A barback slid you out
A generation early, in
The shape of your father.
He who befriended the
Blondest girl in town -
Elf-sheen baby, eternally mortal,
Entangled in bedsheets, or,
Everyone's Fantasy ****.
So she gifted you lawn rakes
And snack cakes, and you
We're raised in the bar on
Highway 51. Far from the
Vinyl static emitted from your
Mother's breast. She warned you
About The Suburbs. Always
Whispering tiny prayers -
Grab the keys, we're leaving.

And they keep dying on you -
Your matriarchal mirrors.
Leaving you in the hands
Of workmen scientists,
All waiting for the explosion,
The bomb to drop,
The neighborhood burn.

Grab the keys, we're leaving.

I will kiss you on trailer kitchen floors,
And make you trace my corduroy with
Your grown out fingernails.

But your brain resides in elsewhere -
The place between two auburn freckles
In the cork skin milk.

Tomorrow never does arrive as
We exist in strictly today -
Holiday ties and river guides.

There are only so many times that I
Can haunt the roof of my mouth with
Cave drawings of made-up memories.

Only so many times that I can turn
Up the volume and smash my skull
Off of those reverberating guitar strings -

Hammer those bar chords / Say Goodnight.

Say goldenrod.
Say Time Machine.
Say velvet dress & radio wars.
Say Eileen on a dance floor.

I believed in the backs of your knees,
The little cove I built beneath your blue dye village veins.
And I remember the back of your neck, with ink to show, but summer came and grew your hair out long.

Deliberate illusion, babe -
I'm sorry for the mess!
The psychedelic bonfire,
The prayer that you'd undress.

***** baby beats.
Pumps red through my tiny head,
And into the walls.

So I will cease production
On love poems of yore.
I will color my insides with
Little pills and forget the rest.
I will take note on my own,
Bottles of wine and aluminum shreds,
And I will coat you in vapor rub
Until you've melted into peppermint bits.

This hallway was so much smaller,
Back when we owned it.

And it ran rampant with plaid,
Concealing plastic bottles of tequila thrown about the parking lot.

We woke with trembling chests -
Rumored teenage love affair coursing through bed frames and fingertips.

Standing in a cemetery, East of any Eden.
The sky is frozen, and my bones are still.
There's a rip in my tights & there's a rip in my tights.
And there's a skeleton lying in a wooden box,
Sent from Ireland, all red-headed and bones.
So I'll scream your name from behind tombstones,
the urgency dripping from my tongue,
glowing through the rip in my tights.
We are not dead yet. And yet.
You continue to exist in careful corners,
subjecting yourself to death beds for secret stories -
In tandem to refusing to die for yourself.

You will sing comforting songs to your parents,
willing to cease existence without ever causing a ruckus.