In place of calm, read stirring ocean,
Scylla and Charybdis,
between a rock and a hard place.
In place of comfort, read your body,
transient, missing, on a plane somewhere
in a car somewhere on a boat somewhere
without your phone somewhere
somewhere somewhere somewhere
that is not my apartment or my arms
but somewhere where you smile.
Somewhere where your eyes
finally focus.
In place of sleep, read blood between the floorboards
and moving boxes scattered,
read burst capillaries and a savings jar
full of Washingtons and no idea
what I’m saving for.
In place of stasis, read
one fast move or I’m gone.
Oct 10, 2018
Oct 10, 2018 at 5:02 PM UTC
There's **** on the floor of the Blue Line.
It's one in the afternoon,
Tuesday.
This is the poetry
I don't like writing.
About the Fight Club anarchism
without the sense of purpose.
I watch a man cry
over a woman's leftover Chipotle.
Eight feet away:
the passage of pills between palms.
I don't know the contents
any better than they do.
I keep my blind eye
and loose change.
I keep my middle class pride
safe for another day.
Aug 16, 2017
Aug 16, 2017 at 8:17 PM UTC
I am open for you—
like cemetery gates at sunrise.
Both deities above and below
warn of dire consequences.
Still I am open for you.
Love, and love, and love.
You must admit there was love
in the speckled blue you left on my neck,
and the tight grip on my hip
beneath flannel sheets and morning eyes.
Not love like caged doves and thrown rice.
Not love like three-bedroom house in the suburbs.
Love like no space in your queen-sized bed.
Love like you showing me how to inhale smoke at 3am.
Love like teeth and tongues and thumbs and thighs.
I am open, fully.
Gaping, expanding, overwhelming.
I am racing heart.
I am goosebumps on your forearm.
I am fingertips gripping shoulderblades.
I am love, I am love, I am love.
Jul 7, 2017
Jul 7, 2017 at 12:49 PM UTC
Pulsating track lights.
Resonation.
Sunlight trickling down my neck as it set,
following the same pattern as your fingertips
that afternoon in your kitchen,
dripping like morning sweat.
When there was nothing left to say,
we filled the silences.
I adored your friends before I knew you,
yet my gaze drifted
to your shadow
as you stood behind a sheer black curtain;
no bigger than a toy soldier in my periphery
but I'd already memorised your shape.
I'd know you anywhere.
Sixteen thousand other people saw you,
but none like me.
She asked why I was blushing.
I had no explanation for the way my heart raced
as I remembered whose body I would sleep next to that night.
There you were,
in my sightline,
and yet I ached for you.
Jul 5, 2017
Jul 5, 2017 at 4:25 PM UTC
I died a few times in the night.
Hungry lips are decades away.
My passport is locked up tight
in the safe in my closet.
I’ve been a poet for so many years now,
but this feeling will always be
ineffable.
All the nudists riding bikes past my window,
all the love songs, all the sad songs,
all the lens flares and strong ‘o’ sounds,
and Jameson, always Jameson;
my hands get shaky
and tap out
you—you—you
on the coffee table
and suddenly I’m spilling drinks on myself
and I need to go for a run
and I feel sick to my stomach
and none of this makes sense.
I see the maintenance man every morning
and he says,
“Just another day in paradise”
and I actually believe him.
It’s easier when you’re so far away
because I don’t have to worry about
having you and then not having you.
I am terrified of the valediction.
May 20, 2017
May 20, 2017 at 12:02 AM UTC
I witnessed your birth.
Oak barrel wombs,
unknown fathers.
They presented you with so much pride
that I felt guilty refusing a taste.
So smooth.
Too smooth.
Unnatural.
Fire should not destroy so calmly.
You witnessed my redemption.
Your name on his tongue
returned me to a Dublin distillery
but I did not fear you.
His offering was one of comfort.
You didn’t hurt as much
with his eyes on me,
my lipstick on the rim of his cup.
I was perfectly warm
in the dead of winter.
Fire should not destroy so calmly.
You will witness my unapologetic sins.
I swig straight from the bottle
to prepare for my numb lips against his;
our numb tongues ruining lives.
It won’t hurt anymore.
You gave me courage.
You showed me intimacy, unflinching,
with your solo cup facade.
You put my heart in his hands
and watched us test the waters,
gently.
You will be there
when we collide again.
Fire should not destroy so calmly.
Mar 17, 2017
Mar 17, 2017 at 5:28 PM UTC
He is biblical.
I’ve never had the taste for it,
but I will take his communion
and believe in something,
anything.
I’ve been splitting my knuckles on doorframes
just to know some peace.
Broken skin doesn’t hurt like it should.
Where are your healing lips tonight?
Kiss the poetry away from me;
bury it deep and out of sight.
It will find a way to ruin this.
I don’t ask for eternity.
I ask for one lifetime
knowing where your hands have been,
what they have built,
and who they have destroyed.
He is biblical;
I have always worshipped
someone else’s god.
Mar 16, 2017
Mar 16, 2017 at 10:48 PM UTC
I've never been much of an artist,
but I will paint a portrait
of kisses on your chest,
if you let me.
Matisse has nothing on
the beauty the comes from
the collision of
my lips and your neck,
your lips and my neck.
We are paintbrush and canvas,
both.
The curvature of your lips
belongs in a museum.
I'm keeping it
for my private collection.
My awe cements me
to the bed.
Mar 5, 2017
Mar 5, 2017 at 12:12 AM UTC
I had forgotten how good the fantasy feels.
I dream soundly without him
when the memory of his hands
puts these tired lungs at ease.
I play with 'hope' on my tongue.
It's beginning to taste sweet.
I will hold him in my arms soon.
We will warm our bellies
with whiskey again,
and I won't walk home alone
this time.
We've grown up in the snow,
with winter in our veins,
something visceral and uniform.
He knows what to do with
these freezing hands of mine.
I ****** my lip
with bite marks
at the thought.
I am leather-bound and blank;
he has so many ways
to fill me up.
Feb 25, 2017
Feb 25, 2017 at 6:13 PM UTC
You said I meant the world to you
because I was the one person
who had never given up.
I was a name
you hadn’t yet added to that list.
You mistook that for love.
I will never give up on you;
that’s the truth.
I will never give up on the notion
that one of these days
you’ll find a way to be happy.
But it will be with another girl
in another land,
far from here.
I pray you never set foot on the soil I’ve tread.
I will give up on us.
I will give up on the fantasies.
I will never exist to you
outside of your own self-interest
and that’s okay.
But that doesn’t mean I have to live with it.
That doesn’t mean I have to stay.
I will never give up on you.
I will give up on you, with me.
Feb 25, 2017
Feb 25, 2017 at 5:40 PM UTC