i.

When will I hold a place on your list?

Names that are worth something
- a few I've never even heard before -
sit like pretty little
teacups
all in a row,
all holding their breath,
all minding their own business,
until something comes along and
ignites their genius.

(And I want a piece of it.)

I want to see my name on your list,
I want to feel like everything
I think is worth something
and I am worth something
and I somewhere behind my eyes, I suppose I know I am, but I'd like the confirmation, and if you'd be so kind as to please put my name down on
that list of yours
I'd be ever-so-grateful,

so sir,
when will I hold a place on your list?

ii.

Your decisive opinion of these
fictional scribbles
is like a
black-and-white
silent
stop-motion
film that I was never asked to expose.

And when I did,
(sir, your mind is like gravy)
I knew that you'd thicken with flour and
and overrun my potatoes, and
I've realized that dinner isn't worth ruining for you,
and besides,
this film is nothing more than a
tally of my faults.

One, two, three.

Tick-tock.

Beep.

My bed was built beneath

whirlwind puzzles
and bow-tied time,
pulsing menageries
and lopsided rhymes;
circles and rainbows
and dark-alley’d dreams,
suns that explode
beneath smoothed-over seams.

But between the cracks
of the never-ending skyline
live shadows and demons
and sewage-filled pipelines.

There are toy-soldier boys
carrying small metal knives,
their sharp-tongued solutions
highlight well-thought-out lies;
and the bubble-gum girl armies
that ride into the night
spread pink viscous poison
and dance out of sight.

These spectacular visions
linger over my head,
with too-full rainbows
and ship-wrecked dread;
every highlighted secret
connects the stars of a time
where each piece of the whole
was malleable and mine.

She's spinning
swirling
cyclic dancing
laughing as she's undermining
all her chances
slip through her hands and
she's still smile -
smiling.

Hunting
hurting
rhythmic burning
up and under iron churning
she sees hell
too far to tell
and she's still smile -
smiling.

Loving
drugging
pear tree smuggling
through the leaves
and water bubbling
and lying there
above the ground
floating
holding
not a sound
she tips up
her head on hold
and she's still smile -
smiling.

Plucking
clucking
back-woods *******
but she's too gone
to know it's wrong
her fight is lost
the stars are crossed
and she's still smile -
smiling.

He's lost in a way that can only be seen through
the holes in his coat,
the grit in his verse
(the melody of the blood in his veins).

He's overused
and underpaid
and he has a baby girl
and she's -

beautiful.

She fits into the cradle of his arms
as if he made her himself
(he did),
but he can't give her much,
only the love in his bones
and the time on his hands,
and to live knowing there is nothing more he can give
breaks him
like a thousand-year-old riddle
torn apart by simple science.
She is the gravitational constant
keeping him knee-deep in dirt,
feet so firmly on the ground
that he has no space in his heart
to have his head in the clouds;
she is the fuel at the center of his aging star
(we are all made of it).

He's lost in a way that can't be
found on a map or with directions.
He is a bird with a pen
(nothing more),
convincing the world
he's a father and
proving it with
the words in his love
and the silver glinting like
spoons in a soup kitchen
against the velvet of his pupils.

Take a word.

Take any word,
write it backwards,
say it with a smirk.
Take a word and then
take another.
Roll them across your constellations,
tickle them 'til they squeal and surrender;
take your words and breathe them,
against them,
through them,
with them.

Take a word and peel it apart.
See if it floats.
Unravel its nucleus and strip it of charge.
Pound on its door at three a.m.,
yell its name against the grain,
don't stop until it comes out and steps on you.
Take a word and marry it.

Take a word and make it bold.
Sleep with it on a drunken Tuesday;
leave before it wakes up.
Handle it differently.
Write poems about it,
write essays that don't fit,
write like words are all that matter.
Use few.
Use far more than you could ever possibly need to explain what you're trying to say.

Take a word and beat it to death,
nurse it back to health.
Show it to your friends,
hide it in your freckles,
live like it's not judging your movement.

Take a word and never give it back.
Take it hostage,
a pet for a game you haven't named yet.

Take your words and coax them into order,
let them fall apart.
Rearrange and unscramble your words,
forget about their meanings.
Use them for good and evil,
a sword to smite ignorance.

(But for the love of god,
speak up.)

He would’ve explained how it was still raining,
near dusk one evening, the sky a bright shimmering pink.
The fog made things seem hollow and unattached,
his life was still a constellation of possibilities.
You could let your hair grow, he said.
Some things you can feel.

He would’ve explained how it was still raining,
leaning forward, head down,
wading across the field to the river
and then turning and wading back.

He would’ve explained how it was still raining
as the sky went from pink to purple,
across that dotted line between two different worlds,
a place where your life exists before you’ve lived it.
The vapors **** you in.

He would’ve explained how it was still raining;
he should’ve taken one look and headed for higher ground.
The rain was the war and you had to fight it,
no time for sorting through options, no thinking at all.
He remembered trying to crawl towards the screaming,
and the bright pink sky, and the war, and courage.
You come over clean and you get *****.
He was part of the waste.

Outside, a soft violet light was spreading out across the eastern hillsides.