We are brutally beautiful
We are
The soft red glow of a nuclear sunset
Pooling like blood
From wounds
Like that one time I cut my forearms open

Oh so that’s what a heartbeat looks like

It is sign language after a fist fight
When I’m so angry I can’t speak
So with my hands I tell you
No one should talk to you that way

It is the assbackwards way we allow ourselves to heal

For instance
When I had cancer
My parents took me to church when they could
Asked people to pray for me
And I thought drinking holy water might help me

It only made me sick
And I spent three days in the hospital

This life is *****
It is ugly

We are ugly
Like
Crime scene photos of bathtub suicides
Shortcutting life
And still getting into heaven

How after so many years
Just to make things interesting
Peter takes bribes now

And we are beautiful
Brutally beautiful
Endearing in our passion
Because it’s just a little too conscious to be animal
But we try

It is shotgunning a dove
And the rain of feathers
Even when damp with blood they are still soft

I wanna hold you tightly
You coarse cut angel
Your jagged edges rub
But neither of us wants to fall asleep alone

We will never be perfect
But we were supposed to be

Remember that
When your ugly rears its head
Like a mental mirror showing you only the things you notice about yourself
Know
nobody sees you the way you see yourself

Just remember
To smile more
And laugh when things are funny
Make love when you can

These things are good for you
Balance out the brutal
Because you

Are brutally beautiful

He is red
Flakes of skin breaking away from his arms and face
He smiles stretching the cigarette stain on his white mustache

You young people have got it all wrong

Let me tell you a story
Don’t worry it’s a funny story

He looks behind him to make sure he can soak up my time
I tell the cashier to stay and check if anybody comes

One time there was this really dumb bird
Had a nice beard like yours
Real busy guy
And he waited til winter to fly south

If this story is about me I’m not sure

Some of us work real hard
And still manage to justify that we have nothing

I wonder if he knows I can see the boogers in his nose

The bird finally took off for home
But it began to rain
He kept flying
Then it started to hail
The hail beat his wings
It was getting hard to flap
His body began to shiver

He smiles again
It makes his lips crack and bleed a little
Underneath the stretch of yellow
He exhales and his breath smells sweetly of beer

It began to snow
Lightly at first
Though it was cold it was easier to fly
But the snow fell thicker
It coated his body
His heart slowed
He began to feel really tired
He started to descend
He was dying

He places a hand on mine for a moment
His is comfortably rough
Shovel callous rough
Cinderblock stack rough

If that touch was for me or him
I’m not sure

All these stories are just ways we beg people to stay
This poetry is just a way to keep you here
Touch you with my rough and tremble
So you can look at my cracked broken and ******
A little longer

The bird kept falling
Until he hit the earth
And you know where he landed?
Right in a big cow patty
But the warmth of the fresh ****
Melted the snow
Gave him his life back
So he rolled around in it and began to sing
He sang and sang and sang
And a hawk heard the singing
It was winter
The hawk was hungry
And he ate that bird with the nice beard

He slaps the counter separating us
Eyes widen to mounds of earth
Two big fat piles of cow **** staring at me and smiling

I don’t feel like laughing

And the moral of that story young man
Is if you’re covered in **** and somehow happy
Keep your mouth shut

These stories are just reasons
And I don’t feel like laughing

I laugh anyway

It was like the time our cat died
And we buried it in a shoebox
And made a wind chime out of the bell
Carved her name in the tree we buried her under
Just says Beans

I imagine this confuses the family who now lives there

Coffins shouldn't exist for things that small

I asked a friend to sew you a quilt out of her clothes
So you still might know her warmth

Babies grow fast
So much clothes from the shower
It will be a big quilt

Your belly still a bulb of life bursting
But hollow
In thick black sharpie you wrote
                MORGUE
Just above your belly button

You maker of life
Giver of the good stuff
Holder of the second heartbeat

You can only make good things
Your body is a mess
Genuinely ugly on the inside
But it creates good things

Remind it of that
When it rebukes its purpose
And lets go

The next one will stay

Because there shouldn’t be coffins
For things that small

You said I could be Uncle Jon
I have never been given that
I’m not allowed to see my own nephews
Because of how the past eats us

The past is a morgue
Of heartbreak festering

And forgiveness is not a time machine
Set to 10 minutes before regret kicked in

When my own children bury me
I hope they do something with what I leave behind
So I know that I actually have something worth
Leaving behind

You did not leave her behind
Even though you named her
Ellie
Elizabeth
But we knew it would be Ellie
She is not how you will be remembered

You do not make mistakes
You make life
In everything you do
As long as you are living

You make life

So when your body forgets this

Remind it

With breath
And tears
And sleepless nights
And anger
And happiness

Make life

I am sorry for ruining all vaginas for you
I hope you can recover eventually
She said

I hate to burst your **** bubble
But I’ve slid some lies between your thighs
When howling at your moon wasn’t so much praise
As it was longing for a change of ***** scenery

People change?

How I feel right now
is like when one time I was sick
And my parents recorded a show I watched
so I could watch it later
And at the end of the show
there was a number for a contest to go to space camp

I called that number
It was disconnected
I always find out the important stuff
A little late

I cried that day

I just wanted to go to space camp

And I just wanted someone to love me like a black hole
A warm black hole to put all my love into
**** me in and fix me like there’s no turning back
I mean in the darkness of space
They all look the same
All yank at you turbulent and fiery head rush passion

I mean we all love the same

So I am sorry I overshot your Venus
To crash land in Uranus
A semi-purposeful curious passion

You coulda yelled ****
We felt like ****
When we walked away

Parts of me have always been missing
And I tried to fill the gaps with you
Problem is when you might be gay and are fighting it
Your closet is a ******

Not your fault your beard looked funny on my ****
You can’t wear a person like an accessory
I can’t slap her like masculinity till I feel straight again
Some things aren’t right
I’m not right
And you are so messed up now
Because you have this superpower to turn men gay

You can’t turn men gay
You can only remind them of the pain that lies
In lying to themselves when they know
None of this feels right

None of it will

Dear former lover
Former black hole body
Former holder of my confusion
And filler of my empty spots

I ****** up by ******* you

I ****** up

This is a true story of ******’s ally

The old man carried a cello and a stool
Bullets divided wind
So many straight lines he could see them like sheet music

He sat the stool down in the middle of the street
Held his cello
And played under the gunshots
Until everything was quiet

And in the outdoor acoustics
Made by apartment buildings and the morning cold
He played a fifteen minute rendition of heartache
On a cello tuned to the key of thunder

His high notes were so much screaming
And the deep low notes bellowed his hunger
It was the simple sound of savagery
When people needed another way to know what pain sounds like

They could hear it in the way that the strings
Absorbed the rust from his arthritic fingertips
Scraping the sound of struggle

It was the most painfully beautiful music
He played to the soft continuous metronome click of reloading
Beauty like a rose that dies in the hair of a girl
Whose own rose is a blooming ****** chest wound

Thought maybe he could replant her
Like the earth might give her back

Anything plucked from the root dies shortly after
He played for her
He played for courage
He played like a prayer to be shot doing what he loved

We all wanna die doing what we love

She was shot picking roses

He played cello
On a playground of bullets
A song that begged
**** me

Where is your god now?
When all you wanted was to be a casualty of love and music

He finished
Beads of sweat like ***** diamonds
As the morning sun mocked him for living another day

Some of us get to walk away from this
Without a single scar
Even if we wanted one

He walked away

And shortly after

The bullets began to do what bullets do
When they pierce flesh

This is a true story of ******’s ally

The old man carried a cello and a stool
Bullets divided wind
So many straight lines he could see them like sheet music

He sat the stool down in the middle of the street
Held his cello
And played under the gunshots
Until everything was quiet

And in the outdoor acoustics
Made by apartment buildings and the morning cold
He played a fifteen minute rendition of heartache
On a cello tuned to the key of thunder

His high notes were so much screaming
And the deep low notes bellowed his hunger
It was the simple sound of savagery
When people needed another way to know what pain sounds like

They could hear it in the way that the strings
Absorbed the rust from his arthritic fingertips
Scraping the sound of struggle

It was the most painfully beautiful music
He played to the soft continuous metronome click of reloading
Beauty like a rose that dies in the hair of a girl
Whose own rose is a blooming ****** chest wound

Thought maybe he could replant her
Like the earth might give her back

Anything plucked from the root dies shortly after
He played for her
He played for courage
He played like a prayer to be shot doing what he loved

We all wanna die doing what we love

She was shot picking roses

He played cello
On a playground of bullets
A song that begged
**** me

Where is your god now?
When all you wanted was to be a casualty of love and music

He finished
Beads of sweat like ***** diamonds
As the morning sun mocked him for living another day

Some of us get to walk away from this
Without a single scar
Even if we wanted one

He walked away

And shortly after

The bullets began to do what bullets do
When they pierce flesh

She is salty lipped ocean throat
Warm morning fog
Mixing with her overcast

I want to place my head on her treasure chest
Listen to her wet ruby cascade and thump
A metronome for people who dance lightly

She is a mildly ******* mermaid
Born with the deformity of legs

We were all born a little bit broken
I tell her

I know you’re a body of water I want to drown in
When home feels like it’s so much bigger than these four walls
But not much stronger than the skin I’m in

So here’s to jumping off cliffs
With the hope to land a little painfully
So evolution might give me the wings I was meant to be born with

She walks like a riptide
Often risks drowning in the off chance

Nature might be kind enough to understand
What it really means to have sea legs

This is for the soft shelled crab
Who was tired of the heaviness of home

For the mockingbirds who never studied music
So they copy sound
Sometimes really annoying sound
But they hear the beauty regardless

For the Dumbo Octopus
Who clearly watched too much classic Disney

The beluga whale who can crane its neck
When its sonar song of home is not enough
To know their kids are coming back to them

For the penguins
Who are fine being flightless
Because they’d much rather swim

They didn’t think it was stupid
When they wished they could be different

And she is the ocean
Hips sway like a high tide approaching
Hiding sirens’ secrets
Skeletons in her closet
Lovers who have lost
And drown in her pitch black

She wears the water like a second skin
Smiles like the wind is pressing back her cheeks

She chokes on sea water
Drowns a little
With the hope that this place might feel more like home

Sometimes home is the hardest place to get to
But there’s nothing wrong with going home