He wants to tell her of a story he read once
About that gorilla who could sign
And taught its baby to sign
How when the baby died
The flailing of her fingertips
And the movement of her hands
Said more about loss than anyone ever cared to know

She looks at him
Hot pho steam moistening her face
There is a man pacing outside the windows of the restaurant
It is a whole in a wall
In a small city
The city is *****
Next to the restaurant is a bar
They listen
Juke box bass hick thunder through the walls
She ***** a noodle into her mouth

“Is this a date,” she says
    If you want it to be
“It’s not exactly romantic”

He smiles
thinks about what it means to be romantic
Remembers the list with the boxes to check off
  Of will she **** me later

It’s all too generic
And we are so talented at romanticizing the trivial
That people forget how to be charming

He thinks of death-beds
And what she might say to him

Maybe it isn’t now. But later, you’ll remember this guy
And you’ll think of that weird place he took you to this one time.
It wasn’t exactly romantic.
But for whatever reason
You will remember me for doing things like this.

He wants to tell her of the gorilla
With the sad hands

His own hands tremble

He thinks of languages people spend lifetimes learning

She sips her water
Wipes sweat from her face
She smiles
It is beautiful when she smiles

He smiles too
Shivers as the doors open and the cold comes in

Maybe in some other universe
The words would have meant more to her
They would have made sense

He fills the silence with the sound of soup
She looks at him again
The thunder through the walls stops
And all he can think of
Is the gorilla who learned the language of love
And lost the need to use it

Cigarette smoke and **** colored beer
Family is a suckerpunch epiphany
For people who’ve spent so much time
Saying they no longer had one

I swore forever
Mine was missing parts
This heart carved shells
Let’s swap odd shapes
Re-sew them and **** up our beats forever
Together

If the world is ending and you find me here
Kicking up the earth
Dirt scatter to the wind
Brown blood spatter
That’s just me trying to escape faster

Join me or leave me
But I got this beef with gravity
Like a severed head tetherball
This face senseless

You make me senseless

Numb to all the bad parts
In the same way salt makes everything sweeter
You make everything sweeter
Your salty skin
Sweet mouth
Sweet speak
Sweet laughter

Make me feel a little less stupid
About giving in to the movement
This mouth
This body
Like a knee-buckle kick to the gas pedal
And I peel out by accident

And you can still love me
Like family
I’ve slept in so many beds
And on so many floors
All so much more comfortable than my own

I swear I have bed bugs
Drinking my blood as I sleep
Getting drunk most nights
Them and me
Wake up itchy and fatigued
Like an allergy

But you
You smile like a hammock
Held up by strings hanging from your eye squint
To your dimples

Without speaking
“you can rest here tonight”

This is for the beds
For the people who say ouch when I hug them
For the family I thought I never had

For the appreciation that
Every moment of sadness
Means I’ve known so much joy
To feel that way

I’ve known so much joy
Thank you

I signed the DNR form
And steeled myself
As if this cancer were a battle I could fight with my fists
I felt like a man
Standing before the open mouth of a cave marked midnight
Like grimaced teeth and the desire for life were enough
To withstand the fire the chemo caused my skin
It made my skin crawl some nights

I was sure I would wake just bone
Until I looked just bone
Like an ill fitting skin sheet
Draped over a science project
And enough voice to remind whoever heard me
That I was somehow still human

I felt like a man
Who could do this alone or die trying
That if I were given a scalpel
I could cut this out of me
Pull out whatever caused this
It would look like a gnarled black ball
Humming contently
Like lip shushed fingertips
Begging for silence

I chewed on my pillow
Until my jaw taught me to sleep

I felt like a man
At the end of a road
Who finally realized
The difference between battles you fight with your fists
And battles you fight with caves marked midnight
And battles you fight in a sweat drenched hospital bed
That smells like bleach
And makes you miss home
Battles that remind you
No matter what sort of man you feel like
There is always something
That can make you feel like a child

From the age of 7 to yesterday

I wanted to be a magician

I wanted to saw people in half

And make friends with tigers

I wanted so badly

To own the smoke and mirrors

That distorted the world in front of me

It was in my blood

This house was built on rigged floorboards

I can fall from any height when the rug is pulled

And land safely

I am practiced in

Slight of hand

And slight of tongue

My voice is a distraction

Only convincing because of the

Way it builds

Causing whoever is listening

To expect something magical to happen

         Hocus Pocus

It really is magic to think that time and time

Again

You’ll listen

And believe me

There is nothing up my sleeve

I am still trying to find stitches

Big enough to reattach the parts of you

I sawed away

And hammers big enough to smash the mirrors I used

To lie about the way we look when we’re together

And the smoke

So much smoke building

Like a fire that was never meant to be put out

There is a fire escape

Right behind the trap door

To this whole thing

You know my tricks

You know all my secrets

You’ve fanned through all the pages of my work

Just know

You can leave any time

Right over there

Next to my pens and my poetry

Past the loose floorboards

And the hanging body of my last assistant

Is the EXIT sign

Part 1
My third car broke down
All that metal
It will outlive me

I’ve been jogging to work
Taking the back ways of a neighborhood
I barely know

Yesterday morning
I took pictures
A modern day romantic

A pack of camels followed by
A pack of Marlboro silvers
The cellophane glittered with dew
It will outlive me

A sunset behind a church
Sunsets will outlive me

A shopping cart next to the church sign
The grocery store is very far from here
I imagine it belonged to a homeless man
He found this spot and was saved
The art of being saved will outlive me

Broken glass
I want to touch it
Leave my blood upon it
I want to glue each piece
To form a ball
And hang it from a nearby tree
So that it may own the morning sunlight
Reflect it like small miracles
Some parts red
That glass will outlive me

A dead rabbit
Mostly bone now
That rabbit did not outlive me
I feel good about that

There was also a woman walking her dog
We passed by a tree at the same time
She and the dog were old
She would not let me take her picture
So I took one of the tree
She and the dog will not outlive me
I don’t feel good about that
Part2
This facebook status will outlive me
And I feel like a caveman
Scrawling poetry on cave walls
In an attempt to be remembered forever

I want to place my hand upon your belly
And bite my lips
So I can spit blood
Like a human can of spraypaint
The outline
So you cannot forget what my own touch looked like

You
May not outlive me
And I may not outlive you
All we have is now

All we have is now

She smothers me with her words of desire
So I kiss her to stop it
And choke

I choke on her words
Choke on her soft tongue
Like a vicarious seizure

Put a wallet between our bear traps
So that I might catch my breath

Her lips brand my brain
With short circuits
So I stutter responses

And if she were any less beautiful
Or I could somehow be gay
I might actually have enough confidence

To say
Shut up and bring them gnashers my way

It’s okay if you bite
I like it rough

And
Already I can barely breathe
Suffocating under a blanket of words

I can smell the alcohol on her breath
As she speaks
As if her words could be any less flammable

Makes me wish I could drink gasoline without dying

Do you hear that dark room dancer?
You liquor breathed torpedo tongue
You cat eyed lighthouse
Reminding me where I want home to be?

You make me want to drink flammable liquid just to compete

I pull her close
Like the gentle slam of a car door

Are we dancing?
Or swimming?
Or drowning?

Go ahead **** me with your words

I give up

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 am there
Wishing that if I pressed my fingers to your lips
I could understand the broken Braille of your breath
When your throat locks in the noise

Gentle butterfly gut
Fanning flames over burning cinderblocks in your belly
I am there

When you wished the moon in a rearview mirror
Heading west
Wondering if you really could go far enough to see its dark side
When you wanted to turn back
I was there

When she drank razorblades
And Tylenol ink
Into a botched suicide note
I was there

This is the journey

When he wondered when he could hold somebody again
Like a waterbed full of blood
Without the motion sickness
I was there

Every moment y’all
Of your ***** sacred
I want to be there
So when you see that this place is so big
And you are so small
And our souls might be stardust and minerals
Burning blue so far away
At least you’re not alone

Your body is built for love
She said
Beer breathed and true
I smiled
I was there

Kiss me with your car parts
DUI this knee buckle
I want to be tried and arrested
Spit out and spanked
And I will still kneel before you
And praise all that is good in you
Because you are holy

Every moment of you is holy

I was there
Begging to be baptized by your presence
Because in a place so big
I don’t want to feel so alone anymore

I want to kiss you
I want to kiss you
Like you are better
Than everything you’ve ever done
You are

I was there
When the world inside your breastplate
Spun natural disaster
And sunshine
Anvil remorse
And sweet laughter
When I held you
Any of you
And our worlds
Vibrated a conversation only our souls could understand

I was there
And all we could speak was “LOVE”
All we could speak was “Us”

I wouldn't call it a fear
of falling in love

But how this feels is like
A child's drawing of infinity
But he tells you
Actually it is two people kissing

And I want to cut the image in half
so I can talk in circles
and filibuster the time
I should be using to kiss you

Kissing does not mean you are falling in love
But it is a start

In the same way I sleep best with a body against me
But I have a twin bed

*** is not falling in love
But it often ends
with you falling asleep  
against me

And from there
what do we fall into?
and
Who does the catching?

It hasn’t been as cold lately
The train of shopping carts rattles
Vibrate my forearms
Especially as I cross the yellow speed bumps on the ground

The city put those there to trip up skateboarders
And to confuse babies in strollers

Old women on walkers avoid them

There are things designed to make us slower
More careful

I think about my last poetry reading while filling the coolers
And don’t ask myself why when alone
I take myself to the places that make me most happy

My cashier asks me when he can go home

You do everything slower when
You keep yourself company
When you’re lonely
You’re not savoring moments
You just taking your time
Because you can
I set the alarms and lock the doors
The moon has been out for a while
I will go home and write

Everyone is asleep except for me
I crack open a few beers
Open the window so the moon can keep me company

Forever I thought there was something wrong with me
But I have learned
Like the moon
Some things will only shine in the nighttime
Not everything looks like gold under the sunlight

She told me it was endearing

The way I move my hands

Never mind that I was drunk

Again

Never mind that if hands could stutter

Mine were half loaded cannons

Threatening to hit anyone who got too close

So I showed her the sign for

“I love you”

And

“Beautiful”

And because it’s my favorite

“Dream”

With her back to my chest I told her a story with my hands and her body

She told me that she never realized hands could say so much

Forget that they feel like zippers sometimes

The way they clasp into love

Forget about the days

When fists were held in the air

You acted surprised when so many people looked like superman and solidarity

Forget that mine tremble with no sign of stopping

From the chemo

And the fear that anyone I love will someday leave me

When we hold hands you can feel it

And I’m always asked if I’m cold

I show her the sign for

“Butterfly”

And

“Stubborn”

And explain my second favorite sign is

“Believe”

Because you’re really telling people that you are married to your thoughts

I jokingly sign

“Marry”

And

“Heartache”

But I tell her it means that I am trying to keep my heart trapped in my body

Like it might try and escape

These hands

They will bake you a cake on your birthday

And they will rub your shoulders when you need to relax

They will squeeze you like they were trying to remember what you feel like

These hands

They can do so much

The backyard is the smallest dead wheat field
Raccoons visit without fear

I come to leave food for my cats
Who I could not take with me
They already act like they don’t know me

I punch a hole in a wall
To make this place look more deserted

The giant broken window
The toilets filled with **** and bleach
Because the water stopped
The cigarettes in the driveway

I’ve never abandoned anything before

It feels like a place where bad memories come to pray
Like weeds finding life in deserted places

You make lists
Giving yourself reasons to come back
The bedroom fan
The screws for the bed frame
The beer in the fridge
To leave the cats food and fresh water

To pray in a church
By punching holes in walls till I uncover an answer

Outside
Raccoons are waiting
For the food to be left alone

Your lips tasted like smoke
From the buildings you watched burn
While standing dead center

Our bodies are practiced in the art of collapsing

A collapse to make harder
Make stronger

There is this company called life gem
That can turn your ashes into diamonds

We have diamond potential

Welcome to the church of falling apart
The church constructed from the things tempers make
Built from all the rubble collected from every collapse

It’s where we pray
In tears
Red eye gritted teeth frustration
Pray like a seizure sometimes
How I buckle at the backbone
Bulging out my belly
To show you
There’s still beauty inside

If you’ll forgive me
You can take it

10 years is a long time to love someone
Especially for it all to stop in an instant

I know we both prayed for the love to come back
And if these walls could talk they’d be suicidal for some paint thinner
Wanting to forget as badly as we do

And I am sorry seven ways til Sunday
Just seven days til Sunday
Seven chances not to **** up
Before I have to beg forgiveness again

I wanna pick up the pieces
Like broken glass
And make a disco ball
So I can dance small miracles
In a body designed to break

You know
If I had a typewriter big enough to run myself through
I rewrite the rough drafts god never finished
I’d put the psalms back in my voice box
I’d pray calmly

Despite what you might think
There are still ways to be broken and saved

This church isn’t firewood yet

So let’s sing a savage hallelujah
Know that forgiveness is the only way not to be bitter

Then we can collapse heavily into this bed we’ve made

Know we can always remake it in the morning

Welcome to the church of falling apart
With you at the top
Bangin’ away in the bell tower
Finding ways to drown out the cries
Like morphine

Just above your head
There is a slow fire working its way down
So everyone can exit safely
If they want to

We can make angels in the ashes
Like we do in the snow
And then we can rebuild

It feels like the right kind of leaving
Like the end of a movie
Late at night
And secretly
I wish we didn’t have a destination

With her in the front seat
Him and his boyfriend in the back
They sleep
To the elevator music of my generation

White noise wind
Adds static
Like cards in the spokes of a bike
All spades and hearts
In the blur they dig sometimes

How this feels right now
Is like riding a bicycle
And a man in a car slaps your ***
As the car drives by

It is how life pats you one the back
Good job
But keep going
This **** hurts sometimes

It is a 25 mile an hour slap to the ***

After everything
And all the places I could be right now

It is why I got us lost I think
In the need for no destination

But right here

Black flakes fall from my side like
Charred skin

Shapely scars
Poetry mostly

“Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt… so it goes”
This hip don’t lie

Of all the scar-stories this body tells
I like poetry the best

Though the ones I didn’t pay for
Are more poetic maybe
Their stories longer
A journey
Across the throat
Chest horizon
Knuckle toothed

This body once holie
Now healed
Inked in poetry
Now holy

Like charred skin
Stained black
Falling
from my side

The ticket stall is empty
Sunlight bounces off the pavement
And reflects off the double doors

There are no posters in the frames

In my town
Most places are too cold for pretend

Against the white
In thick black letters
The headlining show
“Theater Closed Broiler Broken”

I’ve written all these first lines
But I am out at the moment
And
I am drunk

So here is mine

It is 1 am and raining
I want to stand in it naked
Feel the wet and cold bite my body into shivers

Feels almost as good as being punched for the first time
Where you realize that these the people you’re afraid of
Can’t hurt you as badly as you thought they could

I am a body practiced in resilience
We are bodies built soft enough for the bounce back

Only now I am not so sure I can bounce back from this

I want to want someone so badly that thinking about them
Helps me sleep at night
He said

Thinking about her helps me sleep
And I want to be wanted like that

Right now I am tired

Maybe it’s the beer
Maybe it’s the comfort of a bed
That I no longer get to sleep in

My ex is out for the night
And I am in our old bed

If I wake up early enough
Leave before she knows I was there
I will still have slept shamefully

There are days where I remind myself
That the strongest men
Are ones who let the chinks in their armor show
And keep walking
I’ve got some nasty holes you might’ve noticed

But I’m trying

And I’m sorry I push you away sometimes
Just that I don’t want you to see me
When I have to retighten the springs in my knees
To keep the buckle at bay
Or when I have to loosen the screws in my jaw
Tightened from a tear-bite

Holding up this armor is hard
These shoulders want to hang heavy
I don’t want to rust in the rain

I want it to break
So the truth might punch me perfectly
Into understanding that this hurts right now
And even though for the moment I want it to **** me
It’s not going to **** me

I am better than that
But I am lonely

Vera once told me Mickey Mouse used to be a bisexual
That she can’t have kids
That I should never get old
But if I do
Don’t get diabetes because
Sugar free chocolate doesn’t taste nice

Her hair has that blue hue
Almost purple
It brings out her eyes

Her voice
When it is not overpowered by her walker
Is smooth and sure
Like sandpaper on velvet
She talks like she is already a ghost

I had a dog when I was younger
And he got sick one day
Really he got old
Something about his liver
And he started to bleed out from the inside
I asked the vet if he was in pain
He said no
Basically he got really tired
So he thought it was time to take a nap
And he went to his place
And never woke up
That’s a nice way to die

She smiles at me
I give her change
For the diapers
And the sugar free chocolate
And the 16 ounce bottle of orange juice

I touch her hand
It feels like that one time
Paper tried to be human
And begged you to play along

I played along

I don’t want her to die
But she’s 93
She’s cool with that

She tells good stories
And I know I won’t see her one day
I’m cool with that

Your voice is like a silent whisper that I no longer wish to hear

On any given day it breaks me down
like the soft hiss and hush of waves
working to break the levee

I feel your voice speaking from inside my cheeks

It feels like forever
and I still can't seem to shake you from my skin
how I say things the way you used to say them

how I sometimes think about things that make me uncomfortable
and say your name out loud to halt my thought's direction

I ******* miss you
but I don't want to miss you anymore

Moving on is the dilemma for ghosts
Who have nothing left to hold on to

I can't hold your ghost
There are people here who
are still perfectly capable of holding me

And when I see you again
Maybe you won't be able to hold me

Because I imagine
heaven
is energy

I know this in the way my skin still heats up
at the thought of your touch
you move my molecules a fire-friction-engine-rumble

You are energy
and this is how I know you are happy
because there isn't anything else you can be

This is how I know heaven is real
God is a ball of light that feels like a fiery smile when you touch it

But I still hear your voice at night
and maybe your memories creep up
like epiphany shivers
like

   oh
This is just me missing you
I am still human
and I am allowed to do silly human  things

Because I am alive
and so much self preservation
I haven't let you go yet

Which is why I still hear you
reminding me to do stupid things like take care of myself
and to not hang my head so wrecking-ball heavy
unless I am finally breaking down my own walls
to sucker punch my gut
in order to remind my lungs
that even without you here
the air still tastes so sweet

Reset my suckerpunch
to gasp
to fight for inhale
to understand
that my own breath
still tastes so sweet

I hear you
you silent whisperer
I hear you

The password to the entrance of your home is
I brought beer

I love you with my liver

If you were a city
You'd be Atlantis
I would be its shorelines

We have both participated
In each other's floods

We were never levies for one another
I will not hold back the ocean for you

I will pick you back up when I can though
So that you can be a landscape that is timeless

In your presence
we are never killing time
We are defining minutes into laughter
So that we can walk away happy

Even in silence
We are living

I called myself homeless
and you said
I wasn't
but I couldn't stay here forever

Then you asked me
"Is it solipsistic in here, or is it just me?"

Then we sank into sleep

And I know your mornings
Your noise
Your wake up call
Takes getting used to

But that is fine
Because I know your flood
and your drought
And I love you with my liver

And yeah
I brought beer

Stop your stuttering heart

And attempts to explain how this is complicated

Let me lap the language from your mouth

Until the words become sound

There is nothing complicated about a moan

Or trying to catch your breath

Let me love you primal

Let me rewind your dizzy gut

So I can love you backwards

So we can start at the end

And you can see that we both die happy

There are no words to explain your presence

How I know that at least

One of those hits on my poetry page is you

Even then

You’d need a stethoscope to hear the subtle changes in my heartsong

So don’t give me reasons why this won’t work

You should know by now

That I was born to surprise people

I’m an underachiever

You can let slide by this time

We both know how this ends

Let’s get past this and

Go straight to the good part

Where I turn your doubts into sounds

Even a baby can understand

Adults coo sometimes

Let me be a quiet sigh of relief

In order to mask the mumbles

Of your fear

Let me turn you into a sound

A moan

A sigh

A quiet breath

And then

Let me love you

I don’t know where the right place is

But if you ever found it

That’s where my heart would be

Pumpin’ contently

Good intentions lookin’ like veins

Stackin’ up like a spiral train track headin’ up and out

It’s the only way they grow

Up and out

Like weeds

They grow from anywhere

I had a friend who’s car was so messy weeds were growin’ in his back seat

Love is synonymous with the way weeds grow

Makes me thankful for the fissures in the foundation that holds me

On days where the money runs out

And I can’t even keep my own head above water

On days where I collapse into the fault lines I’ve made for myself

There’s still love in there

I know I’m not perfect

But the intentions bleedin’ out from the cracks in my skin

Are beggin’ for forgiveness

Like it was all that I ever wanted

I hate the fact that I push people away

And I hate the fact that I can get so obnoxious

That even my laugh sounds like thunder

beggin’ ya to punch me in the face

Go ahead and stop lovin’ me if you have to

Just know

If you ever found the right place

Maybe stumbled upon it like a hole in the ground

That you somehow missed

My heart would be in there

Good intentions

Workin’ up like weeds

Beggin’ you to love me

I am pretty sure I should have been born a bug
These eyes have never been good for believing
But these hands
Stretch out like antennae
And will hold heartbeats till people make sense

I have never met a lap that didn’t look comfy
Or shoulders too bony to rest my head on
I have never met a bear
That I didn’t want to hug me

I am so much one man sized
Invasion of privacy
That I hand out **** whistles on first dates
Not that I’d **** anybody
I just need a painful reminder
Of appropriate distance
Even though
Distance is painful

I mean
I get lonely sometimes
And if you invite me to bed
And don’t ask me for ***
I will skip straight to the cuddles
Till we sweat salty *** puddles

I mean
Goosebumps is the human kinda Braille
For hold me
I know that
Because
I can read your skin with my fingertips
Every chill
Every pock mark
And scar
Has a translation

And If I were a louse
Or a flea
Or a lone cricket
Chirping cuddle-bug morse code
In the silence of your naptime
I’d take the time
To translate the language of your body

All you have to do
Is hold me

I want to know if a venti
Will hold a tall can for my jog home

As I type the word “how” into my phone
Recent searches pop up
Only one starting with the word how

“How do I know if I am having a heart attack”

I skip the beer and run
Until my heart beats so much warm blood into my face
I feel the pump in my lips

If only someone had kissed me just then

You can’t leave without getting what you came here for

I know it’s hard

Finding meaning in life is about as cliché as a needle in a haystack

Just achin’ to fill in the empty spots

With anything you can get your hands on

Got some gaps festering

Afraid to unplug and let the hurt bleed out

Cuz at least you know your holes are full

But life

It punches us toothless

Won’t let us sleep at night

With the ache of mystery

You want a purpose

Hold tight and live

Just live

Like plants and housecats

Someone once told me that there’s a forest of redwoods out there

So big with roots so tightly woven you can’t tell where one tree begins and another ends

You got roots planted in my heart

Each step you take is a purpose

I can feel you even when you aren’t close

So don’t leave me

Not yet

We got too much fire fueling engines in our feet

Just walk with me

I’ll find you a purpose

There are haystacks everywhere

And a heartful of needles buried beneath

Just don’t leave

before you get

Whatever it is that you need

He gazed at her face
In awe of her anthropomorphic beauty

He wants to surrender to her savagely

Come
Migrate your lips my way
Even if it’s just to devour
I want your mouth on me

He trembles
Skin tightens

More beast than human
Less beauty
More everything else

She is a dance floor
Splinter scuffed

He is so much sandpaper passion
That she might actually be smooth again

The way she howls scares him

The wearing down to perfect
Is painful

They both want something they can’t have

But press harder to find it

Teeth gnashing a ****** river

Her scars are ****
Battle bruises from lovers who have lost

He will not lose her this time
He will not lose

He wakes naked
Covered in earth

And the scent of her lingers
Something damp and warm on his mouth

He will not lose her this time
Not again

Forgive me for forgetting
The purpose of this poetry

I got lost in the prose
And diluted the feeling
Distracted enough
To not kiss you completely

I feel like a man who has eaten
Food with onions in it
Self-conscious syntax between my teeth

My tongue attempting to describe
All the things your lips are like

I forget that I am supposed to feel first
Then write

My heart was in spin cycle and I knew she would hang me out to dry
Michael tells me

Tells me
I knew she would find someone to fill the gaps I couldn’t fill*

Dear Michael,

You knew this was going to happen from the start

But it felt good while she let you hold her
when her past came back to haunt her

How your arms felt like the biggest arms
And your heart felt like the biggest heart
And you felt like a man

A real man
Who can make her feel a little less lonely
Until someone comes along who’s better at it

She tells you about him

Tells you how funny he is
And charming
And about his mini crooked sailboat dimples

You are better than he is
You are better than the wind ******* back his cheeks

And you know what?

You’re brave for trying
Brave for giving someone else the weight of your arms
Brave for the buckle of legs when you saw them kiss
And wished he was you

You are so much better than that

And you’re brave

So don’t walk away from this
A lonely casualty
Or a martyr

Wring your heart out red again
Til your body is a fortress fire pumping passion
Into swollen arms so heavy
They dangle like chains

Let them know they can weld around anybody
But not just any body Michael

Not just any body

And not hers

I know
It doesn’t feel good

But boy

You’re so ******* brave

Sometimes the mornings are restless
and the hangover is heavy
and the heart is heavy

And everything goes quiet
The body goes quiet
Maybe the sheets rustle
But the body is quiet
In silent prayer

This headache a revival
Back into existence

She has awaken already
She does not even leave her scent behind

I am thankful
Mostly for the quiet
As the sun illuminates the blinds
Like the beginning of light
exploding through a wall

And I am thankful
That no matter where these nights take me
Every morning
feels like home

Every word I have ever written
Has been some sad attempt to make you love me
I can’t hide my flaws behind walls of words
These black ink blemishes
Are like smears of blood
When you thought bleach would actually clear the crime scene

Not even the smoky morning rasp
Of my voice
When my spoken word sounds best
Stays steady
No
My brave voice breaks
In the same way my thoughts wander

They take me places
But I will always come back to you

Until you love me
I am showing what’s behind my wordy walls now
Before it is too late

Because years from now
After I have finally convinced you to love me
And I become a ******* again
Because I know you will love me
No matter what

Please leave me
And take all this poetry when you do
Because believe it or not
Everything I have ever written
Has always been for you

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

“I don’t believe in love”
He said
“There’s just this
Sycophantic idea with forever
And that somehow our passion
Could last exactly that long”

I think about you
And I almost believe him
But I know
I can love you forever

I am too good at bear hugs
And am fully flexible
When it comes to Kama Sutra napping
I can hold you in slumber
From any angle

I know there are days
Where I fall so far apart
The slow drag of my soul
Along the ground
Pieces me back together a little *****

I am a little *****
Especially when it comes to my mouth
I say things sometimes
That surprise the disgusting

I hope you like ***** talk

And I hope you can be patient
Forever is a long time to love somebody

I mean
Centuries from now
After my soul has doubled back
On it’s ***** self
So many times I come back as just a flower
I will still try and smell nice for you

And I will try and stay alive in
Whatever *** you drown me in
For as long as I can

I mean
I can’t live forever
But as long as I do
I am fully capable
Of loving you

To the simple minded man
This day would have been like the rest

Would have been an overdone steak dinner
Alone

But he plays a broken bone remix
Of ex-lover’s gritted teeth

It is the click in his jaw over steak
That reminds him of the gnashing

He nurses a beer
In between helpings

But there’s always the click
A painful metronome
For past music
When he was capable of lapping the language out of her mouth

Days when he was all noise
Like a hallway echo
Or a fist through drywall
Or a nightmare gasp

But now all he needs is the cotton he eats
To soak up the sound

So he won’t have to listen to himself keep sayin’

There used to be this growl my gut made
For your bitter music
When we choreographed a collision
Of bone
And breath
And teeth that touched when I still thought I wasn’t pressing hard enough

The masticating click
Reminds him of her smile

It hurts his jaw
And his memory
But he continues making her painful sound
Like it might actually bring her back

And it does a little
Just for today

And tomorrow?

Tomorrow is too far away

I would be so grateful

If you could short circuit my

“I really ******’ like you” Button

Because every time I see you

You push it like my heart is really just one of those whack-a-mole games

I would love it if you could

Turn down the static in my head to a simmer

Temper my blood when it boils

Bathe me in ice water

and throw in the blow dryer when you walk away

Nothing more shocking than waking up later

Still alive and breathing

You can’t even **** me

My body’s that dumb

And my heart is so dumb

It forgets how to beat

And my knees are so dumb

They can’t keep me standing

And my mouth is so dumb it never ceases to close

And my brain is so dumb it can’t stop remembering

How you phantom limb my body

Turn me into some puzzle piece

Unrequite my butterfly gut

Makes me wish I were a candle

So that I could burn down to nothing

Got this feeling that forever’s a long ways away

And that you’re going to be at the end of it laughing

I’d be grateful

If you could let me choke on this pillow

To keep the sound in my throat

And to let my serpents go

In order to get this rattle out of my brain

And cool the bubbles in my blood

And the teeth in my tongue

I only ask because these words are poison

The apartment still smells new
It’s all new
Save for my dad’s recliner
That no one sits in
Not even my dad
But in that corner
It smells like our old place

It feels *****
When I sit in it

At the dinner table
It is in the second thing I open
In a birthday card
A note from my sister

“I know your a grown up and your still here. I just don’t want you to hold back on your dreams because of us. I want you to write books and people read them. I want one day for you to walk down the street and for someone to stop you and say hey you wrote my favorite book. I don’t want you to think you are leaving us behind because you are not. I don’t want you to stay because you think you are gunna miss is us growing up like when I go to prom or if you need to beat up a boy who hurt me cause you can do that from a distance while living out your dreams. I want you to travel the world and for your hand to break from signing books. So live your life with no regrets.
Happy Birthday Jon
Emily”

It doesn’t matter now
That mom is gone
Or if dad dies soon

I can leave

No regrets

Doing laundry at night
A place down the street from me
In between a liquor store and a save-a-lot foods
Eyes buried in a new poetry book
and the washing machine’s timer
In my periphery
A little blonde girl sits next to me
And says very clearly,

“I wish someone had a quarter
For some candy”

She opens every metal spout
Tries every blocky butterfly key
Repeats herself, repeats herself, repeats herself,

She is with two men who keep calling her over
Until they don’t notice
And she comes to me again

This time her hand to her ear
Whether there really is a phone there
I can’t tell

She says,
“Yeah mommy
I really just want a quarter for some candy
Uncle J won’t give me one
And daddy isn’t listening
I wish you could have stayed in San Diego longer
I miss you already
Can you tell daddy to give me a quarter?
Are you coming back soon?
Mommy
I still want to talk to you
Just a quarter
Just a minute
Don’t hang up
K?”

I know this is barely halfway between Halloween and Christmas
I also know how long that sweetness really lasts
Not nearly long enough
And as supplies dwindle
It all becomes bitter

I leave a few quarters on the bench where I was sitting
Act like I don’t notice they fell out of my pocket
She acts like she doesn’t notice them there
We watch each other like adults watch the washing machine timers
So no one steals their property when they ding

I leave
And she does whatever she does
And that sweetness
Never lasts

This isn’t so much giving up
As it is the shedding of weight

He kneels down in a bedroom that isn’t his
He sleeps on borrowed furniture
Elbows on the edge of a twin bed
He wishes there was a body there
Any body

There are some things he needs to let go

There is always going to be a girl with your heart
And your veins wrapped around her fingers
Curling up her arms
Like vines on a trellis

Let her go

He knows that being good looking is 20 percent physical
The rest is all you

Sometimes weird things make him sad
That’s cool
Anything your body does without your permission
Is natural
You’re human
Get over it

Get over
The cancerous residuals
And the fear of silence
Between two people
When all you want to do is stare

Stare if you want to
Be charming
He knows he can be charming
If he smiles right
If remembers to be honest

Be honest with me
Lonely boy
Fearful stranger to self
Little lover of the things that get left behind

Admire the broken patchwork of your poetry

You are not a naysayer
You are a yes man

Yes
Hesitant kisses
Yes
Knee buckle trembles
Yes
Loving with the lights on
With the fire burning
Say yes to the breaking

You are not being broken
You are refining your badly built artwork
Molding your eyes less somber

Do not be somber sweet child

Stand like gravity is your slave
Bow down to nothing

Unless you want to

There are some things that require kneeling

Your knees are sacred
Use them only to make things better
To show honor
To shed weight

He knows this is not giving up
As much as it is shedding enough weight
So he can stand again

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

I wonder if the big bang
was a response to god's loneliness

And maybe he sat alone for a long time
half braining ideas
about making things that
might love him

God never said
let there be light
he just put a gun in his mouth and splattered
stars across the wall of the universe

His black hole brain
something like regret
trying to **** all the stars back inside

And I think about the days you tried

But that's not like you kid
Even though you had blood
spilling out a hole in your gut
Bone white shallow breathed

There are still stains on the passenger seat of my car
Which I now call my living room
because I am homeless

And there are no walls that could hold the contents of your head
like jackson ******* bloodspatter
a pretentious painting titled
and homage to the ****** of failure

And you are not our mother
suicide cocktail
no ice

and you are not our father
an Alzheimer's ghost
Haunting a history
we never lived through

You are skinny like water
running down the zylephone of your ribcage
tinny laughter

Asking me questions like
if love is as powerful as they say it is in the movies
then why do people give up sometimes

I'll never give up I said

You asked me if I thought god was mad at you

the doctor chalked up you living
to just luck

and I think of when god made molds of men out of mud
and breathed into them
and the mud men lived
Mud must have felt lucky then

But for us its not luck
we make so much fuss
Just so the world knows
we're alive as ****

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

Her bones sound like the shaky clink of a glass teacup

On a glass plate

And she’s trying to keep it all steady

Her eyes are blue and huge inside her glasses which

I hope make me look as larger than life as she pretends I am

As I pretend to be

Even though it’s against protocol

I hold her hand as we walk through the aisles

And it feels like that one time paper became human

And asked you to pretend it was

Just long enough to know what love felt like

I wanted to tell her I love her

“You’re so sweet,” she said

“So handsome”

“Such a nice smile” she said

I wanted to push the red beaming sun of my face to her cheek

so she could feel me blush

First we looked for hair spray

And then we looked for lipstick

Her favorite chocolate

Which she confided tasted like ****

But she had to stick to sugar free now

And then we looked for her arthritis medicine

Adult diapers

A bedside ******

Please take the years I am not using

I’d die young to keep you here a little longer

To fight back the dust in your bones

And the paper of your skin

I want you to wake up every morning

So when I ask you how your day has been

You can say more than

“Well

I woke up again”

******* lady

If you knew what I would do to stop this

Her smile never fades

No shame hidden in the wrinkles of her face

I let her out the back so she can get to the street corner faster

“Such a nice young boy” She says

And I just want to tell her

I love her

There is a woman I know and she speaks like she is dreaming

The fog in her throat pools on her tongue
It pulls me in and I wonder if I’m dreaming too

Wonder at what age my voice will be like hers
So gentle I listen carefully
Like what she is saying will eventually make sense

Like listening to that high caterpillar
Talk in tongues
And dancing language

I wish she were my grandmother
So visiting her at the nursing home wouldn’t be weird

A woman who looks like a coffee stain in red lipstick
offers her a ride back
Though it is walking distance

She takes the smoky dreamer’s bags
And leaves
Says she’ll help her with the bags at least

I’m so confused
Where are my bags?

I remind her not to worry

Oh I feel so lost sometimes
But everything feels familiar too
I’ll feel better after a nap maybe

This is déjà vu backwards

Like walking into an empty room
Still expecting to see you there
I still get surprised sometimes

I put my hand on her shoulder

She talks in dreams
And childhood mornings
Of stereotype
Of longing
Of knowing
That any day she’ll forget again

I still have to remind her my name
Even though she smiles when she sees me

Like
Why does this boy make me so happy?

And just like in dreams
Whenever everything makes no sense
You realize your dreaming
And then everything does

He thinks about the grocery bags
Crawling around the sidewalk
Like dying jellyfish

Thinks about sheets
And how cold the other side of the bed can get

You know most days I stand like a windmill with my mouth open
just trying to catch my breath
And I am just trying to get some sleep
And I want
You
To leave me alone

She kicks her feet into the air
Not knowing what feet are
Or why they move that way

Bits of white are breaking skin in her gums
Like a compound fracture of the jaw

Her fingertips are ****** from chewing

Her tears settle

He realizes we are not ones for not hurting
As much as we are ones for transferring pain

Your mother wanted me to get a goldfish
Or some plants before we had you
But I never saw the purpose in caring for
Something that is trying to die on me
As quickly as I am
And now
All I have is you

Her eyes are wet and glassy
Chin dimples like moon craters
She is so much softer than he is

He places the tip of his finger to her gums
She bites down
It hurts

But for whatever reason
He finally catches his breath

This is the year of the search party
The year we stop looking for the answers
The year our inner commotion
Winds down to a clockwork steady

The year where everything is okay
Because it is
Because you are not your lame job
And you are not your last semester
And you are not your bills piling up

You are the moment your lungs erupt
A steady stream of your own breath
Taste it like biting cold
Or cigarettes
Feel it like a mudslide on your own skin

Let it go

Let it go like the millions of choices you can make today
Let every choice you have ever made fall away
So that you may take a moment to be satisfied right now

Assume you had no other options
And because you had no other options
Where you are is where you were meant to be

This is the year made easy
The year the search party found the answers
And hand delivered you note

The year you are a nuclear reactor
Every time you stand still
Feel the hum of your breath
As it fills up your chest
And you get so hot
The snow bending your branches melts away

The year you do not still yourself because of your anchors
You still yourself to watch them fall away

This is the year you make peace with the past

Be in the moment
Make this the year of forgiveness
And the year of less stress
The year you shake hands with your vices
The year of really good ***

The year the search party stopped
And you walked away
Dropped all your gear
Because what you found was a mirror
And it felt like you saw yourself for the first time
Because you did

Because there are no answers
Because every choice you have ever made brought you here
And right here is where you were meant to be

If you could see the way she looks at you
you would know

But you're busy building walls of doubt
nursung weary what-ifs
like feeding gremlins after midnight

I have this picture of the both of you

You are staring off into your imagination
always just above the horizon

And she is laughing
at something you said

She is looking right at you
smiling honest

Only you can make her laugh like that
Only you

I guess some of us need it spelled out
Our egos need to be reminded

You are not always going to be her favorite everything
You are not the best

But for whatever reason she chose you

Chose you like a raffle ticket
from a barrel full of so much better

You are not a jackpot
she is not a jackpot
but you both have won something

You're both walking away with what you came here for

You break her heart some days
How her eyes sadden
and she does that thing that girls do

you know
when they go
awww but it's pronounced oohh
(Men love that sound)

I see the tremble in her arms
the hesitation to hold your head to her *******

But your signals cross
and you beat yourself up later
for not acting differently
because she might fall in love with you
if you had done things differently

You can't act your way into a relationship
If you're not being yourself
You're being somebody else
and in that case
she's better off with that other guy

It makes me wonder about lightbulbs
and how many people it takes to ***** them in
depending on your occupation

I wonder how many pairs of eyes it takes
to notice what love looks like

Because if you could see the way she looks at you
you would know
and the only thing you might do differently
is continue to be yourself

This poetry is bad art now
As fragile and as tasteless as a communion wafer
In the mouth of a murderer

I thought this poetry would make you love me
But your body stands like a marble statue
In a Stendhall suicide exhibit

Looking away is easy

Maybe I gave my heart away to easily
That flattery is bad manners
When everyone is a subject

Forgive me
For I have sinned poetically
Lived solely for the stories I want to tell later

So that my chest might be a campfire
And voice the gravel trail that slips beneath your feet
You listen to maintain balance

So yeah
I ****** up
I feel ****** up

Like poster board
Covered in Jackson ******* blood spatter
And called an "Homage to the ****** of Failure"

It's lazy

This language is lazy

My heart is lazy
Pulsing with the same low voltage of the moon

I don't care anymore

I don't care

Forever from now, after we are dead and gone, scientists will x-ray our bodies. They will see the way our backbones sit behind our breastplates. Our chests will resemble busted church gates. Any soul big enough to do that to a body is ******* beautiful.

She is so good at burning down bridges
That I don’t know what to do with the singed rope
Hanging from my backbone

But thank goodness
She birthed a crash-lander
In the off chance she severs our last ties
Because if I pinch my vocal chords tight enough
They double as a rip-cord attached to a parachute
I got buried in my heart

This doesn’t feel so much like having the wind knocked out of me
As much as it does landing safely

It’s how she made me
Raised me to crash and live

I am broken bone-callous- heal
Knuckle-scar and broken tooth smile

And you made me

Like that one time
You let him make me
Place my hand on the car door frame
So he could smash my fingers in it

I don’t even remember what I did that day
So doing it again?
Probably I’ve done it

My hand used to hurt some nights like a memory

It takes long time to forget
How to phantom limb our trauma
Like we might learn from it

I am not perfect
Which is why they remain nameless
I have probably been guilty
Of doing the things I am accusing them of

Hurting people I love

But thank goodness
Nature is the kindest architect

And I am ready to rebuild