Before walking through the doorway
Made of trash bags
A woman checked our ID’s

We passed the booth with the feathers and the ball-gags
Passed the woman selling *** toys
Just a white awning with plastic chairs

We sat and watched a man dressed in leather
He was the kind of expert who understood his passion
But for him there was no teaching it

Beer saturated my white shirt
As I sweated it out
I could feel the alcohol in my lungs
I breathed slower as if it would hide the sensation

He explained to us puppy play
The dynamics

He had his own puppy with him
A man so good at making wet eyes
So good at seeming lost

He barked and wagged an invisible tail
Chewed on rope
Probably he thought about burying his bone
What his wife might be making for dinner
Wondered if I had recognized him as a regular
At my work

While taking questions the leather man said
It takes time to discover the puppy inside

It makes me think of how
In order to view ourselves as anything
We need a filter

I want you to **** me
With a ****** full of yes

I told them
If I were a puppy
I would be very stupid
But great to cuddle

We can admit these things about ourselves
While in character

If I tell you
I am pretending to be anything
I can still find ways to pretend to be me

It is like an electric chair
Disguised as a lazy boy
It will not hold you for long
Your skin does not fit proper

It makes me think of my father
The Clown
Who bent me into shape
With his balloon animal breath
Only he had asthma
The empty static

My inner puppy
Is a half deflated balloon poodle
Ends pulled tight like amputee sausage link limbs

Looking lost and lonely isn’t hard
What’s hard about it is
Looking like that was your intention

In character
Some invisible narrator
I can admit anything

Stop what you’re doing
Cut to
My old math teacher

The one who I saw at gay pride a few nights ago
Wearing neon rainbow fairy wings
And an open, white, feathered vest
And ***** shorts
And glitter
So much glitter

How even at a place where you are supposed to be wholly accepted
You can still find yourself comin’ up lonely

He stands to the side
Head down
Messing with the batteries for his glowing wand
As if once his whole ensemble is complete
He’ll be okay

I try not to watch
No one wants to be seen while changing the batteries
In their confidence

Cut to the next day
Where my friend Monica asks me to write a poem
About how god is a pointillist

We are both drunk
It his hot
Even though I don’t think I can do it
I say ok

Cut to the actual poem

Space is ******’ huge y’all
And from the distance of godliness
We form a complete picture
Like bleeding dots
Waiting to be human

How we probably smell as good as a perfume shop
From the distance of subtlety
And how the hate in our cacophony
Becomes a human white noise
How it all blends beautifully

How if we were created in god’s image
Then after 2000 years
In the cold blackness of space
He rests his head on his hands sleepily
And can only daydream about us
Because his sight and hearing have failed him

And as a collective
We represent an emotional spectrum
As big as his ego
And as large as the hole in his heart

All this has ever been about
Is finding ways not to feel so lonely

Cut to the molecules making me human
Cut to the bits of space dust that made us
The iron in our blood was once star parts

Step into this with every ounce of yourself
So I can hold you like water

Cut to the days that I get so ******* scared
That I have to think about friends just to sleep at night

Go ahead
Take a look at all my bits of broken
Stare holes into me
I promise
All my insecurities are placed where they’re supposed to be
So are yours

So are you

Cut to the grass under our feet
Being stomped flat by the dancing

Step into this
with every ounce of yourself
So I can hold you like water

So from the distance
Where bleeding dots blend
Into uniform color
Our chaos becomes trivial

I want you to know
it always has been

Because from whatever distance
We see each other from
Right here is where you belong

If it wasn’t
You wouldn’t be

My bad choices were borne of good intentions

I just wanted him to hurt a little

So much like a lost boy
I explained to him how things are
And how they are going to be

And he is gone now

He is skinny like water cascading
Down a xylophone ribcage

He is a clumsy song
A constant struggle for a high note

“It’s the thought that counts,” he says

Says, “The cream takes the pain away in my feet
Don’t worry I am making myself better.”

So many days I wish I had his dumb hope
Believed that people are only bad in movies
That everything works itself out

I have the wool
And is eyes
But lack his energy
There are holes he has made
Through bitter curiosity

It comes honest
His head throw-back mouth-agape cackle

“I am making myself better. It doesn’t even hurt right now,” he says.

Only because I love him

I wish it did

Hurt

Just a little

It makes me think of the cloud
Human heart-shaped humble
Floating alone against an onyx horizon

We see it because of the lightning
It wants us to know of its presence
Through inner struggle

I imagine that is how the heart works
Lightning bolts from the top to the base
From the sides
The smallest thunder

Even little voices stop us in our tracks sometimes

On a porch in a cabin in the woods
Even when we get away
Some things never leave us

It smells like citronella
but still feels like bug bites
a certain kind of back-of-mind reminding

It tastes like laughter
and feels like deep breaths when I need this more than ever

Life suckerpunches you in the gut
And sometimes feels like killing yourself backwards
When you finally get that gasp
You realize how sweet your own breath actually is

It is so sweet
Like them

A perfect collection of breath forming smoke
from the cold
and the ****
and the cigarettes

It warms me
Fills me like a lone lighting cloud competing with the beauty of a horizon
with simple flashes of light and the quietest thunder

Hear me heartbreak and simple chatter

Makes me think of the boy with the hospital gown smile
and the hopeless optimism

My beautiful back-of-mind bug bite
when we both need this healing

Healing is a fire sometimes
That feels like at any moment
It will burn out
But the embers pulse a diligent glow
to bring this back to life

Bring me back to life you poorly polished diamonds
We will reflect your light and bend the beams an entire spectrum

Notice me and this quiet voice
The smallest thunder and flashes of light like living Morse code

The simplest message

And this feels so much like a bent harmonica inhale
A beautiful gasp
A collection of smoke made from ***** lung laughter that doesnʼt rain
Only begs you to join it like the voice of god in a thunder storm

He speaks Morse code lightning
If you look carefully the voice is always there

The answer is always

you

The answer is always

you

She struck a chord although off key
She heard the beauty

So much noise like an overly passionate remix
Of a song that should have said one thing

To her there was language
In the rough off key finger press of her piano

To the rest of the band class
She was noise

Even after the teacher explained
She would never learn piano
How some people can’t be good at everything

She still showed up for music practice
With a song in her heart
So heavy
It made her consider opera
And Latin as a second language

Some of us will never learn some things
Like how to give up
When all we ever wanted
Was to make enough noise
For people to notice

So after practice
As she walked home
Her teacher picked her up

Explained to her about wasting time
Left out how secretly he wanted an entire successful band class

Explained how the truth hurts
But better learn it now
Than discover it later and feel like a failure

“You’re the only one who feels like a failure”
She said

And the next day
Her bench was empty

Though every note was perfect
And the music teacher was smiling
What happened was a tip-of-tongue beauty
Like something was missing

Even without her
They all felt a little off-key

Loneliness is like hunting for redwood trees
Their gnarled faces
Gritting teeth

They bite the loveliest poison

Out of all the holes your heart couldn’t fill
Sprout carnations
Sprout dahlias

All crimson petals
Blooming from the places
You wanted to be held

Loneliness is a garden
That no one tends
So you choke on the roots

Your tongue turns green
And little tendrils tickle up your throat
Looks like worms at first
But those come later

Pretty soon you’re planted
And collapsing blood red beautiful

Loneliness kills you sometimes
Turns you into a garden after you go hunting
For redwood trees

And on the brief occasions the light breaks the treetop
It shines on you
Just a few red red flowers

A little girl sees one maybe
She plucks what’s left of you

Places you in a vase
That sits on a kitchen table
Without much sunlight

Loneliness is you in a vase
Trying to be as beautiful as you can
Before your petals fall
And your stalks wilt

For a girl
Who thought you were worth taking home
Long enough to brighten up a kitchen

A few days maybe
That’s all we can hope for

At the library I look for old books
Ones that might have actually been owned
Before they were borrowed

I write fake love letters on the inside
How I want these stories to change some person’s life

Now these novels are secondary
And the people finding them make up their own stories

They constantly ask themselves what it means
How it relates

In some I make lists
Of the parts of my body that still function

Some
See you final chapter

Some
This is the reason I almost didn’t **** myself

Some
I write what I really want to tell her

How seeing her sometimes
Is a punch to the gut
Like a fire at a library
And I dry heave barely blank pages

She comes here a lot
And if she knew
She might read them and wonder
Why I chose the books I chose

So in one I write
I don’t know
I’ve never been good at telling stories
I thought you’d make up some beautiful reason
And I could say yeah

In the bible I write
I never believed in god
But I also never believed
The story is over
After reading

The end