Hinkle

He kept looking over his shoulder at her, as if to check that she had not flown, like a small bluebird, away from him. The gesture was reminiscent of a young boy who, after having secured a toad or a lame crow to one end of a string, must look back every so often in order to assure himself that it had not yet escaped. In fact, what little more was he than the young boy he cast echoes back to so carelessly? Did he not care to pause and consider how the real boychild of his past might feel about such an unprecedented intrusion? Was he afraid to truly think about him and thus invoke the nightmares -- and worse, the dreams -- that they had shared?

A wanting list to haunt
You
During your day
Days
A wanting

Blue rains
To drizzle into my hair
While the neighbors refuse to go inside

Franky-kind-of-fantastic
glitzy-glamour red-hot nails

And here is our earth!
What have we done?

I want a haunting of
that peace
I felt sometime
Late last forever

Was it this morning
Or a year ago?

Blue rain
Red nails
Black thoughts
And no peace

When I have children

If I have children

If I find someone to trust enough to hold my children

If I find I want children all
 my
  self,
   without some strange man whom I have met and given my heart

If I discover that by the strangest chances,
   some one of my friends
 has died
   and left me theirs
   and they want me to be there

If I don't slip away from myself before I hit
 that streak

Then I will ask them not to call me Mother,
 except for on occasions when there are ancient, visiting Aunts and Grandmeres
 Not to call me mama, unless they speak in an impeccable accent
 Not to call me mom, unless they have broken a bone, or a treasured possession, or a heart,

But to call me mum

It seems almost as if you can
  wrap yourself up in that word
 almost as if it were a blanket
  or somebody's arms

Utah Nights

It is the long, hot summer nights like these
that leave me transfixed,
So hot, it feels as if my skin is glowing, as if
I could simply
burn up,
wasted by fire from
a deep within.

The water, cold tap, does little
but the
little
it
alleviates
is enough.

How can it be that I am so feverish?
Am I delicate?!
made of paper?!
to be consumed?!

I have always
been a warm sleeper,
my body raising the temperature
of a room,
and even
unconscious
I take care to kick away my covers
to get them away
that would so dare to cause my discomfort.

Yet this heat serves a purpose,
as, inflamed,
my brain quiets all distractions
and I am gifted
a blind,
deaf, intense
focus.

Often it keeps me up,
during the hot
dry
desert summer.

Nearly always, this
eerie focus
is aimed wistfully, agonizingly
on cooling down, on twisting, on cold and lovely thoughts.
Icy, unattainable dreams
billow like plasma
through my mind

But they
Are
Only
Dreams,
and it is a kind of torture.

And I loathe to think of it,
but when the nights
grow chill
and I grow
Still,
will not I be
glad of this heat?

I wanted nothing more than to kick it away
Throw it as far into the sea
As I could