On Fri-the-day in Physics
we spent all trying on movie scripts
cutting them down, wrapping them around our calves like
shin-guards, tight and vaguely reassuring
And have I read it? just the first
You tell me juice instead of grey
I wish you best but do not say so
a woman makes a cup of her heart, and in that way I hear
how he came home to
a surprise celebration of Gerald
(tunes with mountains and bears)
the hell's bells man, what a sweet sound
they were
some kind
of astounding

Cold, tilted
Despite the blood and the parchment
And the warm, dry tint
His eyes are closed,
He’s sleeping?

A warning, a memorial
A testimony
A revolution’s star,
Supernovates.

I do not know what his secrets are
I always wonder at funerals
My money’s on a hidden love
For Charlotte Corday
People tend to love their murderers

For K:

As I was sitting,
  legs lotus-folded (like human origami)
Listening to your message
Thinking how your wry wit always
  sends trickles of glory into my laugh

As I was listening,
ears cold without the warmth
Of your conversation to heat them
I wished for your kind of company,
  like a museum in the rain

And I was thinking
I don't know what this means

I was searching for evidence
like a deaf man for music
Or perhaps more like a dust mote
looking for home

Perhaps more like a map
Embossed vellum with names of
Places etched meaningfully
With red dotted trails leading
Looping and folding back into themselves
Except the X is absent

I was looking for meaning
in the ideas we'd shared
And here is the truth, I do not
twinge with dolorousness
I do not keep souvenirs of you

You will find no evidence of the time
          (chalk-dusted fingerprints on cold glass)
Spent with me until you
          (hush and behold the mystery)
reach to discover moments
          (hidden and higher than most)
Stacked tall in my memory
          (tip the shelves in the library, it all tumbles down)

Hold those words out
Eject them form hibernation
Toss them, set them
Let them hang in the air

Watch to see if they sparkle
           Or dart or cut or
                     Just hang
Watch to see if they lash back

Did you chew them seven times before you spoke them?
Seven and seven again before you woke them?

Heed history's dark edges
Clever words lead to high ledges
And revelry will flee
Without two glances back

So
   Hold them close up to you
      Cultivate them, flowing through you
          Hang them in the air like stars
To see if they will sparkle

I love the smell of gasoline
Blue flowers, and green neon lettering
Embarrassing-honest people
The words nocturnal, cavalier, and arable
Reading, reading is my second-best to humans,
Greek mythology, all mythology
Solving math equations, being surprised
The soft waves of my mother’s hair
All kinds of clouds and rain
Smooth fabrics, sharpened-pointy pencil-tips
Gravelly voices
      and exploring

With and without
  Hush now, don't pout
Running my hands through my hair
Quantum mechanics
And butterfly feet
  I can't tell you why
Elephants, unable to jump
Bats, with bones too thin to walk
  Just hold on tight
We are all the children of nine
With or without

You think my soul is lovely
  And my diction dazzling
    what kind of friends are we
       I ask, passingly

      We are so good

A moment's pause

I hold my breath
  In that instant you drop off to sleep
    And I whisper to the dark room
       The best

Don't worry about what your aunts say
Or your uncles
I will protect you from the brunt of
Their recriminations and disappointments
Who asked them, anyway!
They don't know how you feel exposed
And naked when they heap lectures on you
They don't know what you went through
With your latest loves and failures
They do not know how I will fight for you
When push comes to shove and I grow claws
Friends? The very best, the best I've ever known

Yet you would leave me hanging
Out the window
Avid in my interest for you
Mid-gesture, mid-thought
Interrupted

Yet left hanging would I still sing
Thinking naught of chilly shoulders

Yet in laughing you are dying
Listener, I am, and sorrowed
Your softening whispers coaxing
Think you that a lower volume
Will set your words to a gentler scheme

Look at how we treat our dear young men
Appointed to do our dirty work
While we are sitting down in comfort in our homes
We ask them to murder for our sins

Please do not hold your head down so low
And know that I forgive you from the bottom of
The hollow space that used to be my soul
Before it was stolen in the heartbreak of the world

Their hearts are laden down and bowed
With lead and the things we never should have left unsaid
Those things that are beating through their heads
And bruising all the beautiful clear air

“Little child listen close to me”
But do not hold their words as law
They have not seen the sights
That you wish you’d never saw

Maybe all you want is to go home
To curl up with the blankets up around your chin
To have a hand to hold as memories walk by
To have someone to hold you while you cry

The pain you go through
I do no pretend to comprehend
I will not insult you in that way
I can thank you for the days I live

But how can I apologize
For those who will not see the sun’s sweet light
Even one more time
With their dead and open staring eyes

Please do not hold your head so low
And pay your penance out with honor
Serve your sentence and know
That there is pridefulness in lingering too long
On things that only God above can heal

Let the gentling tide of evening come
But do not walk in shame you did not earn
Perhaps you did things you do not want to own
You thought once that you were serving for the good

My life and the lives of others
You have swayed
Are precious to us and our families
More than diamonds or foreign gems of jade

Please do not hold your head so low
Maybe you feel a debt
But do not walk in shame you did not earn
There is pridefulness in lingering too long
On things that only God above can heal

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?

Here it is,
here's your plan
there's nothing beyond it,
it makes me sad to see you reach low like this

You want a fancy car
A fancy house
A fancy woman
  (who only says
the right things,
   quietly,
at the right times)
A large salary
No problems
Miniature models of yourself
         well-behaved and clean

You want a stable, antiseptic love
Something static and sterile

Here's news,
If ever I was in tune with
Hermes and his speed and unashamedness,
(He was ever proud of being the God of Thieves)
His partnership with Iris as messengers
It is in speaking to you, now

My dream is not your 'American'
Because if it was,
It would be neat and profitable
Copyrighted to unnamed sources
I don't want that

I want, chiefly,
something frenetic,
Nothing tidy about it,
Cluttered with memories both wondrous and awful

A proudly imperfect man
To share flaws with
To say "You too? I thought I was the only one!"

Problems to muddle through
And be caught in
And solve, with a happy crow of triumph

A small garden, which I will probably end up killing anyway

Rambunctious, willful children
Who will not be afraid to challenge me
Whom I will teach to argue intelligently
Raised to be civil and
Above all, to be curious

I will not mind the mud
And the blood
And the pain
So much at the end

Because I will be able to die
Without shame for the life I lived

What I am trying to say,
with the hope you are not injured,
is that I don't want a part of your envisioned future
I don't want such sweet synthetic sterility
I supremely enjoy the whole of the mess

Delicate as thin, cold glass
I cannot give you what you ask
Why can't I have my time to be
Alone and growing, healthy, free

Where is my bright future now
The silver lining to this cloud
The golden horizon I shaped is dead
Traded for the daisies about my head

chlorine, sunscreen
  we don't breathe too deep
  I'm here, you're not
  I wish you were, I miss you lots
  summer sun, summer heat
  hot tiles beneath my feet

They don't care to ask
I shouldn't care about their cares
But I'm falling
Falling harder every day
Falling back into thirteen
And I have had a headache
(Pounding not through just my head
but my whole body
With every heartbeat)
Since seven-o-clock
I did not want
To tell you so

I have got something to tell you
That you might not want to hear
Or maybe you will. Want to.
I sometimes
When I'm calling you,
will dial my home phone,
Which is silly, because I've
had your number memorized since
8th grade
But I think it's because you feel like home
in my definitions of the world
And you make me feel at home
In myself

It isn't the days that hit me
hard, it is the nights
When, I admit it, I am overcome
and underwhelmed and shaken
I am ashamed to be a human being
To be a part of a race that so violently
mocks any shred of real humanity
And I am selfish and wretched
And I want to love other people
But all it does is make me feel sick
What are we doing to each other?
Self-destruction never stops with you
Perfection is unattainable and that is alright
Not enough understanding
And too much fear
I am proud and I am wrong and I sin
But I would rather dance the fool
I would rather never heal
Than watch what damage we do each other
This is our world we've inherited
But it will ever be on loan to our children
Children who will grow up
To be riddled with the fears of a dying world
And to be burned with the hate
And wickedness we have been sowing for ages
You can't fix it all
But when you are faced with a choice --
Your agency cannot be stolen
Your deeds will define you in ways none of us understand
And I wish to God
That I will make those who are yet-to-be gladdened

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
Silver stars
No peace

Sometimes --
Somtimes things just
   explode
and there's not a thing to do
So you have to sit back
and let them dazzle you
You couldn't change them,
even if you died trying