You’ve got rain falling down your cheek

You natural disaster

Dressed in a slow building thunder storm

You’re too strong to cry
So I know that those heavenly heaves
Are just tornadoes beating in your chest
Winds whipping away heartache

Know you can discard your debris here

Because when the smoke clears
And your coal corrupts the sunset

I can lay beneath you
Point out the stars on your back
Imagine that home is ******* to the right
And ******* down
From your left shoulder blade

Laugh for me a hallelujah of thunder
So I know how much longer this will last

I am helpless beneath you

Not enough sun in my smile to clear it away

I mean

I am glad the last time
Your cheeks were wet
It was raining

It’s a different kind of helpless

Because we accept it

And if we were children
It might have been easier

How telling you your rain tastes like tears
That won’t kiss away

Is like saying
Okay
You perfect storm
You natural disaster
You lungs filled with cold front
Breath the sweetest fog I can’t see your face through

You are only raining again

*And this too shall pass

I want to make love to you violently

I want to put my hands on you

I have been told that I am a good lover
Because of the way I use my hands

Forgive my fingerprints
I am still learning how to be gentle

And

I want to ******* like a crime scene

So much DNA evidence in the aftermath
We both come like ******

It is your hair
And skin
And sweat

In my nails
And teeth
And sheets

I have never done things gracefully

But I have learned that loving proper
Is not seen in how well you say grace
But is seen in your willingness to sit at the table

I will dine on you

Leave my sweet tooth in your naval

You can scar up my empty spots

Until this hardened tissue
Becomes the secret cuneiform of regret
For all the ways I didn’t love you
When I had the chance

Now’s my chance
To love you like a vagrant fire in a forest
When I was busy building homes
At the base of your volcano

These hands are practiced
in callous
in rough
in firm grip steel kettle fire without the wet rag

And I want to put them on you

Until none of this makes sense

Dear poet,

Dear ***** talker of some unrequited nasty,

Dear slow admirer,
Noticing my detail like a detective

Twist this halo into handcuffs
And love me already

Or don’t

I’m not real

And if I were

I’d hate to be her

You perfect pitch psalm sayer
Waxing generic

Quit the verbal dance

And dance with me

I am glad you know I’m not perfect

I am as faulty
As a topographical map of California

This body is chills

Is goosebumps

Is legs that were soft yesterday

Kiss them

Prickle your cheeks

Does your beard know the difference?

Do you?

Do I feel like scented sandpaper love notes
Still stained with a kiss?

I know I might just be squid ink to everyone else

But you dear poet

Dear detective
Black lighting my flaws into glowing beauty

Put your lips to my stains

They still taste like stains

You made them

You made me

You made me Dear Poet

Stop talking

And take me

1
Pete sets off the alarm as he walks in the doors
Tells me his new heart must be talking to the machines

He talks like Jimmy Stewart was from Boston
All elbows
While I am bruised ribs

Vera sounds like an airplane concession cart
With all the right liquor

Her faded blue walker
Drowns out her sighs

Maybe it’s her knees
I am not sure

2
Before our bodies blend
And I am part appliance

I want to love your sound

If your navel were a ****
I might turn your soft belly
Into a music box

So I could listen to your heart
Through your ribcage
After I bury my head there

Put me to sleep with your
Human sound

I want to hear the rust in your hips
With my head on your lap

The sweet sound of our lively decay

There is no better music
It is simple

Like my name
You can still say it while being punched
In the gut

You breathless barbarian

Just dance with me
Until it is all that we have

To know we’re still human

Dance like flames
Without the fear of swelling joints

Dance like waves trying to break the boardwalk

Dance for your future fake hips

Just dance

3
We link arms as we walk

Even through your jacket
I can tell how soft you are

I want to tell you about our footsteps
How when we are old
And we both have canes

When walking down hallways with linoleum floors
I know we will sound like the saddest horse

So I tell you that I will still love you
Even after our bodies are made into glue

You know me well enough by now
That this is just me being sweet

I kiss you goodbye
Listen to your car’s engine hum

It is so quiet
You might actually hear me sigh

When the sound of you driving away
Sounds like the horsepower of one sad horse
On his last three legs

Like
One sad old lady

Even if we’re just friends by then

I won’t forget
The sweet music of our decay

I know I’ve always said
I’d make a better puppy than a man

Run your fingers through my face fur again
You sweet demon

I always walk away like the ending of a bad movie
With a dusty roaded hitchhike thumb

Only I can drive myself home

I know I am so much smiles
And bad words

I like bad words
They feel good

So much passion in them
Like a Tourette’s prayer

Let me sing your song of profanity
Like a compulsive howl at the moon

I mean,
This poetry is so much sound

That I might make a better wind instrument
Than a man

My lungs feel like a one way accordion
When you smile because of me

You perfect pedestrian
Dressed in slow moving smoke signals

Push all my buttons again

It won’t matter what keys you press
I am always loud, obnoxious, bitter music

Off key like the ***** twang
Of my harmonica exhale

Nothing pretty comes from this

Even the music

I’ve read between these lines
Enough to rewrite paragraphs and pages

Each version
There’s still you in the middle

Still you at the end

And If I were a man

A good man

I’d pick up the confetti
That falls

All inked up bits of paper
From words I chewed and choked on

Trying to tell you

If I were a man

I’d love you like one

I know I’ve always said
I’d make a better puppy than a man

Run your fingers through my face fur again
You sweet demon

Touch my face

I always walk away like the ending of a bad movie
With a dusty roaded hitchhike thumb

Only I can drive myself home

I know I am so much smiles
And bad words

I like bad words
They feel good

So much passion in them
Like a Tourette’s prayer

Let me sing your song of profanity
Like a compulsive howl at the moon

Or we could *******
Or something

I dunno

I just feel more like an animal most days
More than I ever do a man

Touch my face again
With your rough love

And then I can walk away

Robert comes in and tells me about how a bunch of his classmates killed his teacher
It was a freak accident
He says her baby died too
His eyes are deep brown wells
That drain when he is confused

I don’t understand
So I call his school

It was raining
A truck carrying steel poles for construction
Lost one on the road

At the same time that she never saw it coming
She saw it coming

I ask him why he thought that
And he tells me that he goes to the Freak School
And freaks have accidents all the time

When steel meets steel
There is always a fire
Always a spark
Always pressure
Snapping
Grinding
Melting to make harder

The process of building is violent

When he is upset he smashes things
Maybe in the same way people who want to learn
Take things apart

It is in the putting back together
The we understand what it is to be whole

He smashes his own head through a wall
So I hold him violently
His head hits mine and my nose bleeds

Every fight I have ever been in
My nose has bled

With my arms around him
I slide his boots off with my feet

His feet are large
He lumbers with them

I hold him as still
As I can

He hits his head again
Maybe so someone will
Put it back together

He says
Why is Emily so mean to me?
Sisters are just supposed to love their brothers
Sisters are just supposed to love their brothers

I call him Bootsie
Tell him I love him
Though I am squeezing him so hard
He passes out

He apologizes two days later
I tell him
Brothers are always supposed to forgive their brothers

I toast to him in my head

Here’s to becoming whole