Devil's Advocate

http://www.kqed.org/w/youdecide/

A Stranger's Face

Tender with age and smallness like a rustic quarter
Perfectly cut around the edges
As if filed carefully
But burdened with spots
Decorating the jaw line of a face:
Modest in the warm light of love
A surface touched and rubbed
Like an infant’s velvet hand:
Polished with attention
Alive in the eyes with youth-
A swirling green-gray like the offspring of clouds and earth
And I’ll never smell the rush of cold water
From where they are born,
But they hold me down like gravity to understand
The damages
of being so small, but so proud

The More I Run, the Closer I Am to Love

The ratatat echo gets softer
Since walls push together
Until love and I are sharing oxygen
Making emissions with every breath expelled
Poisoning the sky;
A bitter acid rain
Burning with every sizzling drop,
But disintegrating my resent
Despite the overwhelming evaporation
And down pour
The freezing shock,
And the failure
Of every escape route.
I drink it in
To quench the burning itch
On my insides

meow

Sleepy Soup

Souping through the day
Slopping through the sludge
Leaving puddles of abc’s
Spelling nothing
Sloshing soupingly
Spilling over the rim of a set of lips
Speaking cold tomatoes
For anyone who wants to listen
To the swirling of letters in a bowl

love love love

Falling in love is like owning a dog
an epithalamion by Taylor Mali
www.taylormali.com

First of all, it's a big responsibility, 
especially in a city like New York. 
So think long and hard before deciding on love. 
On the other hand, love gives you a sense of security: 
when you're walking down the street late at night 
and you have a leash on love 
ain't no one going to mess with you. 
Because crooks and muggers think love is unpredictable. 
Who knows what love could do in its own defense?

On cold winter nights, love is warm. 
It lies between you and lives and breathes 
and makes funny noises. 
Love wakes you up all hours of the night with its needs. 
It needs to be fed so it will grow and stay healthy.

Love doesn't like being left alone for long. 
But come home and love is always happy to see you. 
It may break a few things accidentally in its passion for life, 
but you can never be mad at love for long.

Is love good all the time? No! No! 
Love can be bad. Bad, love, bad! Very bad love.

Love makes messes. 
Love leaves you little surprises here and there. 
Love needs lots of cleaning up after. 
Sometimes you just want to get love fixed. 
Sometimes you want to roll up a piece of newspaper 
and swat love on the nose, 
not so much to cause pain, 
just to let love know Don't you ever do that again!

Sometimes love just wants to go for a nice long walk. 
Because love loves exercise. 
It runs you around the block and leaves you panting. 
It pulls you in several different directions at once, 
or winds around and around you 
until you're all wound up and can't move.

But love makes you meet people wherever you go. 
People who have nothing in common but love 
stop and talk to each other on the street.

Throw things away and love will bring them back, 
again, and again, and again. 
But most of all, love needs love, lots of it. 
And in return, love loves you and never stops.