Bad news:
things add up.
Try to separate them,
subtract the numbers—
can’t be done. You can’t undo
what you do,
what you’ve done,
what’s been done to you.
Your first kiss. Double digit
birthday. Your second third
fourth kiss, quickly. Your
first drink, which
is your last drink, swear.
Your father’s first death. Your second drink,
which is not your last drink.
Your first ****, your
second third fourth ****, quickly.
Your father’s second third
fourth death,
your first love’s
pity, your teachers’ pity, your
best friends’ pity,
your father’s final death,
and a variable
in the equation, always
needing solving: your hunger.

But, hey.
Good news, too:
things add up.

It all amounts to something
useful, usable, you—
doesn’t it?

Doesn’t it?

We like chopping our love into pieces.
We like labeled jars, tiny portions;
we ration bits to our mothers, our friends,
our courtly lovers, clinging and clutching,
no crumbs for the people we don't know.
The truth is, there is one, enormous love.
One fire in the hearth, one warmth,
one cornucopia resplendent on the table.
There is one home in your heart
for all of it.

Detective in the parlor room
asks who killed mr. body?
Corpse cools,
questions asked,
tense stares,
fingers pointed,
clues counted,
truth found,
justice served,
just kidding.

It was the detective,
in the open,
with his bare hands,

and everybody saw him do it.

Suppose it starts
with wildfire;
lightning on
your driest trees
or once-loved campsites
left neglected, or kindling
that you'll never see--
it all burns just the same.

Suppose it starts
with wildfire;
flames beget
a blood orange sky
and magma pits
beside black trees,
and all your kindest woodland creatures
hurt and hide and crawl away--
but they burn all the same.

Suppose it starts
with wildfire;
see your landscape
on the hill, sickly scorched
with trees rail thin,
stark beside lush greenery,
almost lovely in how clear
the story of the suffering feels,
and burning's just the same.

So what if it starts
with wildfire?
There's no need
for water, seeds,
when warmth still crackles
in the wood and
you have pain and gasoline;
light the match and you will see--
it still burns just the same.

I am in love with Nobody
And Nobody loves me,
When I roll over in my bed
It’s Nobody I see;
Nobody cares enough to stay
And hold me when I weep,
And Nobody will dry my tears
To soothe me back to sleep;
Nobody is a friend to me
When I am feeling down,
And Nobody knows what to do
To get rid of my frown.

As I go through my average day
Nobody’s by my side,
Offering his company or
proffering his guide.
Nobody is my only friend
Sent from the gods above,
But now it seems that fate has tried
To meddle with our love.
Tomorrow night, my Nobody
Heads back to his old home;
He has a wife and child, he says,
Who know not where he roams;

Nobody has been travelling
For years from shore to shore,
Traversing through Ionia
After the Trojan War.
Oh, I will miss my Nobody
With all my giant heart,
I cannot bear to dwell on thoughts
Of us being apart.
Nobody holds my hand and says,
“Polyphemus, don’t cry,”
But I can’t stop the massive tears
From welling in my eye.

I don't know what he was to others—
   fireworks, lemonade, ants crawling on a picnic blanket—
   but I always knew him at his worst.
He was sleep cycles shaped like carnival pretzels,
   days that bled together,
weeks that clumped like a rat king
   under floorboards in the beach house.
He spoke in clouds
   swollen with diluvian rain,
daggers of lightning
   cracking the river in half,
the language of a muggy body in sticky room
   staring out a window
at absolutely nothing.
   The sort of stuff that makes me think
he didn't know his own strength,
   most of the time.

As always, when he died this year
   he died by degrees,
bedridden in the hospice of September.
   I listened to his death rattle
 of rustling yellow leaves
   and watched the last of the fireflies
crawl from between his parted lips.
   When he went cold for good
I built a pyre out of his firewood bones.
   The ashes fell into the soil
like seeds in waiting, and I watched
   the moon grow so large that it stretched
the nighttime like candy licorice
   and made it longer than before.
My duty done, I turned to go.
   The smoke rose up to embrace the sky,
and at the time, I could have sworn
  that from the corner of my eye
I saw it curl around
   and wave at me.