You said you would **** it this morning.
Do not **** it. It startles me still,
The jut of that odd, dark head, pacing

Through the uncut grass on the elm's hill.
It is something to own a pheasant,
Or just to be visited at all.

I am not mystical: it isn't
As if I thought it had a spirit.
It is simply in its element.

That gives it a kingliness, a right.
The print of its big foot last winter,
The trail-track, on the snow in our court

The wonder of it, in that pallor,
Through crosshatch of sparrow and starling.
Is it its rareness, then? It is rare.

But a dozen would be worth having,
A hundred, on that hill-green and red,
Crossing and recrossing: a fine thing!

It is such a good shape, so vivid.
It's a little cornucopia.
It unclaps, brown as a leaf, and loud,

Settles in the elm, and is easy.
It was sunning in the narcissi.
I trespass stupidly. Let be, let be.

i

because instead of slipping away,

i can feel you

stretching away

through the lines of electricity that

used to run from

hand to hand finger to finger

seamlessly clasped and lightning touch

but now, the distinct, archaic

electricity wires;

through the state line that makes

144 miles

2.5 hours in a car with traffic,

3.5 hours in a train with horizons

seem like the years that we spent

not knowing each other;

through the lines of shadow that

keep me up in the middle of the night,

pulling me down when

i’m short enough already, thanks;

through the line that was once binding us,

which was only there to make separate forms

somewhat distinct—

the line which now feels

like us dissolving

thinning,

holes becoming gaps becoming gasps,

then melting into

tarred and feathered feelings,

and the knowledge that even

poetry

can’t make me feel what you felt today.

life line, my ***.


ii

some days, i feel

like a ******* camel.

not only because i have to

stumble bleak miles over

thankless tundra under the

blue sky of distinct impossibility

that in reality is heaven on earth,

but in reality doesn’t have your smile;

not only because i have to do this with

memories of you stored

like water in humps—

the way you look when we press up

nose to nose and laugh,

the way you feel like something new

and something never-ending

the way you conduct lightning though my spine

and make thunder sound in my ears

all of which has faded to a distant sloshing;

not only because sometimes

i see a mirage, that

palm tree lake luau oasis,

that glimpse of the curve of your jaw or

whisper of the sound of your voice

that makes me turn around

but is really another sand dune;

but because when i see other couples

with their hands interlocked and their

eyes aligned and their feet in step like

their life is a stage and their world is a musical,

i want to ******* spit.


iii.

but sometimes i realize

that stretching is growth is elasticity;

that because the  kinetic momentum of matter

is the fusion of what i want to want

with what i need to need,

it doesn’t matter

because either way,

i can’t complain.

that because i’m at home in the sound of your voice

and because i haven’t been homesick at all, but

lovesick and yousick and

healthier than ever because of it—

it makes me smile whenever, at the end of every conversation, we say:

i love you

i miss you.

A generation navigating illusionment:
I am one. Excavation; i sift. Shaking
a plastic basket.

Round - and channel mouths spout
a wire crosshatch. I
Tap
   Against
         My palm.

Fine flour lands on the counter and
In my head I listen to the same songs
because I already know the words.

I look for a truth outside my mind
because on weekdays I tell myself
I’m not worth knowing.

How do you stop hating yourself
When you hate yourself because
You hate yourself?

When I slide my hand across the counter,
White flour mist puffs and I listen:

Mac Miller’s alive. He said he’s
surviving on *****, almonds, and granola bars.

Grasped in some five fingers
A thin red handle.

ever since i could form a thought-
i knew of this phenomenon called god.
at least that's the name it was given.
but i could never think of god as a person,
a figure to look up to and
are ultimately afraid of.

god was never my best friend,
never something i devoted my life to
nor someone i gave anything up for.

god was the force that willed the plants to grow
upwards from the ground.

god was the recklessness that pushed me to forget my reasoning
and follow my gut.

god is how you can make sense of the past,
how your heartbeat and inhales and exhales
synchronise with the ocean
how you know what it means to feel electric.

god is what made my wrists stop bleeding at the right moment.
it made my father cry when he saw the flaw in his production.
god is what refused my angelhood
and allowed me to breathe
and live.

i still had time to grow.

so i prayed.
i surrendered to the magic of the universe.
i gave it my undying loyalty.

I'd been trying to write a poem
Just one ******* poem
But he said
Just **** around
Swallow down a bowl full of squares
Let’s play games with each other’s minds
Spend a night lost in a house of cards
Where the joker cackles despite your begging
A reminder of what I could do without
Shouting at the world from the white pavilion
You suckers!
With your skirts hitched up and tongues hanging out
Gagging on a lover’s loneliness
All I see is your undergarments crying for attention
With a liquor solace barely down your throat

Eighteen silver blades
Smile at me with their perfect teeth
One to mark each year that past
A nineteenth will not be necessary
Ready to drag
Like the man trailing his head on a string
Across the surgeon’s winking knife
Tapping their toes on the bathroom counter
Anxious to mingle with my flesh
I’ve already scrubbed in
The survival rate looks dismal
The cotton reel loosens and my halo slips
Down - the noose around my neck

He sat across the room in plaid
Remarked upon the crosshatch of red
That drew the crooked red grin on the white of my thigh
Like loops of raspberry liquorice
Seeping out sticky tears
He misses handling the vegetables
Who ordered cocktails in lurid colours
Well, I’ve a mélange of my own
A collection of prescriptions from the doctor’s office
Stored in a heart shaped box
To swallow down like jelly beans
I’m waiting for that deadly sugar rush

Death’s been dancing on my doorstep
Absent minded as I sit at the dinner table
Head in hand, foot in grave
There’ll be no morning migraine
Perhaps a little mourning in the peripheral vision
Swept up from beneath the climbing frame
Under a soil blanket with a tomb stone mattress
Coughing up the sand in my throat
That I emptied from the egg-timer
Those darling quadrilateral crystals
Blissful in their ignorance  
Disturbing my quiet complacency
Drowned in a glass of tomato juice
That I poured from my skull
Death holds my hand in the dark
And I whisper to pass on the message
Bury me with pyjama’s and a pillow

Amethyst and evaporating
Counting down the seven days before
I disappear again;
Dissolve into a shooting star
And lose myself along the fractured horizon
Bleeding white tea
Drowning in debt and memory
Elegant, apathetic, re-shattered
Remembering.

I pull the summer back up over my face
Like white sheets so quietly in the morning
Sunlight streams in
The beams crosshatch our scavenged posters and prints
The home we built ourselves
Slowly etherized, erased
Reduced to amethyst and onward.

Stretch out the time and I will spend it gladly
Budgeted and rationed beautifully
One year boils down to seven days
And here is how I count them out:
Sitting on couches wrapped up in rainbow blankets,
Throw pillows
I chart these days on a map;
Meticulous.
One by one they follow each other in perfect order
Like stupid wandering sheep
Progressive
Blinded and bleating ****** ******
Numbered, they lull me to sleep
Sweet seven of them

These days I count in wine glasses
I count them in hours and smiles and tears
Every second of my battered year
Counted like clouds on the spring lilac sky-scape
Days counted down in popcorn kernels and ice cream cones
In laughlines and scars, in lavender scones
And showers and trips to the gym and dishes in the sink
I count my days in vanilla candles and scratched records
And papers and poems and midterms and paintings
Polaroid photos and the deep breaths we take between moments
I counted every moment
But now it’s amethyst and over.

Purple like the city skyline in the spring sunset light
Jasmine, indigo, magenta
And you and I
Our apartment
White walls we plastered in memory
All the homes I never had blurred together
Filtered through this glass prism
And projected in progression
Here is violet
Here is vanishing rapidly
With what velocity the end races towards us
Another melting mauve goodbye to add to my resume of heartbreaks
Strong scent of hot magnolias
We lay maudlin in burgundy wine
And purple rain.
I sit hurting how I always do
Mourning like death’s an opportunity
Mourning like I’ve already moved on
How it cuts me to go
How it’d break me to stay
This amethyst year so sharp and sparkling
It scraped and stained me
Left me shades of purple like our night sky shining
With constellations overlapping
Loved and loathed in suffocating lavender limelight
The winds whisper only of how I adore you all
I so adore you.
This is who I am for seven days
And just only seven
Here we are gemstones,
Dissipating salty starmatter
Fleeting amethyst crystals
Evaporating into oblivion.

A broken hinge rests alone as freedom ripples in the wind. She stands tall beside the red tricycle, fenced in white and rusted green.  

Snapshots fire sepia-toned memories.  Farther down the road, where the crossroads hit the stop sign...  phones lines cross the skies.

I recall counting the
crooked lines that ran the length of your palm,
noting how each and every one
ran on and on and on
before petering out into crosshatch
and creases.

Remember when I came to yours,
that first time?
We watched an inconsequential film,
made inconsequential small talk
as we lay on that  
rough-lined sofa of yours.
I stared into your bright-blue eyes
as you glanced up at mine
(murkier, sea-floor brown tinged with green -
“Harry”, you called me, jokingly)
and we kissed
because at the time
it seemed of consequence.

Later, we petered out somewhat
(creased and crosshatched as we were),
but even now,
as I trace the lines of my palm,
I can’t help but feel that
something that day
was of consequence.

To keep a routine, that's the thing,
that's what keeps it at bay. But
is that not just playing a game -
the shaving, the brushing, the toenail-
trimming every four weeks?
I think depression is no more
than the sudden dropping of pretence.
You keep up your image, because
that is what works, and then when
you should be at your happiest, it comes
like meteors come - not with the cold
efficiency of a mechanical bird,
but like the damning hellfire
of a heavenly body curved off-path.
Say you are going for a walk,
and it is Spring, and say your
love-of-the-moment is a short
distance away, as silent as peace
because she knows how you can get.
Say it is the first bright day,
but still chilly - the moon, having
been on a binge all night, holds
a silent tune so blissfully, a
dog whistle in the deep blue, and say
the fields are endless sheathes,
the crosshatch reeds of farmed corn
forming a mosaic riddle on the ever-
stubborn mud, and there are ghostly
rainbows in the hidden puddles,
and it is joyful unlike anything,
and there's the feeling of being lost
as a child is, comfortably lost, unphased
and focused only on the patch of
ground in front - the only patch
that is, not a patch on what's behind.
And say you feel a smile arrive
and you feel too clean, if anything,
too new and looked after, like a baby,
and just as quick you think: this is not the idea,
this is not my retirement, how dare I pretend
I deserve a moonlit walk in the middle
of the day, how dare I play this game?
What next? Will I drink the sun?

Occasionally I feel the curious mystery that sustains in khaki
bows and the mystery of planes
as an emporium of leaves immerse the night
swallowed in the open plains of plaid or locked in the wood behind the walls in home on the range
a wonder
of crosshatch
and deliver
in the answer
I curiously consider
"what thing would dispel
such a calming
emulsion?"

Feeling chest heave
Not to cry in public

        I sometimes hate
        How emotional I am

Those words spat
A thousand daggers

       Why am I so
        sensitive?  

Fresh, frosted chocolate
Plate of dozen doughnuts

          Fat.

Catastrophic crosshatch
More red marks than pencil

         I’ll never pass.

Avoiding line of sight
Two souls elapsing.  

         When?

Thinking and breathing
a task sometimes overbearing

       *Because...