Your mother only smiles with her mouth closed
You've only seen her teeth in photographs with strangers
These are the truths that stick with you after you leave home
The magnolia tree in the backyard is full of yellow blossoms but
it's still the most beautiful thing you've ever seen
The trees wave something final but
it still looks like an embrace
These are the images you think of at night when sleep is just an old friend
Your mother kept holy in rosewater memories
only to be made human in fluorescent light
You,
never as safe as you were in her womb
Her,
a story about a girl who did not die when she wanted to
Both of you:
women screaming at the red moon
How did it feel when you lost god?
You kept him tucked away safe somewhere
gathering dust
nothing but a memory, a relic
You keep her tucked away on a shelf and out of mind
except for when she phones
You used to joke that she only reached out when she forgot the sound of your voice
These days the line that separates god and your mother is blurred
both creators, both ancient
both built to withstand
both hidden in a house made out of hands
both squeezed mute in the shape of a fist
We aren't forever
We didn't become the stars
We aren't meant to last
no, we don't deserve it
Instead you just write poems about broken, lifeless things
about the past
about tooth and claw and tearing out of skin that never fit quite right
Instead, you just get your mother's smile and her sister's nose
the echoes of a life just out of reach
and the belief in an idea that forgot you
II.
Wisps of nighttime
plumage flopped atop his head,
messy and abstract,
like a crown fit for a snow globe.
Coffee stained epidermis was exposed
on the greater part of his figure
with the exception of his kind snake eyes
and of course
the parts hidden by straggly
oil painted fur.
III.
He speaks like the river after rain
white noise rocking me into a stupor.
His cadence like a
hollowed out gourd keeping time.
He never quite finishes his words,
just phases from thought to thought;
advancing before comprehension.
He lingers & waits
everyone is prey during dialogue
hunted during monologue
And eulogized
with an acrid riddance.
IV.
We danced like fog,
a single puff awakening
a grandfather clock
and getting tangled in the bells,
conducting our own
fox-trot melody. A fluid haze
twisting with the sky sparklers
and skyscrapers, careful not to domino.
So he led me out over the sea
where he returned to the
clouds and I drowned.
V.
He’s made of wax
with a dry wick for a heart.
Unable to light.
Dry stained cow hide
Filled with incomplete promises
Clutched in his right hand.
And the left hand clutched
Green notes of oxidized copper
Pseudo-Lady Liberty
Perpetually
posed as the image of the
American Dream.
I don't like the way our story goes but I'll write it down despite it all:
(It's not like we're trying
(It's not like we should be))
We're staring at the sun –
we're radiant
we love with the gentlest consumption
Now –
I stare at you
and there isn't a name for what you are.
Let's call you holy.
Let's call you whole.
I can't understand what it would mean
to be that good
to be that good
to be that full of light
My god, are you beautiful
and my god, are you terrifying
Silently –
there's a girl screaming
inside the safe room in the house I hold within myself
the black box
Please
don't leave me alone with my hands
You hold stars to your chest like glass and you never see how they burn you up in the place
where it matters.
You become your choices.
A world crumpled.
what a life
what a life
this is what loneliness looks like
like looking through golden fingers
backlit with daybreak
and coming up
empty
Now –
CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS LIFE?
your body made of sunbursts
glass skin and paper hearts
Your body caving in on itself for heat, for touch, and I'm lying naked beside you wanting.
A hopelessness that doesn't win
Imagine that.
I don't know what to call you
but it isn't brave
I don't know what bravery looks like
but it isn't me
"Five AM and Falling In Love"
ass-up and his fresh fingers make it hard to scratch these words on the page
and maybe if I move enough
maybe if I scream and bleed enough
I'll know myself as a poet
and not some half-baked kid convincing god
he's still something to believe in
too distracted by coffee stains and newer stains
spreading like spilt milk down the sides of these softs sheets
and I'm star-struck love-struck
rammed in the throat by shock dragging cold nails up my back
all goosepimpled flesh pinned tight
and nothing short of promise under that ugly ceiling staring back at us
and I'm watching you walk away from the base of the stairs
and you're staring at me like my mother on Sunday morning
my teeth are falling out like a string of broken pearls
and nothing short of promise in the hard pain of knees dropped down on concrete
tell me:
When did you become a you?
When did I stamp your life onto this page?
What makes you permanent?
You.
A pool of moonburst drowning me.
You,
with your crinkled black-eyed smile.
Well I'm choking down air trying to shape your name out of my mouth
while you're choking on me.
babylon is still young and
we're still trying to find ourselves but
we're looking in all the wrong places
and we're flying down the highway flooded full with promise
and we're scratching light into our bodies trying to connect
But it's not violent. We're not violent.
I don't know how this story ends but I know how we will write it --
with some certain kind of softness.
Reaching out to you has made me like junkie
handing over a loot's worth of panhandling
to a dealer for a fix.
Cauliflower is basically broccoli without color
similarly to how
you took the color out of my days.
Maybe cabbage really wants to be lettuce
the way I want to hold conversations
free of any mention of you.
Hazy moments, few and far between allow me
to observe the dealer's small hands and uncut, dirty fingernails
and I give him everything I have.
1.
Thoughts flying across the room
synchronized in the silence of night,
never out of rhythm.
2.
When you are young, but also older
than your friends, you can laugh
at jokes that scare you.
3.
The truth is either the stars have vanished,
or maybe one day
we quit searching for them.
4.
The feeling is alluring.
You'll crawl on your knees and fingertips
never asking why.
5.
When lacking direction, do you know
where to turn?
If to turn? How?
6.
In your mind, it is night.
Both currently, and
eternally.
7.
These days never end.
These days never end.
These days never end.
8.
"I only come around when you
Invite me in; let me stay.
I like it here."
9.
There's blue burning wild
in my mind like a hippo
in a hurricane.
10.
Across the room,
my thoughts fly.
I lay restlessly and watch.
A beautiful morning approaches.
Not here, but
somewhere,
almost assuredly. Good
morning-- breathe, now
think for too long
about the girl you claimed
dibs on "getting over".
Do thoughts of her ever eat at you?
Certainly, but how?
Slowly, like trying to swallow
a hippopotamus blended milkshake,
topped with whipped cream,
and garnished with a cubed watermelon?
Or swiftly, like the wretched blades
manipulating the skin and flesh
of the hippopotamus.
Would you offer her a straw
to help finish the milkshake
sooner? As you drink is your tongue the conductor
of a small symphony as you swish the sad,
unsatisfying, flesh around your mouth?
You might lose sleep tonight
but all you need to know is:
The morning is beautiful.
The morning is beautiful.
You'll observe that every large thing is actually small
up close. Every sentence is a fragment
of expression, and every expression, a moment;
every moment, a mystery--
forever fleeting. That moment no longer exists.
Every forever is shorter than we realize.
The plan is the body, these
mysteries are fantasies of desire.
Each desire is quilted with guilt. Every
story is an epic, and every epic is the Iliad.
Every poem is a journey to the underworld.
These Iliads are a myth, and
every myth buys time.
Sleep is lost every day because
thoughts have impregnated the mind with
queer insecurity, conceived by uncertainty of
conscious experience.
A rose is a rose.
For your sake, for my sake, once more:
A rose is a rose.
Every poem is an observation, and observations
are like breathing.
We are not paintings with their permanence:
We are but windows that frame a wide palette of seasons
Which leave transparent brushstrokes of rain and sun.
We are not single songs:
But symphonies have trembled through our panes,
Echoed into our glass so deeply that they reverberate over again
When the right instruments are pricked.
We are not day or night:
But we have known the touch of both
In proportion to the moments when, in response to each,
We threw back the curtains
Or nailed them shut.
We are not intact or broken:
But the shelves behind our eyes have been many times rearranged,
And these and their objects bear cracks from where they have crashed
Or have been smashed and clumsily pieced back together
(Or still lie in shards).
We are alive and apart:
We are to sit before an eternally-shifting picture of colors and shapes
That we mold--as it molds us--with our crayon hands and our ripping hands
And our laughter and our tears,
And are never to go outside.
We are together and alone:
We watch certain faces that, when they catch us watching, smile back;
And we wonder whether they, like we, wish one of us could
Come inside and sit for a while.
We are but windows that frame a wide palette of seasons
Which leave transparent brushstrokes of rain and sun.
We are not single songs:
But symphonies have trembled through our panes,
Echoed into our glass so deeply that they reverberate over again
When the right instruments are pricked.
We are not day or night:
But we have known the touch of both
In proportion to the moments when, in response to each,
We threw back the curtains
Or nailed them shut.
We are not intact or broken:
But the shelves behind our eyes have been many times rearranged,
And these and their objects bear cracks from where they have crashed
Or have been smashed and clumsily pieced back together
(Or still lie in shards).
We are alive and apart:
We are to sit before an eternally-shifting picture of colors and shapes
That we mold--as it molds us--with our crayon hands and our ripping hands
And our laughter and our tears,
And are never to go outside.
We are together and alone:
We watch certain faces that, when they catch us watching, smile back;
And we wonder whether they, like we, wish one of us could
Come inside and sit for a while.
Maybe Eve didn't mean
To bring us so much pain;
She didn't think
Of breaking her promise
Or shattering her shiny crown,
But maybe she just looked out there
--Just peeked--
And then her mind stuck
Out a white toe from its garden ring,
And she was gone.
And sure, it's fair
That she--we--wear different blooms
Because of her choice to run one day,
But oh, God, isn't it "I told you so" enough
That we dream of the paradise we lost
For eternity?
And she probably did not see
That the gate would fall closed,
That she would miss it so;
And maybe all she wanted to
Know
Was what it tasted like.
To bring us so much pain;
She didn't think
Of breaking her promise
Or shattering her shiny crown,
But maybe she just looked out there
--Just peeked--
And then her mind stuck
Out a white toe from its garden ring,
And she was gone.
And sure, it's fair
That she--we--wear different blooms
Because of her choice to run one day,
But oh, God, isn't it "I told you so" enough
That we dream of the paradise we lost
For eternity?
And she probably did not see
That the gate would fall closed,
That she would miss it so;
And maybe all she wanted to
Know
Was what it tasted like.
I heard her cry out, Oh-
I heard her cry
but still
in the soft rustling of leaves
and under woolen shag carpets
she bumped and scraped like
a night wind
Hold fast hold fast hold me hold
fast
and again like old bruises
I got living in that summer house
She stayed sore
Hold she said Hold
and I held
and like a firm branch
I stood in one spot and grew: roots
I heard her cry
but still
in the soft rustling of leaves
and under woolen shag carpets
she bumped and scraped like
a night wind
Hold fast hold fast hold me hold
fast
and again like old bruises
I got living in that summer house
She stayed sore
Hold she said Hold
and I held
and like a firm branch
I stood in one spot and grew: roots
It's funny:
On those frigid days
When you wake to a crust of ice on the water trough
And the whisper of dead leaves
Skating across the hard snow
And flocks of crows
Admonishing from fenceposts
The only time things are ever black and white . . .
On those very cold days
Everything smells.
Everything smelled before,
of course,
But in the cutglass air
The organic smell of the cattle
And the harsh diesel haze
is cutting.
The wind in sanguine gusts
Swirls around the ankles of
The man in the big hat
But I am safe in the feverish island
here in the
Red, Extended Cab, OneTon, Flatbed Pick-Up
The cattle moan and bawl
Their hides are scruffy
Their tails are pendulums ending in balls of dirty ice
Their ribs are prison bars.
Molasses scented feed pours
into the old troughs
Ice resting where the bottoms are not rusted out.
The cattle swarm over the feed, tossing their heads
An ocean,
A fog of warm bodies and warm breaths
and car exhaust.
I lean out the window to breath that winter perfume
And I drop my glove.
No one steps on it,
But no one picks it up.
On those frigid days
When you wake to a crust of ice on the water trough
And the whisper of dead leaves
Skating across the hard snow
And flocks of crows
Admonishing from fenceposts
The only time things are ever black and white . . .
On those very cold days
Everything smells.
Everything smelled before,
of course,
But in the cutglass air
The organic smell of the cattle
And the harsh diesel haze
is cutting.
The wind in sanguine gusts
Swirls around the ankles of
The man in the big hat
But I am safe in the feverish island
here in the
Red, Extended Cab, OneTon, Flatbed Pick-Up
The cattle moan and bawl
Their hides are scruffy
Their tails are pendulums ending in balls of dirty ice
Their ribs are prison bars.
Molasses scented feed pours
into the old troughs
Ice resting where the bottoms are not rusted out.
The cattle swarm over the feed, tossing their heads
An ocean,
A fog of warm bodies and warm breaths
and car exhaust.
I lean out the window to breath that winter perfume
And I drop my glove.
No one steps on it,
But no one picks it up.
The sun set and your world
landed on its head.
Blood and booze
seeped into the earth.
The flashing red and blue spun in the night
sky, dancing with the stars
as they dragged you
like a phoenix from the wreckage –
a phoenix who'd burnt through his last life.
And yet still you laid on a stretcher
while he laid stretched out
beside his indiscernible car.
Leave him. Save the one
who's alive.
I wanted to tell them you
weren't alive – you stopped living
when we stopped laughing –
and it's been years since I resurrected you.
Now I stare at the letters before me,
letters from a dead man.
There is a photo on my desk:
I sit on your shoulders at Christmas.
But these letters show me a man
in used shoes and tattered clothes,
white knuckling the cold, steal bars
for 75 years or life –
a life that dissipated into that night sky.
I cannot reconcile the orange
jumpsuit with the Christmas sweater
I see before me.
So instead I choose to sit
eternally on your shoulders,
our laughter ringing
through the halls
of our childhood home.
The letters will keep coming, but
I scattered your ashes long ago.
landed on its head.
Blood and booze
seeped into the earth.
The flashing red and blue spun in the night
sky, dancing with the stars
as they dragged you
like a phoenix from the wreckage –
a phoenix who'd burnt through his last life.
And yet still you laid on a stretcher
while he laid stretched out
beside his indiscernible car.
Leave him. Save the one
who's alive.
I wanted to tell them you
weren't alive – you stopped living
when we stopped laughing –
and it's been years since I resurrected you.
Now I stare at the letters before me,
letters from a dead man.
There is a photo on my desk:
I sit on your shoulders at Christmas.
But these letters show me a man
in used shoes and tattered clothes,
white knuckling the cold, steal bars
for 75 years or life –
a life that dissipated into that night sky.
I cannot reconcile the orange
jumpsuit with the Christmas sweater
I see before me.
So instead I choose to sit
eternally on your shoulders,
our laughter ringing
through the halls
of our childhood home.
The letters will keep coming, but
I scattered your ashes long ago.
