An Email Put Off

When you haven't spoken to someone
When you haven't spoken
When,
in ages
From a young age,
you learn to speak
to other people.
Speak to someone.
Today I did,
(ok, I wrote, forgive)
and it made everything seem
covered in snow.

I wrote to someone today.
I was covered in snow.
It was on my hair and on my coat.
In my mouth, it tasted like relief.

Forgetting other people are
as equal as every day in your life is
is forgivable.
Remembering is
waking to a world covered in snow:
so new, clean, and, when you fall
all muffled.

CDL

nobody speak i
think i hear something--
a silence
of rippling
water, soft
waves uncaused
yet causing charmed
movement, hushed
movement of mirrored
branches, and on them tinier
leafless branches below snow
stuffed clouds waiting
intolerable minutes to set free
their snow on
this quiet wintry eve.

dls

a lost email from Annette

you are the butterfly on a mango tree
in jamaica.
you stopped by on your way,
going somewhere,
else.
you forgot to notify my subject line
that you had disappeared from my dreams.
because today i woke up and
you just weren't there,
clear and empty space wished me good morning
and i sat down with a frumpy face
on the grass.
the mangoes and me,
we made some juice with rhinestones
and sang scientific sound them out words, together
as we waited patiently for
jamaican rain
to wash away your foot prints
from the mangoes you used to perch
your stringy legs on.

in new haven it rains.
footprints disappear from mangoes all the time and sometimes
it's hard to remember if they were ever
there at all, but i know that if i
just close my eyes,
behind this purple eyeshadow
i will see your wings fluttering around
my mango tree,
like a ghost from a far away memory
except it hasn't happened yet,
so keep fluttering, and i'll
see you there-
or somewhere-
sometime soon.

DLS
Berkeley dining hall's ghostwriter

This January

we celebrate all the heated conceptions

of eased off summer dresses

by heaping heavy coats in corners

and dancing to stay warm.

EWV

(trying to write more, if but a little)

typography

the blank
page has
evolved. no
doodling allowed
in times
new roman
size 12
double spaced
black font.
the blank
page is
no longer
an open
road, it
is a
double laned
highway speed
limit 55
miles per
hour in
a no
passing zone,
auto pilot.
the blank
page no
longer means
splattered paint
and mona
lisa smiles,
it no
longer includes
anxious and
illegible cursive,
or hearted
i's, or
furious post
scripts, or
the grey
area between
i love
you and
i love
you not.
the blank
page means
emotion less
email, strict
syntax and
marginal degrees
of modernization.

dls

TAL #424: Kid Politics.

his speech
shudders down my spine,
sleeps in my neck,
constructs dreams
in the marrow of my
bones; birthing fictional
characters
in the space between
vertebrates who
play, kids in
motion, clinking tendons
together like high heels
on marble.

his words are like the fourth
of july: full of history,
fireworks, hot
dogs and laughing
children
that echo through
the shadows in
my skeleton-

just bones, muscle, and
eyes
i am, a
capsule of miles
a metered stick
passing his fourth
of july on slushy january
days like it's a sign
post to see,
to sprint towards,
to marvel in
its concise language,
stop. yield. children playing.

out here we are linguistic
imperfectionists. we adhere strictly
to the literary law of the street: where
beating hearts, beating feet,
beating minds, beating that
walker in an over-sized blue parka
rule like miniature kings
on top of snowbank castles.

out here we speak
in words not sentences,
we sing of fire in our feet
not the sky,
our drumtaps tell the
small epic tale of
our footsteps, not
a children's march
towards
death and freedom.

out here our thoughts
are dreams and our dreams
are thoughts and we slip on words and
ice, like small children
playing tag on frozen playgrounds
because how can you ever
really know who's it?

dls

ones and firsts

it's already a

year of ones

especially on

january 11th

when the date on

the top of my notes

lined up perfectly.

straight strokes,

the first symbol

in so many

languages:

one alef alpha

alphabet of new

beginnings soaked in

sleet and snow and

endless puddles,

drawn out over the

path carved

crunched slushsicles

under running shoes

moving forward with

out thinking more

than go, breathe.

sometimes i wonder

how well i spell:

how often i take the

alphabet given me

and create words of

beauty, words

shining and natural like

a tree of street-lamp

sculpted

icicles.

CVP

p.s. let's write more!