“not a first”

Beneath your pillow, there is a fire. There is a bridge. There is a cord. There is a home en flambe. There is a pacing body. There is a reminder that some humans don’t want to be found. There is a box shaped as a womb beneath your bed and there are pieces of the men and women you wandered in. There is a train ride. There is a passport with tattoos which match another’s. There is a tribal marking on right arm beneath the bent above the twitch. There is a rolodex of sexual awakenings. There is a flirtatious gathering of limbs on a rooftop before a month chimes closed as hips test how shatterproof they can be. Between your fingers, there are strings. There is noise. There is a whisper of callus. There is projectile love detonated on a sunday with grass stains and generator fumes. There is a jump but somewhere out there a woman with earth-drenched hair holds your neck and your shoulders and massages the distance between each muscle. This woman gathers you up like a bundle of firewood and beneath the sun, water. And above the water, ice. Some ways to heal can be from taking the you away. Some ways to move on can be found in envelopes or ghost letters lit up by neon magic wand. Beneath your home is an earthworm. Or many. And bones and bugs and blood. You can dig or you can remain up here. Up top where the living are. Are you living. Are you where. Are you up.

timidity of tumbleweeds

A human up north howls on a thursday, slips thunderous moon rocks from beneath tongue into poet’s sockets. There is so much symphony in your satellite, how can one focus on mathematics or meals when you exist. There is no wall there is no lean there is only congestion of solitude. What do you mean you want to slide your memory behind my knees. We walk we walk away we walk around we walk until     until there is someone who meets us  and when that someone is found, there are splinters and cocked mouths. Enter storefronts: speak about what began before the scaffold. Call out a name when you wail against another and pregnant the heart to feel sight again.

repeat. repeat. repeat.

“Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; but remember that what you have now was once among the things you only hoped for.”         —EPICURUS

 

a gathering of spirits

When they ask you how you’re doing, tell them you’re working on a master’s degree on breath control. Tell them you’ve decided to start a religion collaged with meditation, masturbation and memory loss. When they want to know about your (latest) relationship, tell them the moon didn’t return your phone call last night, but you are hopeful. When they comment on your skinny, swallow a piece of mandible and show them your indent. When you forget how to collapse, return to the concrete that held you seven years ago and howl toward the one who kept you safe for a night. When they want to get you drunk, slur your way toward an exit sign. When a stranger confides in you that war is everywhere so we must turn ourselves into bullets and charge, remove their weaponry with the sound of your voice and locate the nearest burst of star. When they tell you how sorry they are, ask them to sing a song from the furthest distance inside them. When they need to mourn longer, collect nests and sew one big enough for them to carry their weep away. When they want to know where you’ve run off to, mail them a root of your hair with a type-set message that reads: here. When they walk past you, travel miles to the nearest reservoir and gather its water; maybe they are thirsty. Tell them you are no longer an atheist, rather a belief-monger intent on translating shadows. When they tell you to call more often, tell them you’ve disconnected all your outlets but unhinged all your doors so come in come in come in.

abandon

Underdeveloped tulips avoid

the amputee with withered 

leaves. Someone plucked its

magenta and pollen while all

that remains is what can be

remembered. 

an art survival

How many trees can paint your way out of here. The bark is mustard and sky and rose and grass. Deep inside a mandala of suctioned moon there is a pharmacy of peace where Stevie Wonder’s blind love echoes against medical bracelets and injection wounds. He tells us feelings are alright as the ones with badges do their best to run our thoughts away. Music forgets to sound out its infection but all this had meaning but all this makes sense.

molasses and pollen

for R.D. whose soul is weaved through each curl that fertilizes earth & who I will forever love.

No one can say if (he) will come back. The sky has been replaced by brick with locks at each corner and who is really strong enough to bypass cement. We are fertilized by the sweet      by the gender we choose      by the mileage of stickiness that forgets our breathing. But that man over there cannot get over the death of his father from twenty years ago and we get stuck and we get stuck and we submerge our necks in lament. No one can say if (you) will heal. There is a reason there is so much gauze and antibiotics. If bodies could be powered by gasoline, perhaps we’d be forced to check in more often. If there is music, fist it with your bones and allow its bass to exorcise you. If there is food, be unafraid of its pleasure or the way it feels to bite down on spice and maybe this is all too familiar and maybe you need to prepare for the obstruction. If this were refined, you’d be more prepared. It is simply dark and raw and if anybody asks, you were away on holiday, celebrating the birth of your second or third or twelfth self. Within loneliness, lines where people wait for their turn at you. Ask the wind; it blows in your direction from the east and it is red and it is bloodied but that is yellow and it is ready and so are you.

elephant

but in your grey, talk about how you arrived

but when your palate splits inside the roof of your rage, talk about the moment you found breath or you found enough soil to sift through the palms of your voice and you dreamt earth

but when you feel hunted or hunt-less, storm the sky for tracks of lightening

but when you grieve, sip on oceans not spiked weep

but you can walk and you can swallow and you can bend and you can still you can still

but when you leak, pour harassed heart into another

but when you dry, find that place in your body that moans

but when you leave, draft words into blotted beams of light and let them know and let them know where you left off

to recall/ to regret/ to leave behind

There was nothing. There were no gasps or grunts from pain there was no pain. MOON follows you home because no one else desires so there is light there is light there is shape to this survival. MOON could only be your lover if you let go if you let go of regret of the restriction in your bend in your height in your existence as stationary. This love this love is unreachable. When did it happen. When did the moment occur when memories moved into billboards and shadows leaned against bicycle wheels and that time that time some other ghost pushed their way in and life is full of hauntings.

You leave behind sleep. Hunger. The sex of your body. You change your locks so that your hips forget where to come home to. You hold your hand because it feels lonely and pockets are so dark and looming. You kiss your wrist with dry space. Your veins have collapsed. Where is the blood where is the blood even your blood is gone.

Sometimes you know how to be human. You know all about manners and rhythm. You understand what words mean and the ones you never learned you ask another. You never brush your hair but you breathe. You remember climbing trees in August and that one that held you in a forest in Brooklyn to keep you here to keep you here.

(you must) Remain.

sunday in march on st. johns on the bus

When baby cries with exposed teethlungsbelly rip, give him orange juice. Woman with enough braids to bring out carpal tunnel digs into plastic bag of groceries for remedy. Baby is a bean jumping out of mother’s arms and when woman pours orange into empty bottle, there is no sound.