Shut off the sky if I ask you to.
Grab my world so brassy boring between
battles and courage.
I provide the cold hands and you provide the ghosts
We know constellations listen from melting harnessed skies
then share stories of their bigness.
June can wait a bit.
My verse spinning sad where you used your knees on the good nights.
Born alive, born with the thinnest layer of skin
Finding comedy in the ripped pages
Cutting phonetics apart
Witling words, truncate.
Shakespeare was an afterthought.
I’m bowing in the middle of the scene, I’m shaking off applause.
Punctuation becomes a commandment
I reverse and misuse.
Commas mean breath and in their place- used in succession,
mean run through corn fields like you’re being chased, like your fingers are full of cramps.
Injecting poetry like insulin.
Hoping it will seep into your bones
and strengthen the foundation
like the milk with you ice cubes you
had to drink with dinner.
Envy the women on nick at night who want new dresses and new babies and don’t scrape their insides out in front of readers and audiences because they’re bored and maybe not sure if they’re real.