11/30/99

note: i wrote this for a friend my senior year in high school while observing her through the window in the choir room and she recently recovered it.

She sings with
her arms hidden behind
her backside without
confidence, ever so delightful
Shifting her feet
forth and back eventually
lifting her hands to a
resting place on the
smooth stomach of
her coke bottle-like definition;
even carrying a hood
on her shirt just in case
she doesn't feel like
being noticed today.

But why hide a smile,
a face, a nose,
endless eyes like that
behind fabricated blackness;
bring it out, all the way
across the fields in high-
step strides with the marching bands
and great voices that
never said a thing
for our future nations.
Her face in a shadow
sitting in corner houses
where nobody hears her,
but she is still
never louder than beautiful.

What an ending that would be -
going out in glory that
everyone will smile at
nine feet deeper than usual,
and one foot away
from unusualness.

Put it behind you, Glory,
because beauty is not
to be ashamed of or disgraceful.

car cut air
razor knife
sharpening ,
gliding pre-death
circles from
side to side
never connecting,
never touching.
my hair touched,
graceful figure
and other.

cold music backround,
fly in air -
death and PETA
mean something.
tolerate one
and not the human

the line / the break

the sweat
swelling down
the thick of my spine,
gathering more as it goes
and leaving less on the trail.
it builds again as the heat heightens.


my body,
gaining strain
with each movement
and losing rest with all time
as i am unfound and found in mourning.


a loss,
pain in muscle
not used and turned
degrees beyond normal use . . .
it turns -
out of pattern;
marking body territory
in reservation
where hell breaks mold,
finds unnatural elements
in the firmament
and breaks the lines.

conformity finds mistake -
individuality finds sad beauties;
vignettes shaded in movement,
clouded in exhaust.

i / they - me ; us
riding solidarity in separation,
panting through it all.