I will contract around you.
I will pour beneath the sand
beneath you
and place little teethmarks between your toes
so I can say I’ve hurt you,
so I can say I’ve ravished you,
so I can say I’ve left my mark,
so I can say I’ve owned you.

I will float upward when you breathe in,
I will dance clumsily when you exhale,

and when you stand perfectly still
you can find me under your fingernails
as sawdust
gold-sprayed
gently tickling
and not a threat

I will nestle in all of you,
and your eyes will close
and you lips pursed

with all your curses and blessings
and lusts and rages,
all your begging and all your begging,
like pieces of eight
rolling over and under stormy cascade tongue

but never rolling onto a shore,
no,
not for my sake.

I have erected every bone
and every page
as pillars for your triumph,
and my arms are nets to catch your flightlessness
for the wax melting off your back
as you rise into yourself.

Birdsong rings for you,
birdsong rings for you!
And so do every portion of me,
softly, as a background testament

that I have upended the First Commandment
in you.

they’ll cover the hills with
their sweet flesh
and soft nails…

The shadows have compassion for me;
they embrace.

The wind is spiteful
and walks past,
and the grass reverent
in their genteel bows.

They know I’m painted red
and swift to draw more paint.

Nothing challenges,
or makes a breath,

save the careless wind,
the immortal wind,
shrieking and stretching its mother-arms
over all the Gehennas I’ve made
of the men I’ve tired of. 

sparkling, jumping,
rowing and rowing!
hopping, exploding,
spinning and spinning!
melting, melting,
flying, dying!

You will chase
any crystal or flower
that will stimulate  you.
Even the crystals of eyes
and the flowers of the timid,
even the heat of fingers
or lips whose words bring
everything within to a
slow and tempting boil.
You will do anything to
grin sinister.
You want
higher summits than this.

I can take you.

squeeze me, squeeze me,
mix and stir me!
roll me, roll me,
melt me, dig me!
stretch me, stretch me,
knead and roll me!
boil me, melt me,
hone me - hone me!

They think you’re just an empty husk
waiting to be poured full
of effervescent fleeting want,
but you’re really
the full one,
full already with tools,
like they eyes that draw bodies close,
and a tongue, saccharine and forged in spirits,
and your own fingers aflame.
You have danced in Luxuria’s showers before,

so we can’t fight the wish
to dip ourselves in yours,
to row through and do anything
to hear your sirensong

and see you smirking afterward.

i’ll shatter!
i’m peeling!
i’ll burst!
i’ll just die!

Perhaps I want to be
that greatest high,
to be the thing you touch
and can never surrender;
the thing you wear sin-shaded silk
to steal another fix from;

perhaps I want to smirk,
to be the one whom your legs trap
and yet still say,

‘I’ve caught you, you fox.’ 

From love to loss
From cigarettes and rain
To black veil tears
And back
And back
And back again
Middle aged couples and their teenage kids in couches in front of the tv watching
Middle aged couples and their teenage kids in couches in front of the tv watching
Act three of bow-and-arrow tragedy
Atypical
A silent kid
Collecting viruses
Collecting scratches
Wrapping his teeth around lychee eyes
To be known just as the victim of his mother
A cold pale thing, she was
An open jaw in post partum
A thrower of a kind of javelin
Her future freedoms shot in the womb
An expert marksman from the start
Chaining his mother’s hem to hell
Childish problem
Problem child
A child of parent problem
A rebel without a point
That’s the point
Sharp slick wooden bolt
Sped through anxious air
Faster than a shriek
Slower than a fear
And back
And back
And dooming motherhood to damnation.

She counts to sleep
not on the backs of sheep or fingernails
but the curvatures of her loves,
kissing them all good morning,
bathing in the heightened glow of
their distracting
delicious
delirium.

Sometimes she sees a shadow and cries,
and she’ll need another kiss
sliding over and under her tongue
like a raft in a storm.

Sometimes she hears her parents’ voices,
and there’s yet another storm,
yet another drowning.

She’ll be drowned in no time,
wrapped in fog,
and she’ll call and say things
she’d quicker forget
than regret.

Sometimes
she won’t find her hands.
You’ll pull them out of your pockets for her
and ask why she grips your wallet or your
pocket-size notebook or your
aspirations so tightly.

If you hum ‘Mister Sandman’,
she’s prone to day
Hades never gives back his Persephone on a prayer,
so don’t hope too loudly.

You won’t know if she is still a
dream you want to have,
but you know that sometimes
you want to check if you can taste
the ocean on her tongue

or save more smoothly-carved boats
and their synthetic captains.

You will go to sleep at a wishing-hour
and whisper a little fortune:

prescribed pills
to offset the shakes;
to offset the pills,
you know you should take it
a day at a time…

Just for the record,
the weather today is

weighty humidity.
It’s been pouring
sweat or tears
all week
and any passerby is lucky to stay dry.
Even the largest sarcasm
won’t keep your feet from puddles.

Just for the record,
the weather today is
pitiful with a chance of apathy,

and I want to walk in it,
play a bit, like children had,
because

I can’t see the sun from here.

‘round my hometown,
memories are fresh;
‘round my hometown,
o, the people i’ve met
are the wonders of my world,
are the wonders of my world,
are the wonders of this world,
are the wonders…

i don’t know what you’re thinking.
i’ve had enough.
just trying to sing my sorrows drowned
reminds me of days i was up to necks
in other people’s tears:

like that day i had to dance on stage with another girl

like that day i had to wear a suit on stage
and propose to another girl
til everyone died

and i don’t want to know what you’re thinking
either,
who needs killing,
whose pretty little face needs scars.

i’ve had enough.

what’s in a name?
between charity and love,
Puck’s in a name;
i have to translate everyone’s christenings
to avoid being beaten up in the street
like other people’s names are copyrights i should never break.
i have to mind what songs i listen to
so other people don’t think
i’m thinking of other other people;
i walk round my memory palace in high contrast.

i walk round my memory palace
in darkness

turn up the lights in here, baby,
extra bright - i want y’all to see this

i want you to see
all of the fights
to expose my wrongdoing in as many lumens as you can muster
lest i hold my head high
like a human

burn right through me
to that selfish core

make my one weakest point
break

so other people’s corroded chains
can be shadowed

play the summoner’s drums
over all my hopes
and throw them into the forger’s fire

call it
refinement

discard my concern

round my memory palace
nothing i’ve documented in sentiment
is a match for another’s rage and poured blood.

my flesh should die
before I follow my desires.

every gaze
and every whisper
of my wants
should leave my skin stripped
with ribbons of absolution exposed.

my apology
should be given in gasoline and fire;

my repentance
should be proven in leather and nails;

for I’m sinning in
my reflection in your eyes

and there is no endless thing or authority
in or under heaven
that will open the Gates for me
if I continue,

and Lord,
would I continue
if I could just so much as taste such
salacious ambrosia
as the hope on your lips,

but I am unworthy,
a devil to a Gypsy,
so any distraction from my wants
is better than surrender.

i’m not the one who didn’t care.

i’m not the one who
poured kerosene on my tongue
and dared me to say i loved you

like anyone loving you
is a thief.

i’m not the one who
held the match rudely.

i’m not the one who
insisted that
if i wanted you
it’s because i don’t

and if i didn’t want you
it’s because you deserve it.

i’m not the one
not hearing the sky
shout down embraces to you,

or the one
shunning the sunlight
then saying no one cares enough
to give you sight.

i’m not the one
being foolish.

if i die,
it’s because i loved you
for all the things except your poison

but i wasn’t the one
who glazed all the food with it.

i was in the classroom
when the cross-shaped light beams
and the house-long lances fell

i was in the classroom
with Walt and Scott
with Marie and Albert

i was in the classroom
with Amadeus and Ludwig
with Immanuel and David and John and Rene

i was in the classroom
studying, too stuck
for the drawing lights and the angelic veneers and the whispering voix celeste

i was in the classroom
so i couldn’t be drafted.
i don’t think that bothers me much any more.

it is
a weapon
forged of his mother
and built by his father’s hand.

it is
a cloud
and a staff
and holding on tightly;

it is the headwear
of a people long forgotten.

you live
and you learn lessons
and you can either choose to follow them

or you can try to push the wind back
just so you can see
a few flowers
and be distracted.

the wind will always see to it
that you come back on the road you’re made for.

it will take you there.
it will take your house
and blow where you can find it.
it will send you a letter
with a book list
and instructions on how to get there.

you do not get to sit in your act one
broodingly, rocking on your heels
saying, ‘no, my lord, no, my lord’.
it compels you,

and you will be compelled.

what does it mean to be bold?

it means
there’s a bad decision to be made
and you’ll never hesitate to get there;
it means
you notice all the moss under your fingernails
and you reach out for an activity;
it means you answer ‘yes’
to not questions,
you answer ‘yes’
to threats,

you answer ‘yes’
to entire bodies.

you get further than us all.
as bridges burn
you jump across the hurtful rivers,
and as forests crumble in ash
you gallop through the breaking branches
to some point in the future that you actually kind of hope

is more on fire than this one,
for the sake of liveliness.

you are your own little danger.
just your ankles
or your wrists
or the sharpest of your teeth
are enough whispering obscenities to the world.

they’ll try to smoke you out,
and the rest of us
in our sofas behind our mystery novels
will be the first to suffocate

but you
will have been
on fire
and loving it.

this is bold.
you will find treasure
buried beneath the now
hidden deep within the future.

I’m coming apart at the seams,
pitching myself for leads in other people’s dreams;
now: buzz, buzz, buzz -
doc, there’s a hole where something was,
doc, there’s a hole where something was…

you can only dowse forward.
there is no pointing at everything,
so you focus,
pointing earnestly at the one place

where you hope to find sustenance.

you don’t surrender
in the face of dirt.

if you turn around,
you may miss something -

no matter what you’re missing already,
your biases deceive you.

you will hope so badly
that your hope will so badly hope for you

that it will rend its way through the earth
and upset any other obstacle

to stand in this one place
for your sweat and your gasps
and your opportunity

but that isn’t always going to happen,
and if it doesn’t,
you’re going to think you’re not worth a thing.

you are not in the process of deciding
if you’ll die of thirst,
but you don’t know that yet.

you are yet in the process of deciding
where your well will be found,
but you don’t know that yet.

‘no one wants to hear you sing about tragedy’,
they say,
because they have enough sins to distract them,
but you’ll keep singing it,

and people will keep hearing your sorry cries
and wonder what to throw through your window.
a red brick.
a dead plant.
a lover.

you cry like us all.
for oasis.

some of us don’t see
rivers following at our heels -

maybe me,
or maybe someone you love,
or, if i’m terrible, both -

but that’s how we drink.
in fear of death,
and then, abundantly.