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?

The doorknob to the closet
full of my skeletons is made of
funny-bone

But there are days
when honesty tugs a little too roughly and
I realize this isn't all that funny now
Is it?

As a writer
You learn presentation is key
In the bend of language
I create this man
I want you to believe me to be

And so I tell you these stories
like they are jokes
Like they are no big deal

Like the first time I got drunk
was with my friend's mom
who was a known child molester
She tried to order us ****
But couldn't work the cable

Or my friends and I used to travel our city
via the water drainage system
Near the mall
We got lost once
and while standing
in ankle high water
we saw at least 20 homeless people
sleeping on pallets
We called that place *** City
We had to get directions back out

There's a possibilty I have been an accessory to ******
Around the time in my life when I learned
How not to dwell

My body was a wishbone
My father meant to break
But every beating
left me the better half

I find so much of it funny

My brother's most recent suicide attempt
My mother's
My father's Alzheimer's

He once chased after our mailman
naked
Asking him about some letter
from some woman
I have never met before

I find laughter
and beauty
in the bend of language

When this chest becomes a broken radiator
and my heart grows cold
The metaphor mutates Campfire

Come here
I am lonely
and I have a story to tell you

The posted photo
made on somones computer
looked like loneliness
dressed as wisdom
and begged you to believe the fallacy

It said
Don't fall in love when you're lonely
fall in love when you're ready

You will never learn how love works
if you save it

give it away
get hurt
give it away again

Love takes practice

And even if finding my love
looks like the crackhead's
needle in the haystack

Know that my love isn't *****
You won't get sick from my love
It is just that my love has been used

And that is all that love ever wanted anyway
was to be used

It is not some Star Wars action figure
Meant to never be opened
to maintain value

Imagine Luke Skywalker's
Anger at you upon tasting fresh air
Thinking
Have you seriously been keeping this from me?

Have you seriously been keeping this from me?

My love is pure
Been refined
by the filter of bodies
and coming back to me

My love is top shelf
but it is always free

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 am as tasteless
as the boiled chicken we are about to eat

Her hands tremble
as she sips her beer
The glass taps her teeth

She exhales like an ocean
made of bone

skeleton secrets
and rolling clatter

It is not cold in here

I don't remember what I said

But I do remember something my grandmother
often said to me

"Whatever man has been here before
and whatever man will be here again
Do not let him speak for you now"

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

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

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 ****

I have been breathing deeply lately
trying to find permanence I think

Because the money will not stay
and the car will not last
and the days turn to nights
and I sleep for tomorrow
and not for the dreams

I have been lost in wonder

And I wonder if there is a sound
for the breath of the spider
that Delia has just sprayed with raid

Or if there is a sound
for the parting of clouds
that reveals the sun

Or if there is a sound
for roots breaking a seed

And if that sound might be similar
to what my bones do sometimes

And right now
safety sounds like the click of the lock in the frame

and peace sounds like the hiss of the can seal breaking

and happiness sounds like the suction of lips
to my neck
to her neck
to our mouths

Each sound is a second
maybe less

Like being under hypnosis
snap
snap
snap

And as far as permanence goes
I have enough

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?