though with due reverence
i kiss the graves of dead poets-

the breathing kind must disassemble an atom to gain a fleck of praise.

no i don’t like it when they say
“i let you hurt me”

try:

please
treat me to porridge filled with kerosene
and rebar,

i’ll let you
drag a razor across my gums

if you kiss those fickle carmine streaks
that dribble from my tongue every time
i find the audacity to speak to you,

tint me,
tint me with spit and break me into cannon fodder,
princess

i know that mirrors
and **** pipes are real,
cobwebs too.

right now i despise everything i’ve ever written

looking through the stories
of a million untold lives.

i feel my words
as hideous black mixtures;

foolish curves and games of association.

let me
paint them on your eyelids,

and build another sorry ideal
to taunt myself with in the twilight.

remind me that i’m not a nag
and i’ll build you a boat made of
frilled marigolds & thornless roses,

i’ll float us along
and talk about how

it upsets me
when i see pieces of my father
mix into basic interactions.

my fear will leave
to go sit next to triangles in heaven

and i’ll wait for a scarecrow from high school that i loved but never slept with,
i’ll wait and think of your eyes.

since meeting you
i’ve understood the impulse
inside of a grave-robbers mind

when he pitches his shovel
and looks at a mound
of soon to be upturned earth.

i’ve wanted to take every action potential
and place it in the wires on a telephone pole,

watch it spark and yell timber
as tree limbs give way
on the route to the roof
of the home that i slept in
when i knew how to sleep;

ill wake to the sound
of the ceiling caving in

just to think it was creaks on the stairs
during christmas day morning-

i’ll look up at leaking pipes
peaking from the insulation

and ask them for presents and chocolate.

to undo the part of myself

curled as thin twine on her finger-
that pallid tissue paper skin
wrapping a network of crimson lighting.

veins turn violet
underneath layers of that kind...
my words cannot excavate every color.

yes your eyes were
a freshly struck match;
brief sight before returning
to cold outlines of breath in the dark.

i’m returned to their glow
every time i wish
i could isolate a melody
that feathers my cheek

(scribble the chords on a napkin

for when you get messy)

you know i’m deaf,
but my eardrums still quake
at the sound of falling pins
and dancing angels.

4 A.M My Lai;

in the lowlight
colors move off my skin at different speeds-

i’ll smear them into filth,
a vignette
plastered and permanent,

and beg
for my face to be scanned like a barcode.

no more ligands
uptakes or exchanges,

just a wall,

a wall erected inside of me,
that rejects all attempts of a raze.