Tagged: the Monsters

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
separately, in the city
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
of the Whole Foods
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
approachable temperature
a star just being friendly
holding it
lighting their eyes
but stars are forever away
maybe they have already died

Harvey

the cab drivers
pull into gas stations, enticed
by the light of zeros
such brightness
meaning nothing, all out

I pick oil off the water
I pick oil
there is always some left
at the bottom, or
stripped up the sides
fucked and left stranded
like the coast
its beautiful lazy
endless versions

I’m trying, but each time
fucking is like flying – There is
more or you die
there is oil
it makes boats of birds
I flap

What could happen any minute
and the minutes lost
probably off somewhere
the drive up coast
its bolted down furniture
no walls
or else these paper thin ones

tonight I dreamt a jaguar
too hungry to hunt, was drowned
by the heron
lifted away and
eaten someplace quiet
on the rocks

down the hallway
until the heron was stretched full
of hair and bone
holding its gut
sloshed to sleep by the moon
her great blue stomach
the sea

After Seeing My Ex // on Tinder

swiping left in child’s pose
as if i didn’t do it

as if to say
no, let me help you

a phone covered in milk
i jumped in a new life

and forgot it
i couldn’t find happiness

when it was in my hand
i couldn’t leave the house

//

i think of you alone there
with my choices

repeating themselves
like children

white cells
the haunt of bodies

moving you from room
to room, where once

we passed through 
inside each other

walked through hallways
of pictures of organs

murmurs following
us with eyes, and we felt

alive, if for a moment
before

the moment
had always been there

Meds

i am asked to pass candles over a fence to a party

i light them first, which I guess makes the whole thing harder

looking back it seems strange

each candle seems desperate, a plea to other nights

the flame a small bird struggling with huge weight

overstimulant with nice things

buried in woman’s hair, the air all at once

i know they are small, my hands

but small things eat things

they consume slugs as dolphins

people who understand, might understand

i see the world in the eyes of everyone else

or do i just see it that way

is near death a symptom, or the start of a remedy

should I stop now, or just go with it?

Rule 34

how much
of the internet
have I’ve seen?

how many thoughts
& friends now side
with my ex?

how many places
will I bed, like
a predator?

we are affiliated, &
would not be
elsewhere, we say

we repeat ourselves, tracked
by those who remind us what
a person is mainly

the few lines
we know
spaced out

repair based on items
cried most often
a little spine, a little

eaten by wolves, not
simply followed, the bones
made powder by morning

hounds asking, even
when satisfied
what else is there?

What if Bugs Bunny Were Bugs Instead of a Bunny

I think of replacing myself
with bugs
fumbling over themselves
heaving
grabbing skin, grain
absorbed
or otherwise freed
like other, smaller
bugs. you would like it if
I had been
now that I am
but I wasn’t
a spider hurls its heart
into its legs
blood hits the wall
and goes up it
like a roach. there is no
naturally occurring
instance of me
in the leaf litter
in the rot
I descend carrots
I say what is up. I
tape your heart

Lime Rinse

maybe I never
in the first place

jelly down a sea of me
me me me

me as I changed
into me again

over and over
over? it continues

through sleep
I am pulled down

tighter, so that you
can be stitched up

I am upside down to you
therefore, to me

Flat Earth

I remember in church
a woman was having trouble
praying to God

sexually abused
by her father and now her husband
she couldn’t take another man

Make God a woman, the pastor
told her. Granted, this
was a Methodist church

Mom liked it for the choir
Dad always felt
he could ignore what he didn’t like

the matter of interpretation
heavy. some things did happen. we
did slay our memories

we did find a dead spot
in the woods
i knew of it

in the way one knows our planet
through pictures
through the elements of trust

wind, fire, through blood
like a meteor disintegrated
how can I ever

get far enough away
to see
what is really the world

to see it touched
by the hands
we are told mean time

and know the forest
for the stars
how on Earth

will I recognize
my mother, her face
like there had been people

Apnea

the trees, their leaves dipped like eggs
into cups of dye, the one flaming oak
on Flaming Oak Cove that has not changed
noticeably, but tonight appears more
red than yellow, an act of collective
memory I contain only part of. I contain only
part of what it takes. I take things out of
the forest and lay them flat onto paper, like
these trees, too much on purpose. I
build my web between birds and train
them to fly in unison above tall grasses,
ponds, collecting bugs. but only in poems
only on weak bones perched in your mind
someone saves me each morning. is that you?
or do I save myself? have I somehow timed
the jump back on correctly, all these times
how have I not stayed too long? this
is where I have been for most of my life