the sign of our impending decline
is all conjuring conjecture and magic
- tricks, you might say, an illusion

but there's nothing ephemeral here:
the mental composition of goodbyes,
congenial farewells without tears

we could sleep in separate beds
without being tied together,
bound up in proximity

the real magician's play here
is that we still pretend to worry,
weigh and measure and provoke

failing that, this house of cards
comes drifting down, soft-sweet
sad too, the sadness of warning

take caution, take care, look!
see here's a rabbit in my hat,
another 'i love you' in the dark

in two days there will be eight -
no. nine children spilling in
and out
back in again.

maybe they’ll build a snowman
in our backyard, this yard
that is our own we have it
we claim it we want it
it’s ours alright

in two days the snow might have
melted. gone. vanished.
in two days we’ll see
our house full
of people, my people,
not really our people
not really mine

I did leave them.
they were mine, though
back then when there wasn’t any our
no our house our yard our life
family, this one, ours.

back then I yelled
washed dressed
hugged ignored
tugged at

fit into the sum total
fact of ten children,
two parents,
assorted pets,
God.

oh we came here and we kept on going
and once we said stop
but we don't stop
we keep going through fall
and fall in lima is just grey turning into gold

and then it's day and we're not day livers but we're trying
and this is almost over but
it ends then
the surviving
the come with me
the you or him

and the sky turns azul or amarillo
truth is we're just going on
and we can do it now
together
juntos
or not at all

I will: sink my teeth into your
skin, I will eat you up, I will
shiver and shudder and find
my tongue on your neck,
licking.

Loginquitas*:
distance remoteness isolation;
separated from others.

No specification about how it is,
what it is,
if it comes as a wall between
or only a space, unrightfully empty.

Isolation indicates past ongoing,
a thing not just temporary,
but potentially permanent,
a sentence like prison solitary,
like a state of celibacy,
a vow of silence given under duress.

Remoteness means far away,
not just a length of earth -
an Everest of longing,
ice shifting underfoot and when the footing goes,
down another interminable edge,
there the freeze into narrow sleep.

Distance like roads in the Midwest,
seeing for hundreds of miles,
the knowing discomfort, the steady hunger,
a fact that is this:
lost, interminably lost, losted after.

Separated from others is the afterthought,
the side effect, the symptom-sick,
visible, wriggling nakedly.
Worm-like, burrowed into itself.

Sky soft-curling on the lines that matter, pale slicing down,
I find my front door and try the key.
Until I get it right, breath blown out relief powered, quiet though, because they're asleep.

These boys here, speaking branching words meant to welcome. The girlfriend, her name slanting from my reach.

I lock the door. Keys crush, hushed, silent in hand against the dark, the questioning downgoing, the black stairs. Downstairs finally my door is solid, wooden, and the doorknob slivers sound into the empty when I go in.

Still. Sound is my breath, heavy in my throat. Hungering for unquiet lungs.

Light raps at my window and I beg a reprieve, tongue my lip where I cut it coppery and accidental.
If I fall asleep now I dream up lost, loved, longed after, but if I don't sleep I won't find it at all, not here.

So my eyes go ticking down, languid. Light looks on.

waiting for a connection that never comes hard
you remember that sleep is just like forgetting
and not even the tenderest hearts keep hurting
once they stop their wide awake circles

morning won't dawn when it comes today
even light has regrets placid and useless
and morning always always comes
muted muting snow grey to abide

here, in this place, in this light,
in this laden love

I don't get you
It's been said.
(By you.)
Your music poem heroic myth combos;
I don't got 'em in me according to you so ****

Pride is what I've got as far as:
Loving you, possessing you, longing you forever and ever and always
Faithing this: I get you and no one else can ever more, just me.

Me wrong: ha!
But apparently maybe
So call me
Or don't cause we sleep together;
no call needed bby

Speak instead so
I can scratch your dreams;
I'mma ******* Count of Monte Cristo type here,
All useless revenge
Offensive retreats I pretend are defense;
therefore, QED legitimate.

A chess player bluff but no
I'm not actually that fancy
I don't fence cause my wrist is ******
don’t play chess because it will not be just any another opponent, it will be my Papa, teaching me the best ways to beat him, in the end.
don’t conjugate Latin anymore,
(she died, the woman who whispered there is a way out of radical christianity and heterosexuality but more importantly taught Latin precisely, inspiring.)
I cheated on the last test anyway so **** that fake fact.

So I just been hoarding meanness
up down,
Left and right, inside out

(In other words: ******)

Sorrow isn't a thing we people make up but we sure spend a lot of time manufacturing it for each other it seems like, and I don't want to be good at doing this.

It doesn't make me tough
Or better
Or mas yours
Or honest or what I'm afraid you think I am:

A wilted desert thing
Secreting thorns first
Exploding them out in every direction
Unpredictably
Unblooming into a prickled seeding creature
nonetheless virile vibrant,
Hungering but not starved

Like home this summer,
The summer you wouldn't believe
If I told you how green it all was down I-25;
(ours and also you and Maria's but we count more than you and she cause she doesn't glow anymore who knows why I wish she would because she is the best poetry you have let out so far just opinion here.)

But so.
Unbelievable.
Like a desert dreamt itself into meadows and unknown greens that you know better words for than I do.

You missed this.

You hate missing things
Pretend they were never there.

You just want to turn longing into creation,
So you're the best at survival
And transforming and I don't want to just wilt out on you, I want to become a cactus that can be anywhere and all where
But I won’t pretend it wasn’t real because I was there and Santa Fe broke my heart and you can  forget all you want but that is fact and nothing changes it even though I can bear it, bore it all summer, and then broke a bunch of your bundles of trust this fall and now you can have reasons for what I've done wrong and I wont argue against the facts.

But I am not incapable or lazy or insane or crazy. I do not need men to tell me I'm bad with money when the only times I am is when I am wrapped into their lives. I do not need to be mistrusted when I know what I know and have done what I have done and do not try to reconcile the two.

Reconciliation? Personal analysis? **** that. All I had to know is that here we wouldn't birth fights about who did what wrong, and that I, I am not alone in this world.

P.S. Why am I the one left to keep us safe if you don't trust me enough to believe me when I say your child could be mine one day and I, I would not keep silent watches, build walls with peepholes. Keep believing it, though. Cause I'm the only one in on the secret who hasn't feared for a child's life around you yet. and I'd bet you any amount that every single other person has had that moment of terror. So figure out who it is you want on your side, kid.
( Don't leave yourself alone in this world. )

Your words have all dried up
and your voice seems off -
dry and cracked,    or
swollen and choked where
your heart imploded
in

The wicker chair on the porch
it’s bent
the leg that is
bent sort of brokenly in
which reminds her of
inversions,
how they turned in
and found darkness,
ineffability,
space.

We danced into a desert town,
Decided to stay all summer and breathe in smoke
Instead of looking for the mountains,
Instead of finding a skyline worth lunging for.

When I left I said don’t wait I’ll be back
And you said dance right back over here
My feet felt like oars, weighted, endlessly mobile.
Waterless.

Here’s a question.
What are oars in a desert?

Here’s a question.
Who goes dancing without a place to dance to?

the sidewalks are lit up,
sunbright, enough to look away,
into merciful shade

I keep thinking I oughta be using
this time to say goodbye,
soak in Santa Fe, burn with her

if this is my last home
if this is the summer of loss,
I should let it sink under my skin

but I dry out in the sun,
and browning isn't appealing
when I'm outside myself,
beside myself already

We the transforming people stay up
   too late on this and that;
   we'll take just one,
   we have a plan
   this is how it works

But then we change our minds
   like we knew we would,
   take the just one more and
   go go go out of the late nights
    and out into the glaring sun

And then again and again,
   wake up and ache,
   our muscles reminding us
   we have to let them
   breathe slow sometimes

Thinned out, when we eat
   we find that we've forgotten how
   and we've forgotten how to feel
   the taste of genius without sweet
    running down our throats and we've
      forgotten how to stay
stagnant, s t i l l.

Falling feels like slingshotting your body from metal birds
At colored patches, verdant, oceanic, supposed Earth
That comes so slowly towards you, at fifteen thousand feet
That falling feels like flying then, like floating,
Like dirt is fiction and what you know are only facts

Fact: your eyes were never made to be binoculars
You can’t make them focus on something so far away,
Can’t make them telegraph up the brainwires,
Shouting incomprehensibly about fear

It’s too far. They won’t do it. Sky divers call this distance illusion.
I call it sanity when an ending comes howling across the sightline,
Unavoidable, solid, unfeared
Inside your head is the lie that you aren’t really that far,
That this distance is tame space,
That you are impossible and airborne

atlantic is a stupid word.
it doesn’t mean anything.
it’s just a space between,
a tangible obstacle.
unlike empty words like:
we are always impossible.