I don’t come home some nights
And my brother tells me when I don’t
As if I didn’t know that I did that
He asks me why

I always answer
Just stayed with a friend

But he knows what drinking all night looks like
I remind him of his mother

Weekend mornings
When he’s still home
I walk in smelling like suicide

He talks for hours
Nonstop
His hands hold things I can’t see
“This is how I am going to squeeze the toothpaste from now on
Are you mad at me from doing it wrong?
Hey I wish I was strong like you
It’s hard to help dad when you’re not here
I need you to buy name stickers for the Christmas presents
This is your shirt but dad doesn’t have enough money for laundry
I made too many sandwiches today
I ate them all
My best friend Louise farts a lot
It’s funny when he farts
Do you have to work today?
I know how it feels
Work is so ******* hard”

Sometimes I feel so unprepared
Feels like a ricochet for wrists
Axes chopping bricks
But yesterday
I fist fought a mountain
Some of us get practice

I tell him to relax
To bug his sister

“I love you,” he says
“When you become a writer can I draw pictures for your books?
I wake up some nights and hear you type
Mom used to stay up all night too
I don’t ever want her to come home
Are you going to move out soon?
Before or after Christmas?
Before or after my birthday?
Will you still get me presents?”

He is a one man search party
And has found most of the answers

In the end
The answer is always
Yes
The answer is always
I love you too

You look like a fire escape in a dress
Flower patterned
Sunday's best
I don't have to fall so hard anymore

The first night I held you
I dug your neck into a trench
This body was not at war with itself

Your shoulders are battlements
Your chest a drawbridge
I am waiting
Horseless
For you to let me in

I know you are so much softer than that

Lay across me again gorgeous
Let me sleep under your strength

I felt like a giant
Holding fireworks in his fists
Fuses burning between my knuckles
I could silence the bang if I wanted to

Inside your chest are bibles
Full of psalms about hunger
And love
And letting go
Psalms about selfless
I want to kiss you like a prayer

******* like a prayer

I am small
And I feel the ground breathe beneath my feet
It is dark

I am a marble with a green cat eye center
Still hot and smooth
The glass blower that made me had asthma
I don’t roll like the rest of them
This dent in my chest
But you decide it is a good place to rest your head

You feel like the ocean
When I am sleeping on a raft
I made from fallen trees and rope
A steady rock just past the wave break
So calm I’m sure I could sail safely
As far as I wanted

I feel like I don’t exist
Like I am unicorn horn glitter
After the slaying
The men who have ground me down
Use me to sell toys to kids
Because glitter makes everything magic

I am magic
Clumsy magic
Like a giant learning sleight of hand
Fireworks in his fists
I could stop the bang if I wanted to

I don’t want to
I am hot glowing color
Falling from the palms of a giant
Whose hands are clouds

Someone has just prevented a car accident
Saved someone’s life
There are fireworks
A celebration

I am rubber kneecaps
For people who collapse
I bounce them back
People who don’t pray anymore
They just keep walking

I feel like a slave song
The simple message
When you sing these words
I can do anything

I feel like a giant

And I want to kiss you like a prayer
That stops someone from dying

Not a poem. Just shameless self promotion of a short story.

http://normanshine.wordpress.com/2012/12/01/this-little-patch-of-earth/

Part1
This body is full of worms
Glowing
And moving forever
If I could match their movement
I might know what it means to be still

This body is afraid of rusting
I shave ***** red banjo strings
From the creak in these joints
This body moves like a song
String snap at a high note

I want you to kiss me with your brake lights
Fast enough to snap a knee cap
Reset my gait

This body is falling apart
Like an old Volkswagen in your dad’s front yard
All rust and ***** engine rumble
Even at red lights
We idle like earthquakes

Feels like a bike rider taking up his own lane
In front of you
Makes you nervous
It takes patience
Not to speed up
It takes patience to stay

Part2
She smiles like I am a child
Asking silly questions

Think softly she says

Your body is dust
Swirling in daylight
There is your rust in the soft glow
It is free
And you are alive

You are still like water
A steady current
Your body is fish and worms now
They move and eat
They are free
And they are alive

Your body is a furnace for glass blowers
The men inside make marbles
They are blue
And gold
And green
And warm

Let her hold you awkward now

You are free
And you are alive

She is dressed like an unmarked bottle of tequila
Smuggled and homemade

There's some dirt on your cheek
Leave it there
Out here looks good on you

There is the crunch and scrape
of dirt in the threading
little pebbles against my teeth

I spit them out onto a smooth portion of cement
Pray that in the blurr
I can read divinity
in the way the dirt falls

Another swig and I am heart heavy
Like scrap metal
and old houses
like fat sacks of glowing mercy

She smiles like a pipedream
of twisted shining copper

She speaks in head spin
This is what it feels like when god talks to you
without killing you

She says
You are not in the business of
feeling sorry for yourself

Name the year

This is the year of the shedding of weight
The year of the cutting in half
The year of shaking the dust
From the fragile places
Wiping the dirt from the threading
even if you have to use your own mouth
so you can finally seal yourself
without worrying if it will hurt this time

The year of hotmess
And young love
The year of leaving
This is the year
Not where everything is lost
But a new lightness is gained
In the way you can walk away

So pull your heart out from the rubble
of the past

This is the year of being charming
The year of fist fights and no regrets
The year where you finally understand
what it means to be honest

This is the year of shaking the dust

This body is a memory
Like a phantom ache
For fingertips
For lips
For fists

There was the rug-burn

I sleep most comfortably on my belly
Shirtless
No blanket

From when he brought the belt loop
Buckle pinching neck
The carpet not as soft
As curls of fabric
Felt like razorblades and fire
Skin so red and raw
Window open it cooled me like a slow breath
On tomato soup
There were days my body looked like tomato soup

This body is a memory
For the soft against my chest
Puzzle piece breath
In the ways I want to fit

I want to taste your mouth like a cannibal
Lips so full of blood I want to bite them

Some days I want you to single cell me
For simply the fight and the ****

This body is a memory
A gentle tickle
Some things I’d rather forget
Phone book bruises
Elbow torque and knuckle gut

Some things I strive to remember
Beer breath kisses
Head on chest
Hold you like an embarrassed birthmark
Because I don’t want my arm to fall asleep
But I don’t want to move you either