You sleep earthquake some nights
like a puppy
Whimper and swim

You dream like the grand canyon did when it was just a shallow river bed

You never expect to get so big
to create so much space

So I know holding you won't make you still

Your head in my hands like a sunrise
strands of gold
drizzling between my fingers

Your body
like a lonely bear living in a city
you miss home
eat only yellow things
Dandilions
and honey
bumble bees
and chips of paint from fire hydrants

Inside you belly it is always
daytime
always spring

So much light
you don't sleep well most nights

And I wish I could place my hands
inside the space between your shoulder blades

and take it out of you
hold it swirling in my hands

I will put it into a jar of water
and in then in the fridge
so that it might learn stillness in the cold

I will come back to bed to you
a beer bottle still in my hand

I will pull the blankets from you
and let the dark settle
Inside this new space

And maybe this night
You can sleep peacefully

I was looking at your chest x rays on the lighted wall

Your straight spine centered behind your rounded ribcage
Looks like busted churchgates
from all the times you let your ghosts go

And there are bees buzzing in your shoulders only
you aren't cold this time

So much faith in what I do with words
Willing to love me like a half written gospel
we are filling in as we go

And I want to write us poetry
like the first man was asked to play the first piano

Come
dance with me to my deathbed

I am afraid
That one day I might kiss you
like a deaf stethoscope
that no longer hears your heart

That this language will grow stale
Along with your faith in me

but my knees
are riverbeds for prayer

And I carry my chest heavy like a library
full of books that hate the silence

You should know that
being a poet is more than just a choice

and maybe my body is like a library
but when I pray to you
I'll never use my inside voice

Just like I know that god used nails
to make the iron in your blood stream

That you'll be strong even when you're old
and even then
I still want you to believe in me

When we are like trains that no longer run the tracks
when we've fully mapped the topography of our bodies

But some days
our engine chests come back

and I write a poem about you that is new

And you listen
To my huff and rumble
you lift your tea and saucer with shaking hands
I close my eyes
and hear our train coming

How it starts is there's an apartment your family lives in
You do not live there
but your stuff does
Then you find out your mom brought bed bugs home from the rehab center

They are downsizing everything now
You show up with 3 boxes
and tell yourself
these can hold more than enough

Mostly you fill them with your favorite books
and in the heat of it
even that feels trivial

But you look at the photos in the frames
The pictures of you at six flags on your last birthday
You let those go
The paper towel painting Monica did at the lake
It's all in a box marked trash now

You joke to yourself about how silly
they would look on the dashboard of your car

The old electronics
and journals
writing contest trophies

You take an inventory
of everything you've ever owned
all your clothes have been thrown away

and you leave with just three boxes
and you ask yourself

"If my life were on fire
what would I save?"

only you can't answer that question
because when the fire is burning
it's not that everything looks as important as everything else
so much as nothing does
not even you

So you smile
and say that you are happy to leave everything behind
because now you have the joy of the memory of having it

Only this time
there is a girl
and she is riding shotgun in your car as you drive away

And maybe she can see the mixed emotion on your face
like driving of a cliff in your boss's car
only he is in the trunk

And she scratches the back of your head
and says
"Tell me a story handsome"

My little brother cuts himself
And I wonder about the scars

Imagine that they are more like
the lines inside the trunk of a fallen tree
An indication of how long he has lived
or how fast he grew

and time is a funny thing now
Because it is easy to forget how old he is
because of how old he looks
and on the inside
who knows

I just think of counting rings
on a fallen tree stump
like a warped record

after the day grows quiet
if I placed a needle to the wood
What song would it play?

I have been breathing deeply lately
trying to find permanence I think

Because the money will not stay
and the car will not last
and the days turn to nights
and I sleep for tomorrow
and not for the dreams

I have been lost in wonder

And I wonder if there is a sound
for the breath of the spider
that Delia has just sprayed with raid

Or if there is a sound
for the parting of clouds
that reveals the sun

Or if there is a sound
for roots breaking a seed

And if that sound might be similar
to what my bones do sometimes

And right now
safety sounds like the click of the lock in the frame

and peace sounds like the hiss of the can seal breaking

and happiness sounds like the suction of lips
to my neck
to her neck
to our mouths

Each sound is a second
maybe less

Like being under hypnosis
snap
snap
snap

And as far as permanence goes
I have enough

I wonder if the big bang
was a response to god's loneliness

And maybe he sat alone for a long time
half braining ideas
about making things that
might love him

God never said
let there be light
he just put a gun in his mouth and splattered
stars across the wall of the universe

His black hole brain
something like regret
trying to **** all the stars back inside

And I think about the days you tried

But that's not like you kid
Even though you had blood
spilling out a hole in your gut
Bone white shallow breathed

There are still stains on the passenger seat of my car
Which I now call my living room
because I am homeless

And there are no walls that could hold the contents of your head
like jackson ******* bloodspatter
a pretentious painting titled
and homage to the ****** of failure

And you are not our mother
suicide cocktail
no ice

and you are not our father
an Alzheimer's ghost
Haunting a history
we never lived through

You are skinny like water
running down the zylephone of your ribcage
tinny laughter

Asking me questions like
if love is as powerful as they say it is in the movies
then why do people give up sometimes

I'll never give up I said

You asked me if I thought god was mad at you

the doctor chalked up you living
to just luck

and I think of when god made molds of men out of mud
and breathed into them
and the mud men lived
Mud must have felt lucky then

But for us its not luck
we make so much fuss
Just so the world knows
we're alive as ****

I feel like a comic strip hobo
With no money for deposit

And still I step from slapstick to cement
and hope court jester is enough here

I have come out of the rain
and into your home
Drawn to you
Though there is no pie in your window
No ghostly fingers of your sweet smell
beckoning me in

You make me feel
Like a ghost in a graveyard
Praying for a new harmonica inhale
and exhale
So that this music can sound more like a dance for two
A panic waltz for feet trying to match your grace

And today
Darlin'
There is honey between my teeth
A sweet sound

Our love is backwards
Blacklisted
An elbow torqued and knuckle gutted dry heave halleluja

Arthur Miller would have written a satire about our love

I remember our early conversations
You said you didn't believe in god
I said that he was a fantastic literary device
You said though you didn't believe in god
that people themselves could be godly
I suddenly wondered what you would look like with a jerry curl
"Let's not call it godly," I said
"What then," you said
I don't know

I just know that
Your eyes are like second winds
like Breathcatch memories
of highway carjackings
where you were the one left on the side of the road

The warm summer pillow of your stomach
And the peel of my face away from it
Is sticky like candy
Your stomach is like candy in that way
So is my face
I can be sweet too

Your smile is speechless
like the speakers are speechless
And the music has stopped
and our bodies are still
save for your smile
That quivers like fire

And I am a comic strip hobo
With a bandana backpack
and not much to offer

But I am drawn to you

You make me feel like harmonica breath
You make my mouth feel like honey