No, I don't want to write a sonnet;
to self-lock in an octave
only clasping a rusty key
-volta-
leading to another office cubicle
efficiently labelled sestet
for its six undone quotas
waiting coolly for my
calculating.

I want to untuck my shirt, Whitman;
to unleash words to gather at seams
then tear them open
like bursting blood cells crowding
out of a wound.
I do not want to fit
flesh into a 'perfect' Barbie membrane,
let me stretch the skin taut as sheets
so I can feel the redness
and gouge underneath.

Clarity glazed the Classical sonata
opaque; staves of controlled fantasy
so imaginable, like an illogically
round orange, sliced
in concaves fat
with pulp, each ripeness methodically
connected by thin breath threads.

This is why we have madness, need it;
bless the ****** of brilliance in Beethoven
symphonies, the metallic muscling
of Ginsberg verses, electronic with strange beauty, holy
and unholy, every ****** mess
in between

The heart can't suffice
by merely inhaling
glitter; I can't dare remember the sane
pretty sighing of a Petrarchan
uttering; canned love,
a predictable malaise packaged
neatly in a bland tome, most likely
beige, with the fashionable odor
of bookish age

And so, serif-writing sweetheart
please don't ask
me to write a sonnet.

too comfortable to tuck my shirt in,
I won't touch I won't touch I won't touch

The sky, a plate
in kindly blue,
smooth
as the ceramic face
of this, my swimming pool;

the bobbing palm
glazing the back
of my starfish shape
like white liquid icing;

sweet, the water's after-taste;
gently
pungent smell lodged
in the nape of my neck

I will wash the blue
off my skin, in a tiled doll-box
cubicle
I will smell the smell fade
out of my fizzled wet-strung hair
just as sugar dissipates
into the hot
nothingness of drinks.

I will pretend to forget,
then forget
I was offered a plate
in a summery shade, bordered by
tree branches
I was in that half
amniotic vessel -
weightless

as a seed pearl in
an ocean or a lover
exhaling in the depths
of a kiss;

a posy of
air on liquid.

The air burns where I sleep;
you trudge in almost-snow.

The resetting of alarm clocks
let the wind slip
through your dreamcatcher.

And my sunset is all
the colours of your fall.

I write a poem;
you will awaken six hours
and countless miles later

in the cold
while I burn.

The ink lies between
the segments of the universe;
unreachable,
incomprehensible

in the fire
while you shiver.

What is it to miss
someone?
I do not know.

I am the poem
I refuse to write.

My skin has formed itself
as sedimented book pages,
quietly injecting
our unspoken metaphors
into my bloodstream
of Murakami, of Plath,
of everything that hurt too much
to even whisper to my typewriter.

I am a poet,
and I will type you
into the night sky.