Imagine your eyes
as bluegreenhazelgrayamber
windows to actuality.

Now imagine your eyes
s lo   w lllllllly

f
      a
              d

                      i
                    
                             n
              
                                    g

to






black.

i once dated a boy who found it "adorable" that i know how to change my headlights
     fill my radiator
     change the oil
     and notice every stopsign as i'm halfway through it
he dumped me via text

before that
there was a boy who loved my lack of first person capitalization
     my over-use of metaphores and similies
     the way i personify the night
     and practice preforming poetry in the shower
he took off into the sunset with my journal in his shoulder-sack

and somewhere in between
i stopped asking myself what it means
threw up my hands
     and learned to enjoy the ride

someone I once (loved) kills himself every day
with various darkness and poisons
because he hates the way he was made
-
someone he once (loved) wakes up every day
with various dreams and flowers
because she learned to love the way she was made

on a good day
the ice is cutting your feet
but it looks like you're -
walking a seabed of roses
and red bells
shivering in silver molasses
and your far away eyes
seek oblivion and
mercy...
but you can't think
of anything
to dream.

on a bad day, you can't smoke scotch
so you drink it. you burn matchsticks
and croon lunacy with thick lips wishing
and rude plumes of an ash life.
you can hardly bark, but your bite's slipping
and the fruit is straw and dung
but the sugar,  black
in the white
flesh.

You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Daddy, I have had to **** you.
You died before I had time ----
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal

And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off the beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.

In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My ****** friend

Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.

It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene

An engine, an engine,
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.

The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gypsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.

I have always been scared of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You ----

Not God but a *******
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.

You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who

Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.

But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look

And a love of the rack and the *****.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I'm finally through.
The black telephone's off at the root,
The voices just can't worm through.

If I've killed one man, I've killed two ----
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.

There's a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagersnever liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you *******, I'm through.

Time beats her pulse into
charcoaled stillness:
Persistence reminding a heart
to keep going

Flowers die off so soon
They are beautiful at the
moment they were born
but when they
wither away into the ground
no one cares, no one cries
because flowers are so easily
replaced by another bouquet of plants
the petals will fall and that is their demise
I am a flower

I am the dust in your bedroom
the kind that falls from the sky and
tumbles through the light
streaming through your windows
I am only visible to you with the
light of the Earth
I will stay on your floor and
you will walk all over me and
never know anything of it
You will kick me up and
I will leave you

I am not the blanket that covers
you up at night and keeps you warm
I do not deserve such a title
I am not the roof that keeps you safe
from the ongoing snow and rain
that happens in this town
I am not your lover, your friend
I am nothing

I am a ghost, an apparition
a wisp of non-existence

i can't believe i wasted
poetry
on you.

It is the driest winter we’ve had in years
Drier than bones
Bones hold things up
Like you held me up
Until you didn’t

It is so dry that my skin aches as it stretches
I am starting to hate the sun
I curse it every morning and then I feel guilty
I need to stop feeling guilty
About what I can’t control
I need to stop feeling guilty about my heart
All we can ever do is try
Sometimes it’s enough
Sometimes it’s not

I’m praying for rain but worried about
What’d I’d do if it came
Lie in the street and let it soak me
But here,
It’s illegal to lay on the street naked
Either way
When it comes
I’m going to stay in it for so long there’s no way
I’m not getting sick
I’ll lie there until they come peel my body up off the pavement
Like a wet rag

Let me be the wet rag for the world
No no, it’s alright, I volunteer myself
Let me soak up all of their sorrows because mine aren’t so big
Only as big as my body

Just now,
One man in a café went up to another
Said he’d seen his son
Sixteen years old,
And he looks great.
The other said that, “yea, it’s been a whole year
He has a check up in six months”
But he can’t imagine he’ll come out positive again

God

It seems like these moments of beauty are placed there
Right when we need them
No one is separate here
We are all alone and together at the same time and sometimes it is so
****** awful
And so ****** beautiful

It is possible that I can ache
For you to come back and fill whatever chasm it was that you left
Me with
And at the same time
Somewhere,
(Where is an empty space facing north,
or towards the sky or both
the space will be more apparent later when the ache fills my chest less
When it doesn’t sit inside my stomach like an animal that needs to be fed)
You gave me something, too
But it doesn’t make it less hard right now
The animal is still hungry,
Clawing,
It will be for a while.

Is it possible to hand someone hopefulness and
Hopelessness
At the same time?
To demand them to cradle it in their arms until their
Chest absorbs it-
Well, you don’t have a choice.

The earth is so      d         r          y
California, she needs some water

Don’t we all