there was a time when my words were more than
please
and there was a time when you cared.

i taught you to care, darling, i taught you myself
and i'm small and i'm broken and i've ripped the world into chasms but i always thought
that you could bring me redemption
if i taught you

but i taught
you the wrong
thing.

you followed my example and you
lied;
you learnt it all from me,
how to laugh, how to cry, how to eat until you’re sick and how to
move inside another like you’re inseparable
and we fit so seamlessly i forgot that i was teaching you
how to forget yourself
because you're not you anymore, you're what
i made you

and wherever god is
he's jealous of us for loving so endlessly.

i've always worshipped you
with my heart, my battered and weary soul,
my mouth covering every blessed inch
of your borrowed skin

you've been my god for a long time but
now
you're not you
and i'm worshipping a
memory.

everything there is
to say is said already
but still we will write

because these fixed forms
are more than what they appear
to be; not constraint

but freedom in light
of your hand in mine, making
me forget my name

your heart in mine that
beats in time with the cadence
of these ancient words

we claim as our own.
kiss me poetically,
forget what we've known.

this is not poetry.
this is the sound a heart makes when you swallow it whole
this is the taste of bile in your mouth
this is saccharine-sweet cancer
(all razor-edge smiles that catch to bleed you dry)
this is the crack of your spine
this is the ars(c)enic route to hell
this is the twist of your lips when you hold in your sobs
this is a love song in a language you'll never understand
this is a funeral dirge for happiness
this is your blood, or is it mine
this is your heart, or is it mine
this is where we join
forces this is my rib cage plucked out to leave my
chest unprotected this is your cue
to leave me this is a swimming pool of viscera just
like you always wanted this is the coffee gone cold this is
your love grown old and this is
not poetry
this is your requiem.

you stopped caring about yourself around the same time that
she stopped fighting, which is
to say circa 1977, when president
jimmy carter asked you to turn down your heat, wear
a sweater, and you still trusted that things could change
so you wore two and shut your heat
off. she was no longer the beauty you married circa 1960, which is
to say she let herself go, which is to
say that you'd never loved her more.

now you're dead and she doesn't even
know it, but here i am getting ahead of myself again
and here you are hiding in the ground. i'm asking you to wake
up and you tell me no for the first time. your eyes stay shut.
now you're dead.

you finally gave up on keeping her home circa
2011, and you institutionalized her, and nothing had ever
hurt more. you stayed home alone. you
went to church. you visited her every day, and you prayed,
and nothing ever changed.

you went to the doctor. you died. you got cancer.
those aren't in the right order but you know
the story by
now. you can sort it
out.

you left me and i never even wrote that thank-you card that i thought about
for years, but i promise, i thought about it. i thought about
you.

here she is alone, here she is
trapped in her mind, here she is forgetting
you while you love her, here you are
six feet under, you silly goose. come home, we miss
you. come home, there's kolbas and solina and anything you
want. come home and maybe she'll remember
and maybe she won't
and maybe she's been dead since circa 1990
and maybe it's your turn now.

what's worse than the cancer - "everywhere",
as they put it, was the look on your
face when you told us about your 52nd anniversary. you
gave her a card and she looked at it for a moment, then handed it back to
you. they say she doesn't communicate with anyone anymore.
i think it's killing both of you.

i never wrote you a thank-you
note. i wrote you a eulogy three weeks before
you died. i brought cake but you're dead,
i cried for a week but you're dead.
i'm still crying. you're still dead.

i wonder if she remembers you at all.

Black lungs, bright eyes.
You are my only addiction and I inhale you into
my blood
stream

.
Leave me in the wreckage and I
will sing of you forever. Take me with you and
I will only slit your throat.

I’m praying for Pangaea so I can run to the ends of the earth for you. Mixed signals are cancerous so I swallow yours down to keep you safe. Sure, souls like fire in my bloodstream burn on the way out but they’re streaming for you into this chest cavity missing a heart, my own Judas, betrayed me for your eyes. Even saints can be lost causes, darling, but you’re neither. You’re a superhero, all technicolour capes and dollar-store disguises and you’d think I’m the damsel in distress but I’m your nemesis. Why else do you think I’m burning Earth to the ground, for my own perverse enjoyment? I’m pulling your hair, putting tacks on your seat because I’m too afraid to say I love you, which is a truth, which is a bomb to defuse before our bed becomes ground zero. I laugh at your jokes and offer myself up for slaughter but you’re not biting so I’m walking home in the snow, alone. I’m cold, I’m frozen. I’ve gone home to a Heaven of ice, heads in the freezer like a good luck charm, your words carved into my palms so I won’t forget. Back to the lab, back to the drawing board. Maybe I’ll close the warplans for tonight.
I know you belong to her but I’m jealous, baby, I’m so jealous. I’ll tell you to bow down, defer, sing a hallelujah to lull me to sleep before I remember how much it hurts to love you. And tomorrow when you’re gone I’ll plan death: hell, maybe the world’s. You might love me then. I’m not too hopeful.

i hope the bullet
that kissed your brain, dear
brother, was kinder to you
than i.