dreams like this aren’t a dime a dozen
and maybe it’s just me but i have the sudden urge
to rip out that piggie bank my mother gave to me
when i was six years old and gut it
with every knife in my silverware drawer
or the hammer in her tool box,
whichever i manage to find first.
you taught me proper grammar and spelling
and while i’m pretty good at one, i still forget i before e
even though you spent a half an hour teaching the rhyme to me
when we were in fifth grade
and suddenly we’re getting spelling words like relief and believe
and achieve and even though i had to look up their spelling on dictionary.com,
five years later,
at least i’ve experienced them all,
at least i know all the blues of relief
and the reds of achieve
and every shade of yellow that colour in ‘belief’
like a stain glass window,
and i’m glad i know what inversion and parallelism are
because if i didn’t my poetry would sound like garbled half-english
when read aloud.
(as though it doesn’t already)
i’ve found that spelling errors are slightly easier to rectify
and god knows you gave me enough dictionaries as ******* christmas gifts.

all ideas are repeated until we have left seven entities
with their tentacles cut off but spices sprinkled on,
ready for consumption, and i’ve learned that innovation and originality
don’t come from new components,
they come from the new arrangement of old components,
so if i arranged the alphabet so u and i were together,
maybe we’d have a fairy tale or maybe it would be a horror story
or a crime thriller.
i’d dream up the ending because that’s my specialty
and you’ll read it like the loyal friend you are
despite my many, many, many, many spelling errors.

your fingertips are coated with stardust
from the other day when you dipped into
the midnight skyscape as though
it were paint and I could smell it on you,
the faerie-light, confectionary sugar scent
of hazy dreams the color of moon-bathed water

i clasped your hands gingerly because
everyone knows that starstuff is sticky and steadfast
and you told me that the oceans don’t
follow the moon for the fun of it

i don’t remember much of what came after
because you had aligned your fingers so
precisely against mine that I could feel the remnants
of a thousand dying universes caught
in the creases of my thumbs

i soon learned that handsoap only applies
to the earthly, just like water doesn’t even
touch stains on the soul

i.
dusk doesn’t feel like an end to me.
gladly, we play hide and seek amongst monuments
made in retrospect, and the sun doesn’t make us
go home until it’s already past dead. we drop
hearts on the unsuspecting, play make-believe in the
style of world war ii documentaries your grandfather
watches on the history channel. winston
churchill played with fire the way we play with
matchsticks and death and dying make
cameos fit for better actors. your rocking horse isn’t
fast enough. nagasaki still stinks of radiation.

ii.
we breathe, virtueless, shoes untied and headaches no
tylenol can hope to amend. there is
money involved, as there usually is, and
bills are exchanged from hand to soulless
hand, stench of cannabis like perfume in the air.
sobriety is elusive–you, effusive–we toast to
ambiguity and *** between stoners and
sinners. The ****** of yesteryear haunt street
corners we use for battleground, though the
fights take flight on rusted wings within the confines of our
heads, vacancy signs flashing in our pupils.
you reek immortal.

iii.
colourlessness is inevitable, but you always liked
noir films. i play you on first base, set myself
against flesh still pink with love bites from december
chill, and your lips tell a better story than
anything in black and white. we consume–we are all that’s
left. we don’t speak english until sunrise and by then we’re
telepathic. i don’t need words to say i love you.

iv.
we part, gasping for breath without sound in
clothes that don’t yet fit us right, doggy paddling because
they don’t actually teach you how to
swim in high school PE. you’re a
cartographer, your hands are
maps, and i am left bereft, grasping at substance too
thick for breath. i stop breathing, then, and
you haven’t held my hand since.

iridescence was never my forte
but baby, when i’m with you, i feel like
i can be any colour in the rainbow

Endlessly, relentlessly, you make
haste by unbroken parable, cry
incense incensed, censure me, call
names of the unjust, we’re unjust, there’s
unbroken like fish and bread in
multitudes, swing low and wide on
fingertips that have never known bare
skin the way I have known
yours, chariots lost on pharoah’s
feet and dying prodigals covering
little ground.

Calling him, you came like
waves on shore parting for
boat hulls, licking up
starboard side thirsty for
purpose, raising church in three
days making metaphor into
matter, I met you halfway, holding staff
still dripping crimson on toes that
hadn’t yet touched the sea.
We made miracles.

I’ve yet to find contentment among
tents pitched forty days
ago, dusted in sugar burning
tongues too used to manna, leaning
‘against winds that
whisper designs o'er mount Sinai,
whisper Pontius Pilate condemnation,
whisper platitudes Peter proclaimed
before **** crowed thrice.
Crucify us.
We don’t dare step down.
Raise us.
We’ve yet to sin.