—love is dead. The slow

red rush, & in the absence of love we

raise steel walls

& castanet airs to dance

by. Love is gone

& all tenderness faded,

& in its place castles of knowing

in which we

pass our time from

hand to hand.

Hands which once pressed

earth into the shape of men & earth

into bowls for holding

nothing but sound, between sound

silence, melodic, & if dissonance

then beauty in dissonance as well, but always

the bowl,

shaped by hands,

made of earth & music

for lovers to dance by, & when the age

of dancing passed, to mourn by, & the when the age

of mourning passed, to burn

& lie in death.

Corridors

planes

masterpiece of master scenes

cameras

following girls around

shops closing at 5

owners whispering

from display windows

maquettes

marionettes

girls losing their heads

and tails in unfair fights

stray dogs seeking the shade

in sheds

shedding their olive oil skin

blasphemous and pure

puritan mornings

wondrous kids

a kiss from an imaginary stranger

for strangers do not look like strangers

they all seem familiar

like ghosts of past lovers

past burnt letters

restaurants with empty kitchens

when raw materials cost a fortune

to make a cake

and bake a hope

filled with mermaid tears

sirens

going off

every time a girl walks

in heels

click clack on the dirty tiles

kitchens smelling

of cooked dogs and rotten meat

veggies going wild

rotten with pompous girls

losing their shit

over a boy rapping and tapping

they would have easily dismissed earlier

had they seen where he originally lived

ghost towns hate us

kick us out

with long, strappy boots

heels connecting with shins

fingers trailing wet skin

boarded ceilings stolen

empty tokens of frivolous streets

Wild nights gone awry

of people pretending to laugh over eerie jokes

Ghost towns are in our hearts

never to abandon us

until death bed do us apart

She's leaning out against hope

Again

Suspended

Above the impossible

With those 3 stray hairs

Mindlessly framing

My future

She trips over

Her dreams as she recalls them

Worried about these imaginary

Failures

That whip behind her

Like ribbons

While she rises

And it seems the total

Of her regrets

Have become an arrow

Pointing her away

From

The nightmare I never met

That never really existed.

Her heartbeat kind of sways

Like dreams wrapped in

Doubt

And it's fucking beautiful

And I'm cursing the clouds

Again

And praying for a mirror

Big enough to reflect

the view

And I wonder if the sun

Ever sees itself fall

As it sets beyond the shore

Or how I would feel

If I carried such a burden

So I will hunch

Over the page

And write within the shadows

Of myself

As I follow her into tomorrow,

Begging, that dimly lit lines on a page

Will somehow become

Reflection

What if the body did not exist?

What if the vessel was disposable?

What if you could write without hands

tongue

feet

eyes

No eyedrops to counteract the hours in front of a screen

No stretching exercise to prevent osteoporosis

What's a writer

if the body does not exist?

Will the writer write more

better

stranger

more rapidly, brutally, sufficiently

If there's anything but dimes in their pocket

dreams in their souls

masquerading as quotes from a reiki healer

a shaman

a master of karate

something so banal and hyperbolic

sometimes all a writer needs is a brain

soulless and lonely

but in the end, you gotta listen to yourself

that's what Elvis said

The fake one, really

But as a body wanes and fades

a soul (were you to believe in one)

a mind

remain intact

able to give and repeat

the vicious creative cycle

cradle to grave

"Being alive makes up for what life does to you." --Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses

The summers make up for what New England winters do to you. --me

Babies make up for what libido does to you. --me

Nightly embraces make up for what love does to you. --me

Not dying makes up for what modern medicine does to you. --me

Having money makes up for what money does to you. --me

Your good looks, fascinating charm, and incredible strength make up for what alcohol does to you. --me

Spicy chile going down makes up for what spicy chile coming out does to you. --me

Someone's guilt makes up for what someone does to you. --me

Parking in great spots makes up for what old age does to you. --me

Having the last laugh makes up for what being laughed at does to you. --me

Having no aches or pains makes up for what a lifetime without competitive sports does to you. --me

I could go on and on... --a life well lived.

It’s about fireflies,

how, as a child, my mother would fashion

their abdomens into earrings.

Those nights, I’d cry, not

at the cruelty, but the feeling,

the glow on my earlobes

a brittle-cut gorgeous.

While we wore the jewelry, we’d pitch

baseballs over the grass, watch the beanfields

frame the sunset as it deadweight-dropped

over us, draped us in starred space

where we, too, were blinking,

half-dead satellites. I never liked

the light I carried. I never wanted

to burden other bodies

the way their bones burdened me.

When the cicadas came, I worried

what my mother would make of them:

their shells finger puppets on the shelf,

how I’d hate the way they felt on my skin

but I’d never tell.

in her long legs and lipstick she sings to the mirror: save me darling!

you’re all i’ve got left, and even this might be a figment. i am so far

from home, in this strange dress of mine. the mirror is too clean,

the bathroom sink upended, the bed an empty unslept nation, peeled

of its citizens and skyscrapers. i’ve pulled on my black tights, i’ve pulled on

my mourning, stifling and ill-fitting. goodbye curtains. goodbye empty rooms.

i tried to bury the world but it came back twice as strong, and hungry for vengeance.

i’ve forgotten the lines now. i’ve mixed up the moves. this lipstick is a smudged affair.

i smudge it on the mirrors. i write my name in not-blood. i paint a memorial to this

wretched self and it comes out messy, all the lines uneven. if i want to be remembered

i’ll have to do it the real way, name a nation after this strange body and then never call

the place home again. all the oceans and evangelical highways forgotten. you know.

moving along. on goes the eyeliner. on goes the show. the hotel mirror scrubbed clean

of yesterday’s loathing. the sadness torn from its socket, the soldier’s limbs broken.

this one-person country ransacked and undone. all the survivors lost and searching

for my face in the wide dirty maw of this mirror, stumbling through the black-hole mouth of this tragic city and its relentless smoker’s grin. mirror, i want to find shelter between your teeth. hold me close, and don’t bite down. i am already so fragile

from all those times i have loved to bursting. and i am a body: i am a sleepless nation:

the mirror echoing back all my faces. the mirror singing a sollemn anthem, singing

you better believe it. you’re real. you’re fucking alive.

When I lost the word for beautiful,

I said instead you make me sick

with your wrinkles. I said

there must be a word for this imbalance,

my inability to put form to my sadness.

I searched for synonyms

in streetlights, doctors, little pauses of weather,

punched my sleeping muscles

in an effort to remember—

and slowly the fade came faster.

Sadness. Sad. S—

soundless. A loss of precision,

my alphabet gone longing.

Soon nothing wet my tongue

and I wondered if this was my flood,

just this one layer of blueness, no difference

between shades of sky. A ruin

and then a renaming. To label my misery

as anything but.

How do you say it? I was so griefstruck

that all I could do was speak in scribbles,

whirrs ringing from my throat.

-

When I lost word

I said you make me

I said

there must be a

form to my sadness

I

punched

to remember--

and slowly the fade came

soundless. A loss

longing

nothing

if this was my flood,

just this blueness

between shades of ruin

renaming my misery

as anything

I could do

from my throat

Winter

And people who wonder if they want to fuck you because they are stuck in a little world and then they realize that choice is not an option so then they get very close to begging and all moves are the wrong moves and all talk is invasive do not speak to me because when you speak you say shit and when you are silent in my company I could maybe just maybe decide to put my thigh near your hand.

if you had tentacles like we do you would know that but instead you say some shit that makes me wish I had an axe