Proof

Not one picture,
through thick and dark
passage of self-
sabotage, neither candid
nor ordained, a year
obscured, turned blue
bluffing— 

and then you, 
within minutes,
after laughing 
at our broken bodies,
caught me on tape
driving, distracted,
not present in the way
I would have liked
to present myself,
but after all that
time not
seen—

you produced
proof
that we were
enjoying
ourselves.

That we were present.

WHAT is GOOD

sitting in the morning dark humming all my brilliant ditties
searching for hidden beauties that got left behind in all the hullabaloo
we done with these YOU poems not even got room for these beautiful VIEW poems
it's.... damn it all looks so different all of a sudden i must be barreling toward imminent
crash cause from this vantage point i can't even smell the remnants of a joint or the husk
of my atheist apathy god they called me man of god so often i bet i swallowed the lie
funny how it's COMMON KNOWLEDGE that it's all so complicated but never laid
my life before all mighty all mighty (!) glory it's outrageous i sound to myself like a hack
because i've trained to hack the reverent language to pieces funny how it seemed so NORMAL
to exult some COMMON midwestern free-wheeling bricolage of indecision yet could never
bring myself to say god is good god is good god is good god is good god is good god is good
now i got myself plenty of time and plenty of leftover love to write the manifesto of my glorious
complete self so many legitimately SOUND poems suddenly have their place and i am allowed
all of a sudden and suddenly forever to write EVERYTHING ELSE that don't have your name
slobbered all over it god it's embarrassing god it's so good to see you god you always knew
i was coming home?

why my first kiss will be on my wedding day

nothing would bring me closer to you. nothing, not even

licking snack dust from your fingers, not washing your feet

at the highest point of the ferris wheel, not even opening

all the presents on christmas eve. you see it's about giving,

and once we're married you better believe i'm giving

our first kiss all that i've got. oh i am so excited

to put my lips against other lips. the sweet briny thrill

of co-mingling fluids. i want to believe

that all this time you were looking at me, except

there is no way. i waited. my lips twitching

for showtime. hearing you ask, how can your face

be so close to another's yet never touch?

this poem as answer. this idle daydreaming

of our first kiss revisited, scratched,

as if it never happened. until it does

sudden tense switch of your favorite song

what are these things                                   too far away                                   you


             cannot caress against                       your ear                 (delicate mine)



        wonder woe           /              care proxy               /             indirect songbird symphony
               


                                                       a couple hours                   we hold                  (held)


 
                   the ghost-jar of reasonable distance
               

                                                            a logical split                      memories spat          out
                 
                                                                                                              like cherry pits

        gardening throat soil                                      gone bubonic                   


                                           give     (gave)     reasons    for      sunlight      to        imitate                                     

                        sing/sang another verse another verse another verse another verse

                                                                             
                                                                 waiting on a new vexation


          last night for a moment i couldn't see who was hostage


                                                                                       and this thought i have

                                                                 (had)

                     can't stop feeding                                           
                                                                                 the starving instrument

                                                                                                                             makes music

                                 from craters                from abrasions


                                                               
                                                          from remnants of february                            lodged in


               delicate mine                                                                                             (your ear)                                                       


                                                           i am still holding here

    & won't forget

     
                                                                                       (well, haven't yet)




           how you make
                   you make
                   you made                                                                                      me feel

                                                                               

                                             
                                                                                                                                           
                     

You Are In My Way

    I woke up in the nation of commercialization, crystals of a careless world still clinging to the corners of my eyes, and took a ragged breath, left my glasses on the table so I could not see, and went to make coffee—


                                                                       but you were in my way.



    I saw postcards of lynchings and a serial abuser elected— reminding me of when you told me about the time his friend pulled your hair in the kitchen, and how he shrugged when confronted, and how you cried yourself to sleep— as circuses, zoos, theaters and schools jack up their tuition. I wanted to teach English in China, or see the town in Mexico where Mama and Ramon were born, or see a single coral reef before they are all bleached off the face of the Earth. I look at the autopsy, and see myself, an atom of sickness, and reached for my only weapon—


                                                                        but you were in my way.


    We discussed.... not much, and owed it to the moment which could not be spoiled by the quotidian erosion of our rights. We did not discuss the sound children make as their parents are ripped away from them. We did not sit down to dinner. We didn't talk about the job your father took in Colorado, which refinery he was reviving or which plot of land he was eyeing. I don't know how to talk about our country's abuse with you. Since abuse was all you knew.

    I dream of wanting to remember my dreams. I showed you the exit and you would not take it. Once my breath was strong and full of an ocean I had crossed, an eight month voyage without, so that when I became old I could still sing you songs. Now it clips and drags on the one thing I vowed to never again touch. You melted in my mouth like raspberry chocolate, and said this wasn't goodbye— which is a thing people say when it's goodbye. I couldn't be angry. I couldn't even move, so long as you were in my way.

    See, at everything else, I give up too easy. In an other-worldly November, I walked until my ankles were bruised, in a state that, honestly, was bound to go blue anyway. But nothing was a given. It actually took so much more than we knew. But since that fall I could not get back up, and looked elsewhere, waiting for somebody, not just any body but that body, to fight for me. Your disappearance proves what I have to do. Doing no wrong doesn't make it right. I know that better. And I want to feel better. I have to fight to make myself better.


                                                                                                  And you are in my way.

diamond & the rough

first let's ask what can i do for you? before balsamic taste
of there's nothing we can do for you permeates the glinting

tile six years and swelling of a workhorse bruise sunk by
& into craters of pennies piling. revolving door: pathetic.

pardon me for involving myself. i pushed you into asking
for what you want. the response: rustling of ecosure audits

& a quick return. guess i thought for certain life sometimes,
occasionally, when met with irrefutable claim, wrapped gentle

with ethic, hard-strung by fibers of refusing refusing refusing
to let transplants pull the plug on our little home by the hospital,

yeah i thought this shit was a given. was given to me with hardly
any effort. all it took was a hint and they emptied their pockets

into my bulging account. enemy so friendly. capital enemy.
every way i look people are standing. with twitching mouths.

expectantly. we expected thirty cents, god help us. and took
our time with the selling points. one, whomever walks away

from the register slightly shimmering. two, fucking infallible
corrections, barely registering. three, the loyalty one does not

see but feels, cold, unmoving, as once again the tiles gleam.
four, you forget who allows you sleep. forge forgiveness

from hands dripping red. i thought better of sudden mutiny.
you handled it well. better than i thought seeing your eyes

as they broke from the meeting. i don't know how to serve
the animal that hoards what you deserve. capital insufferable.

we breathe together. i am beside myself with you failing
to learn that nothing is given first without asking.

confession

(you are enough. you are enough for me. i am no longer searching. "battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won." and love is found in the same spirit that it is lost. an aching, a bruising, an abjection. i lose myself daily to giving. what i deserve is unfounded. a projection. if ever i deserved it was what i wanted most. to help you. to land in this place and meet you immediately. what troubles you does not trouble me. what scares you does not scare me. not because i am stranger to trouble or fear. but because since meeting you, for the first time in a long time, i look to the future. even as the world collapses. i have found that fear of the future is better than fear of no future at all. i have found. no longer looking. sorry for my public plea. (but you know me.) i am reckoning with a document, full of flawed gestures of love. reckoning this document to forge a music equal to the easy symphony of our being. a document obsessed with the facts of flying. lighter than. sweeter than. so that if something were to happen. and things are happening. no stranger coming across it would ever doubt. that i love you, i love you, i love you, i love you.)

leaving

that idiot emerged

                                           from his car locked                   out of the store

he didn't knock                  didn't know              did not think

                                                                        to ask you                    if he could show himself

here                     my house                     our castle                 this fucking place            


                                                                  i buried my face in hair

your          [         ]               is here


              and I'm                      gonna go  

                                                                              back door locked front door watched

nowhere to go                 but i'm gonna                                                               go


you said wait                                                                           (always      


                                                                                                                    waiting)

& came around the corner
                                                   with a sudden wetness
                                                                                in your eyes

which i can only translate                                                                   through body

                                    through kisses                       through spit and melancholy

                    you thought i could just leave

                                                                    you just don't know


he doesn't even deserve the title of                        [                                     ]

no  

                  but i know someone who does


   

murmurations

you over there

                             i right here

     working                                      through unthinking

                                   belonging                     if only for a brief moment

       to a shared uncertainty

                                                       that is certainly a miracle of faith

             one i can't pray to

            one i can't unspool

                              can't reverberate but through murmurations of your eyes

                                                                                         anointing me

                                                               with the sweet song of staying


i am leveraging this limitation into a prayer of please
i am unwriting all the anthems that landed in your disbelief
i am becoming the sort of man that knows success before it blooms
i am unstoppably glad to be any sort of sun in your feathered orbit

(the wound)

I fall back

              beside your memory, a rippling wave of smoke, insatiably rich

                                                & feeble. Ungluttoning.

             Running tongue splits into two concrete paths. The wind is like
                                                                                                                         lightning,

                                    not yet storm-worthy.

     What's it matter

                       which eyes hold us in tandem                                  and which see us spilt?

                                                                              Yr embarrassment.

                              My, my, my possession.                                                Going that way.



How durable our fact.

                        How plausible February seemed.

                                                               Manic grace: this eventuality.