i am not dumb
i could read before i could walk but i don't remember when i talked, or what i said.
the words always tangle
they tangle in my ears and my mouth and they ooze down through my bones to my lungs
make it hard to breathe and see
i am not dumb
i know your bluey veins and your callous knuckles. i know your eyes are green and i have never seen them, not ever. but i saw your hand twitch, just once, next to you
myoclonic ****
like you're falling asleep

i feel fear as a rule,
it grows in my ****** like a perennial,
baby's breath if you're lucky
i crawl because i feel fear as a rule
i can feel the weight of my blood and
it pulls my viscera to the ground (all the way to my grave)
all my limbs contort and they abandon me.
the smell of cherries and beer draws me to the kitchen and she draws me out and upstairs
it is so strange to me to occupy such space
why have i grown if i am a child?
the smell of cherries and beer draws me to the kitchen
she draws me out, upstairs, kissing, pulling hair, again
again. again. again.
again as a rule

my limbs are cold and purple and i ache for the past;
they will be rosy soon (if it turns out to be raynaud's in the end)
cairo used to be a boom town, she said; it ain't anymore,
if we're talking about the same place
i miss the waiter in kentucky
he couldn't have been more than fifteen
someday he'll buy me a house

pull on my teeth, press my tongue, make me *****

baptism recurs as trauma, angels watch me
seize
i have begun to pray again
i may feel cold but i am so warm
in my throat and bones, i have a fever
by the time my vagus nerve grew up my lungs were so full i found it impossible to scream
give me love without evasion and equivocation.
no one will just speak to me anymore

peril is not what i fear, i fear your death at such a scintilla of contentment
how can i love you for such distorted exaltation, if it is love at all
she has sunned only her heart, a weathered inamorata of gangrenous pallor
timid and stark naked in the swirling moonlight, blood viscous and ripe to drink, she speaks at last:
i cannot be your lover.
in retrospect, the affair was a whim; lithe but so bitter
love is not divine will, but tenacious valor
as i have learned
as anything

have i disrupted your cadence?

i am so dizzy and i must have vertigo
the harem girls tire me out real nice
it's all good and well in the south until someone goes and cuts their hair
please come with me
am i as you wish me to be?
our time is so short and i must be dreaming
give me some tylenol or something
the more i move the less i can
please come with me? please come with me and cuts their hair she said

from what we have heard she is senile
she will smile and the sun will rise.
take her out to pink pasture, do not heed her caveat,
from what we have heard she is senile and
it is all for naught.
the war did her in, she still bathes there,
in the clouds,
in the tepid spring of father's rigorwater
the dewdrops are full of gas, they must have made her this way
(or, retrospectively, the bombs)
the old war did her in
the sun is risen over pink pasture and i can hear her seizure scream
the clear air fills with smoke and the curtain closes.