Dear John,

All my poems are addressed to no one,
And no thing.
You see, I’ve been trying to braid scenes, create spaces,
To hide and for you to seek. A sanctuary, a sin.
We could dream of fortresses,
places to protect us
From the worst of all: ourselves.
But we are here, in this city,
And your mouth is a sky,
Setting, leaving words black.
Every dream is on water,
And every morning, I wake up sinking.

In my dreams are ships, are sinking,
Are floods of skies and no rain,
Are jungles dry and thick and my finger on the trigger
Of a camera, imagining a frame to fit everything in
Side. And outside, car rides on roads closest to the
milky way. Bells do not chime in America, only horns, only
a billion birds fly but have you ever caught one in your hands?

Do you unravel yourself before falling to bed, but only dream in your sleep?

it was a pinnacle of ideals

every time
it rained
we tasted snow on our tongues
and inside
we pressed our cheeks
to a fire

and when discovering grass is the tip to woven roots,
nimbly, we fashioned strands
of earth into crowns
that slipped away from our fingers

before we were royal, before we created
our kingdom

I could have sworn
  I could have sworn this
is what I needed. But,
regret (a
nasty metal)

And I wish I could drain myself
of all which it no longer needs,
when this is what I need:

Please, Listen, You
no longer know what you want and
what you do, you can not have it. Oh
God. Oh god. god, you say you are
everywhere. I have
not seen you in even
the most empty of spaces

Full and boundless and tumbling
across the plank that
is the universe. And us,
lay quiet as a breath but
don't forget to breathe. We, a seam:
holding together
two betweens.

Cool water in grains of sand &
undone stars.                     from here,
both are billions groaning
for less and more.

nerves stalk the battlefield, strangling,
only to beat out another breathe. only
to continue limping lamely and
timidly, I wander

home, holding my own
body bag. Tongue tied and
Toe-tagged:

forfeit!

Here: I've forgotten how the lakes freeze over. How the cold wears you, how the snow strips us all from the same tree. How breathing is breaking through the clouds.

How I was never ready.

Strange, from above, how the white of the world is an iris waiting to erupt. There is so much turbulence and yet not a single vein brings blood.

How the highways snake like veins, how this is nothing like a car crash  but a prayer to God.  How I was crashing next to the sea. Sleep soft, sleep violent

take me to the slaughter house
and behead me like the
pig that I know that I am
—raw and oinking,
squealing with gluttony
and delight

and shame:
the ugly ******* who
roasts me on an open flame;
licking my belly, large
and content and
although I attend church,
I never once prayed
for the body of a sparrow, this was always just
the direction in which I flew

I pray to be devoured:
finished with
licking lips & extended
bellies. I ask of you to eat me &
then never think of
my taste again