See this patch of
of space and time?
You are the thread
that vibrates though
this fabric,
you are the knot
that that ties these
strands of light.
I am waiting
in the moment
that sits right here
between us.
Lean in
and weave it into
a stunning matter.
When you
and you
would lie together,
the bed would eat
your recognition:
the smells of your bodies
the tastes of your mouths
the weight of your bodies
upon and beneath;
that knowing of the body,
your most trusted knowing,
your ancestors’ knowing
in their brutal millennia.
And your beloved
was not your beloved.
You
and you
may have felt that something was awry
and groped for light.
There was no light
It wouldn’t go on.
Or else the bed had eaten well
the bones crunched up
no other searching
could take place
it seemed there was
no other knowing
but your ancestors’ knowing
in their brutal millennia.
A yellow door would open then
The lid unscrewed
on jars of laughter
The bed would eat
the last of your knowing.
Your beloved
was not your beloved.
i am not the moon, though you've told me of my lunar beauty
you said i was like a tide, pushing and pulling you back and forth
but perhaps you confused the oceanic assault on the shoreline with
the way our pelvic regions danced away from one another
like the repelling of two magnets
you relegated me to a thing of borrowed beauty
said i could never be luminary on my own
no solitary source of light, too filled with a catastrophic darkness
my dark side more prevalent than my bright
but i am much more. inside me galaxies explode
you've been there to feel the milky way be birthed inside me
you've been there for shooting stars growing inside as my back arches
i am not some black hole consuming
i am an asteroid expanding, collecting burnt out stars (like you) as i set in an orbit
on the course of destruction
These hands are less
than the sum of my hands.
These words are less
than the sum of my mouths.
For my body has been occupied
by a marauding colony of silkworms.
Don’t be misled. I am tumbling
somersaults through this exfoliating high
with my vacant eyes and fingers, revelling
in this great hibernation, but
my mind took the last train hours ago.
I might never have known. How
the wires crossed and gave a dead man
breath. So let me be grateful. Let me
thank the gods. Not for luck,
but for true friends with real spines,
and quick tongues that proved a
lifeline I wouldn’t have known I needed.
We might never have known. How
we carried ourselves home. Up stairs.
Through halls. Like crazed puppet
dolls. The neighbors suspicious of our
good times. One just rolled her
eyes under the sheltered logic of
‘who would drug you without
raping you?’ So, let’s be grateful
for a job half done. It could be anyone.
We might never have known. How
we lost the day in a cup and our lives
in a balance as thin as morning,
as fragile as these flashes of his
sinister smile as we sunk into the worst
and worst that lasted for days.
Charcoal eyes and cold sweats.
Where all is the same. Repetitious
horseflies replaying circles above a flame.
The worst isn’t that I can’t breathe,
that I can’t hold food in my teeth,
that days later my skin is still green
and I still can’t sleep. It’s not the
I-told-you-sos or shoulda-knowns.
It’s not the bruises and tears in my jeans
and gaping hole in my memory. No.
It’s this animal unleashed. This feral
body inside my body that came out
to play when he put us to sleep. This
carnivorous corpse. This lone wolf
risen from slumbering sheep. This
Venus trap around my neck and stones
ready to throw. Now tell me, where
is there room for this creature to grow?
He’s walking, a plaid flannel and blue jeans
and – Oh my Lord – we’re in the middle of nowhere,
close to Phoenix, AZ: home of the desert,
the nation’s cactus, and sequoia trees
that shed light on the rivers or lakes preserving
a resource of nature. I breathe the fresh air.
You send a couple to travel with each other
for days, carrying bags and books and too
much luggage filled with clothes and ivory soap,
their different selves begin to intertwine
a peak or the end of a good relationship –
and essentially the death: we’re both mad.
Who made you the best? I say. He says,
talking may turn around to fire at you,
and then he throws a hard, white pillow at me –
to hit my body. He won’t care for months
after he hurts me, yet in every single case,
it pierces my heavy heart, a thunderbolt
before it drops to my feet on the beige carpet,
that forces our lives to diverge in separate ways.