Years ago
We stayed up till
3 am talking,
And today
I don’t even know
How to say hi,

We rarely talk
We've had memories
Some bittersweet

You're the song on repeat
And I want it to stop
Get it off my mind

No longer do I want this lullaby

Conception:
life fills itself with
life, to offer
more life

We make things out of mud.
Because we were made out of mud.

But you have to wonder -
Why the first should grow at all.

I want life to sleep in the palm of my hand forever.
Small as it always was.

Like a chick.
Like a good dream.
Like the egg
the snake comes in.

I sat in the old pool and let
the black algae sprout all over me.
I lay down and became soil for
the black algae. Gave it my
sweat so full of minerals. Ate it
to keep going. To keep going
and grow more and eat more.
I have been lying down so long
my ears are ringing. From the soda-water
smell of the pool bottom - my eyes spring
to color like an Indian rug
as I stand up.

I thought I was taller.

Every day I eat an apple
and watch the dogs fight each other
at the big rocks in the park and this
is Freedom.

And I think about you, or who you might be.
You are buried under the skin of the world
behind its face and muscle. You are sweet.
You are a lime seed.

You are a lime seed
and every day I eat an apple
whose seeds sleep in the
middle lurking with poison.

My plan is to **** on the flesh of the world.
I'm no supervillain. I just want the smack of sugar.
I will **** until you emerge. Or I
will run through the park, shout at every stranger
in a new voice.

I thought I was taller.
I thought I was taller.
I lose my balance.
I lie back down.

Let's think about this, before we do it.
Let's think about this.
Let's do it.

You can tell me I've failed. My lungs are hot.
My breath is useless, like my rescue.

If you close a door, I open a wound.
I made plans to steal you from yourself.
I wanted sunlight for you, roots and crawling
ants, pyramids of help and hope.

I wanted.
I wanted them to be mine, my contribution.
Well.
The self wants a shadow. A shield.
A soul.
The -I- falls apart when the skin does.

There was a moment when
you became who you always were:
alone, surviving against a sea of black,
and I could not help you. Could not
swim against the dark surf
your arms themselves made.

And how am I now to make you
some craft to come home on.
How am I now to give
knots and knowledge to your
drowning. I cannot brave
the isles that break you from
the strings of sand that wait beyond the waves
dying, still, to give you home and breath.

I want your bedding. Your body.
I want your terrible soul, your bait and switch,
your milk, your cave, the meat of your
isolation, the heart you hid in the Pacific.

All I ever find at sea:
tired arms, a head full of wishes.
(Not exactly buoyant.)
And the flashing fins of fish
who sank and died.

Is that all it takes
to rob a body of its inner light?

Something lives inside there.
It needs no attire:
not gouged, not whole, not absent.

It is as present on a Sunday morning as a Saturday night.

Unlike holiness,
it stays in the world through seasons,
and requires no sacrament.

Like the numbers of the dead,
whose bodies held lives,
favourite subjects, foods,
loves, pets, remembered vacations. And then,
because the body is fragile,
they didn’t.

All it seems to take is a story, secondhand
and God is gone from this world.

The stars in their ordained paths and metered blinking
their blue shifts
their moody disappearances into the south or into daylight
their human dreams of travel -
I dispute their ownership by anyone
and would they weakly claim to own me?

Should I feel the fatherly pressure
of their hands on the nape of my neck?
Should they tell us the future
if we’re quiet enough to listen
and if we read the newspaper?
I can’t unpack decisions from markets
and markets from the seasons
nor seasons from the stars.

They are comfortable with great distances:
they circle and swoon. One day, their orbits
will bend to one another and the great gas globes
will move in straight lines. They’ll put
two gallons in the tank and go
wherever they want to go. But for now
I am as bound as they are, and I am told
I don’t live in the same kind of darkness.

Funny little thing is she,
She laughs at lightning in the storm.
And what most would see as torture,
She inflicts with pride and is not scared.
Her skin is sharp like broken glass,
And through her lover’s skin she tore.

Through her safest home she tore.
Stupid little girl is she.
They try to mend her broken glass
But the edges cause destruction of a storm.
Please don’t run, don’t be scared,
Don’t be a part of her torture.

Running love is her only torture,
Not pain that through her heart tore.
Distance leaves her crying scared,
Unable to control the fear in her.
Maybe she is the rain in the storm,
Shattering passing window glass.

Maybe she doesn’t mind the glass,
She doesn’t think this is torture.
And maybe it’s not a storm,
But a hurricane she tore
Out of her skin. She
Is no longer scared.

The distance does not make her scared.
Her skin is no longer broken glass.
Alive little girl is she.
Nothing more will be her torture.
She doesn’t need the lover she tore.
No longer does she hide from the storm.

Not sunny skies, but no more storm.
Not yet calm, but at least not scared.
Not yet healed, but not torn.
Maybe cracked, but not broken glass.
Some discomfort, but it doesn’t feel like torture.
Strong little girl is she.

Screaming insanely she tore herself out of this storm.
No one will say “she’s gonna lose it”. Because she somehow she is not scared.
It’s a mystery how she fixed her glass, or how she can still tolerate the torture.

I will dance
And I will spin
Until the room blurs
And the lightless gaps
Between swaying bodies
Absorb my ache
And longing

I will twist
And I will wring
Dizzily releasing
Whatever still clings
To my depleting soul
And replace it with champagne

And I will dance