Tagged: relationships

Elgin, TX

rain looks likely
which out here
makes us scurry to
burn things
that are piling up

the weed thing
the food thing
the sleep thing
the dreams

stuck together like
broken furniture
intertwined
clinging to each other

I get home and you’re
bored, so I’m scared
you’re the best thing
I’ve got going

I’m throwing
these things in
I see the neighbor’s fire
hit the tree

sparks threaten
to crawl like ants
towards our house
towards me and

all this wood
towards you and
wherever you are
in there

but the rain comes
as expected
it allows the fire to
process without

consuming itself
or so it assumes
as the fire assumes
it can quit when it wants

so more and more
is just thrown in
like us
a getting-through-shit

machine
a knot through which
the accelerant
is love

When You Travel by Balloon

I worry you will learn something
that takes you away
a balloon you forget
to let go of
or choose not to

I will grab a balloon
and follow, though
in the sky
I have even less
direction

no bones to block it
no blood
maybe they will put
all the reds together
maybe it has to do with the air

it is exhausting trying to plan
my plans, I fear, are me
choice animating thought
a quarter machine
who grabbed me? do I have control

over where I am? is
control like a thought
should I let it go? is it the same?
I swim through the air in
my best clothing

careful to match the color of cloud
but it’s different when you’re in it
it’s obvious
it ruins it

don’t go
don’t look at me
don’t go

Battery Effect

tonight it has been red

then yellow, then luminous white
I think coral, copper, cotton, rattle

at one point it was below the water
before that it had never left

now it’s here, and I know instantly
that I know something, just not what

maybe I feel the moon’s knowing, or I
heard something, the stars

discussing the moon’s politics on the Earth
children in their adult poses

doing mounted police, fixing the sink
kings and queens

with bull’s heads, stomping the water
they don’t play the root, as you have

or me, the stone with a root in it
we are fixed to the hood of the Earth

the sun does a firm bounce off the moon
it goes down a corridor before

coming back, unlocking the next
entrance, and the next, perhaps everything

a baby gate opens, the milky way opens
we are ferried to our rooms in secret

swept in by birds, to be checked on
later, though they know we will be gone

in their wisdom they can see themselves coming
as I have seen myself coming, and you

our mouths open to the same phase
your blood a belt of red, the candles yellow

my reach a luminous white

Vision at Fallen Home

we took his couch, some
tools – to help
evacuate belongings

the garden too
has been demolished
though hummingbirds return
for the turk’s cap
along the fence

they go from stagnant
to blistering
which feels familiar

one transcendence
to another
a tourist in each

starting to head back
then pulled out again
by color, certain
red objects

brilliant against
old footage

a poppy
a war

in many ways I feel
that we knew each other before
we must have done

the way you identified my mouth
like a plant from home

and I know your hands

and I fear so capably
your loss, as if
it has happened

Thirty

I was standing in line with you
when I passed out, fainted
I guess, and woke up
on the floor

I remember feeling
guilty, like I had overslept
and how different
you looked

appearing over me, like
a god, or its mother
perfect
and impatient

my elbow hurts – I realize
I must have fallen on it
you say I may have fallen forward
if it hadn’t been for you

how lucky – I am grateful
– I am weak – I am
let down gently – I am
long to see

the security footage
in which your reaction
plays out like a silent film
in which

the faces of the embarassed
become everyone, black
and white, at each moment
assigned a time

SWAT

woke up drenched again, not
dreams, not raining
who knows

there’s a resiny
imprint of me
on my mattress, myself laid
down over countless
others, like days

I go through what I ate, when
the withdrawal symptoms of
things like caffeine
pot, what I’m wearing
sleep positions, if
I should have showered

maybe my mattress is a valley
my blankets roads
I overheat, sweat
become cold, pull them up

to wake unsure
where the water came from
if it’s water at all, or
just salt

if while sleeping, I’ve
been swimming, and
barely made it back

Orion

If you lay in snow
and I lay in snow
even with the same moon
as headboard, the electricity
wouldn’t travel, the water
too densely packed
I feel that way today
both in our underwear
you walking from Planned Parenthood
to yoga, me having worn
the wrong clothes to work
now bathing in the spillway
we have no gas for water
we named a cat Fuel
each man presents
his best self, the
6-month awoken blood stem
you unlock something in me, he says
it was not there before
you make me want to be a better man
a star falls on the roof
by definition not that great
of a star, but close
men burn their tongues
try to recall
what they were doing before
just to have you say it
have you pull it out
the long steel draw
an approachable temperature
a star just being friendly
holding it
lighting their eyes
but stars are forever away
maybe they have died already

& Countless Other Things

        in my room there are four praying
mantises, two tarantulas, one puppy,
        two people

        matter is neither created nor
destroyed, but some things are small enough
        not to exist until culminated

        sex flicked off tables,
fingernail plate armor, dust bunnies,
        the occasional bird

        squirrels who gnaw 
the owl box
         back into the trunk

        the tree that fell so we
could stand before it, thinking
       through tunnels

        addressing dead starlings,
the consecutive order of ants,
        whether or not

        we should have seen it coming
upright decay on which
        we strung lights

        instead we watched it going
wilting & sopping
        still holding up dinner

        for us, as much as anything
to get drunk & watch come
        creatures returning with tape

        inseparable to the earth
as if nothing could be greater
        than to be put in its misery

7-10

I run more when I’m single. I         dig holes in my skin
as if something might pupate         & emerge
I would like to be         more inwardly motivated
so my heart won’t come out black         in a rocky bed
I’m consumed by         how much
it doesn’t hurt. Does that mean it hurts?