The stillness
The parking lot
The chest in bundles

am i a bad person
Am i
AM i
AM I

left in heaps
peering out windows
approached by the one that always hides

how to shake this
how to fill into your love
how to forget my chapters

I want to be wood
I want to be shade
I want to be shelter

Instead I tell you everything you do is wrong.

It doesn't feel wrong
When the chest is bundled
the alarms are ringing
when I am no longer frontal lobe

It doesn't feel wrong
When I am trying to survive
When my feet point
slightly towards the exit on their own

But i do wish I could slip from under this
I do
Wish I could be
yours.

lover
I want to know if we are alright
I want to know if I have just stolen
a corn field and am hiding in a closet
I want to know if I am just too young
oh lover
I want to see the wounds that I am shaping
or shaking away
I need to know that we are not something
shadowed, an eclipse
I cannot take a surprise battery
I want to know that my words are petals
or taro or blankets or water
I need to know if I am nuclear
If I am clean but not clean enough
I need to know if I am pure and full
and hollow and whole and everything good
I need to know that I am nothing but suspension
I want to keep you risen.
Lover
I need to know that my loving is really loving.

the insecurity that intersects
your fingers and my figure
is enough to spin a whirlpool
seven miles wide

i rage at your taste for me
but i am cyclical, stuck
i am a fly on your calf
you do not even notice my thrashing

to feel you are ugly in the arms of a lover
to feel you are nothing in the clenches of another
frankly,
i think is quite common.

I said
Don't!
Stop!

He said
He heard
Don't stop

"you smell like family"
I say, do you have a tissue?
My nose is clogged.

all this means is
I am no where near my Neruda
all this means is

I do not have love rising through my eyes
Or swaying lightly in my lungs
Or waiting to jump from my fingers

My love is snake holed
Buried and mixed with stomach acid
My love hurts when it comes up throat

sometimes
when I drive
down the road
and see the trees
in the small patches of grass
between cement
I see they are weeping
they are waving their arms about
calling for help.

By this, all I mean is
am I paying enough attention?
or more like,
is the attention I am paying enough?
or maybe it's,
are the conclusions drawn from perception correct
and by correct
I mean
are they mine
are they systemic
are they volatile
are they tired
the poet has the strange position
of interviewing their consciousness
sometimes telling it
you are wrong, so far from anything right
and that is after the poem has been written
what goes on before, or during
if I had to say
it'd probably be close to ******
you feel it building
you pay close attention when it starts tingling
warning you of its course
then it is driving
rushing, clarifying, spreading, spilling out
it is you. consuming. enveloping. all.
editing comes next
the fighting with the you that has risen and went
looking for insight in the hardened cotton of *******.