Some people say it is the easiest thing in the world
The first thing that spills from a baby’s eyes:
Not tears, but love, easy love like cheese oozing out of a sandwich!
I like that, I want that;
That ease of use, reaching behind me to pluck love
Out of my toolbox without even turning to look!
There it is, at hand, at hand, fistfuls of it like plenty, like bounty!
But other people say the other thing,
That feels so true because it hurts,
Because hurt is what we’re used to when truth comes into it.
They say it’s hard work every day, that it’s conscious;
It’s the tension in your muscles when you do a new dance step,
And the only ease you ever find is the autopilot, the muscle memory.
Years down the line after hard, hard work you just might feel it,
The way a gymnast’s old breaks thrum in reminder.
“Remember how it used to be so hard,”
“How it hurt you and you had to work to become this,”
That inner contradiction to her graceful posture when she lands.
I think I want it easy,
But I don’t really know how I want it.
When you’ve never had it at all, how can you
Pick and choose the way you finally get it?
I think about women in pastel dresses brushing lint off their husbands’ clothes,
And I think about how blood rises to a cheek when it’s been slapped,
And I think what if I was never meant to have it at all.
Maybe I can’t even do it the hard way, can’t fake it till I make it
‘Cause I’ll never make it anyway.
The easy way or the hard way,
The easy way or the hard.
We never talk about option number 3,
When someone looks up at you, eyebrow slightly raised,
And says with a quiet finality,
“No.”

I am always missing signs
and the standard question here is
Can’t you read
And the only answer here is
Yes, I can read, but I can’t see
Long ago, when I was upset I could shut off the camera feed
Do away with my eyes like removing a pair of goggles
And one day I misplaced them and have not been able
To set them back down atop my nose
And the question of course is
Why would you do a thing like that
And the answer is
It isn’t really so injurious
These days it feels like I never see the stuff
Inside of other people that other people are always talking about
The greed and selfishness and the cruelty and the lack of care
And it has been so long since I’ve glimpsed and
Properly identified these shards of glass
I’ve almost convinced myself they aren’t even there
The only problem is I know about them really
I did see them before, the persons unshelled
The coals and flames and pieces of
God and Angels and Demons
The burning cargo inside the wineskin
That when you ****** a foolish glance you can only say
Oh sorry
Before blinding yourself in humility
As if there were enough apologies for seeing
As if you could shut a door and forget what’s on the other side

Chasing after wonder days
Of eggs and toast, no tums required
Walks to the grocery store past
Rows of cactuses and pansies
Bouquets of daffodils strung like hangmen
In the window
Singing to Tie Guan Yin at sunrise and weaving
Life of strings over and under like a basket
To sleep in.
Chasing after it all,
Struggling feebly now,
A dog under a heavy blanket, against
This thing that lives inside you
This thing that hates your happiness so much
It would bleed to see it killed
Signs of life appear at mealtimes,
When rambling,
Under laden branches,
In flower patches,
In the filtered light of the sun,
Especially at dawn.
So, you want to thirst for the past?
Ears ***** up at pieces of it
Flung like pebbles against the siding
And, chasing after wonder days,
You were always what you are.
You have always loved an equinox.
Every spring and autumn bringing
The gradient smear of change.
Chasing after wonder days
You will not get them back.

I get it
You want to leave
Fall off like split hairs and shed scabs
It’s the natural process of the body
The un-become and the dust-to-return
And I get it
The hangnails and the skin cells
Omens and auguries
Hold up a mirror to this necrosis of the brain
I want to leave
And so do you
And I’m sorry
But here we are wrapped up together
Tentpoles under flesh and the
Constant ache of splitting
Hands twined together
Ribbons round the wrists
Forehead pressed to forehead
Twins under a blanket of quicklime
In the same ditch
We want to leave
We want to leave
We want to leave

remember your limp cat after surgery
eyes caked in mammalian sleep
woozy around the house
resentful but too sore and tired to
hiss at you under the steam of medication
her soft paws, her uncontrolled
streams drooling around useless fangs
uncomfortable, as always, meeting your eyes
and this must be, you thought,
this must be
an alien abduction
and something of infant extraction and surgery
Fishing line through your tear ducts
your ripe fruit swollen face and eyes
peaches and grapes before you were weaned
Pricked through you
you blossomed to cough up chunks of wisdom teeth
****** sleep paralysis flinging insects up your nose
to infect your skin with itch
in this bed where they laid me down and lied to me
that i was my own, leading myself to The Land of Get Better
when even a spayed cat could tell you in words
as clear as those of an assault survivor or an invalid
you are not your own
a claim is laid to the body by the first hand that peels it open
cracks the ribs and gauges the ripeness of swelled organs
feathering fingers out over the veins
a hammer and chisel to the jaw and now you’re
introducing the self you used to be
gnawing around mandarin to a room of ghosts
yes this must be
this must be
an alien abduction

You love flowers in the springtime, like a classic girl in love,
Sweetness heavy in the air when sugar’s not enough.
All the lies that daddy told go down better with honey,
And gifts make you uncomfortable if they cost too much money.

So, take weeds from the street, and steal prizes from the garden
To soften up the heart inside you that the world has hardened.
You like it that they’re for the Dead, for Maidens, and the Sick,
For of the three you often feel that you could take your pick.

They make you understand the things so emptily talked about
By Film and English majors running at the mouth for clout:
Rebirth and Renewal, and the fever of the Spring,
How Death pervades the world and cracks up every lovely thing!

You hold the promises of these that ooze from every flower,
Collected on your raw red knees, kowtowing in the bower.
You press *** flat in poetry, and Death in dictionaries.
The Garden of Eden makes good tea when dried with leaves and berries.

little animal walking in the dark
chased by the heartbeat, heartbeat,
the hammer that says
die alone in the dark
the downswing of it cruel on the skull
of the suffering little animal
in its misery in the road
You still take an analgesic
and feel nothing
a cure is a poison is a cure is a poison
you’re grateful to the berry
that killed you
and scared of the river water
that brought you back
scared of the stutter of that
heartbeat, heartbeat
the ache in the chest
the shortness of breath
the voice saying that was enough to die
now pay enough to live
heart-throat animal stumbling on a dark road
it can pay you as well as a rock can fly