sorry I said
sorry—you were almost there
that night
and sorry—for the mess
my skin is woven
from straw
     & therefore
prone to
slow splitting
     & knives
in general

same you said
same that crowds
make you jumpy
     & disappointment
wraps you often
like an afghan
of fresh pelts
home to flies
     & putrid
     & ******
     & that
forebears a
partnership in
liquescence

sure we said
sure we can try
     & see
if tandem is best
or single is for the
better because
happy alone
     & happy
together are
commensurate
     & equivalent

     & sorry
I am so slow to
peer out a new
window at newly
spring'd trees
under a new blaze
of hot yellow light
     & not
feel like a slug
in a salt bath

It took until now
thin and mid 20s
to comprehend
that as a child I was
and as an adult
still very much am
spoiled

little childhood
traumas to mine
               no festering drama
               no shrouded mess

calm can bury like a
gravity blanket
               too hot or too cold
               I complain

I have never clawed
at my belly in hunger
felt my body
fall off in jeweled
pieces but I have
at times been
hungry

adulthood is a lake
blue black and endless
               rife with mudtraps
                    brimming with viperheads
                         scraping at the surface water

I am spoiled
I have not known pain
but I knew a person
whose eyes prodded
               like nails through jello
my insides and cut
tendrils of muscle
and delighted in the
stitching back
               the pushing of
                    needle through
                         meaty bits

some time after
I was grown
but flailing madly
as a comet poised
for landfall

a beetle in
a dust storm
a child with its
first scraped knee

my flesh yearns
for the needle
and for skin all
smooth and
scarred and
like the color of night
               singing
like the color of night
like sky like light
a rapturous blue

You're blocked;
you're bugged;
your eyes stay screaming
but I can't hear a thing.

Wash through me like knees through mud
not yet caked over by the heat of the
sun; like you're looking for something
you dropped and it may soon be entombed.

Look at me as you would a tree
caked in mud.
          Name me by my leaves, or
                    my sinewy limbs.

You're soft;
you're coarse;
the lines that puzzle your face
make frowning silly, and small.

          Name me Steinway like the
               piano. Or Pecan, like the
                    tree.

Find me forward, trudging through mud.

I can see solid ground but my branches
can't reach to touch the grass or its flowers
or to smell the rotten-ripe crushed leaves of
the pecan trees.

Stick me where I'm stuck,
save the mud. Give my leaves
some snow, some lightness,
cold. Give me color. Paint me
in storm clouds.

First we watched the fires dance
lapping at the old wood like
a parched dog's tongue to water

Second we bought vegetables from
a man and ate them without washing
or burning with fire

Next I can't remember but it was
so very long and sad and the things
that make people cry
made us cry

Without a compass I can't move
a new direction even if the wind
rips at my back and thrusts me
forward

I am the shadow of tree limbs
on bright mornings

Dark and soft and untouchable

don’t numb that brain silly boy

put it to good use



cleave in half

the line parsing

chest from

chin hair

        you’re a man when

        you say you are

save the streaks of palm-filth

dug-under nails broken

buried under dirtweight



what do you know of slippage

        —something  



****** as inch-thick glass

run through a filter

                        tossed aloft

                into

        the ceiling

fan  



I’m left for nothing of my efforts

it's dirt under the fingernail

        you can taste it

it's dirt


        taste it

I don't know the rules. If I go looking
for grace and find it, what will grace

be but penance for my past, a silver
sinew-thread wrapping 'round old
            wrongs, gray hair for the
                        fickle.

I've naught but want for sweet release
from this history. The bombs ignored,
            repeating in gramophone static
                        dripping stiff

as wet bamboo. I remember someone
once sang here, once strung together

chords so sweet they rang like peace-
bells beneath cloudless sky. They've
            rang the bell upon my jaw and
                        done no wrong.

It's not so much unlike one's curiously
cold reception at a funeral. The cold
            and rain ****** at the skin
                        during graveside hymnal.

As long as the earth continues
its stony breathing I will breathe.

That which I cannot help but do.
Stuck between boulders, I sing.

When it stops, I will shatter back
into gravity. Into quartz.

The history—you and me—
it's carved in sandstone
               
                   I've taken to asking
                            Scheherazade myself

As though capital-T time cones
into a chisel of wind with which
to strike its flattest face

                  There was a time I thought
                            you had taken to the idea
                   of leaving me and there
                            is naught to blame for
                   that but myself

There is little evidence to believe
in history on loop until you've again
been consumed by blindness and
fear and utterly sick of yourself

                    The one person you're with
                             every waking second

Just thinking can—at ***** times—
be an act of self-negation

You told me you loved me and
I felt it in your breath