Tagged: story
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
Domain
if you put a carcass
on the roof, the rats
will get it before
the birds
I do my coughing
on the roof
you do your
proving
you impress the doctor
with a bouquet
I ask stupid questions
that I hope
sound like love
then we go get ice cream
you choose something brilliant
I get chocolate
people celebrate
having finished the maze
never mind
getting out
then drive up and down
the one road
negative
in string lights
revving their lack
of ideas
like the start of a new
world until boom
it appears, and
we’re here, this tiny beach
with not enough space to
space out
as we float on bars
sit on each other
sink the land
into the sea
Worm-Like
once I let the machines
repair my body
they power washed my stomach
drilled relief
into my tail
one guy spent the entire time
in my jaw, just scraping
they must have missed some
anxiety, I guess – what I
described to my parents as
a knife above my chest
not stabbing, just hovering there
I’ve got it down to my tummy
I’m trying to push it out
I’ve ejected my appendix
anxiety – what I describe now
as a strange fungus
aboard a ship
oh to cut it loose
watch it drift into the cold
never to return
never to wonder if you love me
to devalue your love so
never to make things wrong
because it’s easier
because I know these things by
prescription, or strand
because I blame them
or make them disappear to
appear changed
it’s still here
it’s in the room with us now
one day I will loose my hair
my eyesight
my home planet
one day there will be a voice
the one who keeps anxiety
at all costs
from reaching my hands
the poles
dowels in every pore
make the rope you make
around my wrists
nothing can escape when we go
Yell Fuck at Canoe Rental
geese scream hate
over a banjo being played
inside a trailer full
of life-jackets
the geese are so angry
they lose themselves
feathers in disarray off them
dropping two at a time
soon there will be
more feathers on
the ground
than on the birds themselves
you could build a new bird
imagine the feathers cleaned
and colored for crafts
kids attaching them
to their shoes, banjo music
lifting them into the sky
where light is adjacent colors
the music plays on speaker
it will never stop
but eventually the geese do
they scream their necks
into collapse, then
disperse, like light
onto the blacktop
squirming
the light is the same light
as always. we’ve had it
this whole time. it has been
everything since and will be
everything else
it extends beyond the prism
of our atmosphere. it comes from
a fucking star – how can there
be hate?
it is only the brain making
of light what it will
the brain which has never felt
the feeling of light on its skin
Pressing Medicine
I do one, maybe
two things wrong &
I can’t function – my
stomach is the rag
my ribs are the glass jar
inside awash with medicine
how much does it take
to twist like that?
what do you do with
the rest?
black in the dark, black
red in the light
it is left
in the margin, discarded
white space that
oblierates, white winter
that proliferates
how can it be so many
when it is also each one?
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