Tagged: the Humans

Jump the River

watching kids play
Jump the River, which
is a game with two ropes

the kids line up, then
run at the “river”
& jump across it

each time the river
gets wider, until the kids
are barely able to make it

some run their hardest then
stop abruptly at its edge
some throw their bodies &

roll for extra distance
some just cry –
too hard, no fair

later they will wade in
the creek. its banks
move apart like ropes

the water flow lessens
some of it abruptly stops
it gets warmer

the sunlight reaches lower &
blooms the algae
the tadpoles feel the urgency

the tepid water tells them
hurry up, get eaten
or get caught & held

their instenstines still in
a perfect spiral
our eyes take time to adjust

to decide if we are heading
towards, or away
either way we fall into it

hypnotized, regressed
will we get word?
will it be fire? monsoon?

will we throw our bodies?
or stop
at its edge?

Mink Teddy Bear

to exist beyond
the worst
having happened

is not the end
of fear
but a full lap

the kids will
often
bring me things

one brings a mermaid
I take its
temperature

one brings
a transformer
it lights up

another brings
a bear that is so soft
it feels alive

maybe it is alive
we’ll keep
its secret

it hides
in the child’s
arms

slips
behind
her voice

around the breath
beneath
the door

mutating
undulate along
the air

like a virus –
evading its end
by

pretending
it’s
not real

to my Brother’s Spirit

at first, my courage
was naive
it couldn’t have imagined
so it led with that

now my courage
feels old
no longer looking
no longing for something to happen

like Mom said – I knew
there was something
more interesting about us
and I felt it

now I couldn’t care less
I want to live
as long as we can
in case we were wrong

Fear of Dying

I beg the stars to move –
that is, to have died already
I’m still uncertain of their distance
now more than ever

what would happen if I ate one?
would it kill me? if I sleep
facing the sky, will it breathe me?
if I get bit, will I die?

I am unsure about so much
what does a virus want?
which is the universe
and which is the galaxy?

is it cicadas? or static on
spirit headlamps? or
feverish kazoo music?
Denis? Denis?

could be just a bug
am I doing the right thing?
where do I place
the needs that could kill me?

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 way light does
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

Salamander

light, like the cricket that leaves the cave
our minds which consume
and think they have been. our minds

of the palest skin
they are stuck inside
the cave of skull

blind as a salamander – seeing nothing
aware of only what they see

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?

Why Don’t You Say My Name as Much Anymore

my parents would say Terri – I mean your mother
or David – I mean your father

as if I wouldn’t know who they meant. Or like
they were each hiding some Terris or Davids

we weren’t supposed to know about. I never really
suspected, but I would listen sometimes

put a cup to the wall in my closet
that connected to their bathroom

I’d listen to my mother and father spending time
with Terri and David – coordinating spits

in their sinks – starting the shower for the other –
flushing the toilet. sometimes I’d hear the long lighter

snapping its fingers at the candle. sometimes
I’d hear the tub water. they’d say their lover’s name

– serious business in the house that holds
their children. they must have been in on it together

sometimes I’d fall asleep in the closet listening
my nicer pants and things hanging close to my face

curled up against bags with my name
adorned on them, a clear cup along the carpet

Candida

your heart will hurry
to the places it’s been
a note tied to its leg
what if the quiet place

in your mind vanishes, or
worse, is given to someone else?
for now though, this is us
this is a city

it shows us its spirits
it calls when the grass
is too long, stops calling
when the grass dies off from sun

where the ice cream truck
does circles, donuts
do your ears hang low
and the occasional BOOIIIOIIINNGG

or HEELLOOO?! we lay
in its sound, having just licked
each other, perpetual lawn mower
I guess the gears of the world

dairy for the diligent whackers
and every house, broken in
on champagne, with its windows
smiling through a baby

under expansion, like most things
built to withstand fire
bison, winter, crop
shortages and floods

termites, outages of power
the way things are
underneath, before eventually
there is a die off

a long low moan without
complaint, the REMEMBER ME
of life that has taken hold
bugs in two dimensions

a flattened Earth holding
more of us, all at once
if she is trying to say something
we wouldn’t know

she is collapsed upon. so
we move forward
in the old way
in which you’re only allowed

to replace yourself