nov 6th

i want to know when we were ever given any evidence to the fact that beauty might not feel like pain. the answer is never, we were never given anything. the air has it’s fingers around my heart, it’s nails are painted white, i have faith in nothing, the moon is crying out loud and i don’t know what to say. i have changed often, i still am, slipping skin like a snake, coiled inside itself, the heart eats what the heart wants & the villains are always beautiful in the movies, all of us. things keep happening and overlapping, i need them to slow down, everything is clapping, left marked up and fuzzy like after nap dreams, learning if everyone misses you you will always be loved. winter is coming, the leaves are almost gone, the trick-or-treater’s aren’t like the ones in the city, the new world missing two sky scrapers, missing teeth. there’s skin on the scissors i say no, no i am just stirring my coffee with them. the blood.

october 26th 2am

i stay underneath the blankets, protected from the tiny ghosts the air carries, they keep singing their lullaby songs but i pretend it’s just some bluebirds singing, some honey loving hummingbirds, i want to call you but i won’t; it’s late, you’re sleeping and it’s that simple, it’s that easy. i want to call you because there are things i need to ask, things i need to tell you, to hear the way a person sounds when they first wake up, the crunchy voice and breathy sighs. the first thing i would say if i called you is this, i know the answer is yes, you don’t have to say the words, a deer told me in my dream last night, it’s a secret i can keep. the second was what do you think it would be like to be buried face down? the body peering into the sharp bottom of a coffin? my mind is cataloging the unfortunate corpses, there could be so many, all looking down forever into the infinite brown inner shell of the earth. maybe there were reasons for it, old superstitions, forgotten religions that believed this was the way to do it. is there a way to do it? it is funny the way things tug at your head, little kids that can finally cross the monkey bars in the playground “look how far i can go” the mind eats away at the world until it becomes it’s own one, until it’s stuffed up and gluttonous, always passing through red lights and smoking cigarettes next to no smoking signs. it’s late, i want sleep. it occurs to me it is possible i can never sleep on sundays, the “holy day,” they say, but maybe i make these things up, perhaps i turn everything into balloons, plump things up with air and watch them take slow, lazy flight. on the contrary my mind is underneath, nowhere close to flight and yes, i am on the earth but I’m crawling towards the sun. a deck of playing cards flip dramatically in my mind, some faceless dealer – quick and precise, i wonder who the first people to play cards were, the first game invented, who drew them up, designed them? i resign to look into this sometime soon, jot it down somewhere with a juicy inked pen, it sits there looking back at me like some bad dream. i imagine the way the cards sound against each other, the smooth faces of the queens and kings, the simple eloquence of the ace of spades, which card am i? and you?
you faceless wonder, an ever glow distant but still inside me, something unnamed and pretty that people on slopey hills take out to hang with their white sheets along a laundry line.

ampersands in my eyes

when this piano was born i was calling out for it, somewhere on the other side of the world & i ran for miles and miles to find it and when i did i collapsed, i remember things turning a dull shade of yellow, like some magazine ad from the 60’s. i told the gravel to push me back up & it did and i smiled & wrote stories on it with sidewalk chalk, i climbed trees and swung from branches and kept the pine cones i found to give to you we could put tiny bulbs inside all of them and string them up like lights. you said “saeglopur” i said we’ll find it everywhere we go, i said we’ll follow the birds, my heart shook and so did your body and i thought we’d crack open the universe if we weren’t too careful, that we could teach planets how to kiss their moons, my eyes were doing it right now, had their arms around one, watch me, i think, write this down. they say, all you talk about is birds, all you write about is shadows of hearts and season smells and the insides of people who want to be outside themselves but, it’s all true and i just want to let you out. nothing left to do but aimless walking, lost sentences and fevers and clammy hands, i fall asleep thinking about how i always cheated in elementary school when we played 7 up and the bob dylan song that’s stuck in my head keeps playing.

tiger lily

was always me

water bottles & blankets

the words are bumpy and big so we crawl through, like the little globes they placed in the sand that you could stick your head into at the park slope zoo, so you would see the meerkats in their habitat, so you could feel like one of them. This is the thing about life.
this is the thing about where it is you and i find ourselves. i find myself, here and carved wood, feeling like all of you and letting all those kids’ feet crawl around, banging on the roof over my head, their chests caving in like collapsing houses. one by one the little hearts are learning and i close my eyes and look up like dancing in a snowstorm, tasting the flakes but knowing it doesn’t feel like much.
But i am tired of writing about love.
i used to be real in here, flesh and blood. i used to be a lot more of the tactile, of the reactions & satisfactions. things have been folded and unfolded relentlessly but not the pretty way i thought they’d be, in high school, like the counting crows song. a different kind, like putting wrinkled clothes away in a drawer, or making paper airplanes that can never fly.
but god it’s good when you feel real little, but not in time in space, no, more like in someone’s arms. it’s so nice when the wings get light and every little sigh can be heard like echoes & getting inside them.
when words are water rushes and ting tingles and music switches places with god for awhile and you find that yes you’re praying.

mystery trees

we’ll go where they keep the bodies. where they ring those big bells, we’ll say, shout out, hey! you’re doing it wrong! we’ll kiss for hours we won’t hear the bells; no, we’ll be them. climbing up you like ivy; my ivory faced landscape, the smell of acrylic paint, the smell of those slices in time. i’ll take the greens please, i’ll swallow your blues. now only your bed sheets know your secrets, your cotton-soft tear touches, they hold you like arms and i want to be those. the walls watch you and then they close their eyes, i write your name on my ankles, with me every step.

cannibalism

what i don’t understand is how i used to stand on top of your shoes and you’d dance and laugh and i’d laugh a little too and in between those giggles the world rushed over and pulled up a chair and sat down to watch us. but these days it’s quite different, because everyone looks like a bad copy of themselves, or a little kid version dressed up in their parents clothes trying not to cry. and for the second night in a row in my dreams i’ve seen a dog rip apart another dog and eat it. my coffee is cold but i drink it anyway, you standing there like some well-lit mansion and where do my hands go? just, well
let me tell you what i want
i want some vowel sounds out of your mouth
some love hands.
the languages we would speak here, what languages.
no one sounds the same
i watch your mouths for understanding
instead the secrets fall out of your eyes like sand
eyelashes slipping through my fingers

okay

wolf like – starlights.
sunshine shoes,
breaking off the little rubber pieces on avenues.
cough syrup rain drops, gooey heart rays
sprinkled rainbow cemetery shielded children
with their tongues out for a taste.

conversations between the air and I (pillow-talk).

sometimes i just want to reach out and grab someone, a movement just like an elevator ride, after you’ve pressed the button and the destination is inevitable, right ? the moment is moving regardless – right in front of you. out of nowhere just to touch someone, hold their hands or their shoulders, a little human contact, like two hands around a warm tea cup. you know?

yes i do. like a tidal wave would do it.

exactly. like rivers of hands, “hello.”
“you’re pretty, you know. we can be found. all of the same.”

the people do not want this.

no, the people do not want this, what we want.

but the catholics hold hands, in church, that’s something, right?
during the our father.

yes. i can remember this.

though i suppose this is just an exchange like any other,
in the name of another, that is. switching around the reasons.
we must do this for us, you and i, everyone.

i just want to know what the people are doing.

what are the people doing.

they are forgetting.

do you remember?

i can’t forget.

how do you sleep?

with my arms holding nothing.

what can you hear?

when the singer counts for the beginning of the song.
Like one. two. three. four .

where is it that you come from?

the ventricles of your heart.
every underneath & every above.

did you know when i see you i go all upside down? my lungs go from bones to birds and all the other things inside me disappear . there is only one way out of this, one way out of this alive.

and what is that.

we must swim.

swim where?

turn the world to water and hold our breaths and go right in, open our eyes underneath without that saltwater or chlorine burn.

what about the tears?

they won’t matter now.

what about the birds?

they’ll come with us.

i can’t, i won’t go with you. its just that i cannot do this, little one.

but why won’t you swim?

i am forever sorry . i just have to stay for my songs, all these songs.

we can make songs.

they are never the same.

you are never the same.

is that okay?

no. but you’re so good it hurts my eyes. so strong you keep me awake for days, inside shining open like knife slices of light.

i am no different from you.

but you are.

show me.

look; you break up like tiny pieces in the sky , vibrating radio waves.

and where is my song?

this is the end of it.

and that’s all i get?

yes and that’s all you get.

september

we are cracking open coconuts and finding the milk with our lips you say “i taste it” and i smile because i taste it too and yeah, your hands are on my hips but i heard the world is ending and if i kiss you now and then we stop where does the kiss go? and margaret atwood said guilt isn’t about something you have done but what someone has done to you and i’m thinking, oh, this will stick. this will stick like the sleep in your eyes the mornings it decides to hang around, always rubbing. i think, there must be safer ways around this. i wake up and write slide in bold script letters up the side of my lungs with a marker and hope the ink seeps in, they always warned us the ink would sink in but they didn’t know we didn’t care. they couldn’t tell i was waiting for it.
and he tried to explain and they said they understood but they laughed and laughed like silver jewelry and drank their wine and so did he but not for the same reasons. i wanted to run over and tell him that i had never seen an owl or skipped stones, do they really jump like that? and that i couldn’t remember the last time i had held someone for more than twenty minutes. for more than ten, maybe.
but i didn’t. god knows i didn’t, because he doesn’t even exist.