Ask her what she wants. Assure her there are no wrong answers.

If she says she needs time give her all your clocks. If its space she wants construct a rocket—send her there. Mean what you say. Girls do not like to be lied to. Mean what you say.

Kiss her but do not expect anything. Girls disdain expectations.

Do not discard her as just another one or mistake her as a wonder carved from the skin of the moon. Girls are special; not unique. They are hair, hide. Teeth, thumb. Bone, brain. Wondrous vessels composed of hellos, heartbeats. Goodbyes, gums. Their bodies shaped like cellos or pears. As unpredictable and powerful as wind or waves. Listen to me my brother when I say “Welcome her crash with caution”.

Tell her you appreciate her entirety, even the rust. Build her a castle with the dust she’s swept under the rug. Undress her ghosts. Tell her, her ghouls are gorgeous. Palm her phantoms. Do not treat her like a problem to solve. You my friend, are not that advanced. She is not a book to be read then placed back on the shelf; a magazine to thumb through, a letter to be opened or sent out, some 44cent stamp. She is not an equation; so do not treat her like a number. Pull her close. Follow her breath. Study it. Listen.

Kiss her like rain. Kiss her like spark. Kiss her like whisper. Go slow. Let her hips guide you. Feel her meaningful. Thrust gentle. Move like you are giving something back instead of taking something from her. Never make her feel like she is an accident—even if you hate her—do not hate her. Accept her misunderstood.

Understand her uncomfortable. Love her awkward. Adore her whole. Respect her being. Embrace her difficult. Cuddle her complexity. Caress her chaos. Hold her honest. Take her broken; lick it perfect. Let her know she has always been a jawdropper. But do not put her on some pedestal, you may like her, too, much to hurt herself if she falls.

When a girl says kiss me, be careful.

She may not know what she is asking. And you may not anticipate

The haunting you may have when she doesn’t want you
to anymore.

Her response.
“A sex symbol becomes a thing… I just hate to be a thing.”

Oh Marilyn…
I know you never asked for your bones.

What a shame we made you pay for how your skin stretched over them.
Symmetry we called it. Perfect, even.

You stitchless beauty
Our own
American doll.

How we hung you in the headlights of Hollywood
printed you on 8x10s
made you as common as a cough

At the advent of the color motion picture
you shifted the beauty paradigm
caused brunettes to rip fistfuls of hair out
hoping it would bloom back blonde

People migrated towards as if you were the Gold-rush.

We did not care for Norma Jean
so we made Marilyn Monroe

You became our epidemic,
it was all your fault sweetheart.

The way we scanned your body like an item to be put in a bag
told you that what you had to say was as interesting as a dial tone.

You were too pretty to be considered the shy girl
mistook your quietness for either
stuck-up or dumb

“You don’t need a brain, baby,
with a body like that”

Is what they told you.

It has been 48years after your death
and you have become what you never wanted to be

an emblem
an icon
a pin-up pimped for all things sexy

Your skeleton nothing but a mound of silt
knuckles and kneecaps just gravel in a tomb

Yet your epithet still howls

Blond bombshell
Honey
Sweetie
Baby

A person turned placard.

You never wanted your bones. And yet,
you are still strewn across billboards
an imprint on a Visa platinum
the way we used you like a napkin to wipe ourselves
clean

Your skin was that distracting.

We never thought to ask how you felt in it
simply opened the curtain and announced you
sex symbol

While the men of your era were modestly declared heartthrobs
despite all the Joe DiMaggio punches you received from a husband
who we deemed hero.

How the only help you ever received from producers
was this piece of advice,

“Duck if he tries to hit you in the face, that’s too pretty, doll—
to bang up.”

We made you as secondhand as a receipt
a proof of purchase
that you are a thing, girl.

It is no wonder that you had trouble sleeping
afraid that if you closed your eyes for too long
women would come in and slit your silhouette in an attempt
to stitch themselves in it

Men would ecstatically rape your shadow.
You, Marilyn,
were that sexy
we couldn’t help it.

As soon as you curved we felt that your body was ours for the taking
squeezed you like an avocado to see if you were ripe enough
peeled you like a fruit.

We thought you apricot, honeydew.

You were supple, sensuous
the thought of being tangled with you muddled men

it caused women to curse their own bones
for the way they curved under the skin

“Stop crying!
Why are you such an ungrateful bitch?
People would kill to be you,
Marilyn.”
They said.

Because who would have ever thought that you would kill yourself to not?

The body a song spilling of sea and hum.

So Billy,
When I read how they found you dangling in the barn
I wanted to know who told you your neck
was a branch to swing from.

I know what it’s like to think your skin
is made of shingles, but you were
no roof to jump from,
kid.

This is for anyone being told to live in a shadow
crack the glowsticks in your halo
burn so beautiful that if the sun
ever look at you he’d go blind
that there is no bully out there bright enough
to dim your shine.

Billy,
Just because you loved a boy
didn’t mean your town should have tried to straighten your notes
when your throat has always been a harp to strum,
never a branch to be found swinging from.

Don’t wait at traffic-lights;
You will waste your life like that.

When the sky opens itself up why bother pulling the sheets over your eyelids?
The sun is a handsome marvel to not watch undress in the morning.

And some have this habit of looking out of windows and calling it impossible.
They look forward to sleeping so they can escape these feelings
hug pillows tight and dream of
letting go

If I could paint a picture of all I could never hold in my hands
I’d name it possible and jump from this earth
I’d somersault with the wind
put the dirt in my pockets and sail to the Arctic to show the Eskimos
that you can build castles out of anything

people need hope

every non-believer believes in something
so doctor explain to me sunset because I know you felt it as a boy
Mathematician, does your heart unwind at the spine
of certain books like problem you can’t solve?

We consist of science and things that can’t be explained by it
the world is not a foreign place
we are foreign to it

it spins and spins and spins at 1,038mph on its orbit and
another 67,000mph more around the sun

while the average American will spend nearly 15 years of their life
waiting in line at grocery stores or traffic jams or on

phone calls of people who will never love you as much
as you have fallen in love with the idea that they might.

We wait…

Wishing for our chance to jump because so many of us
have responsibility tied to our ankles
we clipped our wings years ago
buried the pages of fables
put away our crayons the moment we got our driver’s license

blocked out our imaginations with our BIG words and plans for the future
but the future is just an excuse for you not to do incredible things with your life
right now

the minutes are ticking; moments build up on themselves
windows are here for you to know that other places exist on the otherside of them

open the door
break the glass

sleep on your roof tonight so you can slumber to heartbeat of the stars
that beat because someone, somewhere is on the otherside of them wishing

you don’t have to wait until tomorrow to go to the edge of the earth
you don’t have to wait until you are in your bed dreaming
before you wake up and
let go.

There are parts of humans that science can’t explain.

We know the mechanics of organs and which way the blood flows.
We know the effects of smoking and typical reactions to taste buds.

A scientist likes to think that in time he will know everything.

The problem with knowing everything
is that we often forget what is worth remembering.

The doctor sits me on a table and asks me to stick out my tongue
I do.

I ask him if he sees the paintings I carry in the back of my throat
he laughs as if I’m telling a joke
I’m not.

I got Basquiat, Schiele, Van Gogh, and Da Vinci
so when I laugh I taste brushstrokes.

I ask him if he can stick out his tongue so I can see what he has trapped
inside of him.
He hesitates a little then he does and I see a man who
struggles for acceptance and chokes on the word
Love.

We’ve got robots that dismantle bombs so soldiers
can still pull triggers with their finger.
We’ve got a blueprint of a hotel that will be located
on the moon in 2047.

We’ve got microchips small enough to be slipped inside of hair follicles
yet we still have a hard time saying words like please and thank you
and offering our hands to help strangers.

The psychiatrist asks me what I am feeling
so she can prescribe me a pill to take
that feeling away.

I sit there silent hoping not to interfere with
the tambourines and trumpets being played in my head.

She stares in my eyes and I hope that she can see my insides dancing
but I can tell by the sigh in her face that she hasn’t danced in a long, long
time.

This is what we are creating.

A world where the living and breathing
are depending on inanimate objects that only move
because they have buttons and batteries
when we have hearts.

I go to school to make sense of this to find the formula that will save us
when my professor instructs me to lift my head from my desk and quit
sleeping.

I tell him

I’m not sleeping, I’m dreaming –
There’s a difference.

I ask him if he dreams and he tells me that there isn’t enough time for that
when we have work to do.

So I take out my pen and my paper and I draw him what I dream
it is people who sleep in rainclouds, pass out more smiles than business
cards
and find beauty in the broken things.

It is people who can speak every language so we can better understand
each other

But he continues his lecture about the greatest inventions of the 21st
century
while all the kids in the class speak excitedly about
voice-activated cell phones, satellite radios, and plasma screen TVs
that can help us see reality more clearly

When this world that we are living in seems more foreign to me
than Pluto’s moons or the idea of being a queen.

With every great advancement we make it seems like
we are taking something more important back

Like we are trying to prove to ourselves that we are smarter
than monkeys and apes we can build skyscrapers and send rockets
to space

“To each his own” seems to be our motto
and since this is the case

I wish the aliens would come attack us today

Because only then would we unite as one world
instead of being separated by our own governments, prejudices, religions, and races

only then would we be able to figure out

The parts of humans that science can’t explain.

Make me into a dove with iron wings
So if someone shoots me I won’t feel it,
I’ll just keep flying.

Make me into something God hears.
I want to speak every language because I know he has to understand at
least one.

Give me arms stronger than my father’s so I can stand up to him next
time.
Give me a mind that won’t forget things worth remembering.
Give me the things you know you’ll never use because all things have
purpose.

I just want answers,
He says…

This boy is the accumulation of every spirit who refused to quit burning
He carries the sun in his shadow
He just turned 7.

He tells me that he is supposed to close his eyes when he sees something
bad
But he tried it once and only had his eyes open twice that day.

He only had his eyes open long enough to see the oak tree by his home
Wave goodbye to him as he walked himself to school alone
And noticed a blue bird sharing a worm with a black bird which made him
wonder
Why color mattered so much to people?

I want to be the wind,
He says…

I want to be the feeling that gives others goosebumps
I want my fingerprint to be in the shape of a dragonfly
I want to be cobalt blue.

His eyes are as innocent as the inside of angles
He wantes to be everything he can imagine
And out of all things I can think of I just want to be more like him.
He looks up to me as if the entire universe is my lover
Just because I can read the Encyclopedia Britannica
And pronounce the names of dinosaurs

He things I am a hero and it makes me sad
Because I know we all had thoughts like his when we were younger
But it seems like with every candle we blow out on our birthdays
Something greater than flames disappears.

You know everything!
He says.

No, no,
I say.

I only know what I have been taught
You know what you feel
That’s far more important.

His head is still arched up looking at me smiling
Even though he doesn’t really understand what it is I am trying to tell him
And that’s not the part that scares me
It is knowing that he will someday.

It is knowing that in the next ten years he will be taught that no human can be made into a mountain
And that the sun and moon don’t really chase him around
They just appear that way.

It is knowing that his heart will be broken by someone who didn’t love him
As much as he loved them.

And that his perception of the world might change from thinking of it
As a ginormous place to play
With too many trees he won’t get to climb
And too many puddles of water he won’t get to jump in
Because he ran out of time
To calculating how much he could make by clearing forest
And avoiding water holes so he won’t get his dress shoes dirty.

I stare at him.
I stare at his entire body from the white roots of his hair follicles
To the bottoms of his soles that light up when he walks
Trying to understand him.

He stares at me doing the same
But he isn’t wondering what I’m going to be
He is just trying to understand who I am now.

I want to tell him to not grow up
And to quit blowing out the candles on his birthdays
But I know that I will only set him up for disappointment because

Age is inevitable;
Our perception is what changes.

So instead I ask him,
Do you like to swim, kid?

And with a tongue of a sage the 7-year-old boy tells me,
Yeah! It’s my favorite thing. We can play sharks and mermaids.
I can be the shark and you can be the mermaid!
As he grabs my hand and leads me to the water.

It is within that moment I come to understand
Myself and this life and I watch the boy grow up
To be something other than what he is.

He is a shark who lives in the mountains
And I am a mermaid –

Too bad reality can’t accept us for who we are.

That dangerous things live there
that there have been stories of
barracuda monsters
octopuses with 15 tentacles
whales that will swallow you
and sharks that can’t wait to taste a human.

But despite all of this the manatees and mermaids
are enough to keep the waves in my veins
so I’m swimming.

I got the touch of beautiful women in my shivers
even though I don’t know the meaning of love
I know the feeling of fingers
and that is enough to get me by

For now.

In the wind there are words I have a hard time catching
but I’m trying my best to grab ‘em
and lock ‘em in my pocket
so when I get home I’ll have more poems to write and stories to tell
because

Everyday is a new chance to look at the same things differently.

To stand with no umbrella in the rain
because the rain is just the sky wanting to touch you.

Listen to the birds and crickets chirping away
because everything with sound has a song to sing
and anything that breathes has something to say

So listen.

Just because this thing called reality tells you
you can’t breathe stars
snuggle with clouds
french kiss raindrops
or grow flowers in your hands

You can!

People told me that I couldn’t do a lot of things
and I believed them for a while but I’m doing them now.

I’m practicing hugs and handshakes because that’s what saves people
I never believed that refraining from cursing or saying your prayers
would get you any closer to heaven or any farther from hell

Don’t be afraid to pull the bricks from your feet and skip to your next
location
because the greatest distance is the one still within you

Release the safety you have locked on your ideas
crack the skull of confinement
strap on your wings and fly back towards your dreams

Give the finger to self-reservation
and begin to be the thing that you always wanted to be
but was too afraid to do.

Keep sonnets in your sinews
rest in your lover’s whispers
snuggle with change until it becomes your constant

learn to look at yourself in the mirror at any time of day
and smile finding the definition to beauty
is in your own reflection

Because in the end who is to say what is true?

Who is to tell you who you should love?
Who is to tell you who you should be?
Who is to tell you what is real and what to believe?

When reality was only created to make another category
That would define a certain group of people as crazy.
I know what I feel and
I’m beginning to understand who I am

I’m just a girl.

Who keeps the ocean in my ribs and the waves in my veins
despite all of the terrible things that people say it contains

But I think at the end of the day
We are all just swimming…

It’s the list we make with hour-punching hands and time-kept fingers
In hopes that if we can complete these things
We could complete ourselves.

Like if we can finish the 1 through 10s
such as grocery shopping
brushing teeth
washing hair
making breakfast for the kids
dinner and love with our spouses
paying the cable and the rent on time
making coffee hoping that it will get us through the day like just another
day
going to work then coming home to sleep in our beds

When at the end of the hours we are too tired to understand ourselves,
so we bury our heads in our pillows
resting our bodies while forgetting our dreams
as if these lists will make us worth something.

We’ve all been told that life is not a race.
That it isn’t measured by how much one can do in a day
but rather how much we learn from one.

How much we give and take
rattle and shake in our steps
how many smiles we pass out
how many bodies we embrace
how many times we pause to say thank you
to things so common and misunderstood
like the sun.

Even though he seems to come too soon and leave too early
swallowing the moon to begin another day
as he takes another away

This is life.
All that pushes and pulls
levitates yet grounds us
leaves us shuffling for pens to organize
what never should be written to obtain
but remembered to remain inside of us

Because with everything we hope to complete
we are forgetting who we once wanted to be.

Replacing pirates for toothpaste
Rockstars for tampons.

Traveling to Africa for sleeping on the same sheets
we slept on the night before and the night before that.

Trading professional football players for band-aids.
peace-corps heroes for bran flakes.
presidents for non-voters.
childhood empathy for grown-up apathy.

Replacing our To-Be lists for To-Do lists
as if self-worth can only come from materialistic obtainment.

But tomorrow isn’t too late or too far away

There are dreams the size of oceans inside you still
there are cities as ancient and magnificent as Pompeii
buried underneath your organs
waiting for you to cough up and live in.

Even though so many of us feel like we are nothing we are something
because everything that breaths is living.

Maybe parts of us are wilting,
but as long as our hearts are pumping
there must be a lesson in the wind for us to learn from

A child to take care of
A stranger to hug
A lover to hold

We may not be the things we wanted to be when we were kids
but perhaps, in some way, we are greater than fantasies.

So don’t give up on yourself for not capturing dragons
Or flying with Peter Pan.
Or living in a castle on a hill somewhere.
Or never finding a frog to kiss.
Or a mermaid to make love with.

Just remember to not replace your To-Be lists with To-Do lists
hold them both in your hands because

Things replace things.

And you are far more important than French fries or mayonnaise

Don’t give up on yourself
when there is still time for you to be anything.