poem #6
August 1st 5:49 pm
To: Billy
From: Ginger
It takes a certain will
to live amongst the ruins,
and still recognize a flower,
to carry so many wounds
without letting the blood
empty you out completely.
I’d like to take you home from that place,
let you rest your head somewhere soft.
I will love you
without making an enemy
of what I cannot control
knowing what is only circumstance
does not move me off course.
I can see your fear
without calling you weak,
even when you are on your knees,
trapped inside your own mind.
Perhaps you are afraid
of the hand reaching
towards you and your wants,
because you cannot imagine
touch without taking.
I am not afraid of the weight your petals carry,
I am afraid only that you will keep calling them stolen
so you never have to admit
that they are secretly free.
You’ve asked what will remain
of me and my garden
after you and your storms.
I will show you:
everything.
Poem #7
August 2nd 9:26 pm
To: Ginger
From: Billy
If I could hide inside
A horse that never dies
I could see our years pass by
In a wet, black eye.
You can’t hammer metal around a sphere
Without having to crease the wheel a bit.
A map on paper is the world distorted;
No one ever gets my features right.
What’s karma to a blank?
What’s redemption to a mirror
That can’t be traced? Fiction
Has turned my love
into a character
That can’t know my true intentions
Without ruining everything.
A secret, for free:
What’s most unbearable to an escapist
Is the thought that there’s nothing more
To escape.
To take a hand held out, in hope, would be
As agonizing
as being
born.
Luckless as he is, an escapist knows
The exact parameters
of his prison, like the back
Of his head.
Poem #8
August 2nd 11:11pm
To: Billy
From: Ginger
The prison
is the escape itself,
and a hand is not a key,
it’s just a hand.
I have one
and so do you,
warm and near enough
for parallel play,
inventing new selves,
becoming unfettered
without judgment
or even forgiveness,
let alone redemption.
My bones
have fractured
and healed
more than
I care to count.
But a wounded animal
still hunts.
We needn’t be broken
or even whole,
only hungry
enough to want.
Poem #9
August 3rd 3:03pm
To: Ginger
From: Billy
Today, in the AA meeting, I wrote
in the notebook I always keep with me
for the times when listening quits trying
(which is all the time) 'this insatiable
HUNGER
is really me.'
A dangerous thought, lacking parallel
To all the deception and deceit
Of other hungers. A hungry star, fixed
to the hem of your tablecloth, pulled out
just as the conversation was about
getting somewhere good, or safe, or clean.
This poem, I'll take your hand, with all its burnt
reflections, moving in ways I don't know
and confess: all the fears before today
were lies, only muscles and bones I bleached
to make the weathers of my deserts sound
more convincing.
Now the mood is Monet, the whispering
of poplar trees, and this moment perfumed
by the indecent scrawl of my letter
to you.
It reads:
I want your innocence
like I want your countlessness:
a cool breeze we can play to, without name.
Poem #10
August 3rd 5:11pm
To: Billy
From: Ginger
Man makes plans
and God laughs,
words will always fail us,
though we are made of them,
we are too full ever to be clean.
Fearless, sweet boy,
your courage is not lost.
I am uncontainable
by nature too.
Our penchant for wandering
is what makes building
a home by choice
worth calling home.
Watching dappled light
breathe upon your head,
resting in my lap,
while you dream indecently
in the innocent warmth
of this woman,
in all her multitudes,
who loves you, knowing
what is mine was always mine
and mine to share with you,
longer than impulse.
Hope comes
after sobriety,
not before.
Time will do what it does
until the life within us
chooses itself.
That’s where I’m at.
Poem #11
August 5th 8:11am
To: Ginger
From: Billy
That when Catallus wrote
Nox est perpetua una dormienda
He really did get a thousand kisses
And a thousand more:
Charm is just itself
When it asks you what you’re waiting for.
There’s no translating it—the morning after
A damn good sleep, with cigarettes and coffee.
That’s where I’m at—where you left me,
Letting my life choose its own multitudes.
I am laughing impassively God’s laughing
And hope you look down, to see me smiling.
I’m having fun.
Not fighting all these waves that taste like loss
Not fighting the sweat and the dust kicked up
Not fighting can’t get this collage started
Not fighting what’s mirage or not mirage
Anything.
At the crossroads of perspective
Or broken heart boulevard
Whatever you wanna call it
I just turned on the radio.
Poem #12
August 5th 8:28 am
To: Billy
From: Ginger
I am changing too,
past my own expectations.
The bar is raised
and it’s partially yours.
What do you do when
everything you’ve ever wanted
walks out the door,
other than lock it
and watch from the window
at a brighter shadow
step into it’s light without you.
Poem #13
August 5th 9:02 am
To: Ginger
From: Billy
A shadow is like a broken watch
It’s bright twice a day.
I’ll help you like you’ve helped me
We’ll find a way.
Can’t follow if we jump high enough
Nothing more to say.
Poem #14
August 5th 9:15 am
To: Billy
From: Ginger
When I fell to my knees
this cool morning
in the middle of road,
and seeing the dog cross
into an open field,
I was only able to follow
because of her vagrancy.
If she hadn’t been there,
I might’ve lain down longer,
perhaps before I could lift myself up,
until a semi could run me over
and I could still see
the dog in tall grass
chasing after shadows.
Poem #15
August 5th 2:43 pm
To: Ginger
From: Billy
This was the first time in my life
I saw a dog that didn't remind me
of dogs I've read, or the dog that I am,
But the dogs I used to walk in the park
With my father, trailing slow behind
watching my feet move without me.
(I usually delete verses like this
where nothing happens, or obfuscate
what happened
with a morbidity of instinct
so pathetic
that everyone claps and laughs
and the whole thing is forgotten.
But I'll keep this one.)
Is this stupid? (timid now, in the cage)
That I want to jump on you,
Trembling all over with mud?
My damp snout, dripping with snot
doesn't even like dogs. But here I am
slobbering with enthusiasm
because I sense the adrenaline.
So please don't give paw
and roll over
beneath the semi wide: your poems are good
and have me gnawing at the marrow
faithful
and howling at the moon.
Poem #16
August 5th 6:428 pm
To: Billy
From: Ginger
You can jump on me,
just know that
I have teeth too.
I want the stupid body
brutally ravening
down to the red.
But a dog should know the difference
between the marrow
and the hand that feeds it.
Would you even taste me
or only your own blood
mudding your wide mouth.
How does a dog eat
when he’s the bitch:
bitchless and broke himself.
Poem #17
August 5th 8:54 pm
To: Ginger
From: Billy
I’m never ‘bitchless and broke’,
Just temporarily embarrassed.
I mean it in the way a bad writer means it—
Literally.
Something about the way dread, and lust
Lose their reticence in light of my eyes.
My delusions simplehearted to trust
I seriously do believe my lies.
What’s to be done? When everything you are
Is a pretty face, so dumb to cruelty
That it’s worse than either of us imagined.
Out of my hands, up to me, to CHANGE
From sand to sand, I tear at the castle
And let them say I’m just insane…
Speaking of teeth (since I remember now—
You) I’ll let you bite it, won’t hold back
My hand. It’ll be amusing, watching you
Try to tear at skin that’s never scarred, or bled
Poem #18
August 5th 9:58 pm
To: Billy
From: Ginger
Your boring excuses
are just that.
Untrusting fears
and lies in failing words,
resolved to give up.
I asked you what lives
beneath your skin,
and you chose to reveal
more skin.
If there is a man
inside the dare,
let him know I am here,
endlessly patient and open
because baby,
I’m on your side.
Poem #19
August 5th 7:09 pm
To: Ginger
From: Billy
My stupid cottage industry
weaving stupid webs
That can’t live with themselves
And never work anyway
Is getting me 0 pussy
The silk belt tightening.
I’d sell out in a heartbeat
Surrender all the thread
If you’ll only promise to show me
How to swim.
I need a vacation from myself
And all the hard work I do
Staying independent
With my hands always empty
If you see bite marks
My fate is a spider
It went down my shirt
It’s probably fine.
I really don’t know how to swim
Or ask for another chance
without sinking. I don’t joke around
With my baby standing next to me.
My motto could be: write slow, sink fast.
The 0 pussy school of poetry.
Poem #20
August 5th 7:44 pm
To: Billy
From: Ginger
It’s far more rewarding,
and easier to laugh
and smile and kiss
and touch and hold
and bleed and shiver
and feel and breathe
side by side
than it is
to cower alone.
Even if we take it that deep,
go that far into the dark,
it will feel so free.
Poem #21
August 6th 9:50 am
To: Ginger
From: Billy
Taking the long way
It’s just as pretty
And wild
As you said it’d be.
Taking it easy
I brought plums
Dark sweet
For us to eat
I try to sleep
This surface
Late afternoon
I feel the water rushing
What do I look like
An osprey
This mountain pine
I’d be crazy not to.
You come back to me
A fullness
Chance of rain
Thinking what you’re thinking.
I’m okay
I want to keep going.
So high up
This deep.
Poem #22
August 6th 10:24 am
To: Billy
From: Ginger
The dark sweet fruit
on the table
is multitudinous
when shared
between open mouths,
staining our hands,
lips and clothes,
learning slowly,
with smaller words
and water deep enough
to wade each other home.
If dying is easier,
I will come back to you too.
Poem #23
August 7th 10:44 am
To: Ginger
From: Billy
11:33
Tears in my eyes
That this love is a poetry
You don’t want to control me.
But this isn’t poetry
A means to an end
Again and again
That doesn’t help anyone
Truthfully, I gave it up long ago.
Expressing this conflict which
Isn’t emotion, but overexposure
To what’s uncontainable
In character, style, or thought—
That love is hate in the heart
And even if you have no heart
Love is hate in the heart
And it’s opposite
I could save the world
If I could just write it’s opposite
By which I mean
Control it.
All this holderlin John Donne shit
Will never get us in Soft Union.
But I want to say I’m sorry
To write you not a poem
But a letter
Just to make me feel better
And tell you that I love you
And that I see now, that I was only afraid
That I wouldn’t be invited to the feast
Of dark sweet plums
we both created.
Poem #24
August 7th 11:11 am
To: Billy
From: Ginger
It’s true that time
waits for no one,
you could spend
a whole life
convincing yourself
otherwise and doing math.
I am outstretching
my hand with trust,
like paradise,
raw and supple,
because my love
is eternally
mine and
forever yours.
Tenderly and
earnestly
loving you
only like this.
Always.
