I feel like a comic strip hobo
With no money for deposit

And still I step from slapstick to cement
and hope court jester is enough here

I have come out of the rain
and into your home
Drawn to you
Though there is no pie in your window
No ghostly fingers of your sweet smell
beckoning me in

You make me feel
Like a ghost in a graveyard
Praying for a new harmonica inhale
and exhale
So that this music can sound more like a dance for two
A panic waltz for feet trying to match your grace

And today
Darlin'
There is honey between my teeth
A sweet sound

Our love is backwards
Blacklisted
An elbow torqued and knuckle gutted dry heave halleluja

Arthur Miller would have written a satire about our love

I remember our early conversations
You said you didn't believe in god
I said that he was a fantastic literary device
You said though you didn't believe in god
that people themselves could be godly
I suddenly wondered what you would look like with a jerry curl
"Let's not call it godly," I said
"What then," you said
I don't know

I just know that
Your eyes are like second winds
like Breathcatch memories
of highway carjackings
where you were the one left on the side of the road

The warm summer pillow of your stomach
And the peel of my face away from it
Is sticky like candy
Your stomach is like candy in that way
So is my face
I can be sweet too

Your smile is speechless
like the speakers are speechless
And the music has stopped
and our bodies are still
save for your smile
That quivers like fire

And I am a comic strip hobo
With a bandana backpack
and not much to offer

But I am drawn to you

You make me feel like harmonica breath
You make my mouth feel like honey

Maybe it was weird that I didn’t move my hand

When it rested against yours

Or that I didn’t move my leg when our knees touched

Or that when we slept facing opposite directions

So we could share the same pillow

I pretended to be asleep when my lips touched your forehead

Just so we could be close a minute longer

I know I cry in my sleep

But you don’t have the same dreams I do

And you don’t have that awkward belief

That all people fit like puzzles if you press hard enough

What the hell do you think hugs are?

Or holding hands is?

I know I can’t accidentally fall into you

And sure

maybe it’s weird that I rub my socks into the carpet

With the sole purpose of shocking you

But how else do you make sparks fly?

I know that my life’s story is an open book I tell so well

My pages are shameless

And my words are honest

And yeah

I know I stare at your mouth when you speak

It’s just that

Eye contact freaks me out

And I’m sorry I spaced out while you were talking

It’s just that I was staring at your lips

And I suddenly wanted to kiss you

I know I have no filter

And am practiced in the art of bad timing

And poor explanations

But we’re only human

We only want simple things

Like to be needed by other humans

Go ahead

Need me like a parasite

I’ve already got so much excess baggage

The weight of your monkey on my back

Might as well be an anchor

Keeping me next to you

There should be dents in your memory foam by now

Pretty lady

There are dents in my cheeks from all the smiling you cause me

And I’m pretty sure you could light a match

From the heat in my face

So I am sorry if I can get a little creepy

It just means I like you

I get so lost some days
I feel like I am rubbernecking lightning
Just waiting for the flash

And life is a Nissan brake-checking your awe

People say you can tell how close the storm is
By counting seconds between lightning and thunder
If you can see it
It is always close enough

I don't mean to romanticize everything
But it's what I do

The clouds look like scabs
In front of some bolts
Before they mesh back into the smooth blackness

I wish I healed that fast

Forgive me for my lack of articulation
I don’t speak as retardedly prophetic as I used to
Or welcome death because no one knows it
When the fear of leaving
Is hell enough to stay
And the finish line is miles away

We will all meet it
At exactly the right time

We’ll both come in first
I promise

And

You

Well mouthed
Keeper of my darkness
Forgive me if I war trench your back at night
I’ve just never really known safety

Surprised at the size a man can be
When pressed to someone’s back
As the night covers all fronts

I know
I got love’s lashings scarring up my liver
When I drink myself to sleep at night

This morning
I awoke shortly after midnight from a text message
That took me an hour to respond to

Forgive me
I was thinking in dreams again
You were there
Watching me steal a pineapple popsicle and a Dr Pepper
From a vending machine

We then hopped in an airborne submarine
Only it was really a long broomstick between my legs
And your legs
And the legs of two others I’ve never met before
And we weren't ever really airborne

Even the figments of my imagination have to humor me
At times

And my ghosts are kind enough to leave before I awake
Playing poker over my body as I sleep
As I dream
As I startle
***** Drunken Poorly Invented Modern Sanskrit
Into the thick air

So cold I have to chisel the sweat away

I don’t sleep as soundly as I used to
Or speak as well
Or think as thoroughly
I just know what feels good when I don’t want it to

And I don’t know any other way to tell you
To slow down and wait for me
Because I am sure that
We’ll get where we’re supposed to be going
Exactly when we’re supposed to

I barely went to school
And was baptized underneath a rain gutter
But I promise
Despite my upbringing
I will die a poet

Birds never studied music
Nature never rough drafted its deformations
Including me
I was born perfectly broken
With heart in throat
And head in clouds
And head in ****

And head

Head everywhere else but center
Hands anywhere but to myself

I dare you to stop pumping fuel
Into my mouth’s motor
Dare you to make fun of me
For my special education
For my short bus
******
My education was special

I learned to walk on two feet
When I should have had four
And I learned
How to stop myself from crying
When I found out not everyone is going to love me

I’ve learned the language
Of your laughter
And can translate your sighs
To mean anything
Right now they are the exhalation of ghosts
You no longer wish to hold on to

Let them go
Let go of your ghosts
And don’t settle for anything less
Than the silence of your soul
As it leaves you
Take this poem with you when you do
It is a love note
Sending Saint Peter home

All are welcome here

Especially you

I mean
Nobody’s perfect
Especially poets
I’m not perfect
Which is perfect
Because that means
I can die
A poet

I am an earthquake

In the desert

Working the rough sand to settle

In my belly

So that the ache in the pit of my gut

Might lose its shape

These shoulder blades feel like wings sometimes

Too bad these hands are prehensile

Not feathered or webbed

Just full of chemo-quake

And tremble

Unless I can hold your hand

Hold my hand

I’ll reverberate your ***** soul to settle

Till we’ve shaken the dust a firmament

Big enough to stand on

I need redemption enough

That stuck in the filter of my cleansing

Is enough dirt to build a hill to stand on

Forget heaven

When I can stand on the land of my past mistakes

And revel in the beauty I left behind

Don’t get left behind

And don’t go to heaven

Just stay with me in the middle

Where I have managed to compact this broken to solid

Like a ghost in a landfill

Haunt these hollow halls of filth with me

Until ***** is all that’s left

***** is all that is left

I understand that you might want to bathe sometimes

Not everyone can live like I do

Not everyone shares my infatuation

With broken things like I do

Let me get you just a little *****

Let me break you too

Let me recycle our fuckery

Till the filaments fit

I am a “found” artist

Making the broken beautiful

What everyone keeps forgetting

Is that even we are recyclable

And there isn’t anything that cannot be rebuilt

So let me make a new heaven

So that I can be like a ghost

Haunting a landfill

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

The ****** tension between us is so terrifying
That if you were a praying mantis
You’d have eaten my head off by now

But you don’t
And maybe I’m mistaken

I mean
If we were naked mole rats
You wouldn’t care what I look like

Naked mole rats are blind

You can see well enough

And if I were an Indian Bull frog
I could croak
The same way I cough up cigarette smoke
When I see how beautiful you are when you smirk
At my burning dimple crow’s feet
And you would know
I wanted you

Turns out
I’m a gag reel of regrets
And should have saids

But if I could release pheromones  
From my butterfly wings
Like shaking dust from heavy clothes
After years of standing still
I would dance for you
And you would know

But you end our conversations the way sighs do

Maybe if the earthly population were at stake
I’d find words for this

Like the carnal cannibal black widow
You are eating up my insides
With all that goes unsaid

I might not carry your children in a watery pouch
But I would
Or I would Argonaut you a detachable *****
I would even serenade you with the cricket creak of rusty joints
A song that makes you whisper


I would do almost anything if I could
But I can’t

I just have this stupid poetry passion stutter

And you

I have you

Just maybe not the way I want you

Today I did not miss the ghost parade
Which always comes without warning
And leaves the way your glasses do
Dusting its tracks before placing itself
On the counter in the bathroom


I think of the pain that comes with growing wings
And understanding the difference between
Beauty and utility

I am too big to fly

We need to grow simpler things from our backs
Starting with patience
But I am just being silly
Patience should grow from your lungs

The ghost parade is a quiet thing
Always manages to pass through you
With the slowness of a carriage ride
Through some well lit park in the evening

And just like all ghosts
They remind you of something you've lost
Or will never have
And takes it with them when they leave

The parade marched off with my wings
Silver feathers erupting like confetti

I heard the hunters load their rifles
And assumed this was a good thing

Norm sits in his honda. He has whisky breath so ***** he feels it change the color of his teeth as he breathes. His voice has become all gravel from a circus pipe-dream about how he'll leave here one day. He feels it like rusty train tracks tracing his bones. It itches his joints, the rusting. He starts the ignition and heads home.

How it starts is there's an apartment your family lives in
You do not live there
but your stuff does
Then you find out your mom brought bed bugs home from the rehab center

They are downsizing everything now
You show up with 3 boxes
and tell yourself
these can hold more than enough

Mostly you fill them with your favorite books
and in the heat of it
even that feels trivial

But you look at the photos in the frames
The pictures of you at six flags on your last birthday
You let those go
The paper towel painting Monica did at the lake
It's all in a box marked trash now

You joke to yourself about how silly
they would look on the dashboard of your car

The old electronics
and journals
writing contest trophies

You take an inventory
of everything you've ever owned
all your clothes have been thrown away

and you leave with just three boxes
and you ask yourself

"If my life were on fire
what would I save?"

only you can't answer that question
because when the fire is burning
it's not that everything looks as important as everything else
so much as nothing does
not even you

So you smile
and say that you are happy to leave everything behind
because now you have the joy of the memory of having it

Only this time
there is a girl
and she is riding shotgun in your car as you drive away

And maybe she can see the mixed emotion on your face
like driving of a cliff in your boss's car
only he is in the trunk

And she scratches the back of your head
and says
"Tell me a story handsome"

1
I remember her body against me

She tells me she doesn't want to get hurt
That I will break her heart

You can break me like a wishbone
and keep the better half

Sharpen it like a prison shiv
and stab me with it if I do

2
She is the snow
I am a stove in a single room cabin

I have been cutting off parts of this home
and feeding them into my belly

There is sawdust
on the floor of my love

3
Most of this house is gone now
I am still a stove
she is still snow

We both think
this heat is a good idea

I keep burning

Call her iglu
Call her daring
Call me almost homeless

4
I have left the stove

I am a candle now

Slow burning

Call me always hot still

Call her always melting

The floor is always wet

5
I tried to trap the ocean
in a dresser drawer

But we were flooded roofless

I learned to hold my breath

She learned that warmth doesn't really change anything

There was the sun
and it heated her body

I bathed in the ocean
she made
a thin
near burnt candle

I sank down

Her heart was made of winning halves of wishbones
Sharpened like shivs

I did not go near them

I am not afraid of getting hurt
But I have always been taught
to respect the sea

Hope there’s someone
Standing like a statue
Cold and silver eyed angel
Waiting
I will kiss his feet
And rest my head on his shoulders
The nights he is kind enough to hold me

The floor of the middle ground
Is the softest earth I know
And I sink slowly as I walk
Not even faith will keep my feet above it

It is a vast expanse of lonely
Damp air but otherwise waterless
This is the place my prayers go
I can hear them like landmarks
Echoing my fears back to life

Home is the distance of a sunset
That never changes
Always in my sight
And always sets so far away

I savor it
And I hope there’s someone
Who will hold me
The nights I get so tired
I risk the earth’s hungry swallow
And give up

There’s a man on the horizon
Statue silver eyed angel
And there’s you on every horizon
I miss you

I am afraid of this place
Wasteland of mistakes
And picturesque landmarks of nightmares
You on every horizon

I don’t want to go
Wherever he is leading me
it is not home

You are home
You are sea sick waterbed *******
Fire sizzle sweat steam
Damp rag soaking up my deathbed
Perfect balance to my off kilter dance steps
You are home on the days I give up
And sink into whatever broken bed I have made this time
You are love in the long hours of insomnia
Head in crook of neck
Even though I know my collar bones aren't comfortable
You are sweet smelling
Rough around the edges
But still so much softer than me

And I hope there’s someone
To hold me
When I am tired
When I die
Because I am scared of that place

I don’t want to go

I feel like I have fox-holed my gut
Sleeping only in the shape of a ball

And I have folded the thought of you into a trench
so that I might sleep safely tonight

But I have learned how not to be lost
In the sharpening of my shoulder blades
I have learned never to shrug
In the off chance I will
shed my wings
and truly be lost

Come back to me

I have been drunk for a week now
and I feel like your breath will sober me up

I want to hold your head like a sunrise
strands of gold drizzle out to the tips of my fingers

I am buzzing
Lacking structure

Your smile
like a hammock hanging from the laugh lines in your eyes

You laugh like a runway held up by your own cool breath

I want to place my mouth there
In darkness, aquatic nightlight glow

Your skin, goose bump braille
a language I am still learning

My fingertips
tracing the topography of your smooth

Your landscape
I want to get lost

My hands
your skin
My drunk
your breath

Come back to me
Sober me up

She kicked me out of bed first thing in the morning
I didn’t even have time to make us breakfast
Not that she was hungry
She seemed satiated enough
So I left
and later met a friend for lunch

He was kicked out of bed first thing in the morning
He didn’t even have time to make his new lover breakfast
Not that he would have eaten
He seemed satiated enough
So my friend left
And he met me for lunch

Our attempts at fuckery find us
Not too far from one another
It is the distance of a coffee table in a diner
After we make our way to the wayside again

We both have water
And it washes our pallets clean
Of the liquor
And the cigarettes
And her mouth
And his mouth

Still lingering a little bit bitter
So we sip some more

These are sheets we leave behind so stained
That you hope the passion will stay
Until there are so many it doesn’t matter anymore
These one night stands will never feel any less *****

The spots of sweat and memory
That still won’t wash out
So many
They look like constellations
As the sheets hang to dry

I imagine they trace out your body
Not just your body
Any body

So generic now
It makes The Shroud of Turin
Look the aftermath of Babylon’s midnight bustle

These are the ways that love leaves you
Hanging you wet to dry
Stained and *****
And equally alone again

Forgive me for the way my mind wanders
I am still with you
I just didn’t want to *** yet

These are the ways my body leaves me
And then you
The morning after I accidentally told you I love you
Even though we just met

I have found and lost love
Enough times to secure my spot in hell by now
I mean
My fear of death his hell enough
To love you as much as I can

Forgive my neuroticism
As I leave again
Finding myself where my fuckery leaves me

At lunch
With a friend
Who is equally awkward
As we make way to the wayside again

Your rose colored glasses make everything okay

Until the shades blend
and you're seeing red again

There will always be a point
where filters deliver their ***** backwash
and you're left with the mess the elephant made
in the corner of the room
and he's rubbing your nose in it

He's rubbing your nose in it

I know I am only beer goggle beautuful
A latex layer of desensitization
to try and make our crash last longer

And you see in hues
of rising shades of deadly
Miss my blushing
so you don't realize
how uncomfortable this is making me

But you're smelling roses
Feel the thorn's *****
but miss the blood on your hands

Wonder why the roses suddenly smell so coppery

Please let us learn how to peel back the layers

Flay me like a whale
on a boat-deck-cutting-board

Pull me out of my element
and peel back my skin
while I am still begging you not to

See me for who I am
while I am at my most vulnurable

writing poetry at 2 am
when I should be sleeping

A t-shirt over a lamp shade
because I am afraid to sleep alone in the dark

The door cracked so I can hear if my father falls again

Sometimes silence scares me
Sometimes it is all I want

Right now it is so quiet
There are no filters here

Your rose colored glasses make everything okay

Everything is not okay

Flay me

See me for who I am

without any filters

Then tell me you still love me

For the sake of discretion, when I retell this story, I am a fish, gill-hooked, near gutted, and thrown back. You are a goose with swan beauty, but not swan grace. There is a girl throwing bread onto the water above my head. Competing for the same crumbs, through what could be a mirror, our mouths met. You took the bread, but I kissed you.

Jonathen
Jonathen wake up

She stands in my doorway
Green knitted scarf
***** pink pajamas
Eyes and skin jaundiced yellow
A ***** Babushka if I were Russian

If this were a movie I'd be cursed by now

There is a man with a shopping cart in the driveway
I think he's trying to break in*

With my baseball bat
I step outside full of all the anger I had reserved for the day

The street is empty and cold

It's the fear
We make it up
We always do

After reading my first love poem
And misunderstanding my first love story
Romanticizing your bleak hope
I knew I was ******

And in trying to explain this
I am left feeling like a schizophrenic Walt Whitman
Scrawling poems about your beauty

As if love is something you can actually seek outside yourself
While inside you there are walls
Mine fields
Trapdoors leading to deadfalls
All to keep you from it

I want to stand at the entrance to myself
And be baptized in my own sweat
From the work of this deconstruction

There is heaven and peace in the rubble
Blueprints for a home without safeguards
A simple place you can rest your head at night
This chest

Love is not something you seek
But you tell that to these hands
This pen
This mouth
Tell these eyes without losing my gaze
That it is not hiding somewhere behind you

It is not
I know this now
I know that love is this
Your heart is this
Your body is this

A spare room in a small house
You had intented on living alone in

And everytime someone comes to your door
Know it is always nicer inside
And be grateful that someone came to it
Let them in with your smile
say
"I have been expecting you"
Then let them leave if that is what they must do
They might

Just remember to be grateful for their presence
Everyone who sought your door
Sought it because there is something good there
There is always you

I want to write this poem
Like a band-aid
For a knuckle scrape the stucco frustration

The adrenalin shiver
Maybe you look at your fingertips
And know you'll never be a doctor

A poem that finds you peaceful

We go to exrtremes so often
This middle ground has leeway
Move around in it

There are things I need to say
Halfwritten letters
Stacked inside a gut-heavy dumbwaiter
And if I ever found the courage to pull the rope
I might choke

This poetry gets scared sometimes
I know you get scared sometimes
There are memories you re-live
Like a masochistic dvr
Or a photo album labeled
"Let's not go back to this place"

I want there to be poems in response to this

A literary anitbiotic
For the sickness we create

There is a reason chemistry makes use of the alphabet

And I find myself searching for the language
Like a child holding his head up to the rain with his mouth open
And wondering why he never feels a single drop touch his tongue
Like a scientists he decides that the water evaporates because of the heat in his breath
So he holds it

It has taken me years to finally understand
You don't need to hold your breath
But you do need to be still
And the reason you think the rain never touches your tongue
Is because your tongue is already wet

And you
Every moment of you
Already is poetry

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

Bored at work
I take a razor to a white eraser

I slice an x down the marble white
So sharp the lines are invisible
Until I bend it

It will take much friction to hide what I did
But if I am too rough
It will break

This song ended like a dry heave halleluja
Like the auction caller ran out of breath
Like we both had nothing to sell and nothing to say

And I've been waiting fo that gasp
So this song can come back.
Been adding gunpowder and tobacco leaves to my coffee
For voice like the earth
To sing a song written like dust kicked up in the ways we walk away
In dirt brown cursive
And choke on your harmonica inhale

You left me speechless
With the things you said to me
Your rusty bear trap dentures gnashing

Spitting out the venom
you ****** from your own wounds
Your music tastes bad when it's lost it's tune
When Captain Morgan set your soul to sea
Poppin' pain killers because the pain aint free
And momma's got a new song now

Long after the men have left to the stairs to smoke
And the women wait with them to be walked to their cars
You sit on your piano alone
Still singing
Warped wreckord throat
A song all slurs

I leave with the men too

And it's just you
In your tiny room

The door slowly closes behind me
and your song is cut short

And I catch myself singing along in the silence
And realize

I'm out of tune

I got your **** right here darlin’

My jaw is the hardest workin’ part of my body

And it never ceases to ***** chomp

Like premature bear trap

I mean lover,

I’ll sing you songs under the covers while you sleep

And wake you up

While standing over you lookin’ possessed like a bad horror film

The light from outside blinds you and blacks out my front

And maybe you won’t ever talk to me again

Been known to do that

Scare people off

With everything I do

This aint neediness love,

I just get so excited when you talk to me

Like a kid ready to run his mouth about his day

Me?

I’ll ***** talk your head off

And dance naked in the daylight before I leave

Make you coffee and eggs in the morning because

I can never sleep

Two eggs over easy, a sausage, and some hash browns

I call it my ******* continental

Please laugh for me one more time before I go

Thought there’d be more humor in my breakfast

That’s when you tell me that you can never be with somebody who can never take life seriously

Woman,

I’ll take you so seriously

Like the clap and the ***** we might’a traded

I don’t put people on pedestals because

I like things I can actually reach

Actually hold at night while they fall asleep

Let’s make a baby

Name him Norman

You know I am serious

About the name

not the baby

I’m not a father figure even though my figure aint good for much

Got it in sad clown college

It’s the one people go to when they want to make people laugh

Not because they want people to be happy

But because it’s the only way to get anyone to like them

Just when you tell your friends later

About that one time that I was your lover

Remember

I never wanted to be anywhere close to the best you had

I only wanted to be your favorite

The guy who can make you laugh and moan at the same time

And pluck your heartstring like a frustrated lullaby

The only guy who can actually make your breakfast *****

And then write you poetry

Every day as the sun rose
the sand sparkled like broken glass and salt

The ocean saw how the sand sparkled
and collapsed on top of it
A steady hush and hiss with every attempt
No one ever wondered why the ocean sounded like that
Like a fatigued Darth Vader

The ocean was sick
The ocean felt lonely
It is hard to have a body that big
to ever feel full

One day people came to swim
They did not swim like the animals did
The animals swam naturally
No one ever notices the way their own blood
pumps inside their veins
so much that they are happy being alive

The people splashed awkward
Stood sometimes letting their toes
graze the sea floor
This made the sea happy
But the people who were not of the sea
grew tired
and started for the sand

The sea became upset that they were leaving
and created a wave so big
it pulled the people back inside of it
A crash that sounded like lung cancer
A heave skipping the heart a beat
One that begs for any kind of breath

The ocean felt the people splashing hard
Fighting for land
It felt good

Eventually
They slowed
Gave up
And drowned

The ocean was lonely again

It calmly wheezed
at the shiny sand

The Grand Canyon
Was once a shallow river bed
Until the water wore away the earth
So far down that when you look over the edge
Many have the urge to jump

When you leave this planet

As you rise

You’ll see

Waterfalls are really mountains
Weeping your departure
Tears enough to make oceans

The thought of your ghost
Quakes the earth in shivers
At the imbalanced caused
By your missing weight

You are that important

Tornadoes are just the sky’s
Way of funneling your soul back down
To the ground where you belong

But we both know

You’ll never stay

If the earth is not strong enough to keep you here
Can’t imagine there is any way
I ever could

I could never mourn
As loud as thunder
I don’t have lightning defribillators

And
I don’t sleep at night
Because I am used to sinking to the left

Your weight is that significant

And yeah
Sometimes the earth wins
Tidal waves
And earthquakes
Even tornadoes claim people

But not you

Not when you leave on your own accord
Not when you have the urge to jump
Making mountains weep
And the sky mourn thunder

"I am leaving to see your mother"
He tells me

He hums
But it is not music

The doctor says people in end stage COPD
make noises like that

I hope that when I am old
my body will uncontrollably make music too

"Dad," I say

"Hmm"

"You know you ****** up at being a dad right?"

"I know" hmm hmmm hmmm hmm

"I'm proud of you anyways though"

"What for?"

" Time I guess. I couldnt say. Can you tell me just once that you love me?"

"Will it change anything if I do?" Hmmm hmmm hmmm

"No"

"I'm going to see your mother."

I want to stumble into you
Like the locked door at the end of the hallway
The one with the sign that doesn’t say
DO NOT ENTER
As much as it says
I ****** DARE YOU

And I dare
I dare to devour your deviance
Like a grungy punk rocker on a microphone

Head shake tongue wag cartoon coyote horn howl

What?
I have no discretion
Leave the lights on
I want us both to see why we taste so bad

I mean
Let’s pound like pistons
Until the oil dries up
And our engines seize

I have nowhere to go

I do not want to go home tonight
I want to sloppy seconds myself
Before passing out
With my head in the crook of your neck

Even drenched in sweat
You smell so sweet

I want to kiss you
I want to taste your body’s attempt
To cool what I do to you

I want to heat you up again

I bought the clapper and unplugged everything else
Just so you could tell me to ******* like a strobe light

Well
Gorgeous
Now I can

Come place your lips on my throat
And I will sing for you

You are so much more beautiful than I could ever be
Let me know what that feels like
By wanting me back

This gentle ache
Of dancing
And drying joints

I wonder if you’ll still be this **** when you’re old

I ask because I have lost any desire for grace

I have fallen from it

And want to stumble into you like a locked door

Fumble for the house keys

Might actually make it inside

If you took your hands off me

For Christmas

I want a bible with all blank pages

I want a butterfly butter-knife
For surprise attack sandwiches

I want a time machine
So I can go back to when I was a ******
To my first cigarette
And my first lover
And my first broken heart

To where my eyes didn’t have the green tint of jade
Lightening up this solid brown
My favorite color

I want a new harmonica inhale
And exhale
I want to breathe heavy into your wind instrument
CPR your song back to life

I want to slow dance on dying yuletide embers
And regift your laughter til I am not funny anymore

Don’t be mad that I recycled the stockings
You made me remove so slowly last night

They are stretched out now
And filled with crumpled photographs
And candy
And sticky notes full of bad one-liners

Like

“I thought I loved you until I loved you
And now I’m not sure of anything”

Forgive me
It was all I could afford

I want
More than just blankets to keep me warm at night
I want you to keep me warm at night

I want a type-writer big enough to run myself through
So I can rewrite the rough drafts my parents never finished

I want to bring the stars back west
So I can wish some more

I wish I knew how to be quiet
When beauty demanded silence
So her feet could echo proper
Drawing eyes to follow her sound

I want the trillions of miles my mind has traveled
To finally stop somewhere important

Like right here

Near the end of this poem

Where I tell you
I want so much
And need so little
Just the promise of tomorrow I guess
Until there are no more tomorrows
Then just a fair warning
Long enough to make you laugh maybe
That’s it

My little brother cuts himself
And I wonder about the scars

Imagine that they are more like
the lines inside the trunk of a fallen tree
An indication of how long he has lived
or how fast he grew

and time is a funny thing now
Because it is easy to forget how old he is
because of how old he looks
and on the inside
who knows

I just think of counting rings
on a fallen tree stump
like a warped record

after the day grows quiet
if I placed a needle to the wood
What song would it play?

You sleep earthquake some nights
like a puppy
Whimper and swim

You dream like the grand canyon did when it was just a shallow river bed

You never expect to get so big
to create so much space

So I know holding you won't make you still

Your head in my hands like a sunrise
strands of gold
drizzling between my fingers

Your body
like a lonely bear living in a city
you miss home
eat only yellow things
Dandilions
and honey
bumble bees
and chips of paint from fire hydrants

Inside you belly it is always
daytime
always spring

So much light
you don't sleep well most nights

And I wish I could place my hands
inside the space between your shoulder blades

and take it out of you
hold it swirling in my hands

I will put it into a jar of water
and in then in the fridge
so that it might learn stillness in the cold

I will come back to bed to you
a beer bottle still in my hand

I will pull the blankets from you
and let the dark settle
Inside this new space

And maybe this night
You can sleep peacefully

Allan keeps forgetting that his knees are sacred
There is not always solace granted from the bodies he prays to
Neck craned howls for love
Some deity’s fingers running through his hair

Allen is not good looking
And he forgets that no one ever hated a man
Who wanted good things for other people
Forgets that true beauty lies in the hands
And is seen by what they do

Your hands are beautiful
She said,

They can buy someone coffee
When it’s cold
They can make people warm

They do more than his mouth can

They speak languages
Entire languages

In the 7th grade
Christy Turtch slapped him once
For making eyes at another girl
It made his face warm with pain
His eyes wet
Allan bought her flowers
Glued googly eyes to the petals
Gave her a note
See. Only ever had eyes for you.

What Allan doesn’t know yet
Is that to get into heaven
Peter checks knees for scars
Checks hands for beauty
Checks eyes for everything else

Allan’s knees look like the moon
From the ways that he prays
Spotty gravel craters
Dimpled with the fear of
Maybe I won’t feel so lonely this time

His hands can hold someone’s head
His own head
Can make someone fall asleep with them
Can hold them so tight
It keeps them from leaving

Allan keeps forgetting

He pushes against the ground to stand
Brushes himself off
Wipes his eyes
And smiles
He forgets

She said
When you're done slaying dragons
and fighting for thrones
will you come back and stay for a while?

But there are not enough puddles
Not enough dirt

He is the king of the living room
when the carpet is lava

Don't come out of the kitchen
The carpet is lava mommy

She says okay
and watches as he jumps from couch cushion to chair to tile
to save her

There will never be a man in her life who can save her like he can
No man who knows the exact distance from doorframe to bedframe
so the hands underneath will not get them
if they jump right

No one's ever thought to save her
From the things she cannot see

I wish I were old enough to use a saw

He is stomping a tin trashcan lid flat
Cuts kite string with his teeth

Discovery says its duck season
If I have armored wings
and get hit by a shotgun
I'll still be able to fly home

I wish I were a shark
I wish I were the wind
I wish I was a lost boy but didn't have to be lost
Can I be a boy forever
and still get homesick?

If peter pan came and offered to whisk him away to neverland
The hardest thing would be for her to let him go

Maybe he can be a boy like ten more years
she thinks

With fistfulls of crayons
and constant pleads for one more of everything

Just one more night as a boy
Just one more day as a dragon
Just one more day as a bird with steel wings
One more day as the wind

But she knows he'll be a man
And he'll visit
and call
talk about
The damsel in distress he met in college
When he saved her at a party
How she spent the whole night laying on his chest
While sleeping on the grass
And for some reason
The cold biting air smelled like home

She knows mothers raise the best men
Because they know what they want in a man

It's not always okay to be your father's son

She says,
When you're done with dragons
and steel winged flights
and being emperor of the living room

Be honest
Women love men who are honest
Smile about everything
Smiling is attractive
and sometimes it's all you need to make yourself feel good

Call me now and then
Or I'll call you every five minutes

Now go
*The wind is calling you home

I have traveled back in time
Or maybe I have dreamt this place in 1987

A bank
My mother a teller
In the middle of a divorce
Or maybe the divorce hasn’t happened yet

My father walks in
He is a security guard
College dropout
Ex-marine
Loves fighting as much as I do

She never went to college
Maybe she thinks he is mysterious
He prevents a robbery
Beats a man in the parking lot

He flirts with her over a coffee break
And this is the part where everything goes fuzzy
Because I could never see my father as a charming man

I want to tell them to stop
If love at first sight
Cared enough to have foresight too
They’d stop

Maybe they were nice people once
If we all knew what we’d one day become
We could fix things

I want to tell them that they will have children
I want to tell them about the things that they will do to these children
And then to themselves
And back and forth and back and forth
Like a pendulum made of knives and soft things

But I do not exist in this place in 1987
And even if I did

I want to live
I want to live

I believed in the easter bunny
And Santa
And god

There was chocolate in  church grass
A gift under a tree
And I pray when I am helpless

And one day you find out the truth
Realize parents are good at keeping secrets from you

Then they do things
Like drink themselves to near-death
Fall apart

And you see they are not superheroes
Thery're human

Makes me understand what it is to be a man

In my house there is a cupboard

Full of VHS tapes

One of them is a recording of a news broadcast

On it I stand

Hospital gowned and smiling

Clowns are there on the terrace where it was filmed

Painting our faces

They all smile

I smile

The other kids smile

None of us over 4 feet

But balding

Black eyed and missing toothed

A clown takes my hand and begins to paint

It is cold

The paint

And the Terrace

I tell her how I want to run away with her

She smiles

Maybe

On camera

You can see my back through the open gown

The bones make me look like a brontosaurus

I turn to the camera

Remembering I was told never to smile with the paint on

or it will crack

The circles under my eyes are gone

My lips are red

My cheeks are tan

I look normal

Off camera

mommies and daddies are crying

Off camera

the clowns are crying

On camera

There is a terrace full of dying children

In a hospital

And we all looked normal

Paint splashes of dirt on the bathroom floor

Kyle coats the room with war paint

He shakes dirt from his ****
and it splatters walls with childhood

This is when being ***** was a good thing
When showers were a chore

He is still muddy when he steps from the tub
Pigeon chest protruding like a plate of armor

She is not mad at Kyle
His smile is a saving grace

She is practiced in spit baths
And spankings that didn’t hurt
Only scared him

Kyle is a little warrior
With long skinny arms
And long skinny legs
And a smile like a lighthouse

She ruins a white towel
Is rough when she rubs the dirt away
Pays much attention to his ears

Kyle knows this is pointless
She knows this is pointless

It’s what boys do
They get *****

And mothers
Can only do so much
Acknowledge that they are helpless to the process
Of becoming a man

Kyle will always find ways to get *****

She won’t always clean up his messes

But parts of her
Will always want to

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

I feel like a big man
in a straight jacket
who has just learned
despite all his strength
he'll never break the restraints

I'm not saying
you should ever give up

Just relax when you can
Don't fight so hard
You'll be free soon enough

It is  what loneliness feels like on late nights
and I find myself drunk texting poetry

I want to make your ears time capsules
for the things I have to say

Sometimes I settle for your phone

I want to wake up
in the morning
with a message from you

A picture of your smile
Your smile
Your stupid beautiful smile

It is all I ever really wanted anyway

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

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

I was looking at your chest x rays on the lighted wall

Your straight spine centered behind your rounded ribcage
Looks like busted churchgates
from all the times you let your ghosts go

And there are bees buzzing in your shoulders only
you aren't cold this time

So much faith in what I do with words
Willing to love me like a half written gospel
we are filling in as we go

And I want to write us poetry
like the first man was asked to play the first piano

Come
dance with me to my deathbed

I am afraid
That one day I might kiss you
like a deaf stethoscope
that no longer hears your heart

That this language will grow stale
Along with your faith in me

but my knees
are riverbeds for prayer

And I carry my chest heavy like a library
full of books that hate the silence

You should know that
being a poet is more than just a choice

and maybe my body is like a library
but when I pray to you
I'll never use my inside voice

Just like I know that god used nails
to make the iron in your blood stream

That you'll be strong even when you're old
and even then
I still want you to believe in me

When we are like trains that no longer run the tracks
when we've fully mapped the topography of our bodies

But some days
our engine chests come back

and I write a poem about you that is new

And you listen
To my huff and rumble
you lift your tea and saucer with shaking hands
I close my eyes
and hear our train coming

Pizza just before bed

reminds me of you

And it makes me miss your couch

So comfy

And brown

Which is my favorite color if I haven’t told you that yet

I saved my sleep dust between your cushions

Trapped some memories just behind the zippers

Tried to wear my shape into it

So that it would not forget how to hold me

I lay so still

Like a wheat field without wind

Listening for the sound of settling

Didn’t even breathe

Pizza before bed

Reminds me of you

And your couch

And that one time

I had no way of thanking you

for everything

Your heartbreak is as cozy
As the fishbowl I still get dizzy in
After you took me off the back burner
And placed me on the counter to cool
I have to remind myself that
It is not an earthquake when you
Slam the kitchen cabinets
Even though
My world shakes

The thing about fish is
If you don’t put a lid on their bowls
They tend to jump out
Not that it is an attempt at suicide
Just that some of us were born
Without the capacity to understand
Our own limitations
Don’t tell me I can’t breathe on dry land
*******
I am a man
Which means I am too dumb to understand that
Unless I try

How am I supposed to know
That I can’t protect you from everything
Unless I try

How am I supposed to know
That I can’t love you forever
Unless I try

How am I
supposed to know
That duct tape
can’t hold everything together
Unless I try

How was I supposed to know
That we would eventually be
Nothing but gasps of air
On a damp cutting board
When the lashings of love
Have denatured the thickest parts of our skin

Maybe I don’t know how to fix everything
Or love you like a normal person
Maybe saying every thought I have out loud
Makes you uncomfortable
It makes me uncomfortable
My face isn’t always this red
My skin isn’t always this hot
I am not always this dumb

But I am a man *******
And maybe I just
Haven’t learned that yet

I am falling
No
I am about to fall

There are instructions in my hand
something about landing safely
Something about floating
Not flying

I do not know who has decided this for me
There are tools in my hands
I am expected to build a kite in the freefall I think

Somone pushes me
If I land safely then she will love me
this is dream truth

I am a kite now
I let my string drag along the surface of the earth

Reel me in as I pass by
Or don't

I don't care
I can't fly
But I can't fall anymore either

I don't know how to be scared anymore
I don't know how to be cold anymore

I've spent some nights in this car
Not worried about anything
Even though the transmission is failing

Drive back and forth most days
Trying to understand this thing we call home

And I want to repay you in something more substantial than money
This poetry posted on websites
and left on coffee tables
but the transmission is failing

And I am falling in love with you
And if I knew that love was the answer to homelesness
That in the shedding of weight
and in the cutting open
Was this

I'd have left long ago

Vaggabond heart
Finding safety
In your chestplate
Like a sea snail who has
shed his shell

To squeeze into yours

There is so much room in there
So much room

Your body
a cabin
made of welcome mats

An extra plate of food at the table
I am always hungry

This body
A broken radiator
always overheating
Give me your feet
To keep warm

Keep me
like a humble savage
Saying grace
In a language
You'll never understand

Changing clothes in a closet trunk
3 backpacks for different things
Worn like heirloom rings
Like they are all that I own
That mean anything

They are

And not that I know what it means just yet
but
Take me home tonight

If I could say one last thing you'd know I was different

You’d see these walls as something else
You’d see the holes for footing

The scars on my shoulders
From the grappling hooks I’ve shaken

It’s a reflex
I’d like to reset

If I could
I’d rip the seesaw from my spine
Break the balance in the fulcrum of my chest
So when you jump away
I don’t fall from you

Call me swing set
Give my arms monkey bar bravery
So I can shimmy close enough for you to see
I want you here

I won’t try and nock you off
I am done playing chicken

I am done playing chicken
Foot on the gas pedal beggin god I run you off the road
Again

This path I am on
Is lonely

I know this

I want to tell you I love you
When I know you won’t say it back

If you could
Shake the dust from your knees
After my walls reflexed a shiver
In your embrace so hard
You fell to the floor

If you stuck around long enough
You’d see
All the cotton I swallowed
So when I heard you leaving
You wouldn’t hear me say

Stay

If I could say one last thing
You’d know
I was different
Was better
Might be ready
With enough patience

Please stay

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

Writing poetry is a lonely thing
It looks you square in the eyes, smiling
It asks you to write alone
Even in company
When writing poetry
You are alone

And even lonelier still
It asks you
To go inside of yourself
There are things there you must find

There is a man inside my body
A boy
And they look just like me
They each hold letters
I do not know what they say
I must find them

Poetry is love you want
Is someone you want to be in love with
Poetry is a child tugging at the pant-leg of someone
You want to be in love with

Poetry is the coffee stain on long sleeve shirts
Right over the wrist
Your mother called them chocolate stains
Never blood

Poetry is my drunk fingertip stumble
My white-boy wasted
My way of loving less awkward

Poetry is someone telling you they love your poetry
Poetry is loving someone for loving your poetry
Poetry is also kissing that person

There is a man
In mirrors he might be me
We have a letter we want to give to you
But they read like a feeling

We spend hours in solitude
Finding ways to step into the daylight

Poetry is convincing you
You need a reason to step into the daylight

There are words etched into your teeth
All white
No bling
The letters change with the shape of your mouth

Smile more often
Even when you don’t want to

Poetry is trying to teach you to speak peace
with the words in your smile
To people you don’t want to speak peace to

Poetry is an angry father
Is neck bruises from belt loops
Is rug-burn from being dragged across the floor

Poetry does not love you
It simply asks you
To find space inside of yourself
And then it wants you to give it to someone else

There are people inside of you
With stories

Writing poetry is a lonely thing
Giving it away
Until no one can be a thief to your soul

That too
Is poetry

Forgive me for my silence

Just that

My mouth has only ever been good

For ******* things up

I know

The cherry pie you baked your heart into

Still tasted like the lucky side of copper

I know all that sweet

Is the only way to keep it down

I know you might think you deserve this

You don't

These scars are not some secret cuneiform

There are no answers waiting

In the long nights you wish would just end

What we all keep forgetting

Is there is always a place of rest

You can rest here

In my silence I am still learning that

Still learning how to properly hold people

Still trying to get my timing right

Because

When is it ever really a good time

To say I love you

I know we’ve all been told

These types of things get easier

But even if they did

I wouldn’t want them to

We are supposed to be complicated

Like my awkward silence

While staring you down in a parking lot

Wondering again

Why I didn’t say what I was thinking

If you wanted to know

I was thinking

My hands have only ever been good for squeezing

And my heart has only ever been good for pumping

And my mouth has only ever been good

For ******* things up

So forgive me

Just that I wanted to keep you here

A little longer