To

To write the great American nothing, you must have a mind of summer. This is the same as the great American no. Then you can feint and move sideways, into and out of the light, as you see. To write with your brain instead of your hands, one must go forward into the cave, release the ragged speakers there, and kneel on the memory altar. There you will be burned, and you will not return. That is what you must desire, to write the great American ever. And to write it you must also whisper after snakes, vanquish the bummy holidays, and go faster after death. He will catch you cheating, and you must chuckle, and nudge him with your comforting knife.

Holding Shroud

Spring was about how we opened. Sliding doors and midnight rain. Our hands entwined and wisdom in the shooting of slight glances. In the humid doom, I watch you fall asleep with my lips against your lips. And fate is not a cake. Drinking in your new world is alive with me, as we wander this museum of violins and chance. Ashes drift down from our campfire and little frog voices lift us above the early dew. It’s not random, but just a little bit more than nothing, in this pitching bucket of stars. 

Somewhere, A Harmonica

“I was the awkward guest everybody hardly knew.”

From “The Burning Girl” by Mary Karr

I was the pink kid’s tambourine, and the sun that you could only look at sideways. I was the frozen winter clarity you sought, to clear your head. I was the last best option, unto death. I was the freaky way you moved your arms when you sensed the mosquito at your ear, that June Saturday, when we were twelve and trying to build our own flying saucer in the yard. I was the hammer that lost its handle, and the bedroom window that kept banging in the wind. I was the friendly way the truckers always waved when driving by our house. I was the worried dream you woke from, forgetting where your heart was positioned in your body. I was the striped shadows that wandered across the floor at night, and the sound of the little bell on the rust-red cat. And I was the cluttered attic that waited for you, when you needed to cross over to the world of memory. 

Untitled

This will be written on the body. Our body, surrounded by spirits and wind, long in voice and happy in mountain air. This bending form is always from now on, but also yesterday. Our arms the desert, our legs the jungle trees, our breath the urging wind. All the spaces between us, charged with electricity and rain. For this is the pause after the outbreath, after the poem, and whatever you there is, and whatever me there is, drift away, return, drift again. The way is to churn and bumble, say the silence, and begin.

Because I Never Stop

My own black heart is yours, because of the break in protocol. I saw that green line down the middle of your face, and your wide dark earrings. You handed me a knife, smiling, and I gathered up my grins. I took them long, into the aisles of this grey dog winter. You let me find my own big hero, someone who could hold me when I needed to cry out the anti-kiss. Now my broken feet are stronger than ever, running alongside that old carriage, over mounds and cornices. The mix of dust and sweat kicks up busted windows. You watch me trip. I’m all in you.

How Do I Stop?

Yes To The Window

Break the heart. Break the head. Break the room. Toy up the thought: no one will come home again. Burn the ballands, in lone moments, your eyes packed with tumbled fears. This is the avalanche of lifetimes. Your hands so plush with loss your neck could snap, a dried reed in a summer breeze. Yes to the window that opens to grey and thunder.

A Thicket

Danger Decides

Attachments

The Week Of Inter-Species Biting

Fist their kid bit our kid. Then our kid bit the dog and the dog bit him back. Then (how to say this?) the couch bit the steak I was trying to cook. That had us biting each other and the halls between the bedrooms. When the dog started biting the TV, we both (simultaneously) ran for our passports at the backs of our desk drawers and bit them to shreds. We tried to cry about it, but the week was long, and there was still so much biting left to do. My teeth burn if I’m not sinking them into plaster, or a camera, or your cheek. Even now. Don’t come near me. I’m running at you. 

Almost Ready Now

A Dissipating Mist

I suppose there is at least one way to kill a song. It involves making the cat the practical matter in the downed tree. The trunk goes away with the mess and I tear something off, like the fragment of a wish. Then a colloid of ghosts holds the handle and I clean the bottom of the world. It means and rankles. It has to be this way, but something isn't right: the way the building storm takes to the fields and dances. The stranger thing is when I have my way with a song, it becomes something I think on, but it emerges from waking life as skinned and shuddering. Another tilted house. Not dead at all, I expect, but certainly beyond me.

Another Going

Then flail, or break with false standards, ever going, and wall up in your tree for the rite. In this lasting final spring, a year is only time to watch shields flare, the forge drop, and the crows. Determine your rate of loss and slide through endless rooms of plastic yellow pails: all the forgotten ones from beach days with the kids. So many little worlds give up sun and dance, as recompense for all the meals we had to miss. My hands would hold you if you could be a torch at the dawn of this ending. I want the curled cradle of your legs under me, to tarry while the earth stops.

How The Torrent Moves The Plan

What, then, is this world, slippery thing, made for trying, or just here? I am here as you are, unsung crowds of shuddering lovers and night redactions. When I step to the door, an old man steps inside me, wagging a finger at the encroaching cosmos, like he could direct it. Then the boy I always wish for shakes free from the squall, and I tumble out of legacy into bright new sweat. Always is always a word of last resort. I don't need it now, but I might when the blue O of my scared mouth finally finds the tune of your breast. As if your lungs gave only gold. We dawn in each other the way the river ripples in the risen light: always the same, never the same, always falling.

Upon Thinking

To write. Or, to writhe. The shell is human, but the meta-factual is even money now. While transcription is a heartfelt thing.

Some Gone Wings

In Cuts

Black wreaths for everyone and the meat that we are falls down, evident. The glassy silt from my sleep last night shakes from my ears. I’m drinking in the noise. 

Open The Night

Not Of A Sudden

At the bottom of the bric-a-brac shop, I saw you veering. You were wondering if we could put it back together. You were wondering how far away we were from quiet.