Today I wanted to buy the copyright to the process of hallelujah
******* in joy the same way whales eat krill
You just bottle it up inside your lungs until you have enough

Inside my fridge I have vacuum sealed jars of hallelujah
There’s nothing religious about that
Jars labeled things like
Loss of virginity
Rob lived this time
The homework is complete

Hallelujah

It’s the same way prayer works
Backwards
Pulling bits of god like an inhale

I want to hyperventilate on your hallelujah
Like a gospel choir on speed

It collects
Over time
For instance
It was maybe a month in to sleeping at Delia’s and Toffer’s house
Before I realized
I didn’t have to sleep in my car anymore
You go into the bathroom to **** and realize
Hallelujah
A jar labeled
Found a Home for now

I know science can do this
For the sake of all that is a monument to a single life
So that on your death bed, or at your funeral
Everyone there can hold a jar

Cold and warm at the same time
Vibrating in their palms
In violent joy
Like mozzletoff cocktails
They are thrown
And when they shatter there is a song
That has been collecting for years

The same word in different tonal joys

Your life

Every good moment

Hallelujah

sleep is as distant
as my love's embrace,
that genuine grace
of her skin against my face.
if only sleep would grant me this night's reprieve
and deceive my unconscious mind
with dreams of her--
lovely, warm, and fleeting.

Your windblown hair and
your windbound heart
inhabit a single memory.
Sad eyes in the rearview mirror
Pursed lips and perverted thoughts
Like how your hand resting on her thigh
should be resting on mine
instead.

You run your fingers across maps
Like you are caressing the cheek
of your dying lover
for the last time

Lover sitting on the shower floor
spits at the drain,
watches it circle away between his feet.

I tell him to close his eyes
as I point the spray at his hair,
pull out the caked-dirt tangles.

I scrub at his back until it's red and raw,
and a thin trickle of blood
from a pimple or an ingrown hair
dances down the steps of his spine.

I could bathe him
in all the world's finest oils,
until the cacophony of fragrances
made my head spin
and he would still tell me that
I missed a spot.

Wrapped in a towel,
he asks me why I
do the things I do.

I say nothing,
and wipe a speck of grime
from his wet, swollen cheek.

It hasn’t been as cold lately
The train of shopping carts rattles
Vibrate my forearms
Especially as I cross the yellow speed bumps on the ground

The city put those there to trip up skateboarders
And to confuse babies in strollers

Old women on walkers avoid them

There are things designed to make us slower
More careful

I think about my last poetry reading while filling the coolers
And don’t ask myself why when alone
I take myself to the places that make me most happy

My cashier asks me when he can go home

You do everything slower when
You keep yourself company
When you’re lonely
You’re not savoring moments
You just taking your time
Because you can
I set the alarms and lock the doors
The moon has been out for a while
I will go home and write

Everyone is asleep except for me
I crack open a few beers
Open the window so the moon can keep me company

Forever I thought there was something wrong with me
But I have learned
Like the moon
Some things will only shine in the nighttime
Not everything looks like gold under the sunlight