I like
pressing your lips

on my palm
as I push your head
against the wall and
hear you
whimper.

This is the only
way I can say
I love you
With you
not refuting.

For you,
the world.

A blanket
of time.

A surge
of dread.

In
your eyes.

For you,
the world.

The pillars,
the rubble.

Welters of war,
inner and visible.

Science, politics,
art. Leak

light into
the blossom

of
quiet.

For you,
the world

intends, supposes,
intimates.

Gives
collapse.

Gives
wait.

Gives
awake.

For you,
the world.

Your bruise,
the weakened heart.

The trust
lended.

The breath
spent.

For you,
the world.

The mere thought
already catastrophe.

The blow
blow blow

The hot to
the touch.

The want
of supper,

The membrane
of a promise.

The objects
of desire.

The properties
of fire.

For you,
the world.

The hurry
up!

A panic
call.

The I’m
better,

The I’m
nothing.

Bless the
touching you.

Bless the
fooling you.

Bless the
pick up,

the not knowing
What to do.

For you,
the world.

We
watch

Then turn
our heads

To stare
at the speed.

I
puncture.

You
puncture.

You
outlast.

Pinch your
throat

and say
Amen.

It’s always after a film when you say,
“Did you like it?” I think for a little while.
I think of the film as a whole, in chopped parts, and time
spent watching it that’s become time no longer.
It’s swimming now in a stream of phantom haze; less of a memory,
and more of the carbon imprint of an experience over.

We argue a lot if we liked it. I think I did, but over
the course of plenty moments, my mind goes restless: What if to say
I liked it somehow violates its completeness? I don’t trust memory
can tell me everything. A moment stretches, it happens a while;
then it's finished. Once immense now vapor; the thing no longer
the exact thing. And to access that again, to recall the past, plays with time.

After the film, you and I have a nice time.
I’d ask for this thousands of times over.
Running through street lights, shadows are cast: mine’s always longer.
You catch up, you giggle, there’s nothing to say.
We stay kinetic for a while.
The spools, the underpinnings, the machinations move, and create a memory.

The film was about a town that one day stopped speaking. One memory
of it astounds me most: The more time
passed, the clearer it became. It took a while,
but we finally knew why. But the credits rolled and it was over.
The audience vacated the room and it belonged to us. We didn’t say
anything. A respite emerged, and it grew longer.

You look at the shadow again, longer
than yours. I wish it was easy for me to access my memory,
and to access yours, too. I wish I could say,
“Did you like it?” and see you go back through time,
back before present turned into past, before it became over,
back when the vapor was the immense, and the blip the while.

While
longer,
still over.
Memory and
time.
“I liked it,” I say.

It took a while, but we have the memory.
We can access it longer than the merits of time.
And when it’s over, I’ll forever say.

He cut his hair, 21,
because at 13, he thought
it would be the end of the world to
don a skinhead. In the end, though,
his scalp looked okay.
It tickled his palm, touching it.
It felt like a baptism
to have been wrong.

/

Books with no pictures started
appealing to him, 14, when he read
about a highschooler who played tennis,
and a fellow highschooler who attempted suicide
because they got to him, stunned him.
This book was lost one day,
and it felt like the world ended.
A language was embedded there that
seemed to belong to him exclusively.
But it was time for it to be somebody else’s.
Someone needed to own it. Then lose it, too.
It needed passing-around, so that it could evolve.
It might return someday, all tattered and shopworn.
Will it feel the same?
Maybe. But perhaps it would be him who isn’t.

/

He imagines, 25, a life somewhere else.
He’s tired of punctuality and order.
The older he gets, the more
it seems control is mere illusion.
It terrifies him to accept that
at some point, he would have to jump.
He would have leave behind everything,
everyone. A major overhaul of the self
is bound to hurt orbiting objects, but it takes
an explosion, maybe, to begin like
It was the first time.

/

The pain of self-hatred
will never leave. It has distorted
the way he perceives, the way he accepts,
the way he welcomes. Hugs
will feel like something he has to do.
Tears won’t come at command.
Excess will seem ordinary.
Horrors will be regular intervals of stimulation.
That is the burden of not knowing
How to save yourself.

/

He will wrestle with time one day,
argue, bargain with it.
But it’s not something
that gives, only occurs.
Maybe he has to stop thinking
he needs to give.
Like time, maybe he has to
let himself occur.

The nature of man is one of impulse
and deceit. You can see it in his life
through time. But suppose,
merely suppose,
there was another way to measure
man’s life aside from time. Will his efforts to deceive
be seen as something else?
Will his impulses then come from somewhere else
more defined, less shapeless? Will his colorless workaday
life have overarching purpose?
It felt false the first time,
living life as a series of consequences following another,
like a story development in a newspaper.
It’s not about perspective.
Nor is it about reflection.
I’m looking, I’ve told you already,
for a way to look at life
besides cause and effect, A-B-C;
besides punishment following sin, sin following intent,
intent following motivation, and motivation
following need.

There could be another dimension
where all these, the spent life, make perfect sense.
Where the shapeless nausea of every day
form the pastiche of a more understood self. Where
the ***** nuances of error are highlighted, mingling
with the big abstract things.
But for now time is simply passing by.
Perhaps this is just right.
Perhaps the unknown must stay the unknown.
Because what does an answer give, really?

An average egg is around 40 to 60 grams.
That is the measurement. It is still an egg,
not the result of an egg, not the weight of an egg.
A measured egg, a reflected egg. An observed egg.
Time arrives and turns the egg into something else.
And at that moment, the first measurement suddenly becomes
false.

10:00 am. How
is it still dark?

In a forest.
Top bunk. The hint
of apocalypse

In his sleeping face, the
world away.

I come down the ladder,
foot landing light on
the floorboards.

Cocooned in a blanket
as I head toward the porch.

There’s no roof. Only screen doors,
wireframes, a platform. Can’t
call it a house yet.

To the lake I go to meet the Fish.
The second I get there, it shoots out from the water,

Telling me,
“your clock is broken.” Then it plops back in.
I leap and return to our “house.”

With military precision and speed, I reach the top bunk.
But in my rush, I stop and see

His strange face, still asleep.

I ****** the clock from the wall.
I wind it back to 7:00 am. Then the sun
Comes up.

I go to him.
I lay with him.

I put my hand over his belly,
feeling it falling and rising
as they replenish with air.

He begins tossing slowly.
And I hear the growl.
The sandpaper breath.

The thing you do
to get the morning out of you.

And on cue,
his eyes open, seeing me. There is a moment
when he doesn’t recognize me. Then it registers:

I am a person he knows. We are in bed.
It is morning. This is the only place we belong in.

There is nothing to worry about. Everything is correct.
The hierarchy of details worm their way in shortly thereafter:
Weather—sunny. Temperature—a bit cold. Feeling—hungry. Taste—dry.

Soon the wub wub wubs heard through his grogginess
dissolves into clearer, more articulate ambients.

With nothing out of place, finally,
he looks at me. I can see he knows me.
I can see he knows I’m obsessed with his skin.

I want to eat it. I want to wear it.
I want to burn it then inhale it.

My lips glide over his chest;
his knuckles rub my ribs,
like police dragging their batons along prison gates.

Finally, he asks the thing he always asks,
a question I always fear.

“What time is it?”

I say what I always say.
“The time is right.”

I feel like a failure today

Dancing around in my underwear



Open the fridge: junk food.

Don’t want to eat it. Take it, eat it anyway



Are you my conscience?

Tell me where my wrists are, then.



So it sounds like I’m

Stuck. I’m too good at life to feel depressed, but



Here it is, like a medal that finds itself on my neck every morning

Heavy on my ribcage.


It's either crippling sadness or abnormal, sudden fits of joy.

No balance yet. Furrowing in the middle is messy.



Zero friends. No boyfriend.

So bored. For the first time ever



I laughed while jerking off

Because what’s the point



Of pleasure.

Neverends, pleasure.



I open an unread book, then I

Close. Open another. Close again



Watch TV for a while

Wash my face



Look at old photographs of

My mother.



There’s this one. Me, a child.

My mouth singing to her hairbrush, pretending it's a mic.


Then another, me about to

Eat cake



And my mother

In work clothes



Smiling for the picture, cutting

The cake. I wonder how



Much she bought it for at the time.

I wonder



What people thought in the ‘90s

When they see a girl with short hair



Bringing cake home, holding

It by the string, suspended



Like a present.

It’s a nice photo.



It’s one of the nicest photos

I’ve seen of my mother.



Today the sun is out

For a while.



Maybe sunlight can help

Me feel anything



Other than dread.

I lust. I falter.



I put the junk food foils in the trash.

I feed the birds and, I praise



The Lord.

Sorry, lord



The breadth of your kingdom

Is lost in plain, bored me.

God is looking at you

asking, what are you up to?

I feel,

like I always have,

The stubble on his chin
Bristling my underbelly like grass blades.
My warm skin melts it into moth wings that eat
Our shared sweaters in the closet space
He vacated three years ago,
When it was just fine to shout his name
Across the hall to make sure he ate dinner already,
To make sure the tickets were by the lampshade,
That the headphones were borrowed by his friend early that morning

I remember,

like I always have,

The way steam forms automatically
On glass panels when heated,
The strange shape of your voice,
The two strange shapes of your voice:

The first for me, was lovelier than the other-
It was the voice who asked how my summer had been.
The soothing, corrosive voice, telling my ex to *******.
It was a voice found in the thin aisles between Peruvian priests
When they come together and think they haven’t sinned.

The other voice was thick, turbid, and button-nosed.
The way asterisks quickly fixed typographical errors.
The sultry, commonfolk, arcane voice that I love so much.
It was heresy.

I’ve heard gems form at the mouth of deep reserves, and I’d like to pretend
That’s where you are
That’s where you went
That’s where you are hiding
And time comes when you return
Gem or sans gem,
I’ll put your chin, like I always have,
On my underbelly.
Like a infant who deployed
Without cutting their placenta open

I can’t believe I’m interested in this guy who
Took a selfie. Inside a ******* art gallery. In
The bathroom, because what?
There was nothing to see?

I asked if he wanted to get out of there,
He did. We went out, to some
Uptown clearance shop.
I saw a book by Joan Rivers.

I took a picture of the book;
Just some of the many illusions of rescue.
These days, nobody wants
Joan Rivers in their lives. And Khaki cargo pants,
Or classic momma-did-this braids.

You, a boy the same age as mine,
Might love me. Almost. It matters,
Even if you don’t remember, the words you said
To me, about my specific beauty. I’m a toothpaste
For vegans; an AZERTY keyboard, or an arthouse film
Only three people will see, but I am worth seeing,
Even if I’m niche, boring, and particular.

Because you said, mumbling in
Your sleep, that I had eyes beneath my bangs,
Which were Licorice black, with
A baby blue pool at the center like a still vacuum.
I already loved you, but really,
What I loved was the way you talked about my
Flaws in illusory grandeurs, granting
My oafish, ungraceful heart and body accolades.

Did you just want to have ***? Probably not,
I mean, look at this whole situation – I’m
Not exactly one to feast eyes on. I’m a wreck,
A dumpling mash of chopped cardboard and
Dead skin. So no, it wasn’t feral.

The thing is, though
I have wanted this love all throughout my
Life, which isn’t a long time, considering the universe ends in
What? A few billion years? And I already feel that end.
Tomorrow, we’ll be 25. Then in five years, 30.
Then 10 years more, 40? The rest is just
A blurry jetsam of reduced memories, and looking
At photo albums online, wishing
Your friends were still alive. We are officially
Dead now, thanks.

The thing is, I feel like
It’s never gonna end when I’m with you,
When I’m ensconced in your consciousness.
The truth, with your name included in it,
Is better than my regular truth, which is
Just painfully boring.

I said this to you last week, and yet,
You dismissed it, saying that all I want
– All I want –
Is stimulus and biological response.
But ******* very much; I know my body;
I know what I ******* want.

I don't need you anyway.

There are other people who might want me
Down the line, I just haven’t met them yet.
I just haven’t learned enough social
Jostling, or romantic politics
To get myself served.

Then again, finding the words
“Requirement” and “champion of his own interests,”
As the foremost concepts of my profile
On your personal journal really ****** me up.
Sorry to have broken your privacy, sorry to have
Entered that forbidden dimension. I am just.
So. livid. That you don’t realize I’m a thousand instances
Of constants in the story you’re weaving, leaving me
Out everytime.

And the thing is, I just can’t do it.
You took a selfie, alone, in the bathroom
Of an art gallery, and I just waited, outside,
Super dark (because it was also an art show)
With other people in line.

When you came out, like
A precious, untamed neanderthal looking
For light outside the cave, I was happy
That I was a touchstone in the dark, horrible
Place of cluelessness we share. I am a blanket of comfort
In this closed space outdoors, in public,
Where monsters are more willing
To eat us alive.

When I saw that picture, though,
You, mustache, brows, bags under eyes,
Adorable. I knew you were happy being alone,
And that I was a side quest
That didn’t took much energy, so
It was fine not to ruffle some feathers.

I knew what I want
As we went home, I knew.

I clear my throat, because that
is the thing one has to do to not
sound Gay. The vocal cords will vibrate,
come awash with a thin liquid film to evince
the Tough Male Sound Format for five seconds, so
I can answer yes, and no, and say
how are you, how have you been, what’s your name to
anyone who does not know, to anyone
who must not find out. When I talk to myself,
It is heard, though: The high pitch, the twang, the flirtations.
It sounds honest when I’m alone, singing in the bathroom when I ****.
When people are with me, I keep it
like a password in my wallet.
So it knows two things:
Hide and unleash, and honestly? It is getting tired
of knowing it has two voices for each.
I sound like a ***. There’s a jump in my As,
a wider opening of the mouth when I do my As,
the teeth showing with As, the identifying lilt,
the **** **** **** of a laugh, the longer tail
of end-syllables, the Mms and Ohhs not enough grit:
All embedded sound files that can get me killed,
that can make me see that I haven’t really stepped out
of the closet; I just opened it, and I can close it each time I like,
each time I find necessary,
like the wallet where I keep my password, like my mouth when
I say keep the change in the borrowed voice of
an Alpha Dog Anymale.
I was inside of my home one time, though.
Clasped in my religion of boundaries.

And then it started raining,
water droplets pelting rooves and shingles and wooden planks,
clapping
on the boardwalk where plants sit.
Closed my eyes. Funny.
the rain sounded like a crackling fire.

I. Entrance

We gather at the quay.
I accuse you, you present the evidence disproving me.
It goes this way for some sampling of forever,
until one’s neck pops, loses vitals.
Clinging to muscle, marrow.

This wharf, an apocalypse story, has become
a trusty habitat. Only nights here.
Sometimes when the moon gets closer, I tap you.
Tell you,

‘How beautiful, how bigger.’

But you remind me:
bigger moons mean higher tides, up to our shins.
It becomes more difficult to wade, walk.

This is what I fell for, your eye for consequence.
What did you see in me?

We start coming apart soon, we hear it from miles away.
It nicks at us via vibrations and frequency,
tap water dripping, scuffing sounds beneath the floorboards.
I notify you immediately. The occurrences of anomaly that speak for us.
I encourage its meanderings and delay. You want to sit it out, too.

So we sit. In a time-tune tick-tock launch-dock gallivant.


II. Exit.

I am merely dangling from your rope, this is
The Image; tied to your *******.
We have managed to keep it that way.
Until I learned the pendulum effect and swung away.
Swung away.

Your purchasing power will work on a new, polished person, I’m sure.
I can’t, anymore.
You harvest me, but you don’t distill me.
I sleep in a silo, I talk to ghosts. They tattle tales—

History lessons


III. Escape Hatch

The sound, the nuisance, the indication, develops a raspier voice.
The vibrations eat on the pollen of our delay,
and at one point
we combust.
Alarms go off.
People get to work.
Normal sequences play out.
I think of you, then I can’t.
Soon you’re a phantom atom in a fog, diffusing slowly.

It will end with an engine dying.
In receipts with faded ink. Movie tickets.
A broken cinema chair will remind you of it.
But that’s fine.
Some say there will be nuclear waste
one has to dump somewhere, some vacuum without portals.

But we make portals.

I open a
box of insecurities and
add one
more.
The sound of my voice.
The boys in their Vans
have them fully-formed by now,
chests heaving, with splotches of hair
and the usual marks of transition.
I don’t, I can’t have those
things. I meet the requirements:
I am a boy, I’ve tried it all.

But in my bed at night, sometimes,
the ocean hums its wavelength
of monsters screaming, howling
for a rise up, to see more light.
a cloud formation gargles and spits out thunders.
A shiver reaction. Muffled. Loud. The strike
cracks the lips of our skies,
and it confesses some secrets about
its own insecurities; that there is no more
wonder in silence, that there is constant
stimulation and reduced pondering,
that there is a need to get rid
of the bad feeling.

It says,
when the thunder strikes, listen
up and listen long and hard,
because there is plenty of
chaos from your own making, but I offer
you unannounced, unpredictable,
disjointed disruptions of comfort, and it is
I who make you scared of uncertainty. It is I
who make you jealous about my loud voice,
my formed voice, my raspy, powerful voice,
not the boys in their Vans.

I hope you can forgive me.
When I said I am,
I meant I seem. And when I said
The Earth is round, I meant
It looked round. You don’t
Believe much in science. You think
There is no chemical response
when I tell you I’m depressed.
Sorry — I seem depressed.
Literally, a flower is in front of your face,
And you question it.
Here is a flower. No —
I hold what seems like a flower.
When an earthquake occurs, you’ll say,
Those movements felt like an earthquake.
It was, and is, an earthquake.
You can’t deduct truth from a situation
Using language. You can only be precise with it.
Oh, be. You hate be. To be, an anomaly
In communication. What is be? Assume a state?
Turn into another thing, far different from the
Previous version of yourself? Be concocts
An idea of an abstract future. Is. Are. Be. Was. Been.
It won’t matter much.
I’ll be leaving you.
You are an *******.
You don’t seem like one —
You are actually one.
I am stating that as a fact. Pontificating, if you will.
I am tired of your *******.

Sa dilim.
Minsan may kailangan magsalita.
Hindi, kahit yata konting kalabog.
Hilik? Dighay?
Utot? Basta may tunog.
Para hindi palaging hinala lang.
May nagmamasid, umaalingawngaw.
Palakad-lakad.
Saka na yung dapo. Haplos. Saka
Na yung pisil, yakap, kagat.
Kung may tunog, okay na.
Ay, andyan. Andyan pa rin pala.

I’ll never forget.
MiniStop, Intramuros.
2016?
I had long graduated, the mortarboard
now a naked head of hair. The gown
now dilapidated jeans, and an overfitting
shirt. The fancy shoes now knockoffs
caked with mud and grime.
The little store was hot. Small.
On walls: baby cockroaches took chances.
Trash bags dog-eared below snack concessions.
A brown goop spun, the tungsten overhead
made no noise. Was there music? Was there
some commentary about love or crudeness on the radio?

Always self-conscious, I retreat to
the inner racks. Magazines lay there vacuumed, unpurchased.
Outside the picture window, an afternoon beamed its sun kiss.
I think I didn’t end up buying anything, because before I could,
some college boys entered. At the instant, I turned to them
and felt curiously incensed. This odd duality of envy and sympathy.
I was you, I’m me now. I want you, I’m not you now.
To look that young yet mature, to have a schedule.
To saunter inside the store before, during, after class. The
choice to enter, to parade, to be so vital.

The college boys, their plackets, collars,
their image. These hot-blooded men finer than me, stronger
than me. All handsome, winsome, reckless and brimmed with
swagger. Me? I stood examining the force, the association.
We’re all merely similar men, and I’m at a similar age, and I can
be a similar form factor. Mimic their teflon skin; shed my stucco,
leatherbound flesh.

And as soon as I attempted to undermine their specificity,
I lost my own place. I found that there’s no connection at all.
Other than I know nothing about the boys,
and the boys know nothing of me.

I. You

An old friend.
He liked me until
I began forming opinions

about pizza.
Soap.

Then politics.

And, X-Factor.
I hated that show.

Because!

He ******* loved it.
Told me, ‘What’s wrong with you?
People just wanna feel good for a while.’

I said it ***** because
it prioritized deliberation
among all facets of performance.

‘You look into it much
more than necessary.’

I looked into everything.
How come you can grow a beard and I can’t?
What was your puberty like?
Did you know lithium-ion batteries degrade overtime?
Keith, don’t charge it beyond 80%. Always stop there.
Then, once a month, charge it to full capacity then

Drain. So it recalibrates.
That’s because batteries have memory.

I look into you.



II. Me

Here’s how to tell a story.
First, gather the facts.

Then,
transmit the feelings of those facts.

We met.
We fell hard.

And as if they’d respond, we
asked the stars what type of connection
they gave us. A pact. An alliance.
A lasting impression? A semblance.

It felt like a love we were free to define. But you
went away, I didn’t come running. Or I lost you
along the way when I hid you in my shirt pocket.
You must have fallen from a hole.

There were words in my pocket, too.
But they were bigger than you. I clung to them and pasted
them onto me like suntan. Scorch, scorch, you *******.

After transmitting the feelings, characters come in,
complaining they deserve better stories.

‘I got it.’ You do got it.

‘I just got in here.’ You’ve been in there for hours, man.

‘Why do I keep wanting you?’ I say the same thing. I don’t mean it.

It ends with an episode of X-Factor.
First, gather the facts.

Then, transmit the feelings of those facts.

But people just want to feel good for a while.

somewhere in there
sounds like a kid
searching for another permuta-
tion of himself, some
semblance of a would-be he won’t hate.
that’s me, I’ll never run out of pain.
this genteel ache,
this conclusion, has nothing to do with choice.
there are some who’re born broken,
those unobtrusives with chapped lips, glancing up for
drones that might pick them up
then throw them to another Earth,
those who like getting into strangers’ cars, laying their head on the
dashboard that’s softer than their bed.
they on cold nights like to whisper to God: ‘we
don’t like this experiment.’ we are more
than warning signs of civilization in peril.
dead and gone.
don’t refuse exploitation; that’s how we still feel useful.
don’t the characters in some books make rooves out of leaves? too
dogged to prioritize shelter, though. too
drugged to maintain another thing
doomed to crack and crumble. just never enough time.
days flow by like silk into a sawmill. In the
dark we try to see if we still stand on strong ground, or surface tension.

such is
the rhythm. feet damp with cakemud. in
darkness we see stoplights turn red, sometimes yellow.

There comes a time,
in the middle of your oppression,
when two men *******
isn’t **** anymore, but
an empowering thing
like Betadine.

Have you ever been kicked
by a bully in the groin?
a kiss should feel like this,
but only from a boy

I keep forgetting. There
was a commotion in 1995 when
a bird flew inside a house to
eat Chia. Then, a truck killed
A boy’s pet dog. Leaves flew all around,
and a cockroach kingdom
feted underneath our road, in
The labyrinthine sewer systems.

These are my questions: who records
the super intimate crumbs of human moments?
Do they even matter in the blip of time?
Where are the books that failed to sell?
When a woman looked at the painting, it moved her.
What happens to that painting when she dies?
Will it look back at the woman staring and remember
A profound solace?

The music of 1995 latches
to the memory of a given, limited
demographic. But they had other things going on, too

at the time

Humans similar to them collected their bill payments
and sold them meat and sandals.

A fabric of time
taut, invisible

It streamed down naked with pollen. People of 1995 inhaled and sneezed it.
Where did it go?

It’s 2017 now. A stranger with fireworks looks me in the eye.
What do you think of your birth year.
The people that came before, who moved and admired
the Systems, the Comforts. As if each time they spent
Looked like a wholly different world to the future observers.
Just that, **** happens — and there’s nothing
you can do about it.

But maybe there’s one thing.
We can talk about it, yeah. But only
Say it in words, mime that whole timespan in pictureform,
Or mimic some simulacrum in moving pictures.

Once a fossil, always so, emotions.

By design.

I.

If I wait by the mirror and
See my calves half-pressed underneath
My elbows, I’d turn into a portal. To warp
Headfirst into the frosted underbelly
Of sugary insults.

II.

You should expect her rage
Any moment now. She will stamp permanent
Burn marks across your entry points.
You will be barred from accessing
Yourself. The only choice at this point
Is to borrow a backup ghost of you.
You will live in a secondhand time. Lended
In after-phases. You will miss it: your hair,
Your old fur, your eyelids, your ****** fluids.
There’s a chance to return.

III.

I run my fingertips from clavicle,
Chest, belly button,
*****. I feel the head,
A tempered muscle.
I feel my neck cramp,
A choking sensation.
I raise my left leg, bring it to
My mouth, and fry the hair strands
With sweat. They can then become black chalk.
Valid chemicals to mark off
My genitals as a forbidden area.
No more search for the carnal.
No more lurching when
The tailspin sends firecrackers down the
Mouth to reduce itself. I am now
A humble biology, and I can
Be defined by you, any way that
You want me.

I press my ear up your belly,
I hear a falsetto of cities; a mechanic
Wrenching mugs.
I tap your sternum, I scratch it, too:
It sounds like a car running on an empty tank.

IV.

No surprise;
There’s no healing.
The disc of the world parades
Like a funeral.

V.

During siestas, the feet unlatches
From the limb, and they tread toward
Their own Mecca. By the time you
Wake up, they’re tethered back, having already been
Into the womb of their promised treaty.
They walk in rote patterns, taking
The integrated human into different places.
Then you wash it with soap and sunflower seeds,
And try to ***** it with a nail file. It is tortured, but also fulfilled.
They press into cotton, finally,
And they have served you.

VI.

The knee is a vault. See
How there’s no joint? See how
there’s just two huge bones weaved between
Sheets of muscle? A gate.
The knee is a cup when taken out,
A bunot spun from a palm tree.
What does it hold?

VII.

Some bed.

I kiss your eyes; they’re hot like the sun.
We ****; magic.
Now, in this aftermoment, we are well
Aware of our shared worth; the emptiness
Of one filled by the fullness of the other.
Or maybe it’s less
absolute than that?
Buck-naked, blankets doused in sweat, we
Attach, coil, and lock like Rubik pieces. I understand,
at that sheer momentum, the planetary involvement of
our animalistic response,
that *** can be priced.
But not this; not this time; not with
Us two scratching our calves with
Thickened skin.

Will you leave?
Will this recede?

VIII.

It will last
For others only.
I need more than that.
The hunger, the blessing
Of your carved upper lip,
The bouncy, fractured
Underpinnings of your rib. It is my
sole Purpose. I am born
For your pleasure, and you
To make me starve for
Feeling.
We transact. This is holy.
It has to be.

When we lose
There comes to be a reversal process;
a rapid prototype souped into bitten rhythm.
And then you collide, like
light particles melting film to form
some replica of an inner war. What is it
about trying; what does attempt do –
Pacify? Resize? Boost the morale
of twentysomethings clinging
to past participles like the sting of a bee?
What can you do to stop the ache
of feeling like ****? What is there to grasp
when no light appears?
But then a day comes.
It’s all fine, with friends, with music, with
anything other than self-flagellation.
At which point I fight the fight not to stay
a mere summary.