Water Song

we're the sound water makes

when it's running from something

the heedless gurgle, you and I

the callous mass, so easy, so fleeting it

flows, in and out, rising into a quiet mist

a fog, I could never catch or quite

fully understand, how something so

vulnerable came forth from the

flowing watery roar

nothing left un-smoothed, no rock

hard-edged, no tree branch un-broken

we're nature left in constant dispute

a true victory of violence so soft

so subtle, no mountain could outweigh

the terrible sound of water

Naked

I have seen you naked
in a sense. I could trace the
contours of your body, to the last
blue vein in your palm, but I
never knew the shape of your
mind, I suppose there is
only so much skin can say
before our brains begin
to speak louder, I guess
your naked chest never
spoke to me the way your
heart palpitations
murdered me.

We the depraved

I drank that last glass, for us, because we're all so afraid
we make people like us by feeding them inaccuracies
it's odd how much we praise self-loathing as if
loving something is a concept altogether too fragile
for our unforgiving bones, we've strangled that word enough
straining it thin through beatnik lust fingers
Oh we the depraved! If only we could muster the bravery
to cut off these hands that only chase trails of smoke
like our bodies were vaguely limbs branching off the grey haze


I spent all my waking time decorating for a wedding that
never existed, now I keep all of my windows locked
and sentences in fragments

Of Downpour

I found peace of mind in a traffic accident
broken skin is hardly a problem

when your brothers all sleep
with their faces covered

now I can’t find motivation to fold my eyes
when you told me moths fly through rain

dodging every drop, how
terrifying

Intimate

small moon shaped burns
cigarette kisses
speckle your chest bones
like maroon love making
caught in barb wired bedframes
dig your nails into
my ribcage now there's so much
more I have left to show you
you haven't yet kissed
my tree root heart strings
or taken in the dark
parts of my marrow

singe my skin again
and maybe one day we'll see
a spark in all this smutty air
but mostly I watch the moon
when you sleep I couldn't
look you in the eye anyway
something about the way we twist
our fingers into one another
is so violently cavalier
like laughing at our own
pity, we're petty enough
to half-believe that not
being alone is good enough

I think next time I'll wrap
my own skin around me like a
towel hung out to dry hang me out
from the clothesline of your
spinal vertebrae maybe if I
can't be in your head I can
support it and maybe if you
can't be in my limb basket
you'de at least know I
never wanted to wonder
if you lie awake avoiding my
eyes the way I avoid yours

Fold

we were bleeding out millions

of rainbows specks from under our skin

refracting, indigenous light

prism veins, I think we were natives

of each others consciousness, but more likely

we were only transparent glass


fragile impossible structures

why is it that humans in love

are already creased with

"fold here" signs, why is it

that nobody can hold

onto expiration dates

without folding.


twist a coat hanger into

the silhouette of the front door

you used to hide behind

use the coarse wires to

examine inside our lung walls

we'll remove every last sentence

with i's and fold

them into Uish fishhooks

Kill Paint

woman

wailing

on TV

how long will it take
for you to lodge a bullet in her

I don't know if I've been
present a day in my life
until the day I poured hot coffee
down my dress on purpose

streaks of muddied paint, all of us
he's aquamarine, she's red
sometime's we blend
sometimes we make black
holes

Splinter Hands

Our bodies hold together like

the way smoke tangles

and then vanishes

you could call it an addiction

but we're more of a cheap metaphor

for moth covered porch lamps

where children go to collect

insect bones and splinters


Constant tree knock gospels

you have woodpecker lips

leaving holes in

scattered veins

made out of every time

you ever said the words

"you and I"

I wouldn't mind the red

if you threaded our fingers

with wood chips

Ghost Eye

scraps of paper skin
fall out of the insides of your eyelids
constant shed, dead eye
never look anyone full on
if you take in every bit of me
the blood will keep rushing

scab, expanding, over ribs
can't pick it fast enough
exposed, marrow
if only you knew
I'm skin, I'm mostly ghost

My hands are still connected
to your temples

nonetheless we're fragments

Your Birthday Party

I want to be your 21st birthday

I want to be the smokey candles

that you blow out on the same day every year

we’re a good college try in the way

you quote me these adolescent words

we used to make sense of our own skin

I swear if I tore open your flesh you’de be full of fall leaves

I like to think of people as trees

we’ll grow together but we don’t belong to each other

we’re quick to catch fire

victorious red pillars

threatening

OH!

burn me down.

shake me out.

cut off my limbs.

make me into your new breakfast table or yard sale sign

don’t mind my tree sap blood

it was only an afterthought

The Impending Bump

You hit me in the chest, pounding

with the fury of a falling tree trunk, I know this forest floor all to well

reducing me to a series of empty sentences

words that hardly mean anything to you

much less me, I think we haphazardly turned our bodies

into commodities of a sweaty back porch

that only knows how to blow smoke into our lungs


I hardly have the oxygen to fold my limbs over

but loss always made us unstoppable forces of wildflowers and rain

gentle, pounding

break through top soil of my sentience

crawling as we may

Particle Study

these bones, who can understand
a body brittle, touch it's skin
and there begins a war
kiss the mouth
and tear down a religion
the glorious machine
insect wings

flying demolition, creature, sick.
turn the bark of our consciousness
inside and outward, twist the neck
hard enough to leave broken veins
milk blood pouring
with the sounds of angels
and gospels, all we ever were
was a dirty collection
of church hymns

a bee stung my ribcage
ever since then I've been bleeding
animal bones out of my side
I call it only human
you call it a miracle
if only you knew
the burial ground
in my chest cavity

Together we're a hive
of a thousand wasps
but poison seeping out of orifices
doesn't change our decay
and our linnen bedsheet bodies
woven into sweaty eyed
circuits, and choir warbles
carry out the final note
till it shakes

Cells

I want to trace the outlines

of every blood cell in your body

it might be only monotonously tracing circles

but maybe then I’de be closer to knowing

the paths of your bloodstream

we’re only streams of movement anyway

nothing we’ve ever done is deliberate

but I’ll continue to try to tear through

your consciousness, like tearing a hole

through the asphalt of the suburban

neighborhood where you first

traced me

Tobacco Commodity

Every time I wake up I count all my fingers

because my hands might be the only complete thing

I have today, It’s a funny thing that we smoke more

cigarettes than we say I love you, if all you

have is a grey haze to comfort you I’de chase after

it with you, but grey clouds turn into rain and rain

turns into sleep and I’ll be left counting my fingers

again, waiting for you to run out of tobacco

A Morning Front

I’de show you all the lines in my hands

maps for all the mornings I made you breakfast

a crease for every time I chased after a muse

that only exists in sleepy eyes

and sunny windows


Parallel rays, almost spider webs

illuminate the empty space that resound-

bellowing, between soft skin and crusty eyes

I think we only exist in a bedsheet kingdom

as long as we don't turn our heads outward

I'll continue to wrap my disfigurements

in wooly pillowcase bandages