I think I’m getting worse at this but maybe it’s just the heat, melting my brain a little.
Underneath
In the yard
underneath the tree
In a ray of moments
Sunlight and clouds
Again and past
How easy it was
To sublimate, to be sublimated
Oh, bird
Oh, corpse
I could not have knelt then
Could not have traversed
Space nor time
To hold it
Supposing it was there or
still
something un-disposed.
Rejoice!!
No matter how beautiful,
the story still ends.
The Witness
It is whispered when I am young
That love is a reward I desire
A prize for the race run
Back bent to hurl over the finish
line cross, camera flash, bulb breaking
White Light so bright and blinding
While they saddle you, pulling down
with a weight slowly sinking and
A solid strangling hand, tearing you to the ground
A post planting you in a field of wants but never needs
A talisman with no magic, desperate to conjure
Instead, held only to anchor
A rock in your stomach that won’t expel
Eyes which gaze on tragedy
but cannot run,
only stand as witness.
A record of when you were not an echo
Before the world grew larger, and you, smaller still.
Distant Shores
You think, before you sleep, of the words that danced
Across the tongues of your grandparents
Now silent, fading syllables
You cannot command
Just the shape of lips behind your eyes
the weight of breath in your echo.
You wake up on a distant shore someday
And find yourself
With no scrap of the blanket you were swaddled you in
You had gripped its very edges until they tore
No repairs to be made
When not even a stitch remains.
You miss the sharp cut of fine china set for a party
Laid out in your childhood home
Around a table long since burnt for wood
The clang of glasses, the crash of plaster
Now there is a single place setting, balanced at edge
Too small for comfort.
Deletion
I don’t recognize myself
if I’m not stuck
in between the lines
But no one likes the repetition
over and over, the hint of me
flooding out in words, all repetition
stuck on repeat, stuck inside of me
I edit it out
all the parts of myself that
are looping around
in wide spools, tape spilling out
crawling from my mouth,
over and over
Stuck on repeat
the same words, in between the lines
clawing their way through my brain
out of my mouth
I can edit it out
Laugh it off when its choking me
clawing out of my mouth
Edit out all the parts
Taking out any hint
Stuck on repeat
over and over
Tearing down each little piece
Every hint of me
Stuck on repeat
Editing out every hint of me
over and over
looping around, tape spilling
Editing out every yelling, flooding
deep within
Editing out
Every me
Stuck on repeat
Crawling through my brain
editing out all the parts
until I don’t recognize myself
–
Impress
You ought to let him
impress upon you
You needn’t worry so much
with his hands on you
Pushing you back down
into soft blankets
through layers of thick words
piles of sharp thoughts
It should come at you then
Like a sigh slipping between lips
Sweet relief of air from lungs,
Pressing and automatic.